Benson Idahosa

Benson Idahosa was born in 1938 in Benin City, in what is now Nigeria. His family was poor, and his father died while he was young. He grew up in hardship and had to leave school early to work. He sold goods in the market to help support the household. As a teenager he heard the gospel and gave his life to Christ. He was drawn to the Bible and began to preach to those around him while he was still a young man. He later said that he felt God had called him to carry the message to the whole of Africa.

He studied at a small Bible school and worked for a time with a Pentecostal church in the region. In the early 1970s he traveled to the United States, where he studied at a Bible institute in Dallas and met American Pentecostal leaders, including Gordon Lindsay, who became a friend and supporter. He returned to Nigeria with a conviction that God wanted to do great things there. In 1972 he founded the Church of God Mission International in Benin City. It began with a few people and grew rapidly. He built a large auditorium in the city, the Miracle Centre, which held thousands of people.

He held large open-air crusades across Nigeria and the continent, and these were marked by prayer for the sick, preaching and many conversions. He preached with a powerful voice and dramatic style. In 1974 he founded the All Nations for Christ Bible Institute, which trained many pastors and evangelists, and several of his students went on to lead major churches of their own. He is counted as one of the fathers of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria. He sent missionaries to other parts of Africa and encouraged African believers to take the gospel to the nations, rather than waiting for help from abroad.

He was one of the first African preachers to teach the message of faith and prosperity, which holds that God wants His people to be healthy and wealthy and that faith can claim these blessings. This teaching became a sign of his ministry and of many that he trained. He taught that poverty was not the will of God and urged believers to rise from lack. For many poor Africans, it was a message of hope. It also has been sharply criticized. Other Christians have argued that the Bible does not promise earthly wealth to all believers and that the teaching has been used by some to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. Those who knew Idahosa were divided on the question, and it is right to say that this part of his legacy is disputed.

He was a man of great energy and large vision. He was also a man who loved the trappings of success, and he lived in a style that some found at odds with the gospel. He was bold in his dealings with political leaders and was often in the public eye. At the same time, many of those who knew him personally testified to his generosity and to the way he cared for his people. He gave scholarships, built schools and helped many pastors get started.

He was in poor health in his later years and suffered from diabetes. He died on March 12, 1998, at the age of fifty-nine. Tens of thousands attended his funeral. After his death a university was founded in his name in Benin City. His life shows the power of a Spirit-filled preacher who came from poverty and led a movement, and it reminds the church to weigh every teaching carefully against the Word of God.