Founder of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, Bishop David Oyedepo, on Sunday, lashed out at the Federal Government over the continuous closure of churches in the country, a move the government took to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 infection in Nigeria.
Giving a virtual sermon from his church’s headquarters in Ota, Ogun State, the fiery prosperity preacher never held back in hitting the government over the exclusion of churches and schools from the partial opening of the economy and some institutions of governance in the country.
Pointblank, he doubled down on his earlier position, in a previous engagement on the same issue, that the government lacked the moral right to continue to put churches under lock and key, and that doing so was tantamount to silencing the church.
The angry Bishop reasoned that if government could approve the partial re-opening of markets where no miracle occurs, it erred phenomenally in maintaining the clamp on churches where phenomenal miracles happen routinely.
Declaring that his has recorded 114 COVID-19 healings so far, the Founder of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, also known as Winners Chapel, wondered:
“Can anybody silence the church? Never! I have never heard of anybody that God healed in the market but people get healed in every church day and night, real tangible healing.”
“We have recorded 114 coronavirus healing testimonies,” Oyedepo continued. “We got 10 this week.
“And that is the place that is vulnerable, not the market.”
Despite the vituperation of Oyedepo, it was still hazy on Sunday if the government would open worship centres and schools any time soon. This is going by the spiraling cases of COVID-19 infections in the country which, as at Sunday, stood at 24, 567.
Though the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, announced, last Friday, that it would submit a report to President Muhammadu Buhari this week on the situation of COVID-19, as well as the level of compliance with health protocols by Nigerians, there were no indications at the time of this report that the ban on worship centres and schools would be lifted.