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Anyone who is an observer of things would certainly tell that we are
definitely coming close to the end of the ages. There is an unprecedented
battle that is underway for the souls of nations..
Sometime in 930 BC toward the end of
Solomon’s reign, the nation of Israel entered into spiritual decay like it had
never done in its history. The whole nation degenerated. The pursuit of
materialism held sway, idolatory began to take over the land, and that state of
affairs so made God angry. King after
king competed with themselves to outdo each other in evil; and a refrain that
you will read is how one king did more evil than the other king. Finally, there arrives on the scene a king
called Ahab. He married a young lady called Jezebel, she was the daughter of
the king of Sidonia, a man called Ethbaal, the prophet of Baal. They took the
evil that existed to another level. Darkness really ruled the nation. The
worship of Baal became common-place. A
state religion imposed on the nation. The worship of God was chased out of
public life. The Bible testifies that by that time the prophets of God were in
hiding. It was a clear strategy from the
pit of hell. This woman Jezebel took control of her husband Ahab, and she had
one agenda on her mind, and the agenda was to erase the worship of Jehovah in
the land. The agenda was to impose immorality as the order of the day. The agenda was to make sure that there was no
worship of the God of Israel. But where I was going, as the nation descended
into that level of darkness; as it seemed like God had lost the battle, we read
in I kings 17:1 God’s response. And what was God’s response? God’s response was
to raise up a man called Elijah.
And what is significant about Elijah? Elijah
was God’s response to degeneration. God’s response to decay. God’s response to
darkness. God’s response to immorality. Elijah was God’s response to
apostasy. Elijah was God’s response to a
plan of the enemy to seize a nation and pervert God’s plan for the nation.
It’s interesting that the Bible talks a bit more about
Elijah. In Mathew 17: 11-12, Jesus answered them and said to them “Indeed
Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. But I say to you that
Elijah has come already, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever
they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer in their hands.”
He says Elijah is coming first, and he will come with the
mandate to restore all things. And so a singular Elijah came, called out by God
from obscurity to confront the evil of the day and to save the nation of
Israel. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks about another Elijah that is coming. And
that Elijah comes with a mandate of restoration. He also goes on in Luke 1:17
to say to us concerning Elijah. “He will also go before Him in the spirit and
power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the
LORD.” Of course He was speaking about
John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and the power of Elijah. So there was
first, Elijah the prophet. But then
there was another Elijah that came in the spirit and in the power of
Elijah. And that Elijah was a
fore-runner to our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ’s coming.
Where am I going?
It would seem very clear to me that just before Jesus comes, just before
a great move of God, just before God steps in to rescue a nation, or nations,
there must be someone who comes in the spirit and the power of Elijah.
What is this spirit of Elijah? There are 6 things: Faith,
Prayer, A commitment to the Word, a Zealousness for God, Holiness, and a
demonstration of Power. Put this at the
back of your mind: there must be a person or people who come with the spirit
and power of Elijah as a precursor to a move of God.
I want to share a bit about the United Kingdom. The state of things in
the United Kingdom. If the truth be told, things are bad. Things are
challenging. We have seen the move of an aggressive secularism that wants to
take the worship of God out of public life. We have seen our leaders
embarrassed and forced to resign simply because of their faith. We have seen
and see an attempt by another faith to wrest control of the nation, to seize
the soul of the nation. We really are seeing some challenging and dark times in
the United Kingdom We have seen churches closed, On the last account 500
churches in and around London closed and 480 mosques were planted in their
stead. We have seen laws that are so ungodly passed. Policies that we know are
so ungodly passed. Some of them…. it is
impossible to imagine that such things can happen. We are now dealing with the
issue of genders and transgenders. It’s being taken out of a lot of our
literature the reference to male and female, because it is assumed that there
is some middle ground that is neither male nor female. And that is official.
And so things are dark in the United kingdom.
But then, I wouldn’t say it’s any different from here. It might not be
the same expression, but then we look round at the state of things here in
Nigeria, we see the rabid corruption that led our former Prime Minister to
describe it as fantastically corrupt. Of
course we all protested; but in our hearts we knew there was an element of
truth in what he was saying. We see the blatant use of the government’s machinery
in some places to advance the agenda of one faith over another. We read about how our curriculum for our
children has been hijacked so that any reference to the deity of Christ has
been removed. We look around at some parts of the Church and we marvel that
this is the Church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We hear about the
killing that is taking place in some parts of the country. The persecution of Christians.
The kidnapping of young girls and them being forced to convert to other faith. We are amazed that we all sat back and the
learning of Arabic was made compulsory in our schools.
And I can go on and on and on, but you get the picture. What I’m trying
to say is that it’s no different here.
It’s no different in the Middle East.
It’s no different in North America. It is no different in South
America. It is clear that the kingdom of
darkness is marching on and has an agenda, and the agenda is to push back the Church,
and to seize the high ground.
We asked ourselves in the UK, How did we get into this state? How did we
allow this to happen?
How did we find ourselves in this state? How did we find
ourselves in a state where the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is
supposed to occupy until He comes, in a lot of instances is just barely surviving?
How did we find ourselves in a state where the prophet‘s description, In
Isaiah, the 60th chapter, of deep darkness over the people and darkness
covering the earth? How did we find ourselves
in a place where the laws are changed, the policies are changed? How did we find ourselves in a place where
the organs of government are used to advance policies that are clearly against
the Church? We find ourselves in this
place because while men slept, the
enemy came and sowed tares. We find ourselves in this place because, if the
truth be told, the church has been asleep.
Yes, we have made gains. Yes, we have planted churches, yes there has
been some progress, but then this is a family meeting, and we can afford to be
truthful to ourselves. If the truth be told, the Church slept while the enemy
made gains.
Let us not forget that the nations of Turkey and Syria
were once Christian nations. An enemy
has done this. An enemy did it while the Church was complacent. And today, if there is anything that I say, I
will like to challenge us out of that complacency, much the same way that I
challenged myself out of that complacency.
And maybe the Prophet Amos might do a better job of this
than me. In Amos 6:1, he says “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion, and who
trust in Mount Samaria, notable persons in the chief nations to whom the house
of Israel comes.”
Amos could easily have been speaking to Church leaders
today. Woe to you who are at ease in
Zion. Those who are complacent. Those who don’t see the signs of the
time. Those who don’t understand that if
we are not advancing, the enemy is advancing
Those who don’t fully understand that we can’t stay stationary in this
battle. Those who don’t understand
that if we don’t take ground the enemy is taking ground. Notable persons in the chief nation, he says
“woe to you
He paints a graphic picture of a leadership, of a nation,
that does not understand that the position of complacency they’ve taken is to
give the enemy ground. I could
paraphrase his message in modern words like these: Woe to the politicians in church. Woe to the
sycophants in church. Woe to those who specialize in insincerity and call it
wisdom. Woe to those who are consumed by personal ambition. Woe to the
purveyors of pettiness. Woe to the agents of distraction. Woe to those who
would not release people into their call but suppress them instead. Woe to
those who cannot discern the times and the seasons. Woe to those who cannot
hear the trumpet call for war. Woe to those who try to drown out God’s voice
with their own voices. Woe to those who are playing Church, instead of being
the Church. Woe to those who are focused
on an honorarium, instead of the mandate. Woe to meaningless conferences and
meetings, while the enemy is gaining ground.
Woe to those who reduce a sacred calling to a job. Woe to those who see our calling as a means
of earning a living.
Woe to those who judge their success by the cars we drive or the sizes
of our church, not the fulfilment of our call. Woe to those who abuse positions
of power and authority. And woe to those who are not grieved by the state of
the Church, by the state of the decomposing
and decaying society.
If we don’t do something, not only are we toying with our captivity, we
are consigning our children to a lifetime of captivity,
And believe me, God will judge us.
How did we end up here? We ended
up here because we played Church. We became politicians of an ecclesiastical
nature. We specialized and majored in pettiness and distractions. We built empires , we said we were building
churches. And maybe we did, but we didn’t understand that to build a church is
the first stage in building the Kingdom of God.
But thank God, we don’t believe in a natural God! But we believe in a supernatural God. That’s
the only thing that gives us hope. That God can do the impossible. We look back
to the early Church, we find them in a similar place. Maybe even worse than we
are. And we see a move of God that turned the whole of the world right side up.
We dare to believe in that God, that He’s the same yesterday, today, and
forever. So even though in a natural sense, we might be too late, but thank
God! God is not natural!
We understand clearly, at least I have come to understand, that it must
be a move of the spirit of God. The words of the prophet Zachariah resonate: In
Zech 4:6 – Not by might, not by intellect, not by persuasion, not by size, not
by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of Hosts.
To be used by God, there are a few things that are absolutely
critical.
Number one, you must even be aware of the problem. And you will be
amazed at the amount of ignorance that exists in the body of Christ. I see it every day where I serve. Good Christians who are unaware, who can’t,
like the sons of Issachar, read the time and seasons. Good Christians who imagine that just
attending church is all that matters. Not realizing that the enemy is making
progress. My brother and my sister, please lift up your eyes from your own
circumstances. Look up from your own challenges. And look around you and see
how the enemy is taking ground at the expense of the Kingdom of God. You have to be aware of the problem.
For God to use you, you have to be burdened. Nehemiah the first chapter
says this about Nehemiah ( in the third verse): “the survivors who are left of the captivity in the Province are there
in great distress and reproach. The wall
of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. And so it was, Jerusalem said, when I heard
these words, that I sat down and wept and mourned for many days. I was fasting and praying before the God of
heaven..” The news came to Nehemiah,
the survivors are in great distress and reproach. My sister, look around you, the nations are
in great distress. The Church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is suffering
reproach in so many sectors. This Bride of Christ is being abused and scorned.
There is an attempt to castrate the Church. My sister look up from your
problem, my brother look up from your challenge. Don’t let the enemy play a
trick on you where the focus becomes yourself. We are here for more than
ourselves. What a tragedy if we live this life just for ourselves!
He says the wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and its gates are
burned with fire. That sentence was driven
into our hearts by the Spirit of God.
The walls of the United Kingdom are broken down, its gates are burned
with fire. This is the nation that took
the gospel to the far-flung parts of the world. This is a nation that had a
church on every single street, literally. This is a nation of John Wesley, this
is a nation of William Booth. This is a nation that sent young missionaries who
came out of Oxford and Cambridge, and they came to Africa knowing that they
would most likely die from malaria; but the fire that was burning in their
bones won’t let them sit down with their degrees from Oxford and Cambridge;
they had to preach the gospel. And yet this is a nation that we look at and we
said to ourselves, the walls are destroyed, they are broken down, the gates are
burned with fire.
Look around you at the nation where you find yourself, the story is
probably the same. And when Nehemiah
heard these things, life couldn’t continue as normal. My brother, my sister, there is no “normal”
life anymore. Someone said to me in England , “you are possessed”, I said
absolutely, I am now possessed by one mission and one mission alone. I live it,
I breath I, I sleep it – that’s all I do, I have nothing else to do! My success in life will be judged whether
that nation goes to the enemy or not. Not by the large church that I am
priviledged to pastor. No, we’ve left that behind. We are now contending for
the soul of the nation. Because if you hear the news, life can’t continue as
normal. You can’t hear that a brother or a sister is being killed in Southern
Zaria and life continues as normal. You can’t hear that a 14 year old girl was
kidnapped and forced to convert and then life continues as normal. You can’t
see some of the billboards that we see advertising things that have nothing to
do with church and yet ending with the name “church”, and life continues as
normal. You can’t watch the Church being emasculated and strangulated and life
continues as normal. If life continues as normal, there is something that’s
wrong somewhere.
Nehemiah said “I sat down, I couldn’t continue.” I looked around, at the immorality that is
rife and it stopped me in my tracks. It
was so heavy, Nehemiah said, I wept and I mourned. My brother, I want to ask
you when was the last time you wept in prayer over the nation you find yourself
in? Enough of this psychedelic prayers! Enough of this oratory, enough of us
praying so that we sound good in people’s ears! When was the last time a
congregation wept because they looked at the state of the nation and thought,
“God, how did it come to this?”
He said, “I didn’t just weep,” he said, “I mourned. It was so heavy on
my soul it led me to mourning.” Have you
mourned for Nigeria? Have you mourned for Cameroon? Have you mourned for
Zambia, have you mourned for Kenya? Have you mourned for Canada? Has it stopped
you in your tracks? Have you said to yourself, I have no other life!
He said “I mourned for many days,” and then he said, “I was led to
fasting and prayed before the God of heaven.” The weight of circumstances is
not supposed to paralyse us. It’s supposed to drive us to our knees in prayer
and to fasting so that the God of the supernatural can move on our behalf. I
understand very clearly, John Knox’s phrase, when Queen Mary of Scotland was
ruling. I understand clearly, how John Knox would kneel down and say to God
“Give me Scotland, or I die!” My sister,
do you have a burden? If you don’t, then
what church are you in?
Number three. To be used by God,
there must be sacrifice. A friend of mine has a favourite phrase. It says the
heavens belong to the highest bidder. Of
course, the work is finished. It was
finished at the Cross of Calvary. It was finished so that we can enter His
rest. Yes, of course I agree theologically, that is sound. But don’t believe
all these crazy message that is going around. God expects us to do something.
When “they” fast, “they fast”. When we
fast, half of us are not fasting. And those who are, will drink and eat
in-between the fasting period. The heavens belong to the highest bidder.
Believe me, a lot of people a bidding higher, that is why we are in the state
we are in. When we say pray, we expect that we say one prayer, and it is
answered. But I say, No. In our Church, for 5 years, we have prayed the same
prayer, every single gathering. It is a
testimony to heaven, that we said we will never gather as a Church without
crying out for this nation. For 5 years, we have not missed one gathering where
we have not cried out for the nation.
Number four. God has to use people of faith because it takes faith to
believe what we are talking about. When you look around and all the signs are
saying the opposite, it has to be a person of faith. It has to be the spirit of Elijah that goes
us a mountain and faces nine hundred plus prophets knowing that if God does not
answer, he is dead! It has to be the spirit of Elijah, that kneels down to pray
and keeps saying to his servant, “Go and
check, because I hear the sound of the abundance of rain, and my God does not
lie”. I hear the sound of revival in the
world, and God does not tell lies!
Number five. It has to be someone
who is ready to be persecuted. You know, when people see the clip of the Prime
Minister visiting Church, and it was a wonderful day, visited Church, not just
visiting, worshiped in Church. The result of that was the most unprecedented
attack personally I have faced in my whole life. The Press tore me to pieces. At a stage, I
felt for my own children, that they have to read such things being said about
their father. My Caucasian friends were calling me to commiserate with me. But
I told them one thing: I said, God must surely prepare a man, for the call of
his life. I said, I am Nigerian. ‘Am African.
We have a thick skin. If this is all that they can throw at me, they
haven’t even seen anything yet!
Number six. A radical holiness. It is impossible for God to use anybody
in this manner if that person is not committed to what I call a “radical
holiness.” This is more than an understanding of “doctrinal holiness”, but is
the pursuit of personal holiness through a knowledge of the Bible as the living
Word of God.
And let me just share some of what our state of affairs has led us to do
in the United Kingdom. Some of it might encourage you, some of it you are
already doing, but I share these things.
We sat down, we strategized, we prayed, we mourned. We wept. Then we
were forced to fast and pray. And God began to give us certain strategies and
I’ll share them very quickly with you.
Number one, God said to us, part of the challenge is that as a people
you are not strategic. And yet, all your enemies are strategic. You see, as a
church, we are short-term in nature. Let me just get through Sunday, let me
just get through the next service. Let me just get through next week. Our enemies are strategic. Our enemies are
strategic. The things we see now, you know history, I don’t have to tell you.
Some of them were said in 1960 at independence.
We are beginning to see them now. The enemy already knows those he has
targeted for certain positions. In whatever guise, the enemy is strategic. Now
in England, they are beginning to slip into the subconscious of young people
especially: that certain lifestyles is normal. They are strategic. They know
that if they do that for the next 10 years, that after 10 years it would be
accepted as normal. Because there are things that are acceptable now, that 15
years ago were unthinkable! But the enemy is strategic, the Church has to
become strategic. We have to look beyond a service. And we have to start to think
of 5 years, and 10 years, and 15 years, and 20 years. Every battle is won by
strategy.
Number two. We came to understand that we have no choice but to be
aggressive church planters. There is no choice in the matter. Why is there no choice? Because nature abhors
a vacuum. If you don’t put your foot there – and don’t forget it’s all about
territory – somebody else is going to put their foot there. That’s how we found
ourselves in a place where 500 churches closed, 480 mosques are planted. It’s
about land. It’s about territory. We don’t have a choice. If we hope to win
this war, we must somehow figure out, how we are going to plant Churches. Because you see, when God looks down from
heaven, and sees those churches, it might only be 10 people, but what God sees
from heaven is a light in darkness.
Number three, and this should have been the first thing. We knew that only prayer like we have never
prayed before can make these things happen.
We knew that for what we want, we must pray prayer we have not prayed
before.
What else did God lay on our hearts about prayer? God said to us, you need to raise governance
cells. Someone said to me, what are
governance cells? They are cells of
people who don’t pray ordinary prayers.
They are people who understand governance prayers. Who understand kingship and who understand
decree, and the power of it
Number four. What else did God tell us? We came to understand too late
that information is critical to every war effort. And so we created the Central Intelligence
Unit. And what is their mandate? Their mandate is just to gather information. Information that allows us to pray and allows
us to act. There are people who love research.
They enjoy it. One of them, he’s just excited when he’s showing me
diagrams and graphs and he’s explaining to me, voting patterns of all our MPs.
Because how do you pray if you don’t know the voting patterns of the Member of
Parliament, or your Senator, or your Member of House of Reps? How do you ensure that the next election, he
does not, as they say in Nigeria, “smell” that place? Because you’ve looked at his voting pattern
and he consistently votes against the Kingdom of God. How do we fight if we don’t have information
in our hands? How do we know what is
happening, How do we know the places where we need to concentrate our
efforts? And so we …set up this research
effort, and that’s what they do. All
those doing this research, they just give us information. And some of the information is
eye-opening. But it allows us to be
targeted in our efforts and in our prayers.
It’s from that information that we knew concentrations of areas that we
needed to concentrate on. Because those
areas were anti the gospel.
Number five. We’ve understood
that God works in partnership. Elijah
said, “God I am the only one!” God said,
“Don’t be so arrogant. There are 7,000
of you who haven’t bowed their knees to Baal.”
Number six. We’ve understood that
Salt and Light means that the salt and light is out there. Not in the salt shaker, but the salt jar. And
so, we’ve now started to fast-track our members into public life. Because if we stay in our churches and clap
hands, and sing songs, the enemy will arrive at the door of our churches. The whole essence of Church is to equip the
saints for the work of the ministry. The
work of the ministry is not just the pulpit.
The work of the ministry is someone who is in the House of Reps and
godly, not someone who purported to be godly, and then when they got out there
we hear they were doing all kinds of things. Someone who is sitting on top of
an organization and godly. And so we
must have a strategy, because part of the reason that they get there and they
fall is because we haven’t intentionally equipped them for the battle that is
out there. And the battle is
fierce. Out there. Somebody says to me, I can’t be corrupted, I
said let them put a million dollars in front of you, and you know nobody is
going to know if you take it. Then tell
me if you don’t take that whether you can be corrupted. That’s what a lot of those people face. And we haven’t fortified them and build
structures around them. And created
accountability circles around them. So
that they can go out there as soldiers on a mission. And we must do that. Of course the Pastor can be President. A Pastor can be President of the Senate. A Pastor is Vice president and Acting President. Of course pastors are ministers. Why shouldn’t ministers be heads of banks? Of
course, they can! But then they must
carry Christ into those places.
Number seven. We realized that if
we don’t engage the millennial generations, we should forget about it.
And can I tell you something, as an aside? I have found one thing to be
true. If you do God’s thing, God does
your thing. I am telling you, if you do
God’s thing, God does your thing.
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