The Nigerian police rescued 43 adults, eight teenagers, and 26 children from the crammed dungeon of Whole Bible Believers Church in the Valentino Area of Ondo town, where they were told to wait for Jesus Christ's second coming. The raid happened after a mom reported that her children were missing as she thought they were at the Church. The pastor of the Pentecostal Church, David Anifowoshe, and his assistant, Josiah Peter Asumosa, have been arrested.
Funmilayo Odunlami, the State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), said the preliminary investigation revealed that the assistant pastor told the members that a Rapture would happen in April. The pastor later backtracked, saying that the phenomenon would be moved to September 2022 and that the young members need to obey only their parents in the Lord, The Sun reports.
Rapture is a Christian belief that Christian believers will ascend to Heaven for the "Second Coming," the return of Jesus Christ after his biblical ascension to heaven.
The Whole Bible Believers Church raid
On Friday, the police raided the church after authorities received a tip that children were being kept in the church against their will.
According to Nigerian Tribune, the victims' relatives alleged that the two pastors hypnotized their victims and camped them in an isolated apartment within the church premises. Odunlami explained that the two pastors were arrested after the parents of the underaged children camped in the church as they were not allowed access to the kids.
Some victims were believed to have been there for months, while others were thought to have left school to be in the church.
The pastors insisted they were kept in the church for special cleansing and deliverance before the Second Coming of Christ in September 2022.
Complaints of parents
One of the parents reported that her daughter had been hypnotized. She refused to come home since January as the two pastors brainwashed her to go against her parents, encouraging her to drop out of school.
Another parent tried to pick up her daughter, who refused to go back home and take a secondary school entrance examination. It caused an uproar, and the parent was thrown out of the church, prompting her to report the incident to the police.
A boy was also reportedly not allowed by the church to take the entrance examination as the two pastors had been preaching against going to school because they claim that education is not necessary after being taken to heaven for the second coming.
Jessica Akintemi said her two daughters and her husband had been hypnotized and had been living in the church since January 2022. Her husband, Rotimi Akintemi, a mathematics teacher, has stopped going to work as he is waiting for the second coming of Christ, which are the pastors' preaching.
Akintemi said that she left the church after the assistant pastor urged the women to leave their matrimonial homes and divorce their husbands to get to heaven.
Investigation of the case is still ongoing for authorities to unravel the facts about the incident. Odulami assured that they would make their findings public after, EWN said.
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