Eze touts miracle healings with the slogan ‘What God can’t do doesn’t exist,’ and halfway via the reside broadcast, cuts to pre-recorded movies from his followers sharing testimonies they are saying are the outcomes of his prayers.
They vary from healings from terminal diseases to conception after years of infertility.
“It’s way beyond science and technology,” he says.
CNN has not independently verified the content material of the movies.
Most watched on YouTube
The broadcasts on the New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations channel (NSPPD) have propelled Eze to change into one in all the most watched preachers on YouTube.
Eze additionally rakes in massive quantities of donations from his broadcasts. He is one in all YouTube’s top-earning preachers who’re leveraging the platform’s Super Chat donations that assist creators earn income.
“Waking up every day to NSPPD … has become part of my daily routine. I hardly miss it. It’s part of my family’s morning devotion,” provides D’banj, whose actual identify is Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo.
The singer says he has had his personal share of miracles from prayers on the platform.
“I remember last year Pastor Jerry said we should write seven things we want to see happen, and we prayed and I believed. I checked the list the other day and … all seven have been answered.”
A poverty-stricken background
Eze, who turns 40 on Monday, has come a good distance from the days he and his single-parent mom struggled to search out meals to eat.
“I came from a family where poor people will describe my family as poor,” he says. “There were days my mum and I had no food to eat, and my mum would hold my hand and pray and give thanks to God. My mum was a single parent and a petty trader who sold groundnuts in the market … There were days she’d come home crying having not made any sales, so unable to buy us what to eat.”
Born on August 22, 1982, in Bende Local Government Area of Abia state, Eze tells CNN his schooling was funded by a benevolent couple who had seen his lively engagement in a church in his early years.
“I was just doing things in church like sweeping, singing, and reading the Bible — doing what most of my mates did not want to do. I had just finished junior secondary school at the time before they took me in,” he says of the couple.
Eze excelled in his research and obtained a level in historical past and worldwide relations from Abia State University. He additionally went on to finish a grasp’s in human useful resource administration.
Before venturing into ministry, Eze beforehand labored with a neighborhood TV station earlier than becoming a member of the World Bank challenge for HIV/AIDS and later labored as a communications specialist with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“I was very excited about the job (at the UNFPA), but my mum wasn’t. She said it wasn’t what God told her. According to her, God told her I was going to be a preacher,” says Eze.
“I never shared those aspirations (to be a preacher). I wasn’t even listening to her. She and I lived in poverty, so I always asked why God didn’t first help us out of poverty before asking me to quit a job that was giving us money to be a preacher. The money I was giving her was coming out of the job (with the UN), so it didn’t make sense.”
He ultimately stop his job and entered full-time ministry however sadly his mom died of coronary heart failure earlier than he fulfilled her ambition for him, he says.
“It was when she died that the reality of my assignment began to dawn on me,” he provides.
Entering into full-time ministry has include large sacrifices and Eze says he spends lengthy hours praying into the evening to arrange.
“I don’t have friends, I don’t hang out, I don’t have spare time. I can’t tell what my hobbies are anymore because there’s no room for hobbies,” he says.
Eze has two youngsters together with his spouse Eno, who can be a pastor. He mentioned his marriage hasn’t been excellent on account of the calls for of ministry.
“It hasn’t been 100 percent, but because my wife and I do the same thing (ministry), we bond the same way. The things that matter to other people don’t matter in our family. Our conversations are about ministry and how next we’ll fulfill God’s will for our lives. If I had married the wrong woman, I’ll be boring the person.”
An unintentional fame
Eze might have change into an internet phenomenon, however insists his fame is unintentional.
He had began livestreaming hoping to encourage his congregation when the pandemic shut down all church providers and attendance at his fledgling ministry, Streams of Joy International, dwindled.
“It wasn’t a goal to reach the world,” Eze says. “During the (peak of) Covid, there was a palpable fear everywhere and I noticed that a lot of my church people were very scared of coming around the church. So, every morning, my wife and I will come online, spreading encouragement to people,” he tells CNN.
“I just wanted to speak hope,” he provides.
Eze’s each day messages of encouragement later morphed right into a each day on-line prayer community each weekday on YouTube and different video-sharing providers.
Viewers from the UK and the US collectively make up 25% of his reside streams on YouTube, with multiple million views from the UK and over 700,000 views from the US between July 20 and August 16, 2022, in accordance with figures from the platform.
Digital analyst Edward Israel-Ayide tells CNN Eze’s success could be linked to the “recent boom in digital churches and online religious movements.”
Israel-Ayide says that is due to the fallout from Covid-19.
“With lockdown restrictions in place, the need for community and a sense of belonging drove Nigerians at home and abroad to seek digital platforms that could provide them with direction and hope,” he says. “Post-Covid, many people are still seeking purpose and direction due to the socioeconomic challenges brought on by Covid-19 and the ongoing global economic crisis. This is one of the main reasons why religious movements like Pastor Jerry Eze’s NSPPD thrive.”
While many individuals now know him due to his on-line platform, “that’s not where it began,” Eze says. “There was a physical church before the online one.”
Eze based the Streams of Joy International church in the suburbs of Nigeria’s jap metropolis of Umuahia a few years earlier than he shot to prominence.
Attendance in his Abuja church has additionally risen. But it’s with the on-line neighborhood he has gained the most traction, and it’s right here to remain.
“People all over the world are accustomed to waking up and finding Pastor Jerry online,” Eze says. “It’s like a virus that has come stay.”