THE most interesting thing about Synagogue Church of Nations (SCOAN) leader Temitope Balogun Joshua’s recent false prophecy on the outcome of the United States presidential election was the purported ‘man of God’s’ lack of remorse in the wake of the embarrassing gaffe.
It was not a strange phenomenon for the man who is loved and loathed in equal measure that his US ‘prophecy’ added to the ever growing list of such similar false prophecies.
The Nigerian preacher has consistently hoodwinked poor salvation searching souls across the globe.
Nevertheless T.B. Joshua continues to rake in thousands of dollars every week.
What has become clear in recent years is that ‘prophets’ and ‘pastors’ in partnership with their spouses who automatically become endowed with the ‘power’ possessing their husbands are now using the church to manipulate and steal from innocent and unsuspecting people.
Zimbabwe is now suffering a similar wretched fate of false prophets.
On a daily basis, a ‘prophet’ of some sort is birthed.
During his service on the eve of the November 8 US elections, T.B. Joshua falsely ‘prophesied’ that Democrats candidate Hillary Diane Rhodam Clinton would ‘narrowly win the US presidential election’ ahead of Republican candidate Donald John Trump.
However, Trump won the November 8 election with a wide margin, becoming United States’ 45th President.
According to the prophecy, recorded on a video posted on his television station, a female candidate (Clinton), was supposed to win by a slight margin.
In the video clip taken from his Emmanuel TV channel, T.B. Joshua claimed he ‘saw a woman’ winning the presidency.
Joshua said:
“Ten days ago, I saw the new President of America with a narrow win.
“The new president will be facing several challenges over many issues including passing bills, attempts to possibly pass a vote of no confidence on the new President. The boat of the new president will be rocked.
“By the way, in order to keep you in suspense, what I frankly saw is a woman.”
The prophecy was posted on his official facebook page T.B. Joshua Ministries and was published on YouTube on November 6 2016, two days before the US elections.
But as news of Trump’s victory filtered through, T.B. Joshua Ministries pulled down the facebook post and claimed it had been ‘mistakenly’ deleted by his people.
Then there was more.
Responding to the embarrassing prophecy drew the ire of many when he said his prediction on the outcome of US presidential election failed because God had a rethink of events!
Malawi President Peter Mutharika, who defied Joshua’s prophecy early this year that he (Mutharika) would die before April 1 2016, called Joshua a fake prophet
“Let me tell you, Joshua… you will fail. What you did in 2012 will not happen again this year,” Mutharika said.
Examples of T.B. Joshua’s false prophecies include the one on the 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 where he said:
“Unless I am not called by God, I place my career and calling on the line. That these 200 plus schoolchildren kidnapped, they have to be released immediately, unharmed and unhurt.”
Two years later they remain captive, with some possibly converted to Islam.
In 2013, The Patriot ran a series of articles exposing Joshua as nothing but an attention-seeking, bigoted and deranged man who has run several errands for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
During that year, this publication carried an exposé of his attempts to come to Zimbabwe to anoint Morgan Tsvangirai as the country’s next leader.
Neighbouring Cameroon declared him persona non grata for his provocative predictions clothed as ‘prophecies’.
In 2014, he falsely predicted the 2014 Ebola crisis was over as it actually got much worse.
He also said the missing Malaysia Airline jet would be found in 2014, but it is still missing.
In September 2014, a SCOAN building collapsed, killing 116 people.
While he was busy warning people all over the world about impending disasters, he didn’t foresee the tragedy that struck his own church.
He instead blamed journalists exposing his faked ‘miracles’, accusing them of causing the disaster, and also that it was the result of an attack by drones.
An inquest into the disaster showed the following:
l Inadequate beams of 750mm by 225mm (should have been 900mm by 300mm)
l Inadequately reinforced columns (should have been reinforced with 12 x Y25 bars or 20 x Y20mm bars. Instead the 6.y used 10 x Y20 bars (as seen in the video released by SCOAN).
l Inadequate bearing pressure for the central column due to the 2m x 2m x 0.9m foundations.
l Failure to introduce rigid zones for bracing the structure and did not design the frames as an unbraced structure.
l Failure to provide movement joints that could have absorbed any movement due to creep, contraction, expansion and differential settlement etc.
l 8 out of the 12 main beams of the structure failed because they were undersized, under-reinforced (both in tension and shear), the tension bars were poorly anchored to the column supports and 8 x Y20 was used instead of 14 x Y20.
l The ground floor columns were slender and readily gave in to buckling
In 2015 he claimed that elections were not going to take place in Nigeria
“I foresee problems coming before the election (in Nigeria) that may stop the election. What God revealed to me is there will be no election in 2015 if we do not pray to avert it. (trouble).”
Born in 1964, T.B. Joshua has mostly lived all his life in a mysterious way to many.
Prior to his birth, it is claimed he spent more than 13 months in his mother’s womb.
Zimbabweans must be wary of men like Joshua who hide behind God’s name when they are in fact worse than armed robbers.