Let’s leave God out of the question for a minute.
My wife was a panelist on a new television programme called “The Debaters.” I sneaked a peak at some of the proposed topics for discussion and discovered with amusement that one of them asks: “Does God Exist?” I could not but smile. My immediate reaction was to ask: “Does man exist?” If God does not exist, how can man exist?
Karen invited one oyinbo man for dinner recently who turned out to be an atheist. Inevitably, the discussion turned to the question of the existence or non-existence of God. I did not want to be drawn on the matter, but I guess our Scottish guest was used to baiting Christians. He wanted to know from me in particular how I knew God exists. “How can you prove the existence of God?” he asked triumphantly.
So I said to him: “Let us leave God out of the question for a minute. How can I prove the existence of Karen? I don’t have to prove it to anybody. I live with her. I talk to her everyday. I have a relationship with her. It makes no difference to me whether you think she exists or not. As far as I am concerned, she is my wife.”
So I said to my new-found friend: “I wonder if you would be kind enough to explain these incidents to me.”
The revealer of secrets
In 2003, Femi-Kevin took his GCSE exams. Before his results came out officially, someone showed them to me in a dream; subject-by-subject and grade-by-grade.
The next day at the dinner-table, I announced to everyone present that I had seen Femi-Kevin’s results. They thought initially that the results had arrived. But I told them they were revealed to me in a dream. Then I gave them the details.
Six weeks later, Femi-Kevin’s results were officially released. Guess what? They were exactly as it had been shown to me.
So I asked my new Scottish friend, in the presence of Karen and Femi-Kevin: “Who would you say is the person who showed these results to me? What would you call him?”
The Lord who heals
On a visit to New York, I was asked to pray for the eighty-five year-old mother-in-law of my wife’s uncle. She was suffering from acute diabetes. It had deadened one of her feet, and she had lost all feeling in it. As a result, she did not know when she had a cut on the foot. By the time she realised it, it had become so infected the prescribed remedy was to amputate the foot so it would not infect her entire body.
My wife and I prayed for this dear lady in the name of Jesus on the eve of her surgery. We did not even know if she was healed. (I left New York without Karen for Lagos the next day.) But when she was wheeled into the operating theatre for the amputation and her bandages were removed, it was discovered that her foot had been miraculously healed and the surgery was cancelled.
So I asked my new Scottish friend: “Who was the person who healed that old woman’s leg? What would you say is his name?”
Our refuge and strength
I was ministering at a night vigil at Pentecostal Assembly in Lagos when an inner witness told me a man in the front row was covered from head to toe with “juju.” The witness said to me: “Give him the microphone. Let him tell the congregation what he did.”
The man admitted he had consulted a “babalawo” for protection. He took him through certain rituals, and “covered” him with “juju.” The inner witness told me to remove manually the man’s invisible “juju” protection, and to warn him severely never to return again to the “juju” man.
“Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy” (Jonah 2:8).
So I asked my new Scottish friend once again: “Who is the person who gave me this privileged information? What would you say is his name?”
His name is “Daddy”
Then I said to him: “I call the person who does these marvelous works ‘Daddy.’ Some people call him God. Others call him Allah. But he is much more than a figment of the imagination to those who know him and who have a personal relationship with him.”
My new Scottish friend had gone deathly pale. He looked at me as if he had suddenly discovered I came from Jupiter. He did not answer my questions, and he quietly dropped the subject.
Jesus says to the Father: “I have declared to them your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).