16th September, 2014
By Simon Ateba
By Simon Ateba
The General Overseer of Synagogue Church Of All Nation (SCOAN) Prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua has said that trying times cannot destroy him.
“Hard times may test me, they cannot destroy me,” Nigeria’s popular pastor, Prophet T.B. Joshua said on Tuesday, four days after a six-storey building packed with people collapsed, killing 62 as at last count.
The building collapsed at 12:44 p.m. on Friday trapping hundreds of people including foreigners.
“To withstand hard times, stand with Christ. When you face trials, hard times, you can ‘count it all joy’ if you add faith,” Joshua said on his Facebook page quoting James 1:2-3 in the bible.
Joshua noted that through hard times men gain the necessary experience and maturity to handle whatever responsibility is given them.
“We are most likely to go astray from God and forget Him when things are easy with us in the world because we often become proud and stupid with wealth and pleasure,” he said, adding,
“God visits His people with hard times that they may learn His way. His ways, though hard to the ungodly men, are desirable and profitable because they lead us to safety unto eternal life.”
Joshua said if not for hard times, men would not have sought the face of God. “I mean, if not because of hard times, man by his wicked nature would not have sought the face of God. This means, God sometimes uses hard times to draw us to Himself so that we can take our proper position and possession in Him.”
Joshua is likely to come under criticism from Christians who argue that God uses the Holy Spirit, not gard times, to teach men and women.
On Tuesday, a 45-year old woman on Tuesday walked out alive from the rubbles of the collapsed building.