Pastor Toye Ebijomore is the General Overseer of God’s Anointed and Blessed Church International. In this interview with BABATOPE OKEOWO, he talks on why it is neccessary for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to convene a national prayer conference and why it has not materialised despite several moves he has made.
You are committed to praying for Nigeria; why not limit your prayers to the church members?
We are enjoined by the Holy Bible to pray for our nation’s peace, leaders, and well-being of everyone in accordance to 1 Timothy 2:1-2, saying, ‘I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; ‘For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.’ This is a general exhortation to every Christian, and the Psalmist also unveils to us that praying for the peace of our Jerusalem will make those who love doing so to prosper.
More so, God wants his servants to do this thoroughly and be more committed than everyone else. While I am strongly committed to the full works of the spirit for the church of God in my care and my loved ones in all places, God ordained me as His prophet unto nations: to save my country and souls worldwide. Hence, I will not stop praying for my country, Nigeria until all nations see her righteousness and world leaders be blinded by her glory.
Why did you subject yourself to such vigil?
Sincerely, Nigeria is a blessed nation but her land is defiled by the engagements of people in immorality, idolatry, bloodshed of the innocent people, and evil covenants. The Lord declares in his word, saying, ‘Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it’. In another passage also, He declares “woe to whosoever that built a town with blood, and established a city by iniquity”. These should prick our hearts and open our understanding to why God wants to heal Nigeria and prosper us.
Is Nigeria sick and is it right to say Nigerians are poor?
As to whether Nigerians are poor or not, prosperity is not an accumulation of wealth as some people always think, but it is to be in good health and living well. If the ground is cursed for the sake of anyone as God did to Adam, the consequences for such a person is to be eating in sorrow and suffering for the rest of his life and not be in good health, unless the curse is removed. There is always a cause for a curse to come forth and a cause for a blessing to come forth, but the same clause that leads to the pronouncement of either a curse or a blessing is ‘because you have done this.’ Now that God is set to heal Nigeria and prosper us, He wants us to humbly seek Him and turn to Him from our wicked ways. As it is written that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me
What is the significance of a 120-day vigil?
Let me clearly state that it was not my decision to observe the one hundred and twenty days vigil and neither have I ever intended towards it in the past, nor did I ever know that it would count to such a number when I started it. If it was my decision to observe a four month-long vigil, flesh and blood would have stopped me from accomplishing it, but the Lord commanded me to do it and this was how He led me through it. On the night of the last weekend of the month of May while I was praying in preparation for the Sunday service, the Lord took me in a vision of the night to stand upon the balcony of my house.
In the vision, I saw beautiful houses in the array of a modern estate with good lighting everywhere, but a black and big serpent of about two meters long or somehow was going round in the night from the front of one house to the other and laying eggs thereon at the houses of people. The Lord told me to rise up quickly and begin crushing the eggs because if they are hatched; there will be great confusion and troubles for everyone. So, I began crushing the eggs from house to house and when the serpent saw me approaching, it moved speedily away in a flying manner and disappeared into a thick bush.
Then, the Lord told me to call the church together for a three day special prayer vigil to destroy the plans of the devil against us and our loved ones. We held the vigil from the twenty-ninth day of May till the dawn of the first day of June. All the glory to God that He magnified His word, manifested His power and made the participants have great testimonies.
When did you begin the vigil?
Towards the midnight of the second day of June, the Lord told me to wake up now and call my wife to start a special intercessory vigil with me right-away for the healing of Nigeria and the prosperity of the people. I woke her up to hear the instruction and she asked for the number of days it would be, but I told her that the Lord didn’t mention it to me. So, we began the vigil immediately, thinking that we would be relieved by the Spirit in three, or seven, or 71 days’ time, but we gradually and smoothly got to the thirtieth night. As I was leading thanksgiving prayer to put a stop to the vigil, the Lord said, He has not told me to stop and we should continue. So, we continued to the end of July and the month of August also passed by until the third day of September when Lord said I should end the vigil on the thirtieth of it and call the public to join on the last six days. When I counted the whole days of the vigil, I found it to be one hundred and twenty days.
The vigil was themed as ‘Let God Heal Nigeria and Prosper Me’, with wide publicity and God brought the participants. Then, the theme was hatch-tagged and posted on social media platforms from the first day of October to the seventh day for Nigerians to confess as a prayer and say Amen to it also. Meanwhile, immediately the Lord announced when I should end the vigil and I counted it to be one hundred and twenty days, I understood that the Lord was communicating a special message to me through the number and I thereby began scriptural search to investigate the significance of number one 120 in the mystery of God’s kingdom. I found that it was a period of divine probation, mercy and grace.
The people of the first world engaged in terrible immorality, broke God’s covenant, did great violence, and multiplied wickedness. God was wrath with them but He gave them one hundred and twenty years of probation as an act of immense mercy to allow time for repentance and salvation from destruction. Upon their failure to repent, He pronounced 120 years as the maximum number of days for humans on the earth and wiped away the first world with the great flood. But Noah found grace in His sight and was saved with his entire household.
The spiritual implications of number one hundred and twenty also signify a period for great change by a great judgment or the end of an era. God said the days of man shall be 120 years (Genesis 6:3). “Moses was a 120 old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” (Deut 34:7). The 120 years of his life were in three stages: forty years in Pharaoh’s palace, 40 years in Jethro’s house, and 40 years of leading the people of God. His experience on Mount Sinai was for a total period of 120 days in three sets of forty days. It then suffices to add that a period of 120 likewise represents a period of testing, cleansing, creation of covenant between God and man, completion, number of divine purposes, and number for divinely appointed time and fulfillment. In these connections, we should all be very hopeful that God has begun to heal Nigeria and to prosper us.
You sometimes said that the Lord sent you to tell President Bola Tinubu to convoke a national prayer for Nigeria. Has he done it, or was that why God sent you to observe the 120 days vigil as a substitute?
God publicly proclaims bold promises and doesn’t whisper obscurities in some dark corner. So, He speaks only what is true and declares only what is right. The Lord specifically demanded that President Bola Tinubu should convoke a national prayer of redemption of Nigeria’s glory and He gave the instructions on how it should be done.
As for whether the President has honoured the message or not, God knew the end of it all ever before He sent me. I am not unaware of many factors around the kings. The laws of Medes and Persia can prevent a king from doing certain things, but God reverses the irreversible.
The astrologers and magicians do manipulate kings not to believe in any interpreter of dream elsewhere, but we are aware how God brought true interpreters of the kings’ dreams to them. If not for a godly king, prophet Micaiah would have not been permitted to tell King Ahab the true vision of the Lord. Even at that, the prophets around the king got angry and one of them smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, ‘ which way went the spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto you?’ (1King 22:24).
Whenever the people of a nation annoy God by their doing and God wants to save them from the consequence of destruction, He will send a message to them and bear long for them to return to Him. “He will seek for a man among His people who will make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before Him for the land, that He should not destroy it: but until if He found none, will He then declare destruction upon such a nation”.
The Lord’s demand from President Bola Tinubu is for him to convene a national prayer of redemption of Nigeria’s glory. Whereas, the Lord led me through the one 120 days vigil for a persistent intercessory to let him (God) heal Nigeria and prosper us. There is clarity in the two directives. God will never send his prophet to blow a trumpet with an uncertain sound to His soldiers that must go to the battle. Therefore, the four-months long vigil by me was not a substitute to the God’s demands from President Bola Tinubu to convene a national prayer for redemption of Nigeria’s glory. However, it may be among God’s plan towards the national prayer
What’s your advice to the government and Nigerians?
I will advise the people in authority to have the fear of God and uphold righteousness in their various positions. They should show their love to Nigeria by replicating the developments in the developed countries here on our land and make good policies for the prosperity of the people. The Nigerian government should be sincere with the glaring fact that the incomes of common Nigerians are not enough for their well-being and the need to subsidize food, health and education for their prosperity is urgently very crucial. If the Federal Government embraces the policy to subsidize food, health and education for the prosperity of the people, it will gladden the hearts of Nigerians to be pronouncing daily blessings on Nigeria and stop them from cursing her or speaking negatively about her. The scripture unarguably says, “when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked bears rule, the people mourn” Therefore, the people in authority should let the masses rejoice and we should all let God heal Nigeria and prosper us. I see a healed and better Nigeria henceforth!
