The Founder of Daystar Christian Center, Sam Adeyemi, has disclosed the rationale behind his relocation to the United States.
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The 57-year-old pastor said, “When COVID-19 started, all our children were in the US, so everyone stayed with their families. We stayed with our children.
“The week services resumed was when EndSARS started, so we were preparing to return to Nigeria. When the EndSARS protests ended in violence, we stayed back a bit. When we were ready to return to Nigeria, a different experience altogether happened.
“My wife had a dream in which she travelled to Nigeria and returned to the US, which was a bad dream. I told her I wouldn’t say I liked this dream. Three days later, I had a dream. We both travelled to Nigeria in my dream, and I was in a big fight. I was being attacked violently and had to ask the Holy Spirit in my heart what to do.
“He said I should call the name of Jesus Christ. I shouted ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ in the dream and didn’t realise I shouted out loud in real life.”
The anchor of the ‘Excellent Leadership’ programme, aired on Daystar Network Television and Word Network in the US, recounted how he shouted from the dream and woke up his wife, Pastor Nike.
“My wife woke me up at 2:00 a.m. by hitting me and asking what was going on. We decided to take it seriously, especially considering a dream we had three days earlier.
“We prayed fervently, sensing danger. Three hours later, I fell back asleep and had another dream. We were in Nigeria this time, and I was in a fight,” he added.
Adeyemi revealed that whenever he and his wife set dates and booked flights to return to Nigeria, he would have a bad dream about something terrible happening to him in Nigeria.
The author of several books on wealth creation said he had never experienced two dreams about the same event in one night.
“A few days later, we called family members in Nigeria, and one person said, ‘I’m feeling very uncomfortable about you travelling to Nigeria.’ We called another family member who said, ‘I feel uncomfortable about you coming. What is going on?’ We just turned and looked at each other, pondering the situation.
“Then I said, ‘You know what? I’ve been a Christian for 40 years. At this point, if God is speaking to me, I should have an idea that it is God speaking. Something is going on. I don’t know what it is, but I want to pray more. And at that point, we called a meeting of all the leaders in Daystar Christian Center, the top 120 leaders on Zoom,” he stated.
Adeyemi, who is the President of Success Power International, noted that he informed the elders of Daystar about the situation, and they agreed to keep the church running.
“They said, ‘You’ve never deceived us before. If God asks you to stay, stay as long as He directs. We’ll continue this journey,” Adeyemi stated.
The host of the radio and television ‘Success Power’ programme heard and seen in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East said he and his wife stayed in the US after the church leaders’ Zoom meeting.
“Six months, we were still in the US, one year, tearing me apart. I discovered that until COVID-19, I’d never been out of Nigeria for eight weeks. To now be away when you had a church with 40,000 members.
“It was almost three years before we had the Holy Spirit’s clearance to return to Nigeria.
“But what eventually the Holy Spirit would tell me was that he wanted me to shift my focus from just being the pastor of a local church to that global walk that I had known that I would do. So, right now, the focus shift is to do that global walk while we keep Daystar running, leveraging technology,” he said.
Daystar Christian Centre was established on November 18, 1995, to empower individuals to discover, develop, release, and maximise potential in God through the word.
The church has branches across Lagos State, such as the Oregun Centre, the headquarters, the Lekki Centre, the Ikorodu Centre, the Alimosho Centre, the Badagry Centre, and an online church.
In 2020, Adeyemi was among prominent Nigerian clerics who condemned the police for using bullets and tear gas to disperse #EndSARS protesters.
In November 2020, a rights activist, Kenechukwu Okeke, filed a criminal complaint against Adeyemi and 50 persons, including musicians Damini Ogulu aka Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Folarin Falana aka Falz, and David Adeleke aka Davido, for their roles in the #EndSARS protests nationwide.
However, the accused filed a suit before a magistrate’s court seeking the dismissal of the charges.
In contrast, Okeke filed a countermotion with the Abuja High Court to dismiss their suit.
The lawyer alleged his property was destroyed during the protest and that the defendants, who promoted it, must be brought to justice.
In January 2021, a High Court in the Federal Capital Territory ordered Magistrate Omolola Akindele to halt the prosecution of the accused.
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