Pastor Chinenye Elijah Simon, one of the sons of an Enugu native doctor, Simon Odo, alias King of Satan, has said his father tried everything to kill him when he converted to Christianity.
Pastor Elijah, a pastor of the Lord’s Chosen Church, Ogidi, Anambra State who spoke in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, noted that his father who made headlines when he died in December 2021 at Enugu-Ezike, once took him, alongside his male sibling, to a mountain where he called them out one by one to know which son would succeed him, and only him agreed to do so.
According to him, “that was in 1996 when I was 14 years old. There was a mountain my father used to go to every year, where he usually spent 40 days. During that 1996, he went to the place with all his male children. He started calling out all the children one after the other to ask them who was willing to succeed him (as a native doctor).
“As they were coming out, they were saying no, no. I think I was the last person he called out. He asked me and I said yes. In their traditional way, it was me, then, not now, that the idol chose to worship him after my father. On that mountain, my father initiated me as somebody who was going to succeed him. But as time went on, that was 1998, I left the village for Lagos to serve as an apprentice.”
Narrating his journey into Christianity, the Anambra based pastor said God arrested him on December 19, 2004.
“I was in my room, the voice came like the wind that I should go to the Lord’s Chosen (Church) … That’s how I located the church at Ijesha, Lagos.”
Asked if his father opposed him when he converted to Christianity, Pastor Elijah said, “It was a very heavy battle. He tried everything to eliminate me, but he could not. At the end he confessed to me that I’m his child, that he could not do anything, that he tried everything he could, but could not do anything. And he said, ‘Go ahead and serve that your God. That your God is a true God.'”
He further explained that he tried to convert his father to Christianity at some point, but he refused saying he had nothing to do with Jesus since Jesus didn’t give him money but Satan did.
“As I gave my life to Christ, my first prayer point was that my family must know Jesus. That was my first prayer point and that my father will not die in idol worshiping. As I was into it, it was in 2011 that I became a pastor,” he told PREMIUM TIMES.
“I preached to him and at one point, he said I should leave his house because he had nothing to do with Jesus. (And) that Jesus did not give him money. That who gave him money was Satan and it’s Satan he would continue following. I told him that Jesus was the owner of his life. He became angry and asked me to leave his house. He picked up a gun and used it to chase me away, though I was stubbornly standing (there). It was people around that told me to leave and I left.”
He noted, however, that before he died, his father finally accepted Jesus.
“But the last thing that happened was that when he was seriously sick, he was calling on me to come home, he wanted to see me. I ignored his call. My siblings called and told me that since my father asked me to come home, that I should come home to see why he was calling me. On 12 December, I went home. That Jesus he refused to accept when he was healthy, he accepted Jesus Christ at the sick point, at the zero hour. I preached to him,” he said.
“He asked me to pray for him and I laid my hand on his head and prayed for him. While I was praying, he shivered. When he shivered, I got a message that the spirit in him had left him. The python spirit that was in him had left him. When I finished praying, he said he believed my prayer, and that he was well. I told him he would be okay.
“I left for Anambra on December 12. Early in the morning, after my midnight prayer, he came to me. In my revelation, his spirit came to me and was telling me that the moment the spirit of God enters someone, the person will become a changed person immediately. I said yes, it’s true. I woke up and it was a dream.
“December 14, a call came that he had gone. But before he died, he did not hand over (his idolatry practice) to any man. It was my brother that saw when he was sick that he could not do anything again that started going close to him. That one is called Ukonu. So, when he died, Ukonu said he wanted to take over, but it’s for a time. All those things in our family will be wiped out because my family will not remain idol worshippers. My father who worshipped the thing, has gone.”
Pastor Elijah, noted that his father was generally a good man who “helped people, orphans. He bought and gave out cars and motorcycles. In fact, if you don’t have anything, come to him, he would give it to you. He would pack food and give it to the people.”