What Oyedepo said during Jonathan’s visit —Resident Pastor

RESIDENT Pastor, Living Faith Church a.k.a Winners Chapel International, Ota, Ogun State, Pastor Ubong Ntia, has doused the tension in mainstream media and other social media platforms about the utterances of the Presiding Bishop of the church, Bishop David Oyedepo, during President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to the church recently.
Pastor Ntia said what Bishop Oyedepo actually said during the visit was contrary to what was being circulated in the media.
Ntia, in a statement made available to the Nigerian Tribune, said “the information, which potrayed an open declaration for the candidacy of the president by a prayer-call directed at the political opposition of the president, is not only far from the truth, but also intended to cause misrepresentation, mischief, rancour and malice in the body of Christ.”
He posited that it was also meant to dent the image of the revered cleric, as well as to create confusion in the polity.
Pastor Ntia futher stated that the president spent approximately six minutes while addressing the congregation and never asked for votes or impressed the congregation with any unsolicited advertorial to win their “electoral” minds.
He, however, quoted Bishop Oyedepo’s response to President Jonathan’s address as: “I only had an idea of the president’s visit just yesterday morning. The information was not there last Friday when we had the ‘One Night with the King’ programme.
“So, we are going to be praying for our president. Let prayers and supplications and intercession be made for all men; first of all, for kings, and for them that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.”
Ntia disclosed that the Bishop, thereafter, performed two quick tasks of praying for the nation, as well as the president, in line with Biblical instruction of 1 Timothy 2:1-2.
“It is our duty as a house of the most high God to follow his instructions and to do what He has sent us to do. As believers, we are called to pray for the leaders, the people and the nation and this is what we have done.
“It is benumbing as it is incomprehensible, therefore, that the imputation of ‘I will open gates of hell to anyone who opposes you,’ during a church service that was attended by over 40,000 people and which was in full glare of the world on the church’s website and YouTube platform, can be acceptable wholesale and proliferated on social and mainstream media without recourse to ascertaining the veracity or authenticity,” Ntia said.