Prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua, Founder and General Overseer of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, [SCOAN] has been ranked as one of the most famous prophets in history by an American based website www.RANKER.com.
Ranker is a leading digital media company for opinion-based, crowdsourced rankings on just about everything.
According to information on www.ranker.com, it says “we put the power in the hands of our audience to answer debates on topics including pop culture, sports, politics, brands and lifestyle and sing Ranker’s unique technology, those lists become definitive rankings based on the “wisdom of the crowd.”
Based in Los Angeles with a sales office in New York, Ranker was founded in 2009 by CEO Clark Benson. AQuantcast Top 100 sites and attracts more than 20 million monthly unique visitors and is growing by more than 50 per cent year-over-year.
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Temitope Balogun Joshua, commonly referred to as T. B. Joshua was born on June 12, 1963, a Christian minister, televangelist and faith healer. He is leader and founder of the ministry organisation The Synagogue, Church of All Nations, which runs a Christian television station called Emmanuel TV.
He has been awarded various accolades, notably receiving the Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic [OFR] by the Nigerian Government in 2008 and was voted the Yoruba man of the decade by Pan-Yoruba media outlet Irohin-Odua.
He was recognised as one of Africa’s 50 most influential people by Pan-African magazines The Africa Report and New African Magazine and listed among the world’s most famous people by the website thefamouspeople.com.
Joshua is known for his popularity across Africa and his online presence, with 2,000,000 fans on Facebook and hundreds of YouTube videos and amassed millions of views.
According to Joshua’s official biography, unusual circumstances surrounded his birth. He says he spent 15 months in his mother’s womb and narrowly avoided death after a quarry explosion near his house sent rocks through its roof just seven days after his birth.
Joshua, then known as Balogun Francis attended St. Stephen’s Anglican Primary School in Arigidi-Akoko, Nigeria between 1971 and 1977 but failed to complete one year of secondary school education according to Wikipedia.
But in school, he was known as “small pastor” because of his love for the Bible. He worked in various casual jobs after his schooling had ended, including carrying chicken waste at a poultry farm.
He organised Bible studies for local children and attended evening school during this period. Joshua attempted to join the Nigerian military but was thwarted due to a train breakdown that left him stranded en route to the military academy.
Joshua wrote that in a heavenly vision, he had received divine anointing and a covenant from God to start his ministry.
Following that vision, Joshua founded the ministry organisation, The Synagogue, Church of All Nations [SCOAN] with only a handful of members.
According to the organisation, more than 15,000 members attend its weekly Sunday service; visitors from outside Nigeria are accommodated in the accommodation blocks constructed at the church before the recent incident that left several people dead.
The Guardian of London also recently reported that The SCOAN attracts more weekly attendees than the combined number of visitors to Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London.
The SCOAN’s popular services have also resulted in an enormous boost for local businesses and hoteliers and most visited destination by religious tourists in West Africa.
Despite Joshua’s popularity, the church only has a branch in Ghana, Joshua stating that “it is not yet time” for him to have branches worldwide as “it will be too much for my character”.
Several hundred Nigerians and international visitors come to the SCOAN each week to register for the prayer lines where the visitors are prayed over by Joshua. SCOAN has published numerous videos of healing of incurable disabilities and illnesses such as HIV/AIDS.
For the church, medical reports are a prerequisite for prayer for any health-related ailment in an attempt to authenticate the miracles.
Spiritual healing at The SCOAN has been the subject of several media reports, including a mention in Time Magazine, an Associated Press interview and an article by Foreign Policy detailing the proficiency of Nigerians to seek ‘spiritual’ help due to insufficient medical facilities.
Many have also claimed to be healed through ‘Anointing Water’ that has been prayed over by Joshua and given to those who are unable to physically attend his church in Lagos while many have also claimed they were protected from deadly incidents because they had the water with them.
Although Joshua rarely travels, he has held foreign crusades in Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and Colombia. His ‘Miracle Crusade’ in Cali, Colombia in July 2014 was allegedly attended by 100,000 people and held in the Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero and another crusade in the Estadio Azteca in Mexico which was allegedly attended by 200,000 people over two days in May 2015.
Apart from the religious aspect of the church, humanitarian arm of SCOAN has been very active over the years, and there were reports that this humanitarian arm has donated money in order to help orphans and the destitute.
In 2009 it was reported that one widow received more than N500, 000.00 and in 2012, Joshua sponsored one Nigerian student doing a PhD in Oxford University with Nigerian media reporting the total given amounted to £100,000.
SCOAN has also established another NGO in Ghana called Passion for Needy and also donated generously to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake as well as team of medical personnel and humanitarian workers to the affected area, establishing a field hospital called ‘Clinique Emmanuel’ which he received a letter of appreciation from the United Nations for.
According to the media unit of the church, TB Joshua is the only one alive among the most famous prophets in history listed.
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