New Telegraph Bishop Michael Amamieye is the founder of Bishop Amamieye Word Outreach International. He is a missionary and has over 40 years’ experience travelling around the world preaching the gospel of Christ. In this interview with ADEYEMI LAHANMI, he talks about the life of a missionary, the challenges and why he feels Christians should play an active part in politics.
Why did you go into the ministry of missions, and who is an evangelist?
Missions, in the contemporary Christian term, is reaching out to the unreached people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is born out of the love of God in our hearts and the passion for souls because those of us who have received Christ have an obligation, a mandate which is called the “Great Commission”. It is a task to get others who have not yet known Christ to get to know him as the Lord and Saviour, and it is to make Christ known where he is not known.
An evangelist is a preacher of the gospel. The word evangelist came from a Greek word which means to proclaim, announce, preach, tell the gospel of Christ because the gospel is a good news or message or glad tidings that brings about salvation when it is and people need to hear the gospel because it is what gives them the information that enables them to make a decision that determines their eternal destination and that is what the gospel is about.
How did the ministry start, and what was your inspiration?
My ministry started way back in April 1984 when I began the Michael Amamieye Evangelistic Association. A ministry which has the mandate to take the gospel and power of the risen Christ to the nations, impacting lives and destinies with the word. I was inspired by my conversion and had the real conversion experience when Christ appeared to me on April 29, 1979, and that encounter totally changed my life and every believer in Christ who has experienced that kind of salvation is under divine obligation to reach out to others. You need not have a title to do ministry. Ministry is the calling of every believer in Christ, and we can simply put that we are saved to save others. We are healed to heal, delivered to deliver, blessed to bless. No one is saved so that they can go to heaven only but God has the mind to reach others through you. He knows that you are the only one he can use to reach several others, and that is why you have been saved.
Secondly, I heard a call from God, which was an express encounter when HE called me specifically to go do the work of an evangelist, and that became my motivation for doing this work. I have also been inspired by several other great evangelists, beginning with the late Billy Graham and started listening to his programme “Hour of Decision” way back in 1980 every Sunday at 4 pm. I also started writing to Billy Graham Evangelist Association and several others, too, like T.L. Osborne, and these two are the ones that really inspired me in the 80s. There is also the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa, who inspired me as well in the evangelistic ministry.
What has been the most critical part of running your ministry?
As an evangelistic ministry, one needs men, finances and materials. Those are the three basic needs that are critical in running this ministry and even other ministries as well. The ministry is about people even throughout target is in persons because ministry is one person who has had encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and is now taking the person of Jesus Christ to the next person and that makes it personal because you are reaching one person at a time and reaching tens of thousands at a time or even millions at a time but, it is still personal because you are reaching one person at a time. Like I said, running a ministry, you need a team, especially prayer and financial partners.
People who will pray for and with you, supporting you with their money and resources, because the gospel is free, basically, but taking the gospel from one person to another, place to place, costs a lot financially, as it is not free. You can’t travel anywhere in the world for free. Even moving from your house to several blocks away requires resources, and these are critical aspects of running the ministry. There is a saying, ‘ With the vision, there is provision .’As long as it is a God-given vision, it will take the visionary communing with God and working in divine wisdom to connect with the right people and at the right time to do the work. Ministry takes a lot of effort and energy, and it is not for lazy people, even though we have people who think ministry is for lazy people. They do not know it is hard work. It’s just that we work from a place of rest, we fight our battles from the place of victory, we are fighting not to win but to enforce our victory. So that’s what makes it look like it is not hard work. It is easy simply because the battle and victory have been won, and we are just enforcing it. It is like what Jesus ‘We are to harvest where others have laboured, so that it is.
You are a farmer. How do you marry these roles and have a time out for your family?
By God’s grace, I am an evangelist and farmer in God’s vineyard. I travel around to plant the seeds of God’s word in the lives of people that bring God’s salvation, healing, deliverance, and freedom, empowering them to become useful too. This commission has taken me to eighty-three countries around the world in the last twenty-five years.
What is your take on ministers who trade the truth on the altar of Mammon?
No genuine minister of the gospel would trade the truth on the altar of mammon. Anyone who does it is either they are false or they have lost their fellowship with God and of course that can happen to anyone because we are still living in this flesh and that is why we need to maintain our consistent fellowship with God daily, keeping our hearts soft and tender to God, easily accessible by the holy Spirit and of course fellowshipping with others. Having prophets, pastors over us who speak to our lives, being accountable to people who can correct you when you are going off track. Those are some of the guards that need to be maintained to stay on course because the line between truth and error is so thin that anyone can walk on it and not even know it. That is why the scripture says, ‘Let he that think he stand take heed lest he fall.’ Even the very elect can be deceived. So it is not for those who are fake or false; it can be anyone who has maybe become discouraged, disappointed, deceived, or deluded to the point where they don’t even know or have others who can sharpen and ignite that flame in them. When one is connected with others who are on fire, by fellowshipping with them, iron sharpens iron, and the person gets ignited again. It is said that two will always be better than one because when one falls, the other will lift him.
How do the struggles, doubts, fears and celebrations in the ministry make you feel?
The struggles are there because life is a battle itself.
Job said that man born of a woman is of a few days, and those few days are full of troubles. So one will have trouble in the flesh and are real struggles that we do through in our flesh, mind, those fiery darts of the enemy that will be shot at you and in your mind to doubt God’s word to you and that is sometimes we may feel discouraged, disappointed, deceived, disillusioned especially when you are going through a protracted season of suffering and this can create doubt. John the Baptist was just six months older than Jesus Christ and was related, probably grew up together, and no one else can claim to know Jesus better than John the Baptist. He was the one who baptised Jesus and saw the dove descend on him and heard the voice of God saying this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
He was the one who pointed to his disciples, behind the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but in his time of struggle, he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask if he was the Messiah of the world, or if they should wait for another. If that could happen to John, it means it can happen to anybody because John saw him for over thirty years, and how can you relate to he physical Jesus for more than thirty years and still doubt if he was the Messiah? Still doubting with all of those spectacular manifestations. Peter walked with him for three years, yet he denied him three times. So those struggles are there, but God helps us.
Your initial encounter with Christ can carry you for the rest of your life, and the way you encounter him matters. Your daily fellowship with him counts because it builds a block that can make one stand any wave, ill wind or struggle. Yes, we have seasons of great miracles, and as an evangelist, when we see people get saved, it is so exciting. Only recently, our ministry was at the Portharcourt prison where I preached, and more than half of the inmates in that hall gave their lives to Christ, and that calls for great celebration as heaven is exploding with joy. There are seasons of notable healings, and don’t undermine the small healings of headaches and even fever. You can’t call any sickness small because some have died as a result of these small sicknesses, and all of these restore your confidence in God.
What are the coming plans of your ministry?
We have different events coming like the School of Evangelism in Calabar and Delta state. There is another outreach in Portharcourt and after that, we head off to Lusaka, Zambia, for the School of Evangelism, as well as Botswana and from there to the Central African Republic to do a missions conference. We touch down in at least fifteen to twenty-five countries in a year, preaching the gospel of Christ.
What are your thoughts on the recent news that the rapture will take place on September 24 and 25?
That is not news, and being a Christian for forty-six years, this has occurred so many times. Even Jesus said he didn’t know, and it is only the Father who knows. So, let’s leave what only the father knows to the father. Deuteronomy 29:29 says ‘ The secret things belong to God. Only those that are revealed belong to us and our children, and Jesus said, Occupy till I come. So we should stop busying ourselves with things of the rapture. Keep yourself busy, and when it is time to go, somehow you will know, and you will live gloriously, or when the rapture comes, just be ready!
What milestones has the ministry been able to achieve?
Over forty years ago, I began preaching from street to street, house to house, market to market, hospitals, and villages, but over the last twenty-five years, I have taken the gospel to over eighty-three nations, and that is hundreds of cities, villages around the world and have seen many saved, healed, and delivered. I have my books displayed on online platforms, and one of them is titled Who is an Evangelist? This will help anyone who wants to be an evangelist. We produce tracts especially for the Let There Light campaign in Rivers state, which has been running for the past six years, reaching out to every street within the twenty-three local governments of Rivers state and also for our Bayelsa State harvest project, where we are determined to reach everyone in the state with the gospel. We have done a number of crusades in Kwara State, and it has been an exciting journey.
