The founder and senior pastor of the Grace Nation Church International, Dr Chris Okafor, says Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who died at the age of 56 would still be alive today if he had the opportunity of encountering the power of God through Jesus Christ.

Okafor said this at a recent crusade in Texas, the United States.

Jobs died on October 5, 2011.

The cleric said too much intellectualism and man’s usual penchant for rationalising issues that pertain to the spirit has often tended to prove counter-productive.

He said mankind was too sense-ruled to understand that spiritual things cannot be subjected to physical or intellectual scrutiny because the “Spirit of God is all-knowing and cannot be understood by mere human wisdom or scientific logic.”

Using famous Biblical figures like Naaman and Gideon to illustrate his point, Pastor Okafor said a mere instruction from the Holy Spirit to a man on how to solve a problem can save him years of toil, pain, and anguish.

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Okafor said: “Naaman, the all-conquering Syrian general in the Bible almost missed being delivered of his leprosy because he was trying to rationalise the instruction God gave him through Prophet Elisha. He wondered why he would be asked to dip himself in the river Jordan, a less prestigious river to the ones found in his native country, seven times.

“But he would surely have lost the chance of being made whole if he refused to obey the instruction. The same would also have happened to Gideon, and by extension to the nation of Israel, if God’s instructions about pulling down the altar of Baal and offering a 7-year bullock as sacrifice had been spurned.

“The average person behaves like Naaman. They allow their high status in society, their wealth, their academic qualifications or human reasonings to affect how they see God and how His Spirit operates.

“Steve Jobs was a very rich and famous man. But he died of cancer – an ailment that could easily have been cured if he knew Jesus and the power He carries to heal and to deliver. I wish he really had the opportunity to come in contact with God’s Spirit — the Holy Spirit. The story would have been different.”

The Star