Founder, Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, in this interview with
Olabisi Deji-Folutile, GBENRO ADEOYE and
TUNDE AJAJA, talks about the church and sundry issues
You preach as if you have committed the entire Bible to your memory. How many times have you read the Bible?
The Bible is an unfinishable book, you
keep reading. A student once met me after a meeting and said that I
quoted 68 scriptures verbatim. He asked if I memorised the scriptures, I
said no, I eat them. No matter how unintelligent you are, you can’t
forget the food you ate last night, except you are mentally derailed. If
you are given three seconds, you could tell what you ate about five
days ago, if you truly ate it. So, the Bible is just not for reading,
it’s actually for eating. I’m not among the people that have read the
Bible three or five times, I don’t know how many times I have read the
Bible and I’m not planning to know how many times. I just know it’s my
delight to feed on it daily, and I can’t claim to have finished reading
it.
The Living Faith church is 33 years old, how has it been pastoring this one church for the past years?
The ministry is 33 years, the church is
now in its 31st year. It started as an itinerant ministry before we were
called into the church ministry. It has always been interesting. These
things work when you have the right perspective on them. Every pastor is
ordained to serve the congregation, not to be served by the
congregation. When that understanding dawns on any pastor, and he
embraces it, then, pasturing becomes a sweet adventure. I’ve never
looked towards what I can get from any member since inception. But I’ve
always longed for what I can give to the people. I must say I’m jealous
over them, I don’t want anyone to take advantage of them or play games
on them. I want them to just be the children of God that they are,
serving God without duress or pressure.
Is it true that church members here pray for the dead and they wake up, even in the mortuary, how do they do it?
(Cuts in..) By tapping them and saying
wake up (laughs). We must know the source of everything that we
experienced or observed. No man has the power to raise the dead. Jesus
is the only one that has the keys of resurrection and death in his
hands. So, we rely on him to do those things and he quickens whosoever
he wills; he determines who to bring back and who not to. We only
believe in God to bring back whosoever he wishes, if we have the key, we
would be delighted to bring back everybody, and even open a clinic for
bringing back the dead.
Why are there so many rich people in Winners?
