By Gbenga Osinaike
At birth, Pastor Olatunji Oluwatosin was looking really miserable and unattractive. His mother was quite ashamed to even back him. Because he was so small and tiny; just about the size of a lizard, his mother would have to pad him up with several cloths so he could fit into her back conveniently. But that brought shame and ridicule.
Tired and confused of making up for the tiny baby, she dumped him by the bush path in the village. “I was not given the opportunity to live at birth. It was so traumatic for my parents. It was my grandmother that God used to rescue me from the bush path when she found out that my mother had dumped me.
“My grandmother was the Iya Ijo (title which means mother of the church) of the CAC Oke-Isegun at Ikare in Ekiti and he was quite close to Apostle Ayodele Babalola. She was the one upon inquiry decided to remove me from the bush path and that was after three days that I had been dumped there. I was found alive. She then took me to Prophet Timothy Obadare during a crusade who gave a simple instruction that I should be put at the church altar and that I would become better after seven days”
At the obedience of that simple instruction, things took a new turn. After seven days he became better and thereafter became the darling of the house. But that was not to end his struggle in life. Several years later he had the opportunity of coming to Lagos to seek for the proverbial greener pasture.
“I joined a cocoa lorry to come to Lagos. I had to start doing odd jobs on the streets of Lagos. Things were so bad that I had just a pair of cloth for a long time. I was worshipping in a church then and by the mercy of God was a minister in that church having surrendered my life to Christ. But God told me that was not a place for me that I needed to start a fresh work for him. I was determined not to do that because of fear of what to eat. But God was faithful. I had to go to mountain top called Oke Orio where God showed me a vision of a rock. In the rock there were several wonderful things. From that vision God instructed me to begin a ministry that would liberate people from the clutches of poverty and from the battle of life.”
The church began thereafter and has since grown to become a blessing to many. He recalled several instances of God’s hand upon the congregation. “There was a time a lady who was trusting God for a husband came to our meeting and the Lord led me to tell him to go to Oshodi in Lagos. She obeyed and stayed in the midst of the crowd in Oshodi for about three hours. When nothing was happening she decided to leave for her house. As she was leaving she stepped on a man and thereafter apologized and continued her journey. After working for about 20 minutes she looked back and her eyes made contact with the man he stepped on. That was how they became friends and eventually got married. The two of them are outside the country now.
“There is the case of a couple who came from abroad trusting God for the fruit of the womb. By the spirit of God I asked them to fast for three days. At the completion of the fast their matrimonial bed caught fire mysteriously and they found their lost wedding ring. The lady became pregnant thereafter. There are several others that time will not permit me to talk about. There was the case of a mad man that God healed through our ministry. The man now works in the bank”
He decried a situation where people seek for prayer contractors noting that such attitude does not augur well for a child of God. “People should pray for themselves and not rely on prayer contractors.”
His church, which is located at Ishaga area of Lagos holds regular non-denominational revival programme that attracts people from other churches. “I want people to worship here but I’m not fussy about it because I believe that I’m not called to everybody. There are people that God sent me to. I tell my members who are trusting God for something that if they stay here for three months and don’t get what they are looking for then they should go to another pastor. This does not mean that people should not be patient when trusting God for something but it is just that everybody has his own prophet. Some come get their miracles immediately some have to wait and there are some who will not get it. For such people I probably was not sent to them. So I advise them to look elsewhere for help.”