By the time Brother Bidemi Taki, wrapping up his testimony that Sunday, requested the intently attentive audience to join him sing “Igwe” a song by The Midnight Crew that eulogizes God’s supremacy and sovereignty, he was hardly done asking when parishioners burst into singing. Who wouldn’t? The testimony he had just related was one of those very rare ones.
Late July Brother Taki had woken up with a back pain. Thinking nothing of it he self medicated with off the counter pain killers. But the pain only grew worse and soon became unbearable. He decided to seek professional help and checked in first with an Urgent Care, then another, and a third as the pain increasingly got worse, and sitting became a punishment. The advice to exercise more was ineffective. And prescription pain killers only brought momentary relief. More than a month into the predicament he eventually visited a hospital where more comprehensive tests were ran and he was told 95 percent of his blood was cancerous.
The prognosis was grim. He was going to have several surgeries, and sessions of chemotherapy every month till January, and the possibility of losing vital organs. There was the possibility of being hospitalized for about a year and there’s no telling how anything was going to play out. The doctors’ assessment baffled him as he had walked into the hospital himself; but he couldn’t deny something unusual was going on inside of him.
Initially, grief and turmoil engulfed him. About the second day of admission, Pastor Olowokere visited him and told him his ailment may have a big name but there’s a bigger God called Jehovah Rapha that could bring him healing. He began to challenge Jehovah Rapha to prove Himself and heal him if indeed He was.
A particular evening, about a month into hospitalization, many surgeries and bouts of chemo, he suddenly felt like he was choking out of life. He was so numb all over he couldn’t feel the intravenous attachment. He requested to have the nurses double-check if the IV was still flowing OK. The answer was “yes”. Still very uncomfortable Brother Taki asked that the intravenous appendage be taken off him. Immediately that was done he felt vitality all over that he hadn’t felt in a long time and decided against the nurse’s advice that the device was going to be fastened back. Not even his wife’s plea changed his mind. He decided to change his room same evening because here was “too much noise in the room and in my head”. He then told the doctors he felt better enough all of a sudden that he wanted to be discharged that evening. Of course his request was overruled. The next morning he then demanded to be re-tested for cancer. The tests were done and to everyone’s surprise his blood was now ONLY 9 PERCENT cancerous! He summed up his response on hearing the surprise heartening news thus “If they hadn’t shown me on the screen how my body looked in the beginning, I would have thought it was a misdiagnosis.” As fabulous a development as this was, the real gist is about to come.
Brother Taki was discharged but was still on medication and supposed to keep up chemotherapy. He was given an appointment for re-assessment two weeks later. This time medical knowledge was blown over because there was NO TRACE of cancerous cells found in him!
This is how Brother Taki summed his testimony “I just want everybody here to know that regardless of how big your problem is, don’t look at the name of the problem, or who is diagnosing. There’s really nothing God can’t do. I give God all the glory.”
