The headquarters is located in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The organization has since become an international network of churches.[9][10][11] The church's teachings are in the tradition of prosperity theology.[12]
The church began in 1983 when Francis Wale Oke brought together a team of seven fellow believers including his wife Victoria to meet every week for a prayer group.[13][14][15]
In 1990, Sword of the Spirit Ministries led an anti-Islamic[16] preaching crusade in Sokoto.[17] Historian Toyin Falola mentions Sword of the Spirit Ministries as being specialized at that time in publishing anti-Islamic tracts.[18]
^Innocent Chiluwa (2012). "Online Religion in Nigeria: The Internet Church and Cyber Miracles". Journal of Asian and African Studies. 47 (6): 734–749. doi:10.1177/0021909611430935. S2CID146471546.
^Rosalind I.J. Hackett (2003). "Managing or Manipulating Religious Conflict in the Nigerian Media". Mediating Religion: Studies in Media, Religion, and Culture: 47–63.
^Brouwer, Steve (1996). Exporting the American gospel: global Christian fundamentalism. Internet Archive. Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-91711-7. In October 1990, Sword of the Spirit Ministries of Ibadan, with preachers from London's Kensington Temple and Elm Pentecostal Churches of Scotland, launched their Operation GAIN with a five-day crusade in Sokoto, the historic seat of Nigeria's caliphate. … The operation was "directed at destroying the enemy's strongholds and deceits in Sokoto"; the preaching "unveiled the enemy's oppressive weapon of deceit in the lives of the people"; and by the end "well over 4, 500 adults had been delivered from the devil's clutch".
^Falola, Toyin (2000). Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. University of Rochester Press. ISBN9781580460187. For instance, The Sword of the Spirit Ministries, based at Ibadan, has printed over a dozen pamphlets in the last one year, mainly written by their leader, Francis Wale Oke, in addition to a bi-monthly magazine.