Trinidad: Unrepentant $28m pastor tells his church – “Is you give it to me”

(Trinidad Guardian) Pas­tor Vin­worth Day­al, head of the Third Ex­o­dus As­sem­bly, was un­re­pen­tant about the more $28 mil­lion he claimed he had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in tithes over many years at his Long­denville church. Preach­ing be­fore a packed con­gre­ga­tion at the church on Fri­day night, Day­al not on­ly de­fend­ed him­self but used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hit out at An­gli­can and Catholic church lead­ers who had called on him to de­clare how he amassed that amount of mon­ey.

“If they want to be­lieve that’s $28 mil­lion that’s them. Is you give it to me,” he said mo­tion­ing to the con­gre­ga­tion.

 
“I walk in here tonight, I re­alise I don’t have to ex­plain. Be­lieve, as you sit un­der the true God, what is true. If I get­ting lock-up is be­cause you give it to me and you see ex­act­ly how I spend it,” he said to cheers from the gath­er­ing. “When you see bags and bags its be­cause it’s all there.”

On De­cem­ber 31, Day­al went to the Cen­tral Bank with 28 box­es of old $100 bills and at­tempt­ed to ex­change them for the new poly­mer bills. That ac­tiv­i­ty at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence branch of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched.

On Thurs­day, of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the church and cart­ed away mil­lions more in small­er de­nom­i­na­tions. At the church, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they found large sums of $20, $10, $5 and $1 notes in a large cab­i­net. Of­fi­cers al­so vis­it­ed a home in La Ro­maine linked to the pas­tor and seized sev­er­al doc­u­ments.

Day­al said he still had a pile of cheques that had not yet been de­posit­ed.

Dur­ing his ser­mon, he told the con­gre­ga­tion that when he spoke with the po­lice of­fi­cers on Thurs­day, they “knew” he was dif­fer­ent just by his voice.

“I tell the po­lice that come here what kind of per­son I am. I on­ly have to open my mouth and they know what kind of per­son I am,” he said.

He asked the church mem­bers whether he ever asked them for any­thing, whether he ever begged them for any­thing and they re­spond­ed with a cho­rus of “nos”.

De­spite his show of calm and faith, Day­al ad­vised the con­gre­ga­tion that if they were asked any­thing by any­one “out­side” they should “give tes­ti­mo­ny, a nice one, glo­ri­fy God, don’t make it too long”.

He took the An­gli­can church to task for say­ing he need­ed to de­clare how he amassed that amount of mon­ey and al­so bashed the Catholic church for “act­ing holi­er than thou.”

“I see they have this man in the news­pa­per, he said that Pas­tor Day­al have to de­clare how he get this, that’s the same peo­ple in the An­gli­can church un­der a ho­mo­sex­u­al man (name called) and all this filth they had in the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral,” he said re­fer­ring to the fash­ion show with biki­ni-clad mod­els held in the church a few weeks ago.

“And they sit­ting down there and talk­ing?” he asked.

Day­al fur­ther claimed the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion was “sit­ting and dis­cussing” him and judg­ing how his church is dif­fer­ent from theirs.

“I was born and con­firmed in an An­gli­can church and when I reach 12 years old, no­body had to tell me, I see it and I tell my moth­er, I not go­ing back there you know,” he said.

He de­scribed the whole sit­u­a­tion as one de­signed by the dev­il.

“That’s what the dev­il does try. The dev­il does try to hit some­thing, Amen, think­ing every­thing will scat­ter and fall apart, Amen, but The Word is plant­ed in you Amen, glo­ry be to God in the high­est,” he de­clared.

“This is our apos­tolic church in the last days, this is the Bible church. In three days I be­come so fa­mous, every­one in the Caribbean know me. It reached as far as Africa and In­dia un­til I start­ed send­ing it to broth­ers. I am not ashamed. What I shame for? I do some­thing wrong?

“Some­times, it takes a cri­sis, tru­ly you could see all things work to­geth­er for good. If it takes that to bring every­body out tonight, what a great thing that is friends.”

Day­al list­ed the peo­ple per­se­cut­ed in the Bible and said if he was ar­rest­ed he would be in good com­pa­ny. He said it seemed that peo­ple out­side the church just “want some ac­tion” which is why he was be­ing tar­get­ed.

“We are here strong as ever, stronger than be­fore. When the full strength of the sun­light comes and the fruit on the tree, it don’t get back green friends, it doesn’t fall off the tree. It does get ripe. Amen. Hal­lelu­jah,” he said.

“You think Sa­tan can break up some­thing that Je­sus built? The dev­il has a lot to learn.”

Day­al quot­ed from the Book of Daniel, say­ing God’s will was not a pun­ish­ment.

“Is God pun­ish­ing him? No, when he comes to that prison, he go­ing to be the right hand of Pharoah, every knee shall bow Amen. Pris­on­er first, then vin­di­cat­ed son,” he said.”This is the re­al­i­ty.”

He al­so quot­ed from Math­ew Chap­ter Five, Verse 10 which speaks about the bless­ings that the right­eous re­ceive when they are per­se­cut­ed.

“You don’t have to give up when you go­ing through hard times, friends. That’s when you dig your heels in,” he said.

Dur­ing his prayer ses­sion, which was sep­a­rate from the ser­mon, Day­al de­nounced those who “gave their own spin” to this mat­ter.

“When test­ing time comes, that’s when they show their colours, what they re­al­ly are but Lord God You stand by your peo­ple and make a spec­ta­cle of them. Though they try to slan­der and black­en them and give their own spin on things, Lord said he will nev­er for­sake you,” Day­al said.

“We are grate­ful for the tri­als and the test­ing. This is not strange, this was proph­e­sied and we ex­pect­ed it, we longed for this time.”

Day­al, who said he had kept the word of the Lord for 45 years, held up one of the news­pa­per re­ports on the seizure of the mil­lions of dol­lars from his church and warned the con­gre­ga­tion to be wary of the ar­ti­cles they read.

“If you ain’t know what you read­ing, you gonna miss every­thing,” he said, adding some of the news re­ports were done to de­lib­er­ate­ly “give peo­ple di­rec­tion”.

“Look here, look here . . . see? Per­son of in­ter­est, mon­ey, sus­pi­cion. Is it mon­ey laun­der­ing? Is it Al Qae­da, is it ISIS. What is it?” he asked.

He said he would con­tin­ue to “serve God” un­til the mat­ter was re­solved.