Former media aide to immediate past president, Goodluck Jonathan, Reuben Abati, has reacted to the recent claim by Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly that God asked him to run for presidency.
Tunde Bakare, the senior pastor of Latter Rain Assembly, has disclosed he will be running for president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Bakare while Speaking at the crossover service inside the Church’s auditorium in Ogba, Lagos, on Monday morning, had said God instructed him to return to politics to lead the nation to prosperity.
“I heard the Lord say to me, politics is not over for you, there is still one thing left for you to do; run for president,” he was quoted as saying.
Reacting via an article entitled Fr. Mbaka and the Voice of God by Reuben Abati, the former presidential spokesman wonder if God now is an author of confusion, having asked Chris Okotie of the Househood of God to run for the office of the president and he failed on his three attempts.
He wrote, “Of all the prophecies that I have read about this year, I find two particularly interesting. The first is the New Year Day declaration by Pastor Tunde Bakare before his congregation at the Latter Rain Church that God had just spoken to him not to leave politics, because he still has an assignment for him in the political arena.
“God told me to run for President”, he announced. When – he does not know but he tells the congregation to pray along with him.
“When He tells me the time, you will hear about it.” It will be recalled that Pastor Tunde Bakare was the running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) during the 2011 Presidential election.
“His decision at the time to go into politics was quite controversial particularly amongst his Christian brethren who argued that a man of the cloth should not swim in the dirty and dirtied waters of Nigerian politics. The CPC lost the Presidential election and Pastor Bakare returned to the pulpit.
”He won’t be the first Pastor to declare interest in the highest office in the land. Pastor “Chris Okotie of the Household of God Church first ran for President in 2003 as a candidate of the Justice Party. Then he ran again in 2007 and again in 2011 on the platform of the FRESH Democratic Party. He lost on all occasions. Yet each time Pastor Chris Okotie declared interest in the Presidential office, he always said he had heard from God. Listening to his campaigns, he always sounded so sure that he had indeed been anointed by God to be President. In 2015, God apparently did not speak to Pastor Okotie because he did not bother to join the race.
“Do Pastors Okotie and Bakare, both learned men, hear the voice of the same God? Is it possible for God to anoint two of his servants as Nigerian President at the same time? For, indeed, when Pastor Bakare’s critics opposed his decision to go into politics, his stoutest defence in 2011 was that he had heard the voice of God, and that the voice of God is superior to that of man.
“He quoted the Scriptures: Psalm 78: 70, 71; Romans 13:1. We, lesser mortals, may probably not fully understand the ways of God and the prophetic Ministry but the clergy must resist the temptation, unwitting temptation may be, to project God in negative light. The doctrine is that the omniscient God, the I-am-that-I-am that we know never plays politics with His words. He does not contradict Himself. He keeps His promises.”
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