"ROT INSIDE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE CHURCH!!!"
PROPHET BEN LUTHER -MOIBI IS A GENERAL AS FAR AS THE BODY OF
CHRIST IS CONCERNED ,HE IS THE GENERAL OVERSEER OF FAST GROWING
PENTECOSTAL OUTFIT:MOUNTAIN OF PROPHETIC
PRAYERS AND DELIEVRANCE MINISTRIES IN LAGOS NIGERIA WHERE HE PASTORS A GROWING
FLOCK.
IN THIS PIECE,ABDULMUMINI ADEKU,EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF PAEDIA
EXPRESS MULTIMEDIA GROUP IN LAGOS,NIGERIA TAKES UP THE WARRIOR OF CHRIST ON
SEVERAL ISSUES RANGING FROM CHURCH GROWTH,POLITICS IN THE CHURCH,HIS ODDYSEY AS
A SERVANT OF GOD THROUGH THE VARIOUS MINISTRIES HE HAS PASTORED OVER THE YEARS
HOW DO YOU FEEL AT 53 YEARS OF AGE ,SIR?
I feel very great about the faithfulness of God upon of good
health ,for the protective hedge he has placed over me and my family members.
Since i started my ministry i have never buried anybody in my ministry
since i started the journey about three years
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE GROWING SUCCESS STORIES OF ONE OF
YOUR SONS IN THE LORD,ABDULMUMINI ADEKU?
His life is a remarkable story which has not even ended as
more success are on the way for him ,i thank God that my son in the lord
:Abdulmumini ireyi Adeku has been listening to my counsel and prayers and am
not in anyway surprised at what he has been doing professionally on his job because
we saw it coming.
He was a member of my church at Mountain Of Fire and when i
left to start up my own ministries he had followed me right from inception so am really very happy that our spiritual
intervention in his life at some point is yielding a lot of dividends.
HOW DID YOU BECOME A CHRISTAIN IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Actually,i was born into a Muslim background and i was
practicing the faith like everyone else around me as i observed the five daily
prayers as expected of a Muslim spiritually.
However ,i thnk my trip to Christainity started due to a
spiritual attack i had in a dream of somebody i do not know giving me something
bad to eat and from then on wards i started having a feeling of something
moving on the inside of my head like a lizard
and this happened sometimes in 1980 and at the time i was living at
Taoreed Street in Animashawun area of
Surulere ,Lagos,Nigeria
I joined the Celestial Church for prayers so as to find a
solution to the crisis and i was
attending the Celestial Church , Adelabu Parish in Surulere where they gave me
several green water to drink with the aim of using this to stop the attack but
to no avail.
When Baba Oshoffa was still alive i was at Imeko in 1983 to
visit him with the hope of seeing him so that he can pray for me and lay his
hands on me for special prayers on the spiritual attack that tormented me but i could not see him due to the enormous
crowd at the time all waiting to see the man of God.
Somebody however preached to me about Christ and he told me that Jesus can heal me and
that he can deliver me if i wanted to be delivered from going to hell and
eternal condemnation .
So he told me that he was a member of The Deeper Life
Christian Church and this was around
July,1983 and at the time Pastor Williams Kumuyi was teaching them on the Book
of Daniel.
So after this i went to meet my friend and enquired from him whether he discussed me
with Kumuyi as the man virtually preached about me in his message when i
attended the programme and to this he had readily replied :no to my questions
as he had told me that even Daddy Kumuyi did not know him on an individual
basis let alone will he have had the chance to discuss me with the servant of
God.
There was a particular program held in April,1984 at the
Ayoobo Camp of the Deeper LIfe Christian Church, titled :he shed his Blood and
a particular brethren called Brother Nnadozie preached a message that day on
the even of April,14,1984 ,that has left an indelible mark on my memories.
i will never forget that day as the man's messages virtually
helped in no small way to preaching me into accepting Jesus Christ as my lord
and personal savior and till date i have never looked back.
The moment i accepted Christ i did not recall the attacks
anymore until after six months later and even after that i did not feel it
again and this was how i became a
Christian..
HOW DID YOU GROW IN THE MINISTRIES YOU WORKED FOR?
The moment i gave up my entire life to Jesus Christ i
immediately took on the job of a career gospel Evangelist ,i became very crazy
for Jesus and i was known all over the
major streets of Lagos, Nigeria for my notoriety as far as the issue of Jesus was concerned.
i became very popular for preaching in commercial buses at
the time and this was in the 1980s and i was still living at Dopemu area of
Lagos at the time and i had the habit of
going to the Deeper Life Church to buy literatures like tracts with my own
money and as i preached inside buses i
will also use the same process to distribute the same while also using the platform
to preach the gospel simultaneously .
I used to go from Dopemu to Oshodi to MIle 2 ,Orile
Iganmu,C.M.S,Obalende,Oyingbo,Ketu,Ikorodum and then back to Oshodi and finally
Dopemu inside commercial busus and just preaching the word of God non-stop at the
time.
i was doing this on a daily basis as i became an anointed
evangelist as people i run into in
several places kept reminding me that they had seen my face in some buses or
the other preaching the word of God.
Am a printer by profession and because i was so zealous with
my gospel work i had to resign where i was working so that i can join the
printing division of The Deeper Life Church and at the time it was called the
Zoe Press but today it is called the Life Press.
In those days you did not need to do a Bible before you became a Pastor and this was how it was at The
Deeper Life Church because Monday Bible studies alone if followed meticulously was enough for a man to grow and
even go on to become a Pastor.
Altogether i spent Nine years in Deeper Life before i left as i was already on fire for the
Lord at the time.
So when i travelled to Kano to go and work while looking for
greener pastures ,i had joined hands with Bishop Ransome Bello:who had just
left Deeper Life to start up his own ministries to be called Calvary Life
Assembly Church .
So one day i was sleeping in the church and i heard a voice
from heaven telling me that if i do not do his work then i should be prepared
for failure.
so i now answered the call as i went to inform Bishop
Bello that this was what God was saying
to me .
He now posted me to one of his church branches in Idah ,then
in Benue state though it is now in Kogi state due to boundary adjustments as a
result of state creation .
The Pastor in Charge of the Idah branch Church of the
Calvary LIfe Assembly Church at the time was called Pastor Joseph Ojiah while i
served as his assistant at the time in history.
This gave me the chance to preach for the first time in my
life before a mammoth congregation aside from a bus situation and i was later asked which of the Bible
school i had gone to for me to have been able to preach the word of God and so i told them that all i did for them
was what i had learnt under Baba Kumuyi's leading at monday Bible study class in Deeper Life church at the time and
nothing more.
So when i now returned to Lagos in 1994 i heard of Mountain
of Fire and Miracles Ministries of Dr D.K. Olukoya .
So i came to the services and visited the church in 1995 ,i
was stunned when i saw the man of God preach the word of God and it
was as if i had never heard of teh word of God before in my entire life as it
came refreshed
So i struggled tirelessly to try to see him one -on- one in 1985 ,i told him that i was a Minister of
God ,Dr D.k.Olukoya is a very generous man and he was so concerned about my
personal welfare that he wanted to know how i had managed to survive on a daily
basis up until then.
so he gave me a monetary gift even if he was just meeting me for the first time in his
life as he never knew me from Adam at the time.
So i joined the church missions outreach Department and we
then started to plant churches all over
the place.
i was one of the first set of clergies that was sent to
start prayer city along the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way and we were led as a group
at the time by Pastor John Oyebanji.
By the special grace of God i was privileged to Pastor mountain of Fire churches
and i served God in that church for 20 solid years .
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES YOU
FACED AT MOUNTAIN OF FIRE CHURCH ,SIR?
The General Overseer with all due respects has a good heart
but has too many negative people surrounding him and i believed to the best of m knowledge that
if all had gone on well i should have risen to an Regional Overseer by now but due to the fierce politics in the church i had to bow out .
So what led to my resignation has proven to me that God was involved
in all that happened to me ,DR Olukoya had called me to look for a new place so
that we can start up a new branch of the church and this made me to look for a
place at Haruna area of Ifako Ijaiye in Lagos,Nigeria .
I got the place alright and i went to inform him about this
new place and he then called the church's administrators to follow me and then
pay for the place for three years.
After we paid for the place and Olukoya wanted to know which
region did the new parish fall into i responded by telling him it was Agege
,Lagos,NIgeria.
The Regional Overseer of that territory was informed by Dr
Olukoya and the church was consecrated
under him and by the
grace of God i started that new parish with my wife and my two beautiful daughters
and within a year we had hundreds of permanent members .
So at the first anniversary celebrations ,i invited Pastor
Ayo Smith ,who was the Zonal Pastor of Ogba Regional Headquarters at the time
for him to get involved.
So he preached there and when he saw the crowd he started to
play a lot of filthy politics so as to bring in his own people to the place
which he did and actually succeeded at achieving his aims at the time.
So after that sometime later he was removed from the region and another regional overseer came in and he
has been there till date
So the new Pastor that was made to replace me by Smith was
transferred with all my members at the time to a new place after i had helped to plant the
new parish.
So another Pastor was on hand to start all over again from
the scratch and when i complaint i had thought that the new Regional Overseer
will take me to my old flock which we transferred
to a new place but instead of this they
sent me to an empty hall where they took
my previous members to and i was asked
to start all over again and even at this i did not complain at all
So i went to meet with the new Regional Overseer that i wanted to pay for the rent but i was
told that there was no money in the purse of the church at the time for such.
So one sunday ,the landlady decided to put an end to my misery when she
put a padlock on the gate of the church and so
the Regional Overseer asked me to go and join the transferred church and its
members and become a mere floor member with suddenly no form of portfolio.
So i saw this as a great form of disrespect ,intimidation
and politics in the church of God and even my family members refused to join me
in the new place i was asked to go as they felt insulted and severely
humiliated due to what they felt was my
huge contributions to the growth of Mountain of Fire as a church.
So i stayed there for a whole year as a ibegan to pray while
asking God on what next to do ,infact at this stage the Regional Overseer was
still expecting me to open a new parish in a new place .
So one day,God said to me that i should serve them a quit
notice by resigning from Mountain of Fire as a Pastor
i have never regretted my decisions ,i have a peace of mind
because if i was there i will be bitter and over their activities and that
can hinder my going to heaven.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR MINISTRIES?
I feel great and good about it as God has been helping me and am delighted to say that we are heading
somewhere.