…is only the most striking video on offer from Gilbert Deya Ministries (although there is serious competition: Ambassador Carrying a Snake in his Belly Delivered in Jesus’ Name and (Witchcraft) 14 Year Missing Baby Born in the Womb (The Mother is 51 Years Old) are among others). Archbishop Deya, of Kenyan origins, heads a 36,000-member network of Pentecostal churches in the U.K. and other countries from his base in New Cross, south London. He claims that God has empowered him to heal HIV and other diseases, and that through his ministry God has supernaturally solved the visa problems of African immigrants. He also spends a lot of time battling witches and witchcraft, as revealed in his video The Walls of Jericho Came Tumbling Down and Killed the Witches. He explains:
With my experience of witches who killed my brother Wilson in 1979, I know how dangerous they are. They can destroy families and wipe out generations. Many people have suffered because their ignorance of witches and witchcraft. The witches have been destroying some Christians, destroying their marriages, jobs, peace in the family and killing people with incurable diseases.
However, Deya has an even more dramatic claim that has caught the attention of BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts (Also, read BBC news stories here and here), and now other media. While Deya’s website claims that members of his church will have any fertility problems solved, the PA carries further details:
[Deya] told the [BBC] programme: “The ‘miracle babies’ which are happening now in our ministry is beyond a human imagination. It’s not something that I can say I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by human beings.”
His wife Mary describes the children as a “holy ghost baby” that “came through prayer, that was why the doctor could not find” them.
Archbishop Deya claims to have helped post menopausal women give birth – including a 56 year-old who has had 13 “miracle” babies in three years.
This is the way it works:
Archbishop Gilbert Deya, pronounces the women worshippers as pregnant “by Jesus”, according to the BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts investigation.
They then travel to Archbishop Deya’s Kenyan homeland where they apparently give birth to babies within days in backstreet clinics in the slums of Nairobi.
But there is a problem:
British authorities have already taken one of these so called “miracle” babies into care after tests revealed its DNA did not match either of its supposed parents. Later its Kenyan birth certificate was found to be a forgery, according to the programme.
This incident is reported on the BBC radio programme, although the BBC website news rather notes the actions of the Kenyan authorities:
The issue has come to a head because Kenyan authorities prevented a so called “miracle baby” from being allowed to leave for Britain, until DNA tests were carried out to establish its true parentage.
Deya’s internet profile is quite low. He is featured on a couple of televangelism sites alongside Benny Hinn and other usual suspects, but doesn’t appear to have interacted with any of them. How he acquired his “Archbishop” title is also mysterious, although one reference links him to the Toronto Blessing:
The renewal has touched both South and East Africa. In November [1994?] Richard Riss attended a renewal conference in Nairobi as a ministry team member along with Dr. A. L. Gill of California.
Riss recounts laughter, drunkenness in the Spirit, and “a tremendous number of healings” first occurred as Gill led a meeting. The most dramatic healings, however, were under the ministry of Archbishop Gilbert Deya, head of the United Evangelical Churches of Kenya.
Deya’s ministry has been a catalyst for both denominational and tribal unity. Deya will finance similar renewal conferences in June to Uganda, and in November to Kenya.
The “United Evangelical Churches of Kenya” has no other internet presence I could find. In 2000 Premier Christian radio, which operates in the U.K., declined to renew Deya’s slot on the station (see here, page 28). In 2002 he won a Gathering of Africa’s Best award. According to the radio programme, Deya is a former stonemason, and his wife Mary is the mother of fifteen, although British hospitals had been unable to detect her pregnancies…
(Link to PA article via The Anomalist)
UPDATE (31 Aug): The Religion News Blog is carrying lots more on Deya, culled from African newspapers. This includes one “miracle baby” recognising his real parents and Deya’s cursing of the Kenyan government.
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