By Pastor Wale Adeduro
I was utterly disconcerted to receive the news of your demise in the afternoon of Sunday 2nd November 2025. This was the most cruel stroke life could lash out at us. Everything about your death is awfully wrong. While there is no perfect timing for anyone to be permanently separated from his loved ones on earth, the occasion of the 45th memorial anniversary of the death of your father, Pa Josiah Akindayomi, the founder of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, is an inauspicious date for your departure from the earth.
My brother and friend, Pastor Ifeoluwa Oluwaloni Akindayomi, please find a way to tell me that this is all a ridiculous joke. My head has been pounding. My stomach rumbles. My tongue has been tasting like bile for about 40 hours since I heard the unsavory news of your demise.
Have you really died? Why did you die on the Lord’s day, like your father, Pa Josiah Akindayomi, the founder of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, without waiting to attend November 2025 thanksgiving service?
You have been waiting for about seven years to celebrate as a winner with members of your nuclear family. How did you now die on the eve of victory? Why did you not wait for our much awaited imminent flight to Canada before you boarded the first flight to heaven that Sunday morning?
I learnt you slumped after your usual prayer walk that morning. How could your feet have become weary on a road on which your footprints are etched?
Wait a minute… Papa (as I fondly called you), were you planning to walk with God into heaven like Enoch during this curious prayer walk? Did an angel of the Lord wrestle with you, like Jacob, on the way to knock you down and out?
You never complained about any physical stress. You did not tell me that there was any negative result after you ran medical tests on Tuesday 7th October 2025 in Lagos. You have been a source of encouragement to me since my battle with kidney failure began on 13th October 2020. We have prayed together several times in Redemption City and virtually about my recovery. Your health was never an issue for prayers. Only three issues mattered to you each time we spoke or prayed together: Importance of us and our family members making heaven, the well-being and success of your dear wife and four children as well as the ultimate success of Daddy G.O. as the General Overseer of RCCG. So where did this force that made you slump come from?
In the over forty years I knew you, you were transformed into a saint. You were always interested in knowing and doing God’s will. You strove daily to be in harmony with God and man in accordance with Hebrews 12:14. You were true to your conscience and never harbored any grudge against anyone. You were forthright enough to tell people who hurt you when they toyed with your emotions. And you were amenable to correction.
Soul winning was your passion. I remember how you went straight from ministering during a vigil on the night of 26th September 2025 in Isolo to coordinate an evangelical cum CSR programme that you single handedly sponsored in Sagamu (a distance of about 70 kilometres apart) the next morning. We made countless successful joint spiritual exploits in and around Lagos State over the last three decades.
You gave everyone around you an opportunity to be who God created them to be. In the past three decades you proudly introduced me to several pastors and altars around the world to preach as an evangelist and a productivity mentor. You were always excited about my spiritual progress and kept supporting me with countless 14 days of dry fasting and prayer vigils. As a testament to our bond of love, you named three of my grandchildren at short notices.
Your humility was a garment you adorned everywhere to the point that many undiscerning people displayed their arrogance and foolhardiness to your amusement.
You were quintessentially hospitable and accommodating. You were good to everyone in the household of faith. For many years, my family and friends (even those you did not know from Adam) huddled in your house on Holiness Road in the Redemption City during numerous RCCG Conventions with you receiving all of us with welcoming hands and smiles.
Through your death, like the death of my late daughter in the Lord, Jennifer Ramat Etuh, I have realised that life is indeed like a vapour that appears for a little time then it vanishes away (James 14:4). I am persuaded that everyone who is alive must make the most impact on those we come in contact with while we make spiritual deposits that are valued as treasures in heaven.
My own Papa, I know you were always mindful of making heaven in all our conversations and in all your ways. However I did not think you would go so soon. We should have been on guard when you started resembling your late father, Pa Josiah Akindayomi, founder of RCCG, like his identical twin brother in recent times. Honestly, I have many questions to ask about why and how you had to join him in heaven exactly 45 years after he went to glory. But my head is still spinning.
Sleep well victorious soldier of Christ. I will miss your friendship, love, prayers, candor, counsel and inspiring smiles. Goodnight Papa, my brother, prayer partner, my confidant and encourager like nobody else. Enjoy the company of saints triumphant in heaven.