The God of Chosen Answers Prayers II

I attended the Lord's Chosen. Here's what I learnt.

A few weeks ago, I watched a video where members of the Chosen Youth Choir sang an interesting song. The chorus went thus; “persecution is over and the rumors are over —- everything they said against my church it’s over”. I’m sad to inform members that everything they said about their church isn’t actually over. If anything, enough wasn’t said.

After the misadventures of the fake Lord’s Chosen I attended, I made sure that I got the right church this time. I attended one Sunday at my local church, went for a Saturday crusade, and then attended the headquaters at Ijesha twice. At the end of my labors, I came to the sober conclusion that the church was either fool-proof evidence that the God of the Chosen is alive and well, or the product of massive fraud.

First, why the Lord’s Chosen? The primary reason is because my readers chose it, but even if they didn’t I would have gone anyway. That’s because the church and its mannerisms have always been fascinating to me. I remember watching the outlandish testimonies — I remember one where their apron stopped bullets — and how much they shocked me. There is also the matter of their lead pastor, Lazaruz Mouka, and the fraud allegations leveled against him by former members. The experience promised to be a fascinating one, and it was.

The God of My Pastor Power

The full title of our church is The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Revival Ministries. After the first Sunday at my local church, I could swear that this church was the least charismatic I’d ever attended. The pastor just stood at the ordinary looking pulpit and droned on for over an hour. Five minutes in, I believed that this was just some dude making an announcement. But he wasn’t. He was actually preaching. By the end of the service, I was convinced that this was possibly the most anti-charismatic church I’d ever been to. The people looked so tired and miserable that I thought at least half of them must have been forced to come. It could be described as a slug-fest.

Now, I am not a total illiterate. I understand that charisma in this context probably refers to the charismatic movement, which is an offshoot of third wave pentecostalism. I know this most likely refers to churches that emphasize the gifts of the holy spirit in every day life. But this church failed on that note as well, as the only gift of the holy spirit I saw on display was ferocious clapping. Wait? That’s not a gift of the Holy Spirit?

Anyway, my sojourn to the main church and crusade informed me how wrong I was. Not only was the Lord’s Chosen actually charismatic, it is probably the most charismatic church in the country. Let me explain.

Charisma, in lay man terms, means to inspire deep devotion and belief in others. And that is exactly what the General Overseer, Lazarus Mouka does. The members of the Lord’s Chosen worship the trinity + 1. God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit, and God my pastor. At my first Sunday at the church headquaters, I learnt that the pastor had previously given out his number to members and said just a text message of their problems to that number would solve whatever issues they had. Jesus didn’t even ask the woman with the issue of blood to touch the helm of his garment. Pastor Lazarus, on the other hand, insists that you don’t even need to see him or touch his garment — just send a message to his heavenly approved phone number and that is the end.

How did I learn of this instruction? A woman testified that her daughter was healed of stomach tumors, fibroid, and bladder infection by just sending one message to the phone number. I wonder why Tinubu hasn’t sent a text message to that number already? But more on that later.

The members of the Lord’s Chosen are extraordinarily devoted to their church. The first Sunday I was at the headquaters, I told someone I was a new member and he smiled like he’d just won a billion dollars. “You will see that the Lord’s Chosen is a different church. You might have been going to churches oh, but the miracles here? You will see.” What an odd thing to say.

Back to my point. While pastor Lazarus’s preaching would be a good substitute for an adult lullaby, he manages to inspire deep conviction in the hearts and souls of Chosen members. You only need to listen to one testimony to understand the depth of this adoration. After each testifier tells a truly fantastic story, they make sure to pray effusively for the man. Every testimony is basically a testament to the potency of the pastor’s power. Here is how a random testimony may go in the Lord’s Chosen.

Chosen, praiseee the Lord! I joined this movement in 2004, and since then the God of my Pastor power has been doing wonders. Help me praise the God of my pastor power! Please, if you are a new comer here, stay put. Hear me? Stay put! The God of my pastor power is alive and he is doing wonders! Just listen and trust and obey our pastor and you will see the God of my pastor power in your life.

I went to Chosen for only four Sundays, and may have heard less than 15 testimonies in total, but in at least two of them the delivering power was the spirit of the pastor. Apparently, the pastor’s spirit is somewhat restless as he is constantly invading the dreams of members and kidnapper’s den to free them. And I have to be honest, if my pastor also constantly appeared in my dream or saved me from kidnappers, I would be taken in by what little charisma he has. The affection and adoration the members have for him — which is repaid by, as far as I can tell, stoic indifference — can be grating to anyone with an aversion to subservience. I used to think regular church goers weird for calling their pastor’s daddy, but this is even a lot more effusive than that.

At one of the services, I heard an usher tell a man not to press his phone because the pastor could see him. We sat close to the front, so that seemed understandable. I used to attend a church where the lead pastor could call out members of the congregation who were sleeping or not paying attention during the sermon. But that church had less than 300 people; would our pastor really do that in front of maybe ten thousand people? I didn’t think much of it, and wasn’t going to include it in my review until something happened during my last visit to the church. I tried to leave while the man was preaching, but the gates to the auditorium were locked. Not closed. Locked. An usher asked me where I was going, and I said I was going home. He said I couldn’t, as papa would see me leaving and could get angry. You just had to see my face. So I sat my black ass down and marinated in this new information.

This sort of subservience was ridiculous even when one considered the general behavior of Nigerian church goers. Jesus once said that this type doesn’t go out through fasting and prayer. I have to say this sort of subservience doesn’t happen except through supernatural means. There had to be something supernatural going on. And brethren, there is.

Brethren, Chosen Is Blessed

Chosen is blessed. They have to be! I am picking my words carefully here so as not to be misconstrued, but the testimonies given at the Lord’s Chosen are nothing short of extraordinarily miraculous. Not just miraculous. Extraordinarily so. In my last review, I attended CCI and I cannot think of one testimony that drove me to incredulity. Pastor Iren’s spirit didn’t free anyone from organ harvesters, and no one got cured of any illness by merely sending a text message to him. But the opposite was the case at Chosen. Let me set the stage.

The main attraction at the Lord’s Chosen, as far as I can tell, are the testimonies. During the combined service, testimony time took over an hour. Testifiers, I gather (though not 100% sure), have to first speak to testimony interviewers before they get the opportunity to say their testimony. Each testifier spends an average of around 8 minutes saying their testimony, and it is all freestyle. Every testifier has two or three testimonies, and they spend all the time on giving context to any given testimony. At mega churches I know of (Winner’s for example), people read out their written testimony. But that is too much preparation for the God of my pastor power.

There is a testimony moderator who stands in a different part of the pulpit whose job is mainly to add ajasa to the testimony and highlight favorable points. For example, if the pastor’s spirit gave your kidnappers a bicycle kick, he would ask you to repeat it clearly for the audience to listen and appreciate. Other churches would ask testifiers to be quick with their testimony, as the church program needs to continue. But across my four services, I never heard the moderator urge the testifier to speak quickly, even when they went on random tangential points that had nothing to do with the testimony. And, of course, every testimony began with a song. At a point, I realized that the testimony time wasn’t just a part of the service — it was the service. And why wouldn’t it be? If I belonged to a church where my pastor’s spirit made random cameo appearances in the spirit realm for me, I would also pay a lot of attention to the testimonies.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Lord’s Chosen is such a successful church, the types of fantastical testimonies people share during service is a good clue. People love signs and wonders. They love the spiritual power. They love being rest assured that the God of their pastor would safe-keep them no matter what. And the Lord’s Chosen offers all of this. Why wouldn’t people come and stay put? The incredible thing is that they don’t even have to experience any supernatural thing to know that the God of their pastor power works wonders. As long as they are reassured of future supernatural blessings every Sunday, all’s well. When there is life there is hope. And even if bad things happen, they can just shrug and say that God works in mysterious ways.

The Times, They Are A-Changin!

“The slow one now will later be fast,

As the present now will later be past

And the first one now will later be last

For the times, they are a-changing”

I have to imagine that the peak of the Lord’s Chosen is past. The glory days have to be over. I am not being cynical, I am merely relaying what I saw. Walking into the church auditorium, on the combined service day no less, felt like I was walking into a set from 2004. The chairs are all plastic, and a third hadn’t been sat on in months — maybe years. Everything seemed so aged, so archaic. Even the translators at the back looked and dressed like they were time travelers from 2004. I am sure there was a time where everything was shimmering new, and there was a boundless future ahead. I didn’t get that feeling at any time during the four services I attended. But, like I said, hope is an inexhaustible resource. At all the services I attended, I remember testifiers telling God to please grant their pastor 10 billion souls. At first I thought this was mere hyperbolic nonsense, but it turns out it wasn’t.

What does progress mean in this context?

And it is actually technically possible. If we calculate from 22 years ago to 30 years in the future, earth would have seen more than ten billion humans. So, yes, our pastor could get ten million souls, but seeing as the church struggled to be filled up even during the combined service, that position seems unlikely.

Picture taken during a single service

It seems this is an issue that even the pastor has privately grappled with. Unlike other mega churches, Lord’s Chosen branches aren’t really branches. Only two Sunday services are held at the local church each month. That’s because the other two Sundays are combined services where every local church in Lagos must appear at the headquaters. At first I believed this was merely a product of excessive centralization created by overzealous local pastors who’d begun poaching members for their own interests or even churches. That is a huge problem with many Nigerian mega churches, and I thought this excessive centralization was just the Lord’s Chosen way of solving that problem.

But a single Sunday at a non-combined service at the headquaters clued me into the real issue. There were just not enough people. Maybe a third — and that is really pushing it — of the available seats were taken during single services. Even combined services often saw only at most 80% of the seats taken. I am sure that there must have been a point where even single services drew enough crowd to fill the auditorium. But something happened, and that’s no longer the case. Like I said, the glory days are gone.

Perhaps nothing fantastical happened and people just grew old. The demographic at the Lord’s Chosen is older than that of any church I’ve been to. 8 out of every 10 men I saw were above 40. And that is to be expected, as the pastor is no spring chicken himself. The demographic is so old that I didn’t see any semblance of a children’s church. Mothers just sat down with their young children, and young boys — some as young as 5 — sat with the men in the main auditorium.

Another peculiar thing that perhaps influenced my description of the church as aged is the way and manner the people presented themselves. The women didn’t wear any flashy clothes, and a lot of the men looked like the wretched of the earth. Please note that I am not mocking anyone, as I also struggle with poverty. A lot of the men looked like they’d just rolled out of bed after having a horrible hangover. Remember my friend? The one who told me that I would see that the Lord’s Chosen is a different church? He didn’t bother to iron his shirt, shave, or even wear shoes. He also looked drunk. This was how a lot of the men presented themselves. The women were a sorry case too, as many looked like poor widows who were still in mourning. The ushers tried to freshen up a bit, but casual observance would reveal that it was all masquerading. The suits were old and obviously only saw wear on Sundays, and the shoes were more of the same. The fittings was horrible as well. I’m not much of a fashion guy, as I manage to look homeless on most days, so you should know this criticism coming from me means the case was terrible.

At some point I wondered if it was in the church’s doctrine for people not to take care of themselves, or perhaps it was mere evidence of overwhelming poverty. But then I thought to myself; why can’t two legends coexist? The outfits could represent both the church’s doctrine on outfits and the general poverty amongst the people. You may wonder why I think that members of the Lord’s Chosen are uniquely poor when compared to other Nigerians. Well, I have got a theory for you to chew on.

“O’Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old roads is rapidly aging

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand, for the times they are a-changin”

Nwa Boy Goes To Church For Signs and Wonders

This part of this review is based on pure speculation because I have no evidence for it. But I know it to be instinctively true. What the Lord’s Chosen offer is so aesthetically peculiar that only a certain sort of fellow can fall for it. And that fellow is the Nwa Boy who comes to Lagos, serves his master, gets his freedom, and becomes an Oga of other Nwa boys. A rough estimate for me would say this is the story of at least 60% of the men who attend the church. They are either Ogas or aspiring ones.

I know you want to ask me how I know this. But I also used to attend an Igbo church that had the same group as its primary demographic. The half shoes, palm slippers, the natives, the colorful shirts the mannerisms are all too recognizable for me. And how did I know they were Igbo? Well, that is just some good ole tribalism. I’m Nigerian after all.

A quick google search showed me that Pastor Lazarus was also probably an Nwa boy himself. Would you look at that? As my friend on Twitter would say, it’s the thief who knows how to track the trail of another thief on the rock. Poor Pastor Lazarus came to Lagos from Imo state (where he has now built the retreat headquaters of The Lord’s Chosen — as any responsible Nwa Boy) and worked for a “company” till he was able to set up his own “company”, after which God called him.

What this means is that a huge percentage of the Lord’s Chosen are poorly educated people who are likely to fall for fantastic gimmicks. When better educated people laugh at miracles of Chosen stickers keeping gas from running out, the half educated masses of the church are shocked and awed. But this theory runs into a few problems. The first is that Pastor Lazarus rarely speaks pidgin, and he has a passable command of grammar. He doesn’t sound polished or anything, but he sounds sufficiently educated. If a majority of his members were poorly educated, wouldn’t he speak to them in pidgin or vernacular?

But that conundrum is easily solved by listening to an hours worth of Chosen testimonies. They hardly speak pidgin there too, but the grammar betrays the lack of sufficient education. So, who attends Chosen? The blue collar worker who is educated enough to abhor speaking pidgin because it is low status, but nevertheless cannot construct English properly. This fellow is of course likely to be given into fantastical superstitions and swayed by extraordinary miracles. And if that’s what you want, the Lord’s Chosen has enough of it to offer.

The average Lord’s Chosen service can be broken up into three segments. The first is the testimony time which is always paid rapt attention. The people clap and cheer when the spirit of their pastor (I’m sorry these sort of testimonies are too common!) kicks the devil’s butt and the moderator makes sure it is an entertaining period. Then we have the preaching led by the pastor, which is usually a snooze fest. It is such a snooze fest that half of the job of the ushers is to wake up people who are sleeping. All four services I attended had multiple people sleeping as the pastor went through his sermon. And then there was the deliverance service. What a service.

You wouldn’t be too amiss if you called the Lord’s Chosen the Igbo C.A.C. The deliverance service is usually a mix of ferocious clapping, revival songs, and people falling under the anointing. And, who can forget miracles! Pastor Lazarus isn’t the type to descend into the mass of humanity in the church to lay hands on anyone. Instead, he merely proclaims from the pulpit that he sees someone falling under the anointing, and that is usually it. The miracles happen the same way too. He simply says that people who came with wheelchairs and crutches could now walk, and the ushers would go into the audience, collect the crutches from people who had one, and then force them to walk to the front where they are paraded as testifiers.

An interesting scene happened at the crusade. A woman in the front had crutches beside her. As the pastor started the deliverance service, he said the spirit of God was walking through the church and ushers — a battalion of them, if I might add — were ordered to go into the crowd and bring out people who could now walk. This woman was seated a few feet from me, and they just got into her row and seized her crutches! Now, this woman could obviously walk but with some difficulty. So she stood up and started walking to go retrieve her crutches from the ushers. But they were already at the front of the congregation, and in what I imagine has to be a monumental mixup, the people started cheering that she's gotten her miracle. However, the woman in question didn’t look elated at all, and was still walking with a lot of difficulty. She was also trying to get her crutches back without making a fuss. Despite this being obvious to anyone with eyes to see, people ignored it and started praising the God of their pastor’s power over healing someone who still obviously had significant problems walking. I mean, it was so obvious. The woman in question didn’t even look happy! If I’d just gotten healed of my lameness or paralysis, I would be jumping and screaming with joy. Yet, everyone ignored the evidence of their eyes to praise God for a miracle that wasn’t a miracle.

While there were deliverance sessions at all the services I attended, I cannot say I actually saw one fantastic miracle performed. One man testified that his two weeks back pain was gone, and another said that God healed him of a three month waist pain after the service. That is impressive, yes, but it’s certainly not on par with the sort of testimonies people share at the beginning of the service. All of this swirled in my head and it got me thinking a great deal about my convictions. If these testimonies are true, and if these miracles — no matter how minor — are true, wouldn’t that be straightforward proof of the existence of God? Dumb atheists like to discount the evidence of miracles and what they mean. Even dumber Christians love to do it as well, but I want some intellectual honesty. And I am going to get it from you, if you allow me.

Why Don’t You Like The Lord’s Chosen?

Both old and young Christians dislike the Lord’s Chosen for horrible reasons. When I was young, a travelling evangelist visited my church with a tape by a Linda Rika. In the tape, Linda said God had taken her to heaven and revealed extraordinary things to her. In particular, she said that the Lord’s Chosen worshipped a demon, and that is why they usually pray to God of Chosen, not Jesus Christ. She also said that their aprons (which cost 1,500 by the way) were charms given to the pastor by the demon that gives him his powers. The clip went very viral and destroyed the church’s reputation amongst regular older Christians. That, of course, was a lie. The Chosen actually pray in Jesus name. And no, they don’t use their aprons to initiate anyone into any cult. I would know, I bought one.

Young Christians don’t like the Lord’s Chosen because of their ridiculous testimonies, and possibly because of how they look and dress. Young Christians, for some weird reason, are unlikely to believe that the Lord’s Chosen aprons can stop bullets, or their stickers can refill a gas container. So the Lord’s Chosen has gotten a horrible reputation on that account as well.

I believe that this attitude towards the church is stupid. I may think that the spirit of Pastor Lazarus giving the devil an uppercut in the spirit realm is ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be true according to Christian doctrine. There is literally no testimony too fantastical to be true! Jesus himself said that Christians would perform even more fantastical wonders than he did.

John 14:12, KJV Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

Jesus raised people from the dead, changed water to wine, multiplied bread and fish, told the lame to walk, and he also walked on water! If Jesus can do all that, who says that a Lord’s Chosen sticker cannot stop a woman’s gas from being exhausted? Who says that a Lord’s Chosen apron cannot stop bullets from penetrating? God is limitless, and Christians should be as well.

The disbelief many Christians have towards the miracles in the Lord’s Chosen merely betrays their lack of faith and lack of similar miracles at their churches. If you’ve never heard anyone talk about your pastor raising the dead, you too would laugh if another church’s pastor did the same. In any case, it is obvious that this behavior is incompatible with Christian doctrine. The truth is that not only do Christians have no good reason to not like the Lord’s Chosen, they have every reason to attend the church and become a Chosen! Let me explain.

The first Christian sects were basically doomsday cults. Remember that Jesus told them very specifically that he would return within the lifetimes of the people he left behind.

Matthew 16:28:
Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

You see, early Christians believed that it was a sure thing that Jesus would come soon. They knew he could arrive even within the hour. When faced with such prospects, what did they do? They sold all they had to support the gospel, gave up earthly luxuries — including flashy clothes and jewelry — and focused entirely on staying holy. They built communal societies, ate together, lived together, and owned nothing privately. And why wouldn’t they? Jesus could come tomorrow morning. What was the point of owning anything if Jesus came tomorrow? They also distanced themselves from regular community, as they believed that others were sinners destined to hell. The imminence of Jesus’s coming also gave them strange missionary zeal, as they believed salvation wasn’t just a matter of imminent life and death — it was one of eternal damnation or life.

All of this, and more, are traits easily discernable amongst the Lord’s Chosen today. For example, there is a lot of emphasis on making heaven. All four services I attended had sermons centered on making heaven. The most common prayer amongst Chosen brethren is: I wish you heaven at last. It is difficult to find a church that more embodies the spirit of the early church in Nigeria today. And yes, that includes their poverty and lack of care towards dressing and looking good. It also includes their fantastical testimonies. Why try to look good when Jesus could come tomorrow? You may not agree, but there’s much that other more fashionable churches could learn from the Chosen. They take themselves and the gospel really seriously. That is why they can believe even the most outlandish miracles, and praise God for a miracle that isn’t one. After all, what’s the point of being a Christian if one doesn’t believe in literal signs and wonders?

There is a common thing that some Christians say to insult other Christians who believe in outlandish miracles, and they say it with this air of superiority that is all-together disgusting. If you follow these ridiculous “intellectual” discussions, you must have heard it too. And it is that “God is a miracle worker, not a magician”. What does that even mean? In what way is a miracle distinguishable from magic? Aren’t miracles supposed to be even more mind-blowing, given that magic is often just a display of clever tricks? Jesus literally walked on water. What is more magical than that? People who make that argument only do it to justify the sorry lack of signs and wonders in their own life, which, according to scripture, is indicative of their lack of faith. Or as they say in Chosen, lack of power.

Mark 16:17-18. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

How is this distinguishable from a magic trick? This is probably why even people who suspect that the Lord’s Chosen may stage-manage miracles don’t speak out against them. It is difficult to make a fuss over miracles you suspect are fake when the scriptures affirms both their existence and fantastical nature.

But Christians aren’t the only ones who need to think through their premises very closely here. Atheists need to as well. I am trying here to prevent any atheist from saying the really foolish thing that they often say about churches like this: “I’m ready to accept religion and the church as a great moral net positive, but I don’t accept the claim of Christians who Jesus is God”. That is the one thing we must not say. If the supernatural doesn’t exist and pastors like Pastor Lazarus did and said what they did, they wouldn’t be a moral crutch. They would either be a lunatic, who should be promptly tied up, or a criminal who should promptly be arrested and thrown in prison. You must make your choice. Either churches like this are cults that must promptly be closed up, criminal enterprises that must also be closed up, or their doctrine is actually true. It is either great deceit, on the level of international fraud, madness or truth. You must make your choice.

Will I Be Attending Again?

No. No. God, no.

The entire affair was unbearably boring, and the ludicrous testimonies were the only portion of the service I enjoyed. The sermon was a snooze fest and incoherent. I don’t think Pastor Lazarus has any unique take on regular pentecostal doctrine worth dissecting. The deliverance service wasn’t helpful as I am somewhat certain I don’t have an evil spirit in me. But you can never be sure, eh?

Would I recommend the church to someone I know? No. Big fat no. First of all, the entire gig just seems a bit too cultish for me, and I don’t think it’s healthy for a human soul to bend and scrape for another man in the way members of Chosen do it for their pastor. So, no.

Next Up

Over the next few months, I will be attending Christ Embassy. I will even try to get baptized for the first time ever. I’ve heard incredible stories about the church, and I feel it will be exciting to confirm them myself. Anticipate.

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