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TB Joshua

Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village, in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, a respected soothsayer is one who predicts a flood and be the first one to climb up a tree. This, Karitundundu, the ageless autochthon of wisdom and knowledge, says indeed demonstrates that the prophet is a seer.
The earth, according to village oracle with cotton tuft hair, was made round so that we would not see too far down the road, yet others claim to see not only thousands of miles down the road, but into the abyss of the future.

This village wordsmith and student of Paremiology, (the art of putting the often ignored and marginalised African indigenous wisdom at the centre of global development discourse and agenda) joins the world in mourning the unfortunate death of 70 people, among them our brothers and sisters from the Rainbow Nation to our south at Prophet TB Joshua’s holding place in yonder Nigeria.

Sorry! Very, very, very sorry indeed!
May their souls rest in eternal peace since they died looking for God. Is it not permissible that, when a soul is troubled, it looks for God everywhere, including in the wrong places? TB Joshua, the popular man of cloth, revered for “pinpoint prophecies” for worldwide events, including chilly ones about political leaders dying in this region or the other, did not, this time around, behave like the proverbial village prophet who predicts the flood and climbs up a tree. He never saw disaster strike. He was clueless when it happened? What had happened to his prophetic prowess?

In his prophecies, TB Joshua has seen events in Southern Africa, the United States of America and everywhere but hey, he missed his own tragedy. A great tragedy! He missed himself in the prophetic matrix. Back in the village, God, this, our heavenly father, the omnipresent and almighty, is tricky. He always has a way of proving people wrong and when he does it, he does it in style. Big time! Then he looks aside.

Suggestions from the man of cloth’s camp, teetering on sixes and sevens are of another 9/11-like operation. Really? What For? In the village, the soothsayer must not see a speck in a client’s eye and not a log in his own. Never! Suppose, it is an incarnate of 9/11, (which it is not) the man of cloth was still supposed to see it coming.
Is it not correct that the best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time . . . and you can’t see it if you are not gifted with vision?

Of interest is a technical report that says the multi-story building served as a guesthouse on the campus of the televangelist’s Synagogue, Church of All Nations, said the likeliest cause of the building’s collapse was the construction of additional storeys without reinforcing the foundations.

But honestly how can a self-styled world class prophet fail to see a disaster of that magnitude while able to prophecy the death of one person?
The gullible will take this villager to task for daring to say the man of cloth is after all human and must accept that earthly things might never be godly things.
Here this villager is raising pertinent issues about religion and religiosity, the art and the belief.

There are indeed many people who get excited when TB Joshua prophesises about leadership in Africa and there is one Southern African leader that attracted page one lead stories. I am sure from here, thereon, TB Joshua is a watered down man because many people have questions about his ability to see far and not near. Probably his prophecies are long-sighted and could not see close to him.

Back in the village, this instalment cannot be complete without this small anecdote.
Zimbabwe has its own fair share of prophets and one such is young, charismatic and energetic prophet, Uebert Angel.

This villager read somewhere about this young man having discouraged his congregates from visiting TB Joshua, saying there was no point in going to a place “where they would only tell you when the next president will die.”

A Zambian who visited Angel’s church and attended a “partners meeting of Prophet Angel” said Angel even boasted: “TB Joshua is the one who always calls me on the phone; I do not phone him.”

Upon which Angel allegedly asked one of his ushers to stand up and confirm this, which he did. The young prophet was probably right, if it is true it happened.