Simbai: walking Bible

Qualified lawyer balances pulpit work with legal career

Elijah Simbai is a lawyer and preacher - Picture from Facebook

By VICTOR KALALANDA, July 27, 2018*

The Bible happens to be in safe hands: if it had to be wiped out from the earth, one young but erudite Zambian preacher would ensure that it's re-written from his head—word for word!

He would actually do that in haste, without any trace of error, just by reciting the entire Good Book from his phenomenal memory while scribes take it down.

This Bible fakir is also a lawyer.

Inspiring a deep sense of spiritual awe and fascination, his name is Elijah Simbai.

When I personally heard about the veritable walking Bible, who is a 29-year-old evangelist, I couldn't believe until I saw him do it.

But as Simbai recited the scriptures for me on the spur of the moment, I witnessed first-hand how excessively theatrical it is to be around him.

“What prompted me to start studying the Bible," he says, "is what a preacher called Charles Brooks once said. (He said) that as a preacher you must know the Bible so well that if a person is standing and reading the wrong passage, you can know that he's lying.” 

Of course, the feat Simbai has accomplished eludes the comprehension of many like Lusaka resident Thomas Nyangulu, who says “it's not normal. Is the Bible the only thing he reads? I don’t think he can do it word for word!”

But besides clerical work and mastering Bible passages, Simbai also practices law in Lusaka. 

Born a premature baby in Livingstone, his parents divorced when he was only three months old.

“My father didn't want to be responsible over me. I was born a sickling and there wasn’t hope I would survive. However, I'm not sure if that's what led to the divorce,” he says.

Born to Peter Nyirongo and Miriam Simaango, Simbai would not inherit either parent's surname owing to the circumstances under which he was born.

“My mother was still in high school when she gave birth and she perhaps thought that I came as a huge inconvenience because of stigma. So, somehow I wasn’t even given her name,” he says.

In light of this, he was named for Elijah Simbai, a man who was a distant maternal relative, a preacher-cum-prophet under the Zionist Movement in Livingstone.

He has learnt the Bible by rote, following his conversion from Rastafarianism in 2006.

As a Rastafarian, he had sunk deep into the philosophy of the religion, listened to countless Reggae hits and kept a long Afro that called for trouble back in school.

“I joined the Seventh Day Adventist, got baptised and left Rastafarianism in 2006. Immediately I had to dispose of a sack of Reggae cassettes I had owned,” he says.

Incidentally, his mother disowned him when he became Adventist, as she did not like the idea.

“She said I was rebellious, I prayed too much and studied the Bible too much. Her recommendation was that I go to Chainama Hospital because she didn’t think I was normal,” he says.

He was only 16 but such an acrimonious dispute saw him chased from home, and he has since lived alone, working for every little penny that kept him going to become a lawyer today.  

He's the kind of guy who will make you shudder and wish for the whole world to see as he runs through the Bible with aplomb.

Even on the pulpit, this preacher does the same, leading the congregation before him in Bible passages to back his sermons.

However, he is quick to mention that a preacher shouldn’t just be an ironclad authority on scriptures, but also one who is used by God.

“Preaching must not just be reciting some Bible passages. Motivational speakers or even lawyers do that. But primary to the rhetorical abilities of a preacher and the lure and charm of oration must be the power of the Holy Ghost,” he says.

Interestingly, he claims he would have forgotten the Bible by now had he merely memorised it.

“I store it in my heart to be drawing lessons from it all the time. The memory will always discard what it doesn’t use with time. That’s how it works,” he says.

According to him, the secret of his mastery is cloaked in the way the Sacred Word is written: “The Bible is written in a predictable pattern and that is why it is easy to know. Verses are like jigsaw puzzles, so much so that you can be picking pieces and fitting them together!”

Though he uses different Bible versions when preparing sermons, he has a soft spot for the King James Version (KJV) in his meditation sessions.

With a law degree from Zambia Open University (ZAOU) and currently pursuing his advocacy certificate, Simbai professionally performs legal work and balances it with his spiritual life.

“I wake up at 03:00 hrs, pray for an hour and spend two hours on Bible reading to start the day,” he says.

Naturally and inevitably, he’s had to contend with some trying moments that have threatened his commitment to the Scriptures. 

For instance, he began to pine away and nearly quit reading the Bible in 2014 when he found his former girlfriend intimate with his best friend.

So it is against all odds that he has stuck with the Bible, just as Exildah Masumbuko, who knows him, says: “He loves reading. Even when he comes for a weekend at my place, his chatting time is reading the Bible.”

Moreover, Pastor Moses Ngoma, who has taught from the Bible for seven years, admits that he personally can't recite the big book and thus finds Simbai’s ability “extraordinary.”

“It takes the Spirit of God,” he says.

Truly, Simbai’s command of the Bible is no mean achievement because he's dealing with a book that is by far the longest in relation to the Qur’an, which many Muslims memorise.

If one should attempt to clear the world of all available copies of the Bible, on the Internet or otherwise, they possibly have to think twice because of this Zambian—he'll still rewrite it.

*Original copy was published in the Zambia Daily Mail on stated date.