Sinking, Sinking, Saved!

I would tell the story of a man
who hated God, the church and
pastors with all his might.
He was born into a Christian home.
He was named Emmanuel, and he was
raised by good Christian parents.
He went to Germany in the 70s
to study and he lost his faith
totally. He became an agnostic
and basically threw his “African
Ignoramus faith-centric” past into
the trash can.
He bought into the ideology of
the godless. I grew up watching
this man curse ministers of the gospel
“They are all thieves”, “Tithe gobblers”,
“Offering stealers” “Lazybones”
“They should all be arrested and thrown
into prison” “They are the reason
the nation is not moving forward”
“They are brainwashing people”
“Most of them are illiterates and they
are fleecing the gullible and the foolish”
As long as he had a listening ear,
he would rile against the church
and church leaders.

I remember he used to be
plagued with migraine headaches and
because of this he uses a
very thick eyeglasses.
One day,we came back from church and
he was In serious pain.
This was 1985 or thereabout.
He had returned from Germany
with his wife and taken up
employment with a bank.
The pain was so severe that
the pills he used didn’t work.
His wife ran to our flat
as soon as we got in asking
my mother if we had anything
at home that could be of help
to this man. Even though his
wife dare not go to church,
she couldn’t sit still while he
suffered and as a result, would
come to our flat to pray with
my mother whenever they were
having one issue or the other.

At this time we were attending a CAC
church at Iyana Church called Jinarere
Miracle center. We would often go
to church with empty kegs and
the pastors would fetch water from a
well for those who wanted it
once every month after the marathon
night vigil (They do not add anything
to the water, it is water drawn
from a well and we often sang
Babalola Olomi iye re o,
omi iye, iye, iye re o, omi iye
meaning Apostle Babalola’s living water
is here etc). We had this water at home.

My mother poured a cup out of
this water, asked her to give it
to her husband. My mother told her
that for her husband to be healed,
she must tell him beforehand that
this water is from Mummy Tokunbo’s
church, it was fetched from a wall
within the church premises and
nothing was added to it in any form.
Pastors prayed and made declarations
over it that it will heal
the sick and work miracles.
The woman said ok.
When she got home she told her
husband everything my mother said
She said her husband grabbed the
water out of desperation and drank
the whole cup. He slept off a
few minutes later.
He slept for 13 hours.
When he woke up the headache
was gone and his sight had been
so corrected that he didn’t need
glasses anymore (The man is 73
years old now and he still doesn’t
use glasses or have migraines)
It was a great miracle.

The man couldn’t deny what had happened,
he went to the hospital
and after a series of tests he was
told the minor tumor he had in
his brain which was affecting his
vision and causing the headache had
totally disappeared.

A few days later, the man and
his wife came to our flat to
visit my parents and the man thanked
my mother. He acknowledged that it
was a miracle and he was grateful
for it but he still argued
that Christianity was a farce and
the way forward for Africa was to
drop every religion entirely.
He swore never to step into
a church in his life.
Everybody was shocked
When they saw the look on our
(The children’s) faces, they switched
their conversation to German.
My parents and the couple all spent
time in Germany and often discuss in
German just to prevent us from
understanding what
they were saying in those days.

After a few years, we parted ways.
The man and his wife moved to a
their own house (Which he built)
and we moved to another flat
somewhere in Ibadan.
We didn’t see each other
that much anymore until 2005
when the man’s wife came to
see my mother.They were in
deep mess and needed spiritual
intervention.
The man bought a big ram and took
it to his parents for
the previous year’s Christmas
celebrations.

Apparently, the elders of their
compound felt he was flaunting his
wealth and decided to teach him a
lesson.
Within eight months he had lost
all his properties and his job.
His wife said all they saw was fire,
they ran out of the house and
within a few hours the house was
completely burnt down including their
three cars which somehow nobody could
move because the keys to the
cars were in the house which
was on fire. A lot of sensitive
documents belonging to the office were
in the house and one of them
especially was needed for a business
transaction the next day.
Her husband couldn’t produce the
document and as a result,
he got fired. She said it was
as if people didn’t see what
happened to them, Nobody sympathized
or offered to help. When her husband
went to the village to inform
his parents about the incident,
He was shocked when his father said
“They wanted to kill you and your
children.
I had to appease them by buying them a
mature black goat…”
He had always considered such talks
from his parents as a result of their
illiteracy and superstitious beliefs.
The incident convinced him that
“There is evil” but he never did recover
from the loss. He sold cement
for a while with the insurance money
he collected on his cars
(The house was not insured).

Eventually, he found a way to travel
abroad. He left his wife and
children in Nigeria and ran far away
to the US. Six months after getting
to the US, the cousin he was
staying with got raided.
He didn’t know his cousin
was helping drug peddlers to
stash their cash.
Unfortunately, he was
the one the police met at home
and he landed in jail.
He had nobody to bail him
because his cousin ran as far
his legs could carry him after
the raid and he didn’t know anybody.
He called and told his wife
His wife came to tell my mother
the story. They both went to see
Evangelist Abimbola who was our
neighbor at the time (Evangelist
Abimbola is a retired MD of a Nigerian
bank and a pastor in the Baptist church)
They prayed and made phone calls.
He was released.
By this time his wife and children
had started attending church in Nigeria.
He still didn’t see any need
to serve God.
He met a woman
in America and married her for papers.
He had to divorce his wife
for the marriage to sail through
because his document stated that
He was married.
The woman got pregnant for him.
He stopped calling his wife and children
His wife and children felt he had
betrayed them.

Seven years later, after two children,
the white woman threw him out of
her life (He was not a citizen yet…)
He had lost everything again.
He went to a church and asked
Jesus to help him sort out his life.
The pastor of the church saw him weeping,
and took an interest in him
The Pastor reached out to his
(Nigerian) wife and reconciled the family.
He began to teach African languages at
the community center.
A few months later, he took
the children to the white house
for an excursion.
A diplomat was impressed by his work.
He got his papers a few months later.
Today at 73, he is a believer whose
broken life was brought together by
the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
through the church.

PS: When you give your life to Jesus,
you save yourself from a lot of sorrow.
It is the biggest favor you can
do for yourself.
You don’t have to give anybody
a dime. Jesus has given you
his life and this life is yours
for free
Don’t rob yourself!
Take it today and enter His rest!
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