Full details how TB Joshua faked all the miracles you all watch in Emmanuel Tv, plus how he raked in millions from those who believed in his magical powers
We present to you the six ways the late megachurch pastor conned millions of people to believe in his purported cures and milked them to dry. I hope you are ready. Get a glass of whatever you like to drink and sit back, Relax as we take you on this journey.
Founded his Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) in Lagos more than thirty years ago, the preacher is accused of extensive abuse and torture spanning nearly twenty years. His quick ascent to renown was attributed to his professed supernatural abilities and his purported ability to treat the sick.
Full details how TB Joshua faked
Together with testimony from individuals he claimed to have treated, the theatrical healings, which included the physically crippled walking and, on one occasion, the purported resuscitation of a dead person, were filmed and sent on VHS tapes to churches worldwide.
Joshua launched Emmanuel TV on satellite and later online after Nigeria’s broadcast regulator forbade stations from airing the alleged miracles of pastors on live terrestrial TV in 2004. His global television and social media empire became one of the most successful Christian networks in the world, with millions of people watching his purported miracles on YouTube, which had hundreds of millions of views.
Full details how TB Joshua faked
However, Joshua, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 57, was a liar. The BBC’s investigation, which involved over 25 church insiders from the US, UK, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Germany, reveals six methods in which Joshua misled worshippers.
1: The emergency department
The sick people who came to be healed would be screened, and the team would determine who should be filmed and prayed for by Joshua in this special section of the church called the “emergency department,” which was in charge of making the purported miracles appear real.
Joshua gave Agomoh Paul, the department’s ten-year supervisor, direct orders, and he told the BBC that the crew had been “trained by medical doctors.” Full details how TB Joshua faked
He was once a devotee, living inside the Scoan compound with the pastor as part of an exclusive group of devoted followers.
“Those who had normal open wounds that could heal, they brought them in to present as cancer,” he says. “Any cancerous situation, they send them away.” Full details how TB Joshua faked
A small, exclusive number of dependable disciples worked in the ER; they would create placards explaining each follower’s imagined or fabricated medical condition, and when it was time to see Joshua, they would queue up in front of the cameras to be “healed.”
Full details how TB Joshua faked
According to Mr. Paul, “it was a secret. It was a complicated system. Not all disciples knew what was happening.”
2: Drugs
Every international guest seeking healing at the church was required to complete a medical report that included information about their ailment and the prescription drugs they were currently taking.
Joshua would instruct chemists to obtain the same medication even though they would be instructed to cease using them.
Mr. Paul clarifies that they would “put those drugs in their fruit drinks” without their awareness and that people would be encouraged to sip the cocktail that Joshua had blessed. Full details how TB Joshua faked
This implied that guests would not become sick while staying at Scoan and would have faith in their pastor’s heavenly healing abilities.
When HIV/AIDS became a pandemic in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s, Joshua advised guests to cease taking their antiviral drugs as soon as they got back home. Full details how TB Joshua faked
“It is hard to live with the knowledge that people have died because they did not take their medication,” acknowledges a former follower who wished to remain anonymous. Full details how TB Joshua faked
Tash Ford, a 49-year-old South African, travelled to Lagos in 2001 in the hopes of having her failing kidney treated, but she was advised to cease taking her medication. Full details how TB Joshua faked
She told the BBC, “It was the promise that you could receive a new kidney in a supernatural way.”
Ms. Ford claims that during the time she had undergone two kidney transplants, the disciples told her to “stop taking your medication and just believe.” She did believe she had been healed, but upon returning home, she fell into renal failure and was admitted to the hospital after skipping her medication for four weeks. Full details how TB Joshua faked
Her kidney was first saved by the medical staff, but eventually it failed, necessitating kidney dialysis for over six years until a third transplant was performed in 2011.
3. Brainwashing
According to Ms. Ford, she never had any reservations when she was a patient at Scoan: “I could not believe I was seeing someone walk out of a wheelchair. I honestly thought we were seeing miracles.”
Everyone appeared drawn in by the theatricality. The ex-disciple told the BBC that the chosen followers would be instructed to “exaggerate their problems so that God can heal you and exaggerate your healing” after being screened.
The followers of the church were warned they would not receive healing unless they sat in a wheelchair when they encountered Joshua. “We are telling them: ‘If you come out there, and walk with your legs, Papa will not pray for you. You need to shout: “Man of God, help me, I cannot walk,”‘ says Mr. Paul. “The people, themselves, are clearly being manipulated,” she says.
When the pastor told the congregation that ‘he had released faith into the stadium’, Bisola, another former disciple who had lived at Scoan for 14 years, accompanied Joshua on his National Healing Campaign at the Church of Our Saviour in Singapore in 2006.
Bisola claims to have witnessed people in wheelchairs attempt to stand up, but they had not been screened, so she watched them fall. ‘I was crying. I was crying for them’, she says
Full details how TB Joshua faked
The emergency department staff members were also being used as tools of manipulation; they had endured horrific experiences such as sexual assault, physical assault, and torture, and they had to abide by severe regulations prohibiting them from sleeping for longer than a few hours at a time. Now, they find it difficult to comprehend how and why they had to keep doing as the pastor had told them.
Full details how TB Joshua faked
“TB Joshua told me: ‘Do not worry, we use this thing to build people’s faith in Christ.’ I was not having in mind that I was actually doing something wrong. I thought I was doing something that would help to build the faith of people in the church,” says Mr Paul.
For Ms Ford, it has meant she has lost all faith in organised religion: “I wish we had known that it was all a farce, that it was not true. I was manipulated into believing that what the prophet was doing was supernatural, miracles, wonders, signs.”
4: Bribes
Several followers claim they were tasked with locating individuals who required financial assistance to pose as ill.
When they conducted healing campaigns outside of Nigeria, they would look for impoverished people in the city’s lower classes. “We would say: ‘We need you to just act out this particular scene and we will pay you,'” a former disciple told the BBC. “We get them into hotels, we get them cleaned up. They come, they do what they do.
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We give them their money and the rest is history,” she adds. “They would tell Joshua which rows they had planted these people in and what clothes they were wearing before the service, so he would know who to perform his supposed miracles on.” “People would be brought in just to pretend that they were healed,” the former disciple told the BBC. Full details how TB Joshua faked
Five: Fake
medical certificates The “healing miracles” that were shown to millions of people included medical reports claiming that people had been cured of diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS. Doctors were interviewed on camera attesting to the cures.
In 2000, Nigerian journalist Adejuwon Soyinka reported that these medical certificates were fake, but Joshua quashed his investigation and it went nowhere. Some people still believe they were healed, but insiders say it was all a performance on the part of the late preacher. “The whole thing is stage-managed and faked. Full details how TB Joshua faked
Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua: A startling descent into a frightening abuse and manipulation labyrinth carried out by one of the most influential religious leaders of the twenty-first century
6: Video
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manipulation The films showing the alleged healing were shot months or even a year apart, but the “miracles” were edited to make it appear as though they happened instantly. Before and after footage was spliced together to show his alleged miraculous powers.
“All you see on TV is the before and after, you do not know the time space,” says Bisola, who worked on Emmanuel TV and was Scoan’s chief video editor for five years. Like other insiders interviewed by the BBC, she chose to go by her first name.
Full details how TB Joshua faked
Regarding the tapes and programmes she oversaw, she declares, “What people see… is not real. It is fraud.” Speaking now as an insider, she adds, “Anything they did not want viewers to see was “cut away” and everything was “organised.” Full details how TB Joshua faked
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