LAGOS – One of the church leaders silently contributing to the expansion of the kingdom of God on earth is soft spoken Dr. Olumuyiwa Stephen Onabanjo, the Senior Pastor and Presiding Overseer of the House of Praise Christian Centre, Ikeja, Lagos. Dr Onabanjo, a renowned bible teacher, is a popular conference speaker.
However, in addition to being a top church leader, Dr Onabanjo is also a medical doctor. As a medical doctor, he is a Medical Director sitting on top of a leading specialist hospital, also in Ikeja, Lagos. How did he become a healer of the souls and bodies? In an encounter with him, Dr.
Onabanjo revealed that he grew up in a fairly disciplined and Christian home. He had his primary and secondary education, including A Level in very disciplined and religiously inclined schools where the foundation of his love, service, and worship of God were inspired and influenced. Growing up, he was at various stages a member and leader in school fellowships, Scripture Union (SU), Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship International (FGBMFI), and other related organisations and fellowships.
To him, ministry is more than being an apostolic teacher of God’s word as God has used him to write several books. He stated: “I love raising men. I love teaching and building people.
The medical platform has now given me a launching pad. I can now reach out to colleagues. How does he combine his role as a family man, and Church pastor with other schedules? He said: “I think the rigorous training, the rigorous medical training, especially those who went to medical school in the 80s and the rigorous training, kind of orientated us or prepared us for the life that we have today.
“Our lives were organised. You have time for everything; the time to meet this person, to go to this place, and to do other things. That was the orientation we had and by the time I got into the ministry and had the family, there was a time for family, time for the church and time for hospital work.
“That is how it has been since my training as a medical doctor and also my training at the University of Ibadan. The orientation, discipline, time management and sense of purpose we were taught, helped me to organise myself, my family, my ministry, and my business. That is why God has been able to help me to be happily married for over 30 years and made me raise four beautiful, God-fearing professionals.
By the grace of God, Christ’s abundance has helped me.” Comparing Christianity in the 80s to what it is now,Onabanjo maintained that indeed there is indeed a whole lot of difference. According to him, “Christianity started as a church and a fellowship in Jerusalem (the early church).
“When it got to Greece, Christianity became a philosophy. When it moved from Greece to Rome, Christianity became an institution and from Rome, when it got to Europe, Christianity became a culture. When Christianity landed in America, it became a business.
But that was a good description. “The Christianity that we met in the 80s was extremely sacrificial, so much of high sense of purpose, heaven-minded, earthly useful, heavenly minded believers, but earthly productive. The system of provision then was very simplified, believe God for; give your tithe, believe God, and God provides.
“But today, because of the downturn in the economy, there is a lot of infrastructure that human beings have put in place that God did not put there in those days. Then, you dare not start a church when God has not spoken to you. Where did you even want to start from? “Everyone has a father, has a mother and there was no bastard anywhere who would say, I just came from nowhere to start a church.
Where are you going to come from, and what is your story? But, today, anybody can stand up at any time and from anywhere to say, ‘I am starting a church and I am a general overseer’.” According to him, people have fabricated an infrastructure of lies and deception, which is majorly for survival. He maintained that many look at the successes of top ministers of the gospel like Bishop David Oyedepo, and decide to go into running churches Onabanjo stressed: “There were a lot of faithful Christians and fruitful elders within the church in those days who were not ready to start any church.
They were not ready to break out or start anything. They were just faithful under their spiritual leadership. But today, everyone is claiming God spoke to them, even when it is clear their belly called them.
” He maintained that there is so much pressure for survival and a revival in a failed state like Nigeria is a tremendous burden on the church. “There is so much corruption in the land. Thousands of people are thronging to the church; those who came from broken homes, broken families, and broken societies.
The children cannot get scholarships to go to school and when they go back to school, there is no system to help them. Therefore, everything falls on the church,” he said. Onabanjo maintained that Christianity of today is shallow and full of worldliness, distractions, and compromise.
He said: “In those days, we were deeper in soul and in spirit. At the same time, Christianity of today has its advantage with hype and has given us an orientation that is holistic to penetrate different sectors. “In those days there was so much schism and separation between the church and the world.
But, the Christianity of today has one advantage. We have entered into every sector of life.” What is the connection between his medical practice and pastoral calling? Onabanjo responded: “I find that they are synergistic.
They work hand in hand. It is like I find myself in a calling of compassion. The call into Pastoral Ministry is a calling to mercy and compassion, helping people to come out of pain, of frustration, through the knowledge of God’s word and training that makes them better.
“In the hospital, on the flip side, is also getting people out of pain, using medical knowledge, medical innovation, training, and specialty to also help people out of pain. They work together and there is a beautiful harmony with it.” He stressed: “Gone are those days when people would say you are a medical doctor, you will be an antagonist.
Today, there is no professor of medicine who in his true sense of integrity and honesty would not fear God. Because, when you go to the theatre and open human beings up, and then close them back, and they are still talking, or is it the one that when you open the bone and want to remove a tumor, and you see the white tissue, and close it back, and the person is fine. Those are things that made you fear God.
” He explained that initially he did not appreciate the ministry mandate God gave to him. He added: “I just saw myself as a man that God has called, and I happen to be a medical doctor, and I’m going to just use my knowledge to advance the gospel. “In the past 10 years, I realised there is more than that.
It is a unique call. When you see a man who is a core apostle and a core professional, now sent to the body of Christ with a message, and it is a message of wisdom that we have an enemy. “The Bible says, ‘Be sober and be vigilant for your adversary, the devil, is running about looking for whom he would devour’, and I noticed that the anointing is not enough.
There is a place of wisdom. God did not create heaven and the earth by anointing. “The Bible says, ‘By wisdom, He found the heavens’.
When it came to creation, God did it by wisdom, and to maintain it is going to be by wisdom. That is why we are coming up with what they call spiritual medicine.” On how the spiritual and the medical flow together, he expiated: “Look at divine healing in the body of Christ for example.
When you ask an average Christian today or the past 10 years, what do you know about the healing covenant? The only thing he is thinking about is divine healing: ‘When I am sick, I believe God will heal me’, which is wrong. “Miracles, as far as God is concerned, are interventional. God is a God of principles, when you just get a miracle, it is because you are out of God’s principle and when you break the principle, that is why you need a miracle.
“For example, according to the law of gravity, anywhere in the world you throw something, it must come down. God put that law there, or else everybody will be hanging in space. Even if you pray and say, God, I want to prove to everybody that this thing I’m throwing up must not come down, like when Joshua prayed that the sun should stand still, God will grant it once.
“We have the personality of Jesus and the principles of Jesus. His personality, if you know Him, He will give you miracles and you will know Him. But, if you don’t follow His principles, you may not achieve much.
So, I have been in medical practice and knowledge for the past 35 years. I have noticed that the healing covenant is made up of three components; divine life, that is the life that you have sustained supernaturally. “That was how Moses grew in the presence of God for 40 days and 40 nights, without water or food.
When the life of God sustains you, we call it Zoe. Then, you now have divine health. If you look at Leviticus 11 and 15, God gave them a healthy lifestyle and told them the animals they should eat and not to eat.
“He told them about environmental sanitation and infectious disease control. He said, when a man has a discharge from his body, from any part of his body, he shall not sleep in the camp. They shall separate him outside the camp.
And his cloth that he wore shall be burnt with fire. That is sterilisation. “When you are saying, the Bible says, God healed them by His strip; you don’t know it was because you broke the principle of divine health.
That is why God has to give you divine healing. You can live if you obey the principles of divine health, you eat healthy, you exercise well, you rest well, you go for medical checkups and you don’t overstress yourself. Your body will last longer because you don’t have a supernatural body, you have a supernatural spirit.
“You are a spirit, you have a soul, live in a body and your body is subject to corruption. Paul said, our humiliated body shall be transformed into a glorious body. Also, he said, ‘We, who are the first fruit of the spirit, we groan within ourselves, waiting for the redemption of our body’.
“Your spirit is redeemed, and your soul is being gradually redeemed as you renew yourself by God’s word. But, your body is not redeemed. That is why you will see an anointed man of God, who will preach with the anointing at the crusade today and people getting healed, and by tomorrow, we hear he is having a serious headache.
His body has broken down. He will be in the hospital with me, the man of God.” According to him, “Elisha, a man who had the double portion of the anointing, still died of sickness.
There is a whole lot of divine health, which in the faith movement, we discountenanced. The Lord has given me a message to the body of Christ, that in the healing covenant, divine health is 70 percent of the component. “Divine healing is when your system breaks down and you need the healing.
Every minister of God must exercise themselves regularly, be very finicky with their food, and have good regular medical check-ups.”.
