Remembering Prophet T. B. Joshua -By Isaiah Ogedegbe

Prophet T. B. Joshua was the Founder/General Overseer of The Synagogue, Church of All Nations. He was born on June 12, 1963 at Arigidi in Akoko of Ondo State, Nigeria. He narrowly escaped death as a three-day-old baby when a large rock crashed through the roof of his house. This made his mother to name him ‘Temitope’ which means, ‘What God has done for me is worthy of thanks.’

Joshua attended St. Stephen’s Primary School between 1971 and 1977, and while there he was the leader of the Scripture Union and was known as ‘small pastor’ because he had zeal and zest for God. He said,

The ministry started from St. Stephen’s Primary School where I collected the cutlass from the madman and where I started leading the Scripture Union, teaching the Bible and everything. This is where the awareness of God’s presence in me started. It continued. Everything big starts little. If everything big starts big, it calls for concern.

Joshua could not complete his secondary education due to financial constraint. He worked in menial positions after he left school and at one time carried chicken waste at a poultry farm. Recalling his struggles in early life, he said,

I found myself in a family background that irritated me. My natural circumstance of birth was poverty. I come from a very humble background. Poverty loomed large in the family. The little education I had was through self-effort. I know many people with a similar circumstance who do otherwise. They allow their circumstance to influence their will. Their dreams crashed on the rocks of disappointment, failure and setback…

T. B. Joshua was the man who never allowed his circumstance to influence his will. He never allowed the poverty he faced then to stop him from seeking God. Instead, he was determined to seek God diligently and he found Him. In 1989, after fasting for forty days and forty nights,

“I was in a trance for three consecutive days, then I saw a hand that pointed a Bible to my heart and the Bible entered my heart and my former heart seemed to immerse with the Bible immediately. Then the awareness came and I saw the apostles and prophets of old with someone whose head I could not see because He was tall to the heaven and suspended, which I believe was our Lord Jesus Christ sitting in their midst. I also saw myself in their midst. After a while, I saw a hand of the same tall man, I could not behold His face, which was glittering with an unimaginable light, tall to the high heavens and suspended in the air. But other apostles I could see their faces, particularly Apostles Peter and Paul, Prophets Moses, Elijah and others. Their names were boldly written on their chests.”

“I heard a voice saying, “I am your God; I am giving you a divine commission to go and carry out the work of the Heavenly Father.” At the same time, the same hand of the tall man gave me a small cross and a big Bible, bigger than the one that entered my heart with a promise that as I keep pressing in His time and name, I would be given a bigger cross but if I fail the opposite would occur. I also heard a voice of the same tall man, I could not see his head, saying, “I am the Lord your God who was and who is―Jesus Christ, giving orders to all the apostles and prophets.” The same voice said to me, “I would show you the wonderful ways. I would reveal Myself through you, in teaching, preaching, miracles, signs and wonders for the salvation of souls.”

Evidently, T. B. Joshua was the man to whom the arm of the Lord had been revealed. Joshua’s hands had become God’s hands through which He brought divine healing to the sick. He was also “the man who saw tomorrow” because he had truly heard from God and had seen what the future held, and he made known to us the mind of God.

Was T. B. Joshua a prophet? Yes, and more than a prophet. His predictions were not mere coincidences because they were known for accuracy as each event he had ever predicted happened exactly when, where and how he said it would happen.