Rev Chris Okotie gave an exclusive interview to City People magazine
through a minister in his church, Rev Grace Funmi Paul, a member of
House Hold of God for the past 25 years. It’s a long interview but here
are the main highlights from the interview.
Rev Grace Paul: A
blind person knows that my pastor loved his wife, Stephanie,
passionately. This year before the separation, he had taken her out of
the country at least three times to different places like Dubai, US and
so on. He loved her, so did the congregation but the bible says that two
cannot walk together except they agree. In the establishment of the
kingdom of God, the rules change because the rules are made by God and
not by man. So, it didn’t have to do with what pastor wanted to do,
because left to him, his love will keep him struggling and going at it
but if God gives him instruction he has to follow it through.
City People: If I get you correctly, it was Jesus instructions for Pastor Chris to part ways with Stephanie?
Rev
Grace: Let me give you a precedent. In the bible, there’s a queen
called Queen Vershti of Persia. The king invited his wife and said –
come woman, I want to show you off to my people and the woman had an
attitude. She had pride issues. It was at that point she said to the
king “Excuse me, I am making up, how can you be humiliating me by
telling me to come and sit down so that people can be looking at me.” So
she refused and the people of the kingdom rose up against her, and they
said the king must let her go, and that was how Esther came in. That is
the principle of The Kingdom. In the two cases of my pastor’s former
wives, it was an abdication of roles. One was a physical abdication, and
the other was a spiritual abdication. In the matters of the Kingdom of
God, when you abdicate your position, your position will be taken over,
because the calling my pastor has, he is not called to work alone
CP: In Stephanie’s case, was it a case of spiritual or physical abdication?
Rev Grace: Her case was spiritual abdication, but either ways it
amounts to the same thing, because the scripture states clearly that if
unbelieving departs, let him depart, you are not bound.
CP: Any efforts to patch things up?
Rev Grace: Spiritual things can not be patched up. When there are two
people who are not the same kind, it is not a matter of patching up.
CP: So is the congregation happy that the pastor is single again and is there any plans to replace Stephanie?
Rev Grace: The congregation is not in the position to replace
Stephanie. My pastor is a full grown man, and he knows what he’s doing.
In the case of our pastor’s first wife, she insisted that where she
wanted to do her church work was in the US. As for Stephanie, I cannot
be intruding. As much as I am authorised to do what I am doing, I can’t
disrespect my pastor and Stephanie. If I begin to give you some details,
they would amount to disrespect. My pastor has insisted that they want
to keep it private.
CP: Pastor Chris once said that the instruction to marry Stephanie was from God
Rev Grace: If you know my pastor, he is a passionate person. They had a
long time relationship before they got married. My pastor is
particularly careful about beautiful women because he knows that the
devil desires them. So when a beautiful woman has issues in church, he
ministers to them, and because he does that, people jump to the
conclusion that he sleeps with them, which is not true. Just like Queen
Ure, pastor has never had an affair with her, will never have an affair
with her because they are not of the same kind Ure was pastoring her own
church, until she became bored.”
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