Speaker 1: Also media, h what's got the plague? My Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: host of Behind the Bastards, the sickest man in podcasting.
Speaker 1: I have some sort of non COVID thing.
Speaker 2: I did take the test.
Speaker 1: Uh, so I have been I've been mainlining, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I've been sober lately. But now I am
Speaker 1: a theorough flu addict. I don't even mix it into
Speaker 1: my drinks anymore. I just pour the powder straight out
Speaker 1: and rail that shit, you know, for you, that's the
Speaker 1: good stuff. Our guests who just congratulated me on my
Speaker 1: theorough flu addiction, mister Miles Gray, how are you doing,
Speaker 1: Miles Gray?
Speaker 2: I'm great, I'm great. Thank you for having me back.
Speaker 2: Shout out to the bTB what do you call a
Speaker 2: BTV nation, your little bad Shout out the little bastards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the little bastards. Sure, yeah, shout out my
Speaker 1: little bastards out, shut out all. Shout out all the
Speaker 1: little bastards out there, love y'all. And I'm yeah, I
Speaker 1: just uh, I'm bracing myself for you again, the ups
Speaker 1: and downs and recording with you where I'm like what
Speaker 1: hah and then like crying inside for the rest of
Speaker 1: the day. You said that, it just made me think
Speaker 1: if we'd gone with my original plan for this podcast
Speaker 1: and made it all about Saddam Hussein, we could call
Speaker 1: our fans the Husseiniacs. Oh oh yeah, see I just
Speaker 1: thought about that now. But that's a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Miles, were you in the room when Robert pitched
Speaker 3: the show on the phone when he was running through
Speaker 3: what sounded like a wind tunnel. Were you in the room?
Speaker 2: I must have been.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that was so such early days and like
Speaker 2: we were all working on all this shit together. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like yeah, and even I mean I remember
Speaker 2: all the fucking process of coming up with a title
Speaker 2: and the art and all that shit. Shout out my
Speaker 2: boy Allan, you know, for the iconic cover art.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Alan Lee.
Speaker 1: Yes, Miles, are you been a good day?
Speaker 2: You happy dude? Just oppose a ship?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm having a fucking good day.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: My little boy has two little teeth coming in. I'm like, wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I gotta go. I gotta go and get my fucking
Speaker 2: head kicked in by whatever tale or fuckery you're gonna do. Nothing.
Speaker 1: Nothing goes with a nice peaceful day like a story
Speaker 1: of one of the most nightmarishly abusive people I have
Speaker 1: ever read about my life. See, God is punishing me
Speaker 1: with a sickness for taking such pleasure and making you
Speaker 1: unhappy Miles.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh you okay. Well look I'm as someone
Speaker 2: who was went to school where they tried to put
Speaker 2: the fear of God in me, but it didn't work.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm kind of split. I don't know if
Speaker 2: I want to talk ill of a man of God? Yeah,
Speaker 2: to see have you heard of this man of God?
Speaker 2: A fellow named TB. Joshua. First of all, no, And
Speaker 2: when Sophie hit me up and was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: we might be talking about this or that, and then
Speaker 2: she's like, okay, actually Robert Robert's gonna write something on
Speaker 2: TV Joshua. I didn't google it because I'm like, what
Speaker 2: the fuck is this? I thought it was like, did
Speaker 2: he give a bunch of people tuberculosis?
Speaker 1: And that would be the fun version of this if
Speaker 1: he was just like the typhoid Mary if tuberculosis, Johnny
Speaker 1: apple seed of tuberculosis. It's like, Oh, who's this TV Joshua,
Speaker 1: Well that's whole TV Joshua giving everybody TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like when he coughs, look at his little
Speaker 2: handkerchief he coughs into, and tell me if there's blood.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was like, And then this morning, out
Speaker 2: of a morbid curiosity, I'm like, let me just see
Speaker 2: what the top line description of this person was. And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, no, yeah, we got a pastor
Speaker 2: in Nigeria, and I don't know what the rest is,
Speaker 2: but I know how evangelical things operate over there, and
Speaker 2: they can be pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is one of those, Like you know,
Speaker 1: there's like Africa for whatever reason, like bastardry over there
Speaker 1: does not usually go as viral as like the very
Speaker 1: worst people from like I don't know Europe, United even
Speaker 1: like South America, Asia.
Speaker 2: But like TB.
Speaker 1: Joshua is not just He's not just a bastard. He
Speaker 1: was like, up until his death very recently, one of
Speaker 1: probably like the twenty or thirty most influential religious figures
Speaker 1: alive on the planet. Massively influential Pentecostal preacher millions not
Speaker 1: just in Nigeria and not just in West Africa, but
Speaker 1: all over the world, in Southeast Asia and Europe unit
Speaker 1: millions and millions of followers, huge, huge spoke in the
Speaker 1: international Pentecostal community very very important.
Speaker 2: Guy. Yeah, I feel like the religious bastards, they're able
Speaker 2: to fly under the radar a little bit longer than
Speaker 2: everybody else. Like if you're not like some dictator, despot,
Speaker 2: kind of despotic leader, you're like it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like when you get the cover, when you're covered in
Speaker 2: the blood of Christ. Yeah, it is one of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this mix of I think they get protected
Speaker 1: from like members of the same faith, some of whom
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of times the people who do expose
Speaker 1: them are also members of the same faith. But like
Speaker 1: that's probably one reason why sometimes it takes while to spread.
Speaker 1: And I think also you get among like atheists or
Speaker 1: even as we'll talk about Pentecostals are kind of in
Speaker 1: an extreme sect of evangelical Christianity from like more moderate
Speaker 1: centrist you know, Christians and like the West. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously Pentecostal movement is huge in the United States, but
Speaker 1: even in the United States, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: like people who are Christians, but you know they live
Speaker 1: in like the East Coast, do they live in the
Speaker 1: West Coast or like just like big cities. They may
Speaker 1: not know how wild. Some of that shit gets right,
Speaker 1: and they may kind of write off stories about these
Speaker 1: guys as just like, oh, well that's just you know,
Speaker 1: normal in that chunk of the faith or whatever.
Speaker 2: And TB.
Speaker 1: Joshua was not, to be honest, like, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with Pentecostal Christianity, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who were trying to expose him for years
Speaker 1: were other Pentecostal pastors. But he just got ignored for
Speaker 1: in a lot of what he was doing. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who enabled him were other Pentecostals. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong.
Speaker 2: Side note, I feel like, you know, based on all
Speaker 2: the fuck real that's going on, you could have a
Speaker 2: like a sister podcast, Behind the Pastors.
Speaker 1: Behind the past Yet we can do an episode every
Speaker 1: week for the next year.
Speaker 2: I'm not joking every fucking week. There's some freak somewhere
Speaker 2: who's like, yeah, this youth pastor is colledge, child porn
Speaker 2: or some other dark shit, and I'm like, man, we're
Speaker 2: still we're still acting like these are the people that
Speaker 2: are above or beyond reproach. But yeah, anyway, Behind the
Speaker 2: Pastors look Behind the Pastors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could also do a whole podcast series on
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, on the Catholic Church in like the seventies.
Speaker 1: You know, even if we just skicked to one decade, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could really So here's the hard facts of this
Speaker 1: guy's life. Timatope Balligan Joshua was born on June twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, in a town called Araghiti a Coco
Speaker 1: in the southwest coastal state of Ondo in Nigeria. Arigedi
Speaker 1: a Coco is very poor and it is unlikely that
Speaker 1: his family had access to any kind of like really
Speaker 1: meaningful wealth at any point. Stretching back in recent memory,
Speaker 1: he is very poor. Everyone around him is very poor.
Speaker 1: He grows up in like a background of pretty desperate poverty.
Speaker 1: Now he does seem to have a fairly strong family,
Speaker 1: which is good. It gives him a leg up on
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are like like don't have
Speaker 1: that benefit obviously, But this is this is a guy
Speaker 1: who's going to have to fight for any amount of
Speaker 1: like wealth that he wants to have. His family are Yoruba.
Speaker 1: That is an ethnic group in southwest Africa that encompasses
Speaker 1: the largest chunk of niger Congo language speakers. Like many
Speaker 1: Yoruba families TV Joshua grows up. He has both Muslim
Speaker 1: and Christian relatives in his close family, and one thing
Speaker 1: people will say about him when he's a pastor is
Speaker 1: that a lot of evangelical pastors in Nigeria are very
Speaker 1: anti Muslim, and he was. He was, not nearly as
Speaker 1: much as is Commons, not nearly as much. We'll get
Speaker 1: into he's going to like he's going to like throw
Speaker 1: Muslims under the bus at a certain point in his future.
Speaker 1: But he does have like a lot of Muslims in
Speaker 1: his family, and so for a while at least, he's
Speaker 1: a lot better on some of that stuff than a
Speaker 1: lot of other people then a lot of other like
Speaker 1: pastors Christian pastors in the area. His father, Kolaole, was
Speaker 1: well educated and made a living translating the Bible, so
Speaker 1: from a fairly early age, he's both taught that it's
Speaker 1: important to learn how to read and specifically to be
Speaker 1: able to read the Bible, like this is something that
Speaker 1: he's going to do obsessively from a very young age.
Speaker 2: Oh God, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He is big on that. His father dies when he's young,
Speaker 1: and he is I think when he's like twelve or
Speaker 1: something like that, and he's raised after that by his uncle,
Speaker 1: who is a Muslim Man. Again, he's going to be
Speaker 1: kind of more tolerant than a lot of people on
Speaker 1: that sort of situation. He grows up speaking a mix
Speaker 1: of Yoruba, English and pigeon. His English is never going
Speaker 1: to be considered very good, in part because he doesn't
Speaker 1: finish secondary school and he has limited formal education in general.
Speaker 1: What time he does spend in school is at Saint
Speaker 1: Stephen Anglican, which is a religious primary school. His teachers
Speaker 1: called him Little Pastor because he was obsessed with the
Speaker 1: Bible from a young age and preached to his classmates
Speaker 1: it's not a red flag. That's not a red flag
Speaker 1: at all. Preaching to your kid.
Speaker 2: Preachers are the freakiest fucking creatures on Oh my God.
Speaker 2: There's like, yeah, there's like this vibe of like you're
Speaker 2: just showing, you're just regurgitating shit the adults are saying
Speaker 2: around you. But they do it with such passion and conviction.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, I don't know, maybe you fucking God
Speaker 2: is talking to you, but please you were nine years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, take some of this
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. I think the stuff about
Speaker 1: him being called little pastor right here often enough and
Speaker 1: is consistent enough that I believe it. We don't have
Speaker 1: great sources on his early life, like there are all
Speaker 1: fan websites and the like.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, so like, first of all, your research methodology
Speaker 2: for this is what, Like, I don't imagine there's like
Speaker 2: a book on like all the shitty things to you.
Speaker 1: I should read a book on him. Now there's good.
Speaker 1: The best info on this guy's actual crimes comes from
Speaker 1: the BBC. BBC So the BBC can be a problematic
Speaker 1: entity in some ways, but they have a division of
Speaker 1: the BBC called BBC Africa Eye, which reports on Africa
Speaker 1: that does extremely good work. There are some of the
Speaker 1: only people, for example, reporting on like war crimes by
Speaker 1: the Camerooney and government. They do really good work, and
Speaker 1: they did a long series on this guy, So there's
Speaker 1: and interviewed a lot of people. So there is good
Speaker 1: reporting on his crimes at this point. There's just not
Speaker 1: a whole lot that we can absolutely verify about his
Speaker 1: early life.
Speaker 2: Right, because it's always some form of like myth building
Speaker 2: or praise or yeah, just bias towards like how great
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the anecdots we get are all shit that his
Speaker 1: fans pulled out of like speeches he gave during like
Speaker 1: religious ceremonies, right, because that's like a big thing you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Like when I was a kid, I did
Speaker 1: this and this, and I saw, you know, the spirit
Speaker 1: of God came into me and whatnot. That's where you
Speaker 1: get a lot of these details, which is like there's
Speaker 1: a good duck if you people want to know the
Speaker 1: way in which these kind of pastors massage and just
Speaker 1: outright invent backstories in order to like make themselves kind
Speaker 1: of fit in with some of these common evangelical narratives.
Speaker 1: There's a documentary I always recommend called Marjoe, and it's
Speaker 1: about a guy who started out as a child pastor.
Speaker 1: His parents may had him preaching when he was like
Speaker 1: four or five years old. He was like doing marriages
Speaker 1: at like age four or five or so, and it
Speaker 1: was all a scam for money, right. He was like,
Speaker 1: I never believed in God, and his parents abandoned him
Speaker 1: as soon as he was old enough that it wasn't cute, right,
Speaker 1: So you can't make money once he's an adult. There's
Speaker 1: nothing special about an adult pastor. So they just fucking
Speaker 1: bounce and he like takes a film crew and this
Speaker 1: is in the United States and all these like evangelical
Speaker 1: revivals in the seventies. It's a really good documentary. It
Speaker 1: won an oscar. I'm recommend it to everybody. Marja one
Speaker 1: of my very favorite movies. Also, he grows up to
Speaker 1: be an actor and is on the A Team. So
Speaker 1: Marginal was, yeah, he's a bad guy in one episode
Speaker 1: of the A Team.
Speaker 2: I think yes. So there you got praise Christ praise
Speaker 2: through him.
Speaker 1: All things are possible.
Speaker 2: You can starting, Yeah, you can be a bad guy
Speaker 2: on the A Team type cast.
Speaker 1: Probably it was this guy black. No, no, no, he's a
Speaker 1: white guy. He's a white guy.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, okay was Look maybe it wasn't God. It
Speaker 2: might have just been a white supremacy that guy either.
Speaker 2: I don't want to conflict the two, but it was
Speaker 2: one of the two.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, anytime you get to hang out with Barakas,
Speaker 1: that's the hand of God.
Speaker 2: That's the hand of God. Yeah, oh yeah, most if
Speaker 2: you could. Yeah, he'd like, can I wear one of
Speaker 2: your chains? He's like, yeah, man, oh yeah, raised Christ baby.
Speaker 1: So the website who owns Kenya, which I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about the providence of, but it does seem to have
Speaker 1: a lot of detail on this guy. They have an
Speaker 1: article on him titled the Man of God who stayed
Speaker 1: in his mother's womb for fifteen months, which gives you
Speaker 1: an idea of the kind of claims he makes. And again,
Speaker 1: this is stuff he's saying during speeches. He like claims
Speaker 1: that he was his mom was pregnant with him for
Speaker 1: fifteen months, and so he's a miracle baby. I guess
Speaker 1: when you're that holy God needs an extra like six
Speaker 1: months to really make sure you get finished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need you need that way, Yeah, man, you
Speaker 2: need to just the what is that the fourth and
Speaker 2: fifth trimester?
Speaker 1: So one eight babies? Yeah, roughly, I'm not great at math. Folks,
Speaker 1: don't come in here and correct me if that's wrong.
Speaker 1: He better have been walking and talking and shit yeah
Speaker 1: that long coaching. No, he'd better come out knowing how
Speaker 1: to read God.
Speaker 2: Damnah into my taxi. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I do find that very funny because I even
Speaker 1: heard that claim that, like, yeah, I took fifteen months
Speaker 1: to be born.
Speaker 2: What are you stunting on people?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that really a brag?
Speaker 2: Thing like, yeah, you're like, you're clingy? Yeah, are you?
Speaker 1: They giving ship to kids who were born early. Oh
Speaker 1: you came out after eight months, not nearly as holy
Speaker 1: as me.
Speaker 2: Baby, I'm a fifteen month there. Yeah, my mom tried
Speaker 2: to get rid of me. I said, no, I'm doing
Speaker 2: some Bible study in here. I'm not ready yet.
Speaker 1: On the weekends he goes to just just goes to
Speaker 1: like nick you wards and makes fun of the babies.
Speaker 2: Ah, look at you, look at you. Couldn't be me,
Speaker 2: couldn't be me. I came out. I came out twenty
Speaker 2: six pounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I almost didn't come out at all.
Speaker 1: I was gonna stay in there.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I said, I would have physically killed my
Speaker 2: mother if I say it in there, I kept growing.
Speaker 2: It would have been bad the person. Maybe, Oh that's funny.
Speaker 1: So later in life he would also claim that as
Speaker 1: a child, he became aware that his coming had been
Speaker 1: foretold in prophecy.
Speaker 2: For more than one hundred years.
Speaker 1: I've never found what this prophecy is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone was like, yeah, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: huge fucking baby someday. Is that in the Book of Revelations,
Speaker 1: And that boy was me so anyway, This bullet proof
Speaker 1: source cites statements from Joshua that as a child, he
Speaker 1: would read the entire Bible every two months. Quote, every
Speaker 1: two months, I would have read the Bible from Genesis
Speaker 1: to Revelation. It was the only subject that interested me
Speaker 1: in primary school. In exams, I scored ninety nine percent consistently,
Speaker 1: whereas I performed woefully in other subjects. My excelling and
Speaker 1: Bible knowledge affected the other subjects where I performed poorly.
Speaker 1: So basically, he was so good at the Bible that
Speaker 1: his brain just didn't work for anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't. I can't do I can't even do
Speaker 2: one plus two. Yeah, so I'm so christ it up
Speaker 2: up here now.
Speaker 1: What I do disbelieve is a claim that he made
Speaker 1: that one day, whilst at school, a madman entered his
Speaker 1: class carrying a weapon. The type is not specified.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Everyone ran away, but he managed to calm the madman
Speaker 1: down through prayer. From that day onwards, he knew there
Speaker 1: was something special in him. I'm gonna need more details.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how old is he?
Speaker 1: I think what this is like when he's in like
Speaker 1: like middle school.
Speaker 2: Maybe and a man came through with a weapon, just
Speaker 2: a weapon, just a weapon.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, praise he praise him out of hurting anybody.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing. I mean, it's West Africa. Maybe he's a cutlass,
Speaker 2: you know, so it's a it's a machete.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean, machetes are very certainly, very accessible, but
Speaker 1: who knows. My actual guess is that this did not happen.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, Yeah, he's acting like he's Kevin Spacey
Speaker 2: and the Negotiator. He's Chris Saviian or Shocks.
Speaker 1: So shortly before starting secondary school, his father died and
Speaker 1: again he's raised by his uncle. He drops out of
Speaker 1: school pretty soon after this, I think because he has
Speaker 1: to get a job to help take care of the family.
Speaker 1: And he spends years working a series of odd gigs,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people and who come from his
Speaker 1: level of like wealth and stuff in Nigeria and that
Speaker 1: part of Nigeria. One of his jobs is a poultry attendant,
Speaker 1: which mostly consisted of scrubbing chicken shit with his hands
Speaker 1: and putting it in bags to be turned into fertilizer.
Speaker 1: My my new favorite Kenyan news and culture website says
Speaker 1: this job was so demeaning that no Nigerian did it.
Speaker 1: It was mainly done by Ghanians. Wow, shots fired at Ghana.
Speaker 2: Your neighbor's next door.
Speaker 1: There's all in these articles. There's a lot of shots
Speaker 1: fired at Ghana.
Speaker 2: Mya, it's wild. I've been to Ghana and there there
Speaker 2: is like this sort of back and forth or they'll
Speaker 2: be talking. They talked, They just chat shit about each
Speaker 2: other like Nigerian m I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Write them. This happens a regional Yeah, exactly. Your neighbor is.
Speaker 1: Texas and Oklahoma, shit, right, like Nigeria and Ghana, right
Speaker 1: right right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at some point in his early twenties, he experienced
Speaker 1: a three day trance in which God visited him and
Speaker 1: told him I am your God. I am giving you
Speaker 1: a divine commission to go and carry the work of
Speaker 1: the heavenly Father. This is the inciting incident of the
Speaker 1: TV Joshua story. In the interest of trying to put
Speaker 1: together a more complete picture of the man, I opted
Speaker 1: to read a propaganda by what I thought was a
Speaker 1: propaganda biography by one of his followers. Its title is
Speaker 1: Rejoice and See what Happens Next? The Life and Times
Speaker 1: of TB. Joshua. Now, this book does not give us
Speaker 1: the life and times of TV Joshua. It's basically a
Speaker 1: big brochure for like going to visit his church. And
Speaker 1: we will talk about why a little later that he
Speaker 1: wanted people doing that.
Speaker 2: Just marketing. It is marketing material.
Speaker 1: It's all marketing. You get very little on the guy's life.
Speaker 1: It is kind of interesting to note that the preface
Speaker 1: of this book opens by saying TB. Joshua has shown
Speaker 1: every indication of following this anointed path. He is worthy
Speaker 1: of careful study and emulation, and then complaining TB. Joshua
Speaker 1: has been made out to be controversial and has become
Speaker 1: the subject of persecution, especially by fellow religious leaders. This
Speaker 1: is puzzling to me. I have been in his presence
Speaker 1: and I can say that he is disarmingly humble, gentle,
Speaker 1: and a generous man.
Speaker 2: So that's good.
Speaker 1: Glad, glad we're opening with like a real unbiased account
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's so humble. Yeah, well he sounds great
Speaker 2: so far. He sounds like he's you know, he's cooking
Speaker 2: months talked about his miracles. Yeh, yeah, he topped down
Speaker 2: a man with a machete, or who could have been
Speaker 2: a bazooki, any kind of weapon.
Speaker 1: We have no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just had an enriched plutonium maybe in his hand,
Speaker 2: who knows, but he stopped it. Okay, look, this doesn't
Speaker 2: just get to the bastard. I don't even know this
Speaker 2: guy sounds.
Speaker 1: Cool, Robert, Ye, so far he's great.
Speaker 2: Praise Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's he starts preaching at some point. He's
Speaker 1: probably in his like early to mid twenties when he
Speaker 1: starts preaching, and this seems to have been a fairly
Speaker 1: like humble start. There's some grainy footage that exists, apparently,
Speaker 1: I've heard it reported on. I haven't seen it, that
Speaker 1: shows him somewhere. It started out with something like a dozen,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty followers under a bamboo marquee in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. So he starts out small, but his his
Speaker 1: flock grows fairly rapidly. And the mid nineteen eighties is
Speaker 1: a pretty terrible time for most things, except for cocaine
Speaker 1: and being a Pentecostal preacher in Nigeria, and especially for
Speaker 1: the latter, it's basically the best time ever and this
Speaker 1: merit's a little bit of explanation. First off, on Pentecostalism.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen a video, if you're wondering, like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is he talking about when he says Pentecostals,
Speaker 1: Because I do think a lot of like even a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are Christian right, but who are
Speaker 1: like a fairly mainstream like kayaks Christianity and like normal
Speaker 1: you know, believe in evolution, live a normal modern life.
Speaker 1: They just like you know, they're Christian whatever. May not
Speaker 1: know much about this. It's something you really encounter a lot,
Speaker 1: particularly if you grow up in kind of the Deep
Speaker 1: South and rural areas. It's gotten more common obviously as
Speaker 1: we've gotten older. If you've ever seen videos of like
Speaker 1: some wild seeming Christian religious ceremony where people are chanting
Speaker 1: in tongues or screaming, flopping around on the floor looking
Speaker 1: like they're seizuring, that's a Pentecostal service. Almost certainly. There
Speaker 1: are some other denominations where you'll get stuff like that.
Speaker 1: In popular culture, they're often called snake handlers. This is
Speaker 1: because a lot of Pentecostals used to pass around venomous snakes,
Speaker 1: and basically the idea is if you get bitten like
Speaker 1: it means that you weren't faithful enough. And also if
Speaker 1: you get bitten and die, it means that God just
Speaker 1: wanted you to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was his plan.
Speaker 1: That was his plan for you. A lot of times
Speaker 1: they're using non venomous snakes and it's like it's a show,
Speaker 1: right right, And a lot of times they'll like defang
Speaker 1: the snakes, especially for like the pastor, because the pastor
Speaker 1: you want to like, could you imagine? It's like, but
Speaker 1: I don't have any wound on my hand the fruit Jesus, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Where's that? Wait? I didn't give you the stunt snake pastor?
Speaker 2: Oh fuck? Oh fuck, Okay.
Speaker 1: There's definitely motherfuckers who died from that, Like oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there has to be. I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: like there's there were headlines about like some snake handling
Speaker 2: preacher who you know, somehow who'd a thought his handling
Speaker 2: of a copper head whended with his demises.
Speaker 1: It was also common you still find this sometimes, but
Speaker 1: like people would drink strych nine during these ceremonies. Again,
Speaker 1: it's like a you know, if you have faith, you'll
Speaker 1: know God won't kill you unless it's your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Pentecostals are not the only Christian sect to do
Speaker 1: snake handling. It actually probably started. I think the first
Speaker 1: snake handlers on the Christian historic record are the second
Speaker 1: century o Fights, which is a Gnostic sect. I do
Speaker 1: not know much about them, but I came across that
Speaker 1: when I was looking up snake handlers, So yeah.
Speaker 2: That's neat.
Speaker 1: Pentecostalism has its origins in the eighteen hundreds with radical
Speaker 1: evangelical movements that focused on faith, healing, and the imminently
Speaker 1: coming end times. One description you'll hear a lot is
Speaker 1: that regular Christians kind of as modernity comes in, they
Speaker 1: stop believing in miracles, or at least not miracles as
Speaker 1: a thing that like people can can incite, you know,
Speaker 1: through their direct faith, you know, but as a thing.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's a thing that happens sometimes, but
Speaker 1: you're not You can't make miracles by like praying for
Speaker 1: God and stuff, Right, that's not a thing. I think
Speaker 1: a lot most people believe, but Pentecostals do, and this
Speaker 1: obsession with miraculous happenings is a hallmark of that kind
Speaker 1: of worship. Pentecostal churches started to spread in Nigeria around
Speaker 1: the turn of the nineteen hundreds. It was really given
Speaker 1: a shot in the arm by the influenza epidemic. A
Speaker 1: lot of early Nigerian Pentecostal preachers engaged in faith healing
Speaker 1: of influenza victims. They started out as kind of an
Speaker 1: Anglican offshoot because obviously the Anglican Church is British, and
Speaker 1: the British, you know, owned them in Nigeria for much
Speaker 1: longer than Yeah, and Aghana, yes, and Aghana and yeah.
Speaker 1: The breaks kind of between the Anglicans and the Pentecostals
Speaker 1: became more defined in the twenties and they started, like
Speaker 1: Nigerian Pentecostals started to affiliate with US based churches, more
Speaker 1: like the Faith Tabernacle in Philadelphia. One characteristic of this
Speaker 1: particular segment of Christianity is a near constant conflict with
Speaker 1: medical sens. I'm not going to say that's every group
Speaker 1: of Pentecostals, but it's very common to find Pentecostals who
Speaker 1: preach against like at least certain kinds of modern medicine.
Speaker 1: You know, faith is supposed to handle it. It's not
Speaker 1: like an across the board thing like it is with thinking,
Speaker 1: like Jehovah's witnesses. But it's not uncommon, and early Nigerian
Speaker 1: Pentecostals were extreme, even to their British cousins in their
Speaker 1: rejection of modern medicine. A lot of this is tied
Speaker 1: into colonialism. I think a lot of it also has
Speaker 1: to do with the difficulty of obtaining good medical care
Speaker 1: in a lot of the areas where this is spreading.
Speaker 1: A study in Pew Research Notes Originating in evangelical student revivals,
Speaker 1: a wave of Pentecostal expansion spawns new churches in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. The leader of this expansion is Benson Idahosa,
Speaker 1: one of Africa's most influential Pentecostal preachers. Idahosa establishes the
Speaker 1: Church of God Mission International in nineteen seventy two. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the Pentecostal umbrella organization Grace of God
Speaker 1: Ministry is founded in eastern Nigeria. The Deeper Life Bible
Speaker 1: Church founded in nineteen seventy five and soon becomes one
Speaker 1: of Nigeria's largest Pentecostal churches, with an estimated three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand members by nineteen ninety three. So this
Speaker 1: is a pretty rapid expansion and these are very big churches.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's all line enough for that. Man.
Speaker 2: The faith part is yeah, it's like I mean, because
Speaker 2: there's already you know this culturally, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: thinking that sort of goes beyond the bounds of like science, right,
Speaker 2: So to even for these you know, these very opportunistic
Speaker 2: sort of faith healers, to really get in on them,
Speaker 2: be like, oh man, I just fucking believe.
Speaker 6: Maybe that's all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And that's that's where Chibi Joshua is going
Speaker 1: to stitch in.
Speaker 2: So TB.
Speaker 1: Joshua's church, which also began in nineteen eighty six, was
Speaker 1: called Synagogue Church of All Nations or SCONE, and I
Speaker 1: think the synagogue this is very common. I made a
Speaker 1: comment once that like Christians reincorporate, some groups of like
Speaker 1: particularly fundamental Christians like to reincorporate bits of Jewish religious tradition,
Speaker 1: and like the abuse of Showfars, reincorporate was the wrong term.
Speaker 1: People got rightfully frustrated. This is cultural appropriation, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. And I'm guessing because I have
Speaker 1: never heard of synagogue used outside of the tradition of
Speaker 1: the Jewish faith.
Speaker 2: So my guess is that stand for me, that's what
Speaker 2: that would imply, Yes, ten times out of ten in
Speaker 2: my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's that's what I'm guessing they're doing here.
Speaker 1: So people will call it scone, and that's what we
Speaker 1: will usually call it, because Synagogue Church of All Nations
Speaker 1: is a bit of a mouthful, and in fairly short
Speaker 1: order throughout the mid like mid to late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: scone goes from dozens to hundreds to hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of regular attendants. It becomes common for there to be
Speaker 1: more than fifteen thousand people attending services at once in
Speaker 1: a single day. Obviously, this necessitates the building of a massive,
Speaker 1: like stadium sized church. You know, these are huge events
Speaker 1: every time, and he's out there every day. Basically he
Speaker 1: hears some of his disciples. A lot of appeal of
Speaker 1: these Neo Pentecostal churches in Nigeria is the ability of
Speaker 1: worshippers to witness and participate in miracles. Right, not just
Speaker 1: that miracles are happening, but that your pastor is able
Speaker 1: to call down miracles and you get to be right there.
Speaker 2: And watch this shit.
Speaker 1: You know, some of this there's some like cafe here.
Speaker 1: Some of this is like what people get out of wrestling,
Speaker 1: you know, right for real? Yeah, yeah, And it's not
Speaker 1: coincidental that the massive expansion of these churches that are
Speaker 1: all doing these very big and we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: these look, these big like miracles shows, coincides with a
Speaker 1: huge expansion in the availability of televisions for working class Nigerians.
Speaker 1: Right that has hit like it it hits saturation by
Speaker 1: the eighties, and so these preachers and not only that,
Speaker 1: but it also becomes a lot easier to make your
Speaker 1: own TV and get it on the air, right, So
Speaker 1: all of those things kind of have to happen, and
Speaker 1: that takes a period of time, but by the eighties,
Speaker 1: all of those things are possible, and so any of
Speaker 1: these preachers with big congregations have access to enough capital
Speaker 1: to purchase cameras in airtime, which they use to air
Speaker 1: slick videos of different ill people being miraculously healed and
Speaker 1: miles you know what will miraculously heal our listeners.
Speaker 2: I hope it's some kind of product. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: The only guarantee we make on this podcast is that
Speaker 1: if you are sick, buy someone something that advertises on
Speaker 1: our show, and you will be.
Speaker 2: Healed of anything. Just rub it on your head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you cannot die if you purchase the products
Speaker 1: that advertise on our show unless that was God's plan.
Speaker 1: Unless that was God's plan.
Speaker 2: Obviously obviously obviously.
Speaker 3: We're dallas ridiculous ad transition, both of you.
Speaker 1: We're back and we're thinking about how ematic unless that's
Speaker 1: God's plan really really gives you a lot of you're
Speaker 1: going away with anything with those words.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but people, I.
Speaker 3: Just you know, if it's really funny, please please send
Speaker 3: us what what what that pops up?
Speaker 1: Please it's really funny. Please, that's a good like parenting tip.
Speaker 1: Can we go to the playground, daddy? If it's God's plan,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's God's.
Speaker 2: I mean, but that is the kind of ship like
Speaker 2: super religious parents we'll say to like avoid the responsibility.
Speaker 2: They're like, I don't know, I mean, maybe you didn't
Speaker 2: maybe I forgot your birthday because that was God's plan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you do.
Speaker 1: It is like it's used very differently, but like it's
Speaker 1: used a lot in the in the Muslim world as
Speaker 1: like if you're like, hey, do you think you know
Speaker 1: we'll be able to do this or this will happen
Speaker 1: like you know inshallah, Right, which means like probably not.
Speaker 2: I'm not looking go I mean, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: the same thing people say that to their like yeah, man, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll see, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget your birthday.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you never Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: You don't have the same privilege as Miles.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember my own birthday. Not after all
Speaker 1: this THEO flu I've been dropping. Let me do a
Speaker 1: that line of the of the peach flavor. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: why does he stuff?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 2: What's he snorting out of that bullet? Dude? It's kind
Speaker 2: of fair.
Speaker 1: Round bullet bullet power that opens the capillaries, gets the
Speaker 1: N s A I DS into your system faster, straight
Speaker 1: to the vein. Baby. Yeah, just just like cooking flair
Speaker 1: the on apoo.
Speaker 2: You're like, hey, hand me that dialysis to being really quick,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tie off what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we couldn't arrest him. There's no log against dejecting
Speaker 1: the aflu in parting.
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's no log. It's just freaking people
Speaker 2: the funk out. It's fucked up.
Speaker 1: So spectacle was always part of the deal at Scone.
Speaker 1: Healing the blind is like easy ship, right, you can
Speaker 1: have someone pretend that they're blind, right, and then they
Speaker 1: can see. You know, it's super easy. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: look exciting, right, What looks exciting? He would love to
Speaker 1: have like parades of people who were missing limbs, like
Speaker 1: roll in on wheel boards and stuff to get like
Speaker 1: the healing touch and claim like their pain went away
Speaker 1: or something. He would love to have people who had
Speaker 1: like like skin lesions and stuff come in and then
Speaker 1: they all fall off, right, and this kind of shit
Speaker 1: like these are these are staged right, like they're using makeup,
Speaker 1: they're doing all this kind of shit, but it works.
Speaker 1: His flock goes from dozens to hundreds to tens of
Speaker 1: thousands over the course of like the eighties to the nineties,
Speaker 1: like it gets massive. There are two is wiping off
Speaker 1: people's skin conditions. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: That's a bit And there's there's too many stories of
Speaker 1: this time to count. So I'm going to focus on
Speaker 1: one really well documented recent case. And I'm focusing on
Speaker 1: this because this is someone who got arrested by the
Speaker 1: Nigerian government for miracle fraud recently. But it gives you
Speaker 1: an idea of how this industry is always worked miracle.
Speaker 2: Wait, is that a law we have on all?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh no, we don't have that shit. You can,
Speaker 1: you can. That's Nigeria is so far ahead of us
Speaker 1: and that way.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, you guys don't understand. These people are
Speaker 2: gonna fucking bring down our entire society. Like if we
Speaker 2: don't get that shit under control. Yeah, god damn, because
Speaker 2: who's the guy who sells those fucking buckets, those end
Speaker 2: time buckets?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fucking we did episodes on him, but I'm
Speaker 1: spacing on his name right now. But yeah, the one
Speaker 1: of the three lines in the story. Obviously he gets
Speaker 1: away with a lot because of corruption in the Nigerian government,
Speaker 1: because of bribing people. But there's also like the Nigerian
Speaker 1: government has like passed laws and shit that I wish
Speaker 1: we had in the US to try to limit some
Speaker 1: of this stuff.
Speaker 7: We're talking about.
Speaker 3: Jim Baker, aren't we Jim Baker?
Speaker 2: I'm like, we did.
Speaker 1: We did seeveral episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yell those buckets though they look like absolute shit.
Speaker 1: Like I have. I have to say, the Nigerian government
Speaker 1: fails in a lot of ways. The US government has
Speaker 1: also failed to contain this stuff. But they have also
Speaker 1: attempted to limit it in more ways than we have,
Speaker 1: so I'll give them some credit.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine if someone tried to put forward like
Speaker 2: a bill for miracle fraud and oh no, they would
Speaker 2: get shot.
Speaker 1: They would get literally get fucking shot.
Speaker 2: Like somehow, like that's the fucking life. Oh God, that.
Speaker 1: Would kiss people off so much. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: I want to detail the story of one specific miracle fraudster,
Speaker 1: forty four year old missus bows Olasukanmi. I think is
Speaker 1: how that's pronounced. She was arrested by the Nigerian government
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty for being a fake miracle actor who
Speaker 1: would sell her services to different pastors. Right basically, she
Speaker 1: was really good. She was able to dislocate her arm
Speaker 1: in an unconventional way that made it look like it
Speaker 1: was shattered and in pieces, like there was at least
Speaker 1: I saw.
Speaker 2: There's like one.
Speaker 1: Picture of it out there, like it's pretty good at it.
Speaker 2: This is a little bit of skill.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote from a write up in
Speaker 1: the Nigerian Guardian here. Once she enters the stage, she
Speaker 1: would pretend that the broken right arm had been hanging
Speaker 1: and all medical efforts to heal her in both Orthodox
Speaker 1: in native hospital proved abored of until one of her friends,
Speaker 1: who was a member of the church, advised her to
Speaker 1: try the church. At this point, one of the ministering pastor,
Speaker 1: the General overseer, would step forward and demonstrate as if
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit had entered him. After speaking in tongues
Speaker 1: for some minutes, he would order the woman to come
Speaker 1: very close to him, while the congregation would be silent
Speaker 1: anxiously waiting to see the broken right arm that has
Speaker 1: been hanging. The pastor would ask the woman, do you
Speaker 1: want to be healed? Have you been born again? If
Speaker 1: she answers in the negative, then he led her to
Speaker 1: Christ in prayer. He would then order the evil spirit
Speaker 1: that bent her arm to depart and be destroyed by fire.
Speaker 1: As he is ordering the evil spirit to depart, the
Speaker 1: hanging broken arm will be coming back gradually to its
Speaker 1: form until it is completely stretched down and normal, And
Speaker 1: then he would ask the congregation to praise the Lord.
Speaker 1: Well the congregation is busy praising God, one of the
Speaker 1: church members whose role is to take the woman away,
Speaker 1: would appear and whisker away, and then she gets paid.
Speaker 2: Wow, and so she's just like the Meryl Streep of
Speaker 2: fucking miracles.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch you know how there used to be
Speaker 1: like a circuit of people who would do the Jerry
Speaker 1: Springer style talk shows because they had something like marketable,
Speaker 1: you know, in a weird thing about them.
Speaker 2: I think it's like that, right. Yeah, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: did you get the arm lady? It's like, no, I
Speaker 2: got the dude with the buggy eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, what.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: You can explain that it's because his blood pressure is
Speaker 2: so high his eyes are bulging and then there's.
Speaker 1: Too many demons in his blood they pop the pressure
Speaker 1: right up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now this is one woman, but like she gets arrested
Speaker 1: because the Nigerian police have like units dedicated to busting
Speaker 1: miracle crimes, which is I do want to see that
Speaker 1: TV show. I want to see like a Law and
Speaker 1: Order some miracle c frauds Jersey.
Speaker 2: In it and we get people the wrong. I did,
Speaker 2: like do Law and Order mc U Yeah no, not
Speaker 2: marvel asshole miracle crimes. Yeah they don't. They don't own
Speaker 2: those letters.
Speaker 1: So Joshua and other pastors like him would not just
Speaker 1: like have these people over and do these miracle shows,
Speaker 1: but they would make videos of them, and Joshua is
Speaker 1: really going to be like the number one pastor for
Speaker 1: pioneering making videos out of this stuff and distributing them
Speaker 1: around the world. The basic way this works is that
Speaker 1: you know, within kind of Nigeria, if you have these
Speaker 1: people being healed in your shows, it will convince people
Speaker 1: who are really injured or sick that they or their
Speaker 1: loved ones might get healed. Right obviously, but Joshua took
Speaker 1: this tactic several steps further. Right from an early date,
Speaker 1: he starts filming videos of these healings, picking the most
Speaker 1: sensational and impressive and putting them in videos not meant
Speaker 1: for Nigerian domestic consumption, but these were sent over to Europe,
Speaker 1: to Great Britain, into the United States with white missionaries
Speaker 1: returning from Nigeria. For decades, Nigeria has been a hot
Speaker 1: destination for missionary tourists, young Christians and professional missionaries traveling
Speaker 1: to minister to the poor in a relatively friendly climate.
Speaker 1: Joshua was not the only person to see this as
Speaker 1: a profitable endeavor, but his matter of fishing for them
Speaker 1: was unique at the time. Sending out propaganda to evangelize
Speaker 1: British Christians, in particular. The BBC documentary that I cited
Speaker 1: earlier includes interviews with several young British and South African
Speaker 1: Caucasian women who were enraptured with and then terribly abused
Speaker 1: by TV Joshua. Their journeys all start the same way.
Speaker 1: Members of their local religious communities came back from Nigeria
Speaker 1: with VHS tapes of miraculous healings. To give you an
Speaker 1: idea of what some of these healings were and how
Speaker 1: they looked. I wanted to return to that book Rejoice
Speaker 1: and See what happens Next, which is centered around numerous
Speaker 1: case studies ranging from poor people getting good paying jobs,
Speaker 1: and I think that shit is meant mainly to evangelize
Speaker 1: them to locals, right like this is something that can
Speaker 1: improve your financial situation, to shit like this which is
Speaker 1: very much geared towards Europeans that they're trying to get
Speaker 1: to come over and join the church. Jude Orakas showed
Speaker 1: up at the scone with a life threatening disease. The
Speaker 1: case which I originally viewed live, has now been archived
Speaker 1: by a manual TV that's his TV channel and includes
Speaker 1: a commentary. The story opens with the camera zooming in
Speaker 1: from a full body shot, then to a medium shot
Speaker 1: of a man sitting in a chair. He is separated
Speaker 1: from others, his body quivering in the sunshine and wearing
Speaker 1: nothing but a pair of shorts. A close up shot
Speaker 1: reveals her inndous skin damage. Narrator. A shocking condition brought
Speaker 1: this man to the Synagogue Church of all Nations. His
Speaker 1: body riddled with sickness right from the crown of his head.
Speaker 1: His entire body has been engulfed in a plague, shattering
Speaker 1: his skin into scale like fragments. There is not a
Speaker 1: hair left on his head, as the frightening sickness has
Speaker 1: completely destroyed his skin. From his head, the disease rages
Speaker 1: across his body, damaging every inch and rendering his arms useless.
Speaker 1: The skin flakes and peels horribly all the way down
Speaker 1: his arms to his fingers. Not one inch of his
Speaker 1: skin has been left unaffected. Jude's sister, Man of God,
Speaker 1: help my brother. He has skin disease. For the past
Speaker 1: six years, we have taken him all over. There is
Speaker 1: no solution. Neither the herbalist's homes or hospitals have provided
Speaker 1: any solution. Joshua talked to him briefly, and when he
Speaker 1: sees Iraka is too sick to even talk, he asks
Speaker 1: him if he can accept Jesus Christ as his Lord
Speaker 1: and savior, which the man is able to answer. In
Speaker 1: the name of Jesus Christ, I command that infirmity out.
Speaker 1: Begin to vomit it out.
Speaker 4: TB.
Speaker 1: Joshua watches the man intently for about fifteen seconds, then
Speaker 1: he speaks again. I say to you, disease, can hear me?
Speaker 1: Come out of this man's life, and the name of
Speaker 1: Jesus come out out TB.
Speaker 2: Joshua.
Speaker 1: The man begins to shake uncontrollably and bends forward to
Speaker 1: throw something white and foam me up. You can see
Speaker 1: what the name of Jesus can do out, I say
Speaker 1: out in the name of Jesus. So gives you an idea, right, dude,
Speaker 1: this yeah, okay, it's wild.
Speaker 2: Foam me at the mouth. He's like, yo, dude, don't
Speaker 2: put this Alca Seltzer in. It's gotta be Alca Celtic. No,
Speaker 2: that's the oldest stricken the fucking book. M Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: good shit.
Speaker 1: And again, when we're talking about his appeal, obviously as
Speaker 1: a preacher, he appeals to Nigerians as a preacher, but
Speaker 1: to a lot of these like Europeans, these British people,
Speaker 1: you know, he's not speaking their language fluently. The appeal
Speaker 1: is not the specifics of what he's saying. It's that
Speaker 1: he is promising them that if they come to see him,
Speaker 1: they will get a direct physical connection to a miracle.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And if you are one of these evangelicals from a
Speaker 1: wealthy country, like you're going to you know, reading the Bible,
Speaker 1: you're watching veggie tails or whatever, but you're living like
Speaker 1: these this what you would probably consider, compared to these videos,
Speaker 1: a fairly boring, safe life, And then you see this
Speaker 1: man physically fighting demons, right, and you're like, right, well,
Speaker 1: of course I want to be a part of this.
Speaker 1: This sounds so much more exciting than like going to
Speaker 1: church and doing like fucking youth group shit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of like nineties skate culture, where like
Speaker 2: you would be like, oh, you get the new Toy
Speaker 2: Machine tape and you're like, yo, I'll bring it over.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, dudelet we see the bail scenes or whatever,
Speaker 2: and like there's always this culture being like yo, to
Speaker 2: check this tape out. I got this tape, except in
Speaker 2: this version, I also, I mean, it's clever that he's
Speaker 2: also using the way the Western world views Africa in
Speaker 2: this like exotic, mystical way and weaponizing it to be
Speaker 2: like watch this shit, because they are they're already on
Speaker 2: some bullshit thinking that this is some fucking magic shit
Speaker 2: is happening here. It's like, no, I'm just a next
Speaker 2: level scammer that was in the womb for fifteen months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that time really let him prep. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: you have anticipated something we'll get to. He deals with
Speaker 1: this very directly. He is very consciously taking advantage of
Speaker 1: the way Westerners look at Africa. Right, So I do
Speaker 1: want to I want to give you an idea of
Speaker 1: what it looks like when he's because he's these are
Speaker 1: not just he's not just doing healings. He's doing exorcisms,
Speaker 1: and these take the place of like Gandolf Saromon magic
Speaker 1: fights like that at the most extreme level. He'll like
Speaker 1: walk in and they're like people will lunge at him
Speaker 1: and he'll like put his hand and use the name
Speaker 1: of GM. They'll go flying backwards like it's so it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Actually it looks like kung fu film, Like they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: high production.
Speaker 1: You know, actually what it looks a little bit like
Speaker 1: if you've watched the fake Steven segal a keto videos
Speaker 1: or like the Vladimir Putin fake a keto videos where
Speaker 1: they're just like touching guys and flinging them through.
Speaker 2: The air like Russians video exactly.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, god, it's so funny.
Speaker 2: I want to play you with video of this.
Speaker 8: Miles okah oh ship play as an lad a party.
Speaker 2: I got this shorty by the dome piece Python. Watch.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: He's on the ground rolling like a Python. Boss.
Speaker 2: It is boss.
Speaker 6: It's boss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Boss.
Speaker 2: Of the Boss of the Boss.
Speaker 1: That's pretty. That's like wrestling grade, you know. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fucking school play level. Of course. Of course, a
Speaker 1: bunch of like fucking sheltered like teenage evangelical kids are
Speaker 1: seeing this and they're like, well, I want to go
Speaker 1: fight demons in Africa?
Speaker 2: My god, did you see that? He just like just
Speaker 2: a closed fish swiped in front of his chest and.
Speaker 1: Blew the guy down. Yeah, Christ, it's so fun. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people get horribly abused. It's actually not.
Speaker 1: But this part of it is fun. Look, you got
Speaker 1: to enjoy these little moments, right, yeah, yep, yeah. I
Speaker 1: want to note here again, I don't want to fall
Speaker 1: into the thing of being like, wow, look at this
Speaker 1: African preacher and all these people believe this shit like
Speaker 1: this goes down in the US all the fucking time.
Speaker 1: Members of Congress go to churches that are not all
Speaker 1: that different from this. Okay, Like you know, this is
Speaker 1: not a Nigerian thing.
Speaker 2: This is a thing. This is just that that's what
Speaker 2: religion gives you. We've got a whole bunch of people
Speaker 2: that are working in the government. They're like circle jerking
Speaker 2: for the end times. Like this isn't like mainstream religious
Speaker 2: stuff necessarily, but it's not like wildly uncommon evangelical. I mean,
Speaker 2: especially when you see people prophesying, you know, or speaking
Speaker 2: in tongues and shit, you're.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, this is this is a derivation on a theme, right,
Speaker 1: And I think it's also probably my guess would be
Speaker 1: this is pretty close to what used to be a
Speaker 1: lot more common back in the day, right, Like when
Speaker 1: you hear about these stories of like demons and exorcisms
Speaker 1: and shit, and like you know, someone someone in the
Speaker 1: town water supply like someone will get like some fucking
Speaker 1: air got poisoning, and everyone will hallucinate and you'll have
Speaker 1: like a big demon fight in some medieval French village.
Speaker 1: I'm sure like there's versions of that to explain it,
Speaker 1: like these kind of there have always been people who
Speaker 1: have known that, Like, well, if you really want to
Speaker 1: make some money in the religion business, you got to
Speaker 1: put on a fucking show. Yeah, and nothing's a better
Speaker 1: show than fighting demons.
Speaker 2: Yeah you got a pyrotechnics guy, Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: got one, dude, you cat fingers. I'll say, Satan demon
Speaker 2: get out with the fires of hell. Fucking full plume
Speaker 2: of fucking flame shoots up his back. Dude, it's sing gig.
Speaker 1: It's pretty affordable, It's it's cool, it's good stuff. So again,
Speaker 1: what I want to note is that like, while what
Speaker 1: he is doing is not unique to him, he is
Speaker 1: maybe the best I've seen at it. He's good, like
Speaker 1: these are these are well orchestrated shows.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's also the riz bro he's got. Yeah
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It seems like so cool. He's like watching me hold
Speaker 1: this mic with my vessel.
Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck. That this dude's a python.
Speaker 2: Watch this shit. Yeah, Like it feels like superman ish
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I was like, Damn, he's super cocky
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: Yes, some Superman, some Vince McMahon, Like you got some
Speaker 1: of that going in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now you can see in some of his videos from
Speaker 1: the arts that he's very deliberately taken framing techniques from
Speaker 1: Western reality television. And I'm gonna play you a segment
Speaker 1: from a different scone video about a secret demonic infiltrator,
Speaker 1: mister Anny, being caught by one of TV Joshua's disciples,
Speaker 1: and it just feels like something I would have seen
Speaker 1: on MTV in like two thousand and one.
Speaker 7: Here is mister Annie pretending to be a Christian, but
Speaker 7: is a wolf in sheep's clothing? What is his mission
Speaker 7: here among the people of God? Can darkness be in
Speaker 7: the midst of light?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 7: Capital?
Speaker 2: No, look at.
Speaker 7: Mister Annie praying capital? Who is he praying to? There
Speaker 7: is here and they're on prayers.
Speaker 1: And it's like highlighting him and like the crowd shot
Speaker 1: every time, like it's like surveillance footage, yeah, or.
Speaker 2: Likeny, like back when a hard copy was a show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hard copy is as Yeah, yeah, sixty minutes hard copy.
Speaker 2: That's a better. That's a better. The current affair from
Speaker 2: our old heads and.
Speaker 1: The rest of the video proceeds. It's like this big
Speaker 1: choreographed exorcism because obviously he's like a secret devil infiltrator
Speaker 1: in scone. Oh, this goes it's it's great, it's great.
Speaker 9: Ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 2: Like you have a Marvel movie fucking unfolding. Yeah, at
Speaker 2: your churtzers, Like dude, last week, a fuck three dudes
Speaker 2: came out of a fucking portal, Yeah, and fucked up
Speaker 2: this infiltrator and then TV Joshua turned this woman's droopy
Speaker 2: leg into a muscular one. It was wild man. You
Speaker 2: had to you had to be.
Speaker 1: So what happened in your church? This Sunday priest told
Speaker 1: us we shouldn't have sex before marriage. Guy turned into
Speaker 1: a snake at my church.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, and then you fucking punched him in the
Speaker 2: head and a flame came out.
Speaker 1: Of his As of course, I'm going to the snake church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can barely stay awake. Now.
Speaker 1: This all goes over really well with these young white
Speaker 1: evangelicals from Western countries who are just not used to
Speaker 1: services being this exciting. You will hear comments from yeah,
Speaker 1: no seasoning. You'll hear comments from a number of them
Speaker 1: that are like, I felt like this was where real
Speaker 1: biblical Christianity was still going down right, and I wanted to.
Speaker 2: Be a part of it.
Speaker 1: You know, I cannot exaggerate the extent to which a
Speaker 1: lot of this was a conscious attempt by TV Joshua
Speaker 1: to recruit white people. And I'm going to play a
Speaker 1: clip from a BBC documentary on TV Joshua called Disciples.
Speaker 1: The guy talking here is his former right hand man
Speaker 1: who helped him start the church.
Speaker 10: He had special interest into Ubu.
Speaker 2: You will the whites.
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 9: Are you surprised that God is using a black man
Speaker 9: to do disince?
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not surprised that God is using
Speaker 2: a black man. What are these motherfuckers worried?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 10: Nineteen ninety six, one of the midior parcels came from
Speaker 10: South Africa. When they were living. He gives more than
Speaker 10: two hundred videos to take home to give to people,
Speaker 10: videos of miracles, videos of confessions, video.
Speaker 1: Videos that will feel their head.
Speaker 2: Wow, I say this is too expensive?
Speaker 10: He left. You think I'm a fool. I know what
Speaker 10: I'm doing. A time will come this synagogue. Josh is
Speaker 10: going to shoot out from South Africa to the whole world.
Speaker 1: Now this guy also will claim TV. Joshua basically said
Speaker 1: to him, what I am doing by recruiting the people,
Speaker 1: I want to take advantage of them. I want to
Speaker 1: get revenge for what white people have done to us,
Speaker 1: which is I think is part. I think is largely
Speaker 1: him because as a spoiler, this guy is not some
Speaker 1: sort of like anti colonial hero. Most of the people
Speaker 1: he abuses are Black African women, right like, he is
Speaker 1: not not at all and actually like a hero. But
Speaker 1: I think he understood that this guy who worked with
Speaker 1: him might respond to that. Right, That's that's how I read.
Speaker 2: It, right right, right right? Yeah, Yeah, we're taking them.
Speaker 2: We're taken from them because for years they've been taken
Speaker 2: from me.
Speaker 1: Yes, And the BBC documentary is a very very good
Speaker 1: job of Obviously, a lot of the victims at Cites
Speaker 1: are white people from South Africa, from England, but most
Speaker 1: of the victims that I see are black Nigerian Ghanian women,
Speaker 1: you know, which which is I'm glad, Like they clearly
Speaker 1: put in an effort to not just be like, look
Speaker 1: at what this guy is doing to white women, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but rather to highlight the differences between how he approached.
Speaker 2: Like which would have been the way people first sort
Speaker 2: of had outraged, like he yeah, he could get.
Speaker 1: Over on us. Yeah no, no, no, yeah. And it's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's also there's a lot of very interesting racial dimensions here.
Speaker 1: You saw in that video the guy he asks like,
Speaker 1: are you surprised to see a black man, you know,
Speaker 1: preaching the word of God? That like, I think that's
Speaker 1: a South African pastor. Did you see what he was wearing?
Speaker 2: That dress? Oh yeah, very traditional?
Speaker 1: That is, yeah, traditional African dress. And I think what
Speaker 1: is happening here is that these kind of established South
Speaker 1: African and Western white pastors were being fited by TB.
Speaker 2: Joshua.
Speaker 1: He was giving them basically like you can have an
Speaker 1: authentic African experience, right, Like I'm going to give that
Speaker 1: to you if you endorse me as legitimate. I can't
Speaker 1: have any other explanation for the way that man is
Speaker 1: portraying himself.
Speaker 2: There's also I mean I saw this one when I
Speaker 2: was in Ghana, Like there is like this Canadian expat
Speaker 2: that lived in this village that like nearby where I
Speaker 2: was visiting, and he kind of became like the elder,
Speaker 2: like the chief of the village, only because like he
Speaker 2: like was married to a Genan woman, but like built
Speaker 2: like a proper there, and like he dressed like that,
Speaker 2: like he had the whole vio, like he was like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm here to do the African thing. So I wonder
Speaker 2: if like on some some level they like they just
Speaker 2: really loved the larp of it all, you know too,
Speaker 2: or they're like, yeah, look at me, bro, I look
Speaker 2: like a goddamn fucking god from West Africa right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of this is maybe beyond like my pay grade,
Speaker 1: but that was my read there in that particular scene
Speaker 1: that like that's kind of what he's offering some of
Speaker 1: these established white pastors. Isn't that kind of legitimacy?
Speaker 2: I'm sure, And I'm sure that's a very attractive proposition
Speaker 2: for someone who probably finds himself very self important like
Speaker 2: a pastoro and like watch me enter all of these
Speaker 2: spaces and I accepted with open arms, like no fucking
Speaker 2: friction at all, Like yeah, yeah, TB. Joshua is uh yeah, man,
Speaker 2: fucking Machiavelli over here.
Speaker 1: It to kind of highlight the experience that he's he
Speaker 1: is offering to a lot of these white visitors. I
Speaker 1: want to play you another clip.
Speaker 4: Believe you me, brother Ridia. It was the last type
Speaker 4: on uth that I ever wanted to come to, Thy broadst,
Speaker 4: thy money, Launders, thy drag pedness, And I say, God, sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's a piece of heaven honor.
Speaker 2: The greatest and.
Speaker 10: The prompt and I got church was when the foreigner
Speaker 10: started coming. This was strategic and it was planned.
Speaker 6: I just got a confession to make that I want
Speaker 6: the old world to know. In the past, I've always
Speaker 6: I really hated them. When I got back, every year
Speaker 6: I saw the love that we received from black people.
Speaker 11: He used the white people for markets is bad. I
Speaker 11: mean white a man or white woman around is like
Speaker 11: you have achieved. He just said, look at these people,
Speaker 11: they don't know where the Yeah.
Speaker 1: The white people dancing video there, it's like there's some
Speaker 1: there's some good good like eighties dudes shuffling.
Speaker 2: About, yeah, doing some kind of foot loose.
Speaker 1: Shit, some kind of footler shit.
Speaker 2: What the fuck is going on? But yeah, I mean geez,
Speaker 2: I mean like it's interesting you know, like, there are
Speaker 2: these people who become predatory like this. It's because they
Speaker 2: understand the predation that exists around them at many different levels.
Speaker 2: And he's just able to, like he has such a
Speaker 2: mastery of it that he's like, no, watch this, and
Speaker 2: then I can use white people to legitimize it. It's like,
Speaker 2: I already know how this works. I already know how
Speaker 2: this works. I've seen it. I've seen this shit a
Speaker 2: hundred times.
Speaker 1: You know what, I know how it works. Miles sponsoring
Speaker 1: a podcast and we're back.
Speaker 2: I just want to say that product, fank fuck for that.
Speaker 2: Did that save you?
Speaker 1: Did that cure your your arm? Oh? Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it cleared my ear chlamydia?
Speaker 2: Yeah, clear it right. All my hair grew back to.
Speaker 1: Your uh huh you even you even have several other
Speaker 1: people's hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just from listening to the fucking ad. That's how
Speaker 2: powerful that is. So I'm definitely gonna buy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, folks, spend your money please. So from the
Speaker 1: end of the nineties to the early two thousands, Scone
Speaker 1: expanded rapidly, driven by the surge in foreign religious tourists
Speaker 1: who flooded into Nigeria to see the man deemed a
Speaker 1: profit and miracle worker. According to former associates, he often
Speaker 1: paid for the plane tickets of these white evangelicals because
Speaker 1: he saw their presence as the best marketing his church
Speaker 1: would get. Every youth group leader or pastor from the
Speaker 1: US or Europe who visited came back enthralled and directed
Speaker 1: funds and more followers.
Speaker 2: TB.
Speaker 1: Josh was way White followers again also acted as marketing
Speaker 1: for his church within Nigeria. It was important to him
Speaker 1: that the Synagogue Church of All Nations be seen as
Speaker 1: a world church, and this made it more appeal to
Speaker 1: Nigerians for the same reason people are always drawn to
Speaker 1: international celebrities. Right, are you more impressed with like the
Speaker 1: guy who like me, he's got like a local access
Speaker 1: TV show and he owns a car a lot or are
Speaker 1: you more impressed by like the NFL.
Speaker 2: Dude who owns a series of car dealerships?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: I don't care what that NFL do, But I mean
Speaker 2: if you're like, if you're some dude named TV Joshua
Speaker 2: do and you got some South Africans doing footloo shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah you gotta dancing. You got South Africans dancing? You
Speaker 1: I might get to meet John lyfth Gow, And I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to meet John left Gow. That would totally
Speaker 1: change my opinion of this guy. If there's John in
Speaker 1: the mix. Yeah, I'll do anything to meet John Lythgow.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean he's in the best season of Dexter,
Speaker 1: He's in the best season a Dexter, He's in Bukaroo Bonzai.
Speaker 1: What would Yeah, just a just a rich, rich history
Speaker 1: of being John Lyftgow. So yeah, it was all brilliantly executed.
Speaker 1: Footage from the church in this period is distinctly uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: You can see very small groups of ravenously excited white
Speaker 1: evangelicals given positions of honor at the front of huge
Speaker 1: stadium crowds of Nigerian citizens, Like look at look at
Speaker 1: this picture here, Like it's it's very stark, like all
Speaker 1: the white people in one area, everyone else in another,
Speaker 1: and the white people are right next to TV Joshua.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of like kind of like the same
Speaker 2: logic of like the like a Maga rally where it's like,
Speaker 2: please help the people, like the few people of color,
Speaker 2: Please give them prominent spaces, even though it's the same
Speaker 2: five people. Just please we need them there, we need
Speaker 2: them there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So TV preaching was and is huge in Nigeria, but
Speaker 1: TV Joshua took it to another level, filming much more
Speaker 1: than most of his colleagues and theming his videos for
Speaker 1: an international audience. One interview he recorded features a white
Speaker 1: english woman asking him why he makes so many videos
Speaker 1: and his answer is fucking amazing because if Jesus was
Speaker 1: not recorded in the Bible, you would not believe that
Speaker 1: Jesus is the same today. I fucking love that answer.
Speaker 1: I fucking love that ads there. That is like that.
Speaker 1: That's a smart man. That's a smart man, like he
Speaker 1: either had that in the chamber or he.
Speaker 2: Just extempt that ship. But that is good. What a
Speaker 2: fucking clap back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that man knows his business. I'll give him that.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible business, but he fucking knows it.
Speaker 2: Fucking knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's fun stuff. So I want to play
Speaker 1: a clip for you here of a woman you're about
Speaker 1: to hear from. This lady is the church's head of
Speaker 1: foreign visitor relations and she's talking about kind of bringing
Speaker 1: in these like foreign white religious tourists to Scone. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna press play.
Speaker 11: Here for it was a game on a trap that
Speaker 11: hecets for the whites people.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, it's fun around that, yeah for the white people. Okay, TV,
Speaker 1: Well we're gonna continue in a second. But there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things going on here. One is that for
Speaker 1: these young people traveling from other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: these are mostly kids who are more affluent, they are
Speaker 1: seeing the wider world for the first time, and that's
Speaker 1: intoxicating anytime you go to a country that's not like
Speaker 1: the suburbs, right, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: You're so sheltered too, and such a homogeneous fucking yeah environment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a drug. And in addition to just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're in Africa after a lifetime and a place that
Speaker 1: is not at all Africa, and that's like this whole
Speaker 1: fascinating journey. And then you get love bombed too. You
Speaker 1: are the focus of thousands of locals who are not
Speaker 1: It's not just like going to a country and being
Speaker 1: like a tourist. It's going to a country and seeing
Speaker 1: a crowd of locals overjoyed that you're there, and then
Speaker 1: after you get love bombed. Over the next several days,
Speaker 1: these tourists, the first couple of days you spend at scone.
Speaker 1: You're just watching hours of miracle videos every day. It's
Speaker 1: like a clockwork orange style thing. And then after your treatment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you prime them with the videos and then you
Speaker 1: do live miracle shows, right, because you don't want him
Speaker 1: to just see that ship when they're like kind of tired,
Speaker 1: and it's like you want them in the most suggestible
Speaker 1: mind state possible, right, you prime that shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, horny for a miracle horny And I'm absolutely horny
Speaker 2: for America.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's wild that he's using the same playbook as
Speaker 2: like Andrew Tait and all these other people's like traffic
Speaker 2: them in. Yeah, love bomb them and then and then
Speaker 2: run run your playbook.
Speaker 1: The court leaders only ever work, what like, there's variations
Speaker 1: based on the tech available to you in the time period,
Speaker 1: but it's all the same, you know.
Speaker 2: HS DVD streaming whatever. Ron Hubbard did it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, the classic way with boats. We're going to
Speaker 1: play you one more clip explaining how this process goes.
Speaker 5: I've never seen a local African town before, and it
Speaker 5: was a hustle and mustle and street sellers and food
Speaker 5: and it's very colorful. I was just taking everything in.
Speaker 2: You kind of went down a driveway.
Speaker 4: In these these vehicles that had other foreign visitors in.
Speaker 1: There were tour groups going up from South Africa in
Speaker 1: quite large numbers.
Speaker 12: I'm Angelique and I'm from South Africa. Even before I went,
Speaker 12: I had these VHS tapes that I had watched and
Speaker 12: I'd seen the most incredible things, and I was so
Speaker 12: beyond excited to see this in real life.
Speaker 11: I was coordinator of international visitors. Anytime this visit dot
Speaker 11: com SI Videosha will call and say, go and meet
Speaker 11: your visitors.
Speaker 12: Nag your own disciples with these beautiful smiles, welcome you.
Speaker 12: There's just people smiling. Everyone looks so happy.
Speaker 11: We make you feel like like celebrity.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's that's it's so smart, like it is
Speaker 1: such a it's such a slick operation. I'm just very
Speaker 1: I'm as evil as a lot of this is. I'm
Speaker 1: very impressed. Right, this is the point at which the
Speaker 1: battery hits full swing, because one of the chief things
Speaker 1: he'll do when he's like showing people life miracles is
Speaker 1: he'll cure HIV.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And the way you the way you do this is
Speaker 1: you have someone come up with like a piece of
Speaker 1: paper that looks official that says I have HIV, and
Speaker 1: then you pray over them, and then they get a
Speaker 1: test and they come back with a sheet of paper
Speaker 1: that says I don't have HIV. Right, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have to explain to you how to fake that, right,
Speaker 1: it's not hard Like you have a printer, you can
Speaker 1: bribe a doctor, right, But it's very impressive to these kids.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna have Sophe play a one more clip here.
Speaker 9: When I came here, I had been suffering from asthma,
Speaker 9: and after a short time as the ministry from the
Speaker 9: Prophet TB, I thought my breathing come totally clear. God
Speaker 9: had healed me.
Speaker 11: So I see you've.
Speaker 4: Got a medical report check.
Speaker 2: Can you please just show the camera that, right be
Speaker 2: to God?
Speaker 1: Negative states it for HIV and HIV two. So it's
Speaker 1: not that fucked up to just like it's fucked up,
Speaker 1: but like the amount of damage you can do by
Speaker 1: convincing like these these evangelical tourists that you've cured someone's AIDS,
Speaker 1: you're mainly just going to be able to abuse them more, right, Right,
Speaker 1: But you're not necessarily causing a public health crisis with that.
Speaker 1: What does cause the public health crisis is that he
Speaker 1: is also convincing his Nigerian followers of this right, and
Speaker 1: they are actually the people who have HIV at a
Speaker 1: highd rate, right, certainly higher than these like evangelical tourists.
Speaker 1: And not only is he convincing them that he can
Speaker 1: cure them by praying over them, part of what he's
Speaker 1: convincing them is that they should not go get medical
Speaker 1: treatment or take retrovirals for their HIV only right, HIV
Speaker 1: retrovirals are very available, HIV very treatable. It is not
Speaker 1: a death sentence when you have access to retrovirals. And
Speaker 1: one of the things he is doing to members of
Speaker 1: his flock is telling them, do not take these. God
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to take these. I can cure your HIV.
Speaker 1: And we don't know how many people he got to
Speaker 1: stop taking their retrovirals as a result of this, but
Speaker 1: we do know that in twenty eleven, in one public
Speaker 1: sized case, three women in London died when they were
Speaker 1: convinced by preachers to stop taking their retrovirals. And one
Speaker 1: of those preachers was TV Joshua and I think these
Speaker 1: women were immigrants. When reporters asked TV Joshua if he
Speaker 1: advised followers to avoid treating their HIV. He gave this answer,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, I am a medium in the
Speaker 1: same way doctors are mediums to bring treatment. So basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just a doctor too, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One follower I read an interview with because he's not
Speaker 1: just doing this with HIV. He's telling people to avoid
Speaker 1: all sorts of modern medicine in favor of paying him,
Speaker 1: you know, to pray over them. His followers at devoted
Speaker 1: member of the church who was like helping to run
Speaker 1: the church. His mother was enthralled with TV Joshua and
Speaker 1: refused to take chemotherapy for her cancer after Joshua healed
Speaker 1: her and told her that she did not need it.
Speaker 1: Within six months, she was dead. This follower, who again
Speaker 1: was a dedicated volunteer of the church, calls TB.
Speaker 2: Joshua.
Speaker 1: He's close enough to this guy to have his phone number.
Speaker 1: He calls him to let him know that his mom
Speaker 1: is dead, and TB. Joshua hangs up on him, and
Speaker 1: he later he like asks one of the other workers there,
Speaker 1: like he hung up on me, Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1: And that guy's like, well, the prophet doesn't listen to
Speaker 1: bad news.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, you're gonna fuck up the prophet's confirmation bias,
Speaker 2: so I don't fucking tell him about that shit. He's
Speaker 2: just gonna Oh yeah, you're just going to.
Speaker 1: Hear the click's wild stuff. Anyway, that's the TV Joshua story.
Speaker 3: Oh got anything to plug at the end of part one.
Speaker 2: Miles please you know, when when appropriate, listened to your
Speaker 2: healthcare providers and not someone named TV Joshua or whatever TV.
Speaker 1: Jakes, I don't care who it is at T don't
Speaker 1: get don't get help advice for many of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh plug, Uh yeah, just listen to the Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: You know, that's my daily news and politics and.
Speaker 2: Comedy shit show. And uh, if you like ninety Day Fiance,
Speaker 2: look one of your other favorite guests, Sophia Alexandra. That's
Speaker 2: a show I host with her, and this is us
Speaker 2: getting high and talking about ninety Day Fiance. That's how
Speaker 2: we kind of blow steam off between Bastard's recordings and
Speaker 2: you know, just the general world of it all.
Speaker 1: Well, blow off some steam with that, and blow off
Speaker 1: some steam with steam I don't know. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: new show Sarah flu is really starting to fit me up.
Speaker 3: Now will you plug edge show?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Ed's got a show. It's called Better Offline.
Speaker 1: It's about all the fucked up tech industry shit that
Speaker 1: you probably need to know because they're actively trying to
Speaker 1: destroy your life and everyone else's life, so you know,
Speaker 1: keep an eye out for that.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm gonna go, Miles, I'm gonna go. Uh, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go hang out.
Speaker 1: At a fucking playground with a with a spoon and
Speaker 1: some foil and a pack of a thera flu Yeah.
Speaker 2: Watch, You're gonna go to like a needle exchange and
Speaker 2: they're like, no, man, this is the people that actually
Speaker 2: need it. Man, that's your fucking weird old theraflu shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeahould be ashamed of yourself.
Speaker 1: I got to take a needle from one of my
Speaker 1: diabetic friends to shoot the.
Speaker 2: Flu up, like my EpiPen. Where is it? Oh sorry
Speaker 2: I needed the needle. Yeah no, I empty.
Speaker 1: I emptied the epidephyrin from my EpiPen and just theorough
Speaker 1: fluid that ship up. Get that right into the meat.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: The episode is so over Bye. Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 3: a production a cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Speaker 3: Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or
Speaker 3: check us out on the iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.