Bishop David Oyedepo is the Founder of Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, in an interview with Saturday Punch he said, the reason there are so many rich people in 33 year old church is because they know better than others and understand the importance of tithe. read the report below....
Why are there so many rich people in Winners?
Because they know better than their contemporaries. If you don’t know what you have, you won’t know if you are deprived of it. The Bible is an open chequebook, it is by revelation we access what belongs to us; by faith we take delivery of it. Someone had access to our empowerment programme and she is a pepper seller, while others sell one basket a day, she sells six, seven. I learnt she had become the envy of all the pepper sellers in her area. Such person has an understanding that whatever she does, she prospers and she knows that when she pays her tithe, she experiences open heavens. But in case people don’t know, they perish for lack of knowledge, and in case they think when you are rich you miss heaven, then they perish for lack of knowledge.
So, it’s right when people claim that this church is only for the rich?
It’s for all the people who believe that Jesus already paid for them to be rich. And those who don’t believe, when they come they start believing when they see it happen in a lot of people’s lives. And we are not ashamed to be called the church of the rich. If they call your family poor, will you be excited? Nobody would be excited. Even when a family is poor, they hate to be called poor. No man in his right mind enjoys being called poor, and nobody truly wants to be poor, people may pretend. Which is more honourable between being a giver and a beggar? Most of us came in very poor, but the light of God’s word came on us and we walked out of poverty in grand style into wealth and riches.
How come there is such wealth in the church despite the poverty in the nation?
The kingdom of God is funded by God’s resources. We are not funded by the economy of the world, but by the economy of the kingdom, which has a budget for all of its agenda on earth. We’ve been here since 1999 and we have never had power outage or water shortage. The main players are Nigerians, the builders are Nigerians. There is no building here that any foreign expert took part in. There is no foreign company’s presence here, including the tabernacle. Some of the revered foreign companies here in Nigeria are technicians in Germany, and they are all political contractors, not that they have something special to offer.
Is there any way we can translate this into the Nigerian system?
It is possible by believing in the capability and capacity of Nigerians to do whatever they need to do. This is the largest church auditorium in the world. It’s 104m free span wide. Even one of the reputed foreign construction companies came here to take pictures. Nigerians have unusual capacity to match any expertise in the world in any field they are involved in. Most of us go to school in foreign lands and we beat them, is it that when they get here, they become smarter? It’s just for the authorities at the various levels to believe that we cannot develop ourselves seeking foreign aides for everything. We must take advantage of the opportunities around us to develop the capacity of our men and women. This office was built in 2001 and it’s neat and there is no crack on the wall, so, what is the problem? But if we want to do anything, we must give it to people from foreign countries so that those who award the contract can have a deal and share the money and at the end of the day, they are still poorer than poverty because any money stolen never enhances a man’s value.
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