[size=15pt]PART 1[/size]

Remember, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. If the church of Christ in Nigeria will wake up, the present ravaging fire may end up being one of the ALL things that work together for our good. On the other hand, we could sleep on, even snore and permit the devil to beat the drums and dictate the tempo. Then, this fire, next time shall…

In 1977, while doing my H.S.C. in the then Kwara School of Basic Studies (SBS), our History teacher told us a story. During the Civil War, a soldier kept a copy of the New Testament Bible (not sure it’s Gideon’s) in his chest pocket. As bullets flew on, in their assignment of death and like a guided missile, a bullet hit him directly in the position of the Bible; he fell, but was not injured! Somehow, the bullet couldn’t penetrate the Bible! The story, like wild fire, spread round and so it was that several soldiers bought their New Testament to keep in their pockets when going to war.

Then, the bullets couldn’t penetrate the Bible! Even now, their bullets, their bomb, swords, their arrows shall not prevail against the word of God, here in Nigeria. Who is God’s adviser? Should it surprise us if the present fire has heaven’s approval as a call to come closer before the Bridegroom’s final appearance?
The present problem in Nigeria is more than the politics of oil. No doubt, Nigeria has a role in God’s final project of returning the King. Deep down the skin of the trouble is the devil’s calculation of the danger a peaceful Nigeria poses to his programme. I guess God still has a major role for the black race this end time. It is not an accident that Nigeria has the largest settlement of the black race on our globe.
This ‘fire’ is essentially about the souls of men and eternity. Whether it is an attack on a church, a mosque, an embassy building, a military base or anywhere else, it is all about men dying and sinking into a Christ-less eternity. Note that in their assignment, it is not a successful attack when lives are not lost.

This is not blasphemy! Some years ago, God permitted Babangida and his gang to rubbish an election that could have made the late M.K.O. Abiola “rule” Nigeria. In the protests that followed, something instructive happened here in Minna, the city Babangida claims!
Many big churches closed down like factories with no raw materials for production. Why? Most of the churches then and I am afraid, no serious difference even now, were “Tokunbo churches” They were in a real sense southern churches imported. They claim to be in the North but with above 90% of their members not of the North. The few Northern natives were like negligible punctuation marks in an endless easy. Before the song, “to your tent oh Israel” reached its refrain, even pastors were gone to their homes in the South to stay alive!

Listen carefully to the drummer behind the present death dance. It is still the devil’s old song, coming in a ‘better’, perhaps more marketable packaging. The devil wants Nigeria divided, so that souls are not saved. Not as if the whole of the South is Christian, but the North certainly needs Christ. In my thinking, the major reason why God is keeping Nigeria together is the very reason the devil is calling for Nigeria’s disintegration.

If it is uncomfortable don’t believe it. The call from hell that southerners should return home while northerners come to the North is call to battle against the preaching of the gospel of Christ. If I am a politician, I am ignorantly so!
If Jonathan had won the last election as a Northern Muslim on the platform of the weakest political party, there would be no Boko Haram now. Jesus is not just the answer, He is also the reason for the devil’s headache.

As it was in Abiola’s days so is it now. New visions, to move to the South are springing up. Many Christians are reasonably relocating, escaping like Lot and his family. Church programmes are cancelled, all-night prayers are becoming a thing of the past. The devil is being heard, for now, as there are more metal detectors than bibles in Jesus’ house of prayer. And this might be just the beginning.

In our little corner, I’ve tried sometimes to imagine the unimaginable. Our call is to the unreached. We have a clear instruction from God not to plant a church where there is one. The members of Christ in our care are therefore generally unlearned men and women in the rural areas. Just imagine the devil winning, and all Southerners are asked to return home! Where for example is my home? I have been here for about 26 years. All my children were born here, though officially they are being treated as non-indigenes. Though I am from Kwara State, I have not served the government or people of Kwara for a week, since I left the university about three decades ago. Where then is home? What happens to the converts? Whose converts? Should or shouldn’t their fate be my business? What is life or staying alive without these people?
PART 1
God gave us a vision (MOPRO) of keeping some children taken form our mission fields. Presently, the children number over sixty (60). Some have been with us for about a decade. Rebecca was seven years when she arrived here. Now she is sixteen.
A few days ago, rumours had it, that the Boko Haram sect has arrived in Minna. I asked Rebecca, “What would you do if all Yoruba people are asked to return to their state?” She said, “I would follow you”. Poor child! Follow me to where? Rebecca comes from Kebbi State. Follow me to endanger her life in the South? What would life be for me, without these wonderful children? What manner of father would abandon his children? Question, questions and more questions, have fired my heart to remain here, while I have life no matter what happens.

Has anyone ever considered what might happen to our Christian brethren who are (for example) natives of Borno State, if for fear of death we all move to the South or the cooler zones of the North? Boko Haram is one arm of the octopus agenda of hell against the gospel of Christ in Nigeria in particular. Fear is a tried and trusted winning weapon of the devil, any day. Jericho fell long before her walls came tumbling down Rahab, her most important daughter, aptly sums it: “I know that the Lord hath given you the land and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you…. And as soon as we had heard these things our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you…” (Joshua 2:9 -11). Though he walks and works the earth, the man is thoroughly dead, who has nothing worth dying for. Indeed God can do only very little with men who are afraid.
There is one lonely but compulsory bridge (death) between us and eternity. Could this fire be a call for preparations?

[size=15pt]PART 2[/size]

Though misplaced, the Boko Haram members see death differently. These suicide bombers actually died before they carry out their mission of death. If they carried out “missionary activities” of death on frivolities, why shouldn’t we who claim to have the real thing embark on a deviant and radical evangelism that may (if need be) put our lives at risk. Perhaps this fire is a call, just for that!

I was told the story of a group of missionaries, out to get the gospel to an unreached people. On their arrival near the unreached tribe, they were told no man could get to the village behind a chain of mountains across the river. According to those dissuading the missionaries, there are many hungry lions on the way after crossing the river.
Unknown to the missionaries, there was an old man, who like Simeon had been waiting and praying for God’s hour of grace and visitation unto salvation for this unreached tribe. The story of the missionaries’ arrival filtered through the dusty air of the village to the old man. With an unbelievable excitement, the old man struggled with his walking stick and arrived at the village square, where a crowd of onlookers and mockers had gathered around the strange missionaries. When the old man saw them, he praised God like Simeon did, when he saw baby Jesus (Lk 2:25) and assured the missionaries that God’s appointed time (Gal. 4:4) had come for the tribe beyond the mountains. Shrill, old and lonely was his voice, but carried a weight of assurance as the crowd of jesters laughed them to scorn.

When the old man declared to the missionaries “you will get there because I will go with you” even the missionaries in their confusion felt they were dealing with a lunatic. When Christianity has not propelled us to the point of doing what the worldly wise could call madness (as they called Jesus and Paul) we practice “mere Christianity”
The old man gave a victorious proposal! “Lions kill only when they are hungry”, he said. “After we have crossed the rivers, I shall walk ahead of all of you, (keeping a safe distance) into the lion forest. The lions will see me kill me, and eat me. When they’ve eaten me, they’ll no longer be hungry, and then you can move on, climb the mountains, take over the land for our Master as you give them the words of eternal life”. Jesus! Please help me and help your church.

In this fire, many Christians have been killed and perhaps there are more to be killed. Being killed for a thing however may not tantamount to dying for it! Look at it this way! Imagine a news flash saying ten unnamed churches shall be bombed next Sunday in your city. Even with the best of security measures, would you still be in church for “any reason” next Sunday? How many of those who died in the various church bombings went to church the fateful day, aware of a terminal danger?
Is this a call to carelessness? In a sense, certainly not.
When Jesus told the people that killed him, “I am he; they went backward and fell to the ground (Jn 18:6). Obviously he had something more than his enemies. Hear Jesus, “… and I lay down my life for the sheep… No man taketh it from me but I lay it down of myself (Jn 10:15-18) Suicide? Why would Jesus do that? There was the joy set before him. The joy of seeing the lost restored back to God. He endured the cross for their sake. (Hab 12:2).
For even here unto were ye called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps (1 Pet. 2:21) Are there Christians willing to die if their death would bring life to others?

When we (the church) should be building men and as wise men (Prov. 11:30) winning souls, we squander heaven’s resources in competition and rivalry, building cathedrals that the men we failed to win for Christ are now using as death traps for our largely “mere” Christian congregations.

[size=15pt]PART 3[/size]


It is still the old rebellion! The scope of our original mandate was from “Eden, spreading over all the earth” (Gen 1:26). But listen to man! “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, (our cathedrals) and let us make us a name (our titles and denominations) lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4) Exactly opposite of what God wanted. Jesus re-established and re-affirmed it in the Great commission, from Jerusalem unto the uttermost part of the earth (Mk. 16:15, Acts 1:.

The disciples’ call is one unto sacrifice. Simeon and his brother forsook their nets to follow Christ. Simeon, no doubt must have been a wonderful family man. One day, Jesus visited Simeon’s home. He was quick to introduce his sick mother-in-law. But Simeon finally left all to follow Jesus. The disciples kept their pedestrian sacrifice in mind as they later asked Jesus, what would be their reward. Jesus gave them an answer that I believe shocked them. “If any man come to me and hate not …. Yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26), Matt 10:39. “He that findeth his life shall loose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”
His own life. That is our real problem. Our life!

The church must understand that in the attack on the Police and the Military hell is making more than a political statement. Certainly a clear and bold statement. Mainly that these orthodox symbols of national defence cannot be depended on to deliver us. When the deliverer, conspicuously needs deliverance, who should trust in him for safety?

Let us glean one or two tips from the parable of tares and wheat. (Matt 13:24). In taking the minor as our major, the church slept! This gave the enemy ample time to plant the tares among the good seed. If Boko Haram (and others) had been completely external to the Nigerian people and protecting institutions, it would have been fast and easy to flush them out. We do not need a seer to show us that all these institutions are infected. “Itoro” ( a water insect that dances on the surface of the water) has a drummer deep in the river.
Perhaps it is not too late! Tomorrow is the product of what we did or failed to do today. Let us do something now!

With people like Babangida Aliyu (the Niger State Governor and spokesman of the Northern Governors forum) and Sanusi (the C.B.N. Governor) reportedly giving “unfair resource allocation” as a justification for the existence of Boko Haram, this may be just the beginning of ….. only God knows what. Again true children of their father, they lie naturally. What has the church of Christ got to do with resource allocation?

Why bomb a church? How on earth can any reasonable person sincerely compare the Niger Delta agitations with Boko Haram? What is the relationship between Lion and Nylon? Wait a minute! Did I just say reason “and sincerity”? Fading virtues!

They were just four, but they gave nations a new story. They were only four but they changed the destiny of nations and their military. Only four, sentenced by circumstances of life, outlawed by the traditions of men, but united against their common enemy. Like leaders from Issachar, they knew the right time to do what needed to be done. (1 Chro 12:32). And they were all lepers! They asked the one question the church in Nigeria should have asked decades ago. “Why sit we here until we die? They then took the battle to the enemies’ camp. That exactly is what we must do! It was at the enemy’s camp that they realized that their enemy, powerful as he seemed, was after all not undefeatable! The power sustaining the whole universe worked in their favour. Note that the Lord did nothing to the Syrian camp until they (the four) rose up in the twilight to go unto the camp of the Syrians (2 Kings 7:5a). To get the result of the old time religion” we must do as of old again. The master’s final instruction is “Go ye… (Mt 28:19). The Lord did not work with them until, they went forth (Mk 16:20). The gospel remains the power of God unto salivation (Romans 1:16).

Boko haram or any other Haram cannot contend with the power of God. If it is not from God, it is not freedom!
If God saved Saul, He could save Sheik Lemu. The Holy Spirit does not require a higher voltage of divine fire to save Babangida (Rtd Gen) than to save me. Imagine Nigeria with a Christian Babangida.

The devil is evil! The devil is bad! But do we have “the good news”. Listen to this! “We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us…. “(2 Kings 7:9). Have we, the church tarried too long? Has the morning light come upon us? Is the present mischief (Boko Haram and others) the consequence of our inaction? Is it really too late? The 9th verse ends this way: “Now (emphasis mine) therefore come, that we may go ….” Except Jesus goes, we are doomed. But Jesus only promised to go with us not alone. The true winning church is the “going church”. That was how it all began. That is how we must all team-up and end it, only on a larger more aggressive more dynamic scale.
I have heard it said that sitting “unmolested by Satan is no evidence of blessing”.

POST SCRIPT
Light on my ramblings.
God is aware of all that we are going through and has permitted it that the church might wake-up in a “sleeping” nation.
The devil, in all these is mainly concerned about hauling men into hell.
The church must not receive the Spirit of fear, rather be prepared to lunch an offensive into the enemy’s camp through a conscious aggressive evangelism in the power of the Holy Spirit as in prayers, we seek God’s face.
God is in all these asking the church to partner with Him in hastening the return of the King, even our king. Remember, the time is short (1 Cor. 7:29) and the kings business requires haste! (1 Sam 21:.
When this fire comes next time,..…?

Maranatha!