REVEALED: Untold story of white garment churches celebrating Christmas at Imeko City, reasons emerge

Many questions have been raised over the decisions of Celestial Church of Christ members always eager to travel from all over the world to a small city in Ogun State.

Celestial City, Imeko, is the Holy City of the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC). It is located in the Imeko Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria, close to the Benin border. Celestial City is known as “Jerusalem” by the Celestians. The city has potential as a tourist location.

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What to know

Imeko is a small, spread-out village in a hilly region of Ogun State a few kilometers from the Benin border. The vegetation is a mixture of savannah belts and sparse forest suitable for cattle raising. Most people are engaged in farming, with tomatoes and cassava being the most important crops. Imeko is the hometown of the mother of the Prophet “Papa” Samuel Oshoffa, who founded the Celestial Church of Christ in 1947 in Dahomey (now Benin), moving to Nigeria in 1979.

The reasons Celestial Churches converge during Christmas at Imeko

In 1973, a visionary, Pa Muri Adoye[4] told Oshoffa of a visitation by a troop of angels who had said the Celestial City must be built at Imeko in a place called Igbo-Ifa, home of the traditional Yoruba deity Orunmila. Mecca would be closed and Jerusalem would move to Imeko. This confirmed messages the Prophet said he had received from Christ. Oshoffa initiated the construction of the Celestial City in 1983.[4]

Oshoffa had directed that if he died in Nigeria he should be buried near his mother on family land at Imeko, and his burial ground be treated as holy ground and a place of pilgrimage. If he were to die in Dahomey he was to be buried at Seme in his hometown of Porto-Novo. Oshoffa died in Lagos, Nigeria, on 10 September 1985, a few days after surviving a car crash.

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He was buried according to his wishes at Celestial City on 19 October 1985 with great ceremony. He left behind 34 wives and 150 children. The Porto-Novo congregation was angry at the choice of burial place, and there were rumors of plans to remove the body from Porto-Novo. The Nigerian police took special precautions to prevent this happening.

During the Imeko camping, the businesses around the city usually boom more than 1000 percent as members of the church across the world converge for at least three days with different prayer requests at the mercy land. Not only the Celestial members present in the city, but also other denominations of both Christians and Muslims seek for prayer intervention due to the popular saying about the Celestial church tagged as ‘Ogo Cele’ (The Glory of Celestial Church).

To date, Celestial remains one of the most populated members in the world, and the leadership, Rev Mobiyina Oahaffa, is committed to unifying the church worldwide.

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