Founder of Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare in an interview with City People magazine, revealed that he was once a pastor of the popular Deeper Life Bible Church founded by Pastor W.A. Kumuyi.
Pastor
Bakare told the magazine he was with the ministry for five years and
left due to clash of religious views. He later joined the Redeemed
Christian Church of God before he set up his own ministry which has
grown over the years.
Read excerpts from the Interview:
You were in Deeper Life and The Redeemed churches. At what point did you decide to start up your own ministry?
That’s
what you call memory lane. I was in Deeper Life for five years, between
1978 and December 1983. Brother Kumuyi was and is still a great teacher
of the Word. The person that put the fear of God in me was Brother
Kumuyi. He laid the foundation for systematic teaching that many people
see me do today. However, I rose through the ranks. I preached while I
was there and conducted youth meetings. I was doing some legal works for
the ministry also. I registered some of their companies. But one day
while I was ministering and a brother was interpreting, I was giving
example of the “faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God” and
I said, ‘Supposing you go to a supermarket to buy soap, you might not
know what soap to buy but because you watched the advertisement of Joy
soap on television, then you would look for Joy soap because you have
been hearing about it.’
And my interpreter said:
“If you have been watching the devil’s box … “ I told him I didn’t say
devil’s box but television, and he repeated saying the devil’s box and
Brother Kumuyi was behind us. I said I didn’t say devil’s box and that
the normal interpretation is amu ohun mu aworan, (the box that captures
both the voice and the visuals). Anyway, he still said what he said. The
following Sunday, Brother Kumuyi came up with what he called “Sunday
Exaltation”; he said that even if you repair television, you are a child
of the devil. Then I took my Bible and left. I went home and said I
would serve my God, but was not interested anymore in church.
So
I returned to Surulere Baptist Church. And one day, my photographer
came to me and said I should not just sit like that and that I should
come and join his church because I would enjoy it. I asked, ‘What is the
name of your church’ and he said The Redeemed Christian Church of God. I
said okay and that I would come one day since I was not interested at
that moment. The first Sunday of March, 1984, I invited my wife and said
we should go (we were not married then). I borrowed a car because I had
no car then. We drove to that church and I discovered I had been to
that church before. That was the place Deeper Life was doing their Bible
study in 1978. Then there was this gentleman who walked up, they called
him G.O. He is still G.O. today, but they call him Daddy G.O. He was
the one who preached that day and the message was titled: “The Mercy of
God.” I said this seems better than the background of what seems I was
coming from, because, in fairness to Brother Kumuyi, he himself
eventually went on television. He must have changed his mind, because
that time he was very hard on such things. By the way, looking back
today, there is a lot of evil on television. It is not the television
that is the devil’s box, it is the programmes that people put on it. So
you can choose what you watch.
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