MUCH ADO ABOUT A CHURCH BUILDING

How many mansions have been built for Nigerian politicians by building contractors over the decades? From Minna, to Abuja, to Lagos, the landscape is littered with such donations. And what moslem mansion is ever complete without the mandatory mosque!

Yet for all these mansions and mosques built and donated to individuals, never had we have national dailies filling both front and back pages (see eg The Punch, April 5) with sharp, derogatory commentaries – day after day – on any of such donations. But now, even a supposed national Party (never mind its fielding of Moslem-Moslem candidates in the last presidential election) feels very strongly that a donation of a Church building to a Community should be ground enough to impeach the President! Afterall it’s the President’s village we are talking about, and the idea for the project came up in course of some informal discussion the President was involved with!

One would have thought that an accusation of wrongfully receiving a Church auditorium could only have been leveled at a Pastor or a General Overseer!

Anyway, we have no problems with people playing their do-or-die dirty politics the way they feel; but taking the Church for granted is becoming increasingly fashionable these days. In particular, people whose social agenda (homosexual advocates, etc) are being frustrated by the Church are now teaming up with politicians to have a swipe at the Church. This trend is not novel, and should be expected. “The bloodthirsty hates the righteous… “ says the Scriptures. These social advocates are still far behind their mentors in other lands however. In a place like the US for instance, activists with considerable public funding, have produced such “works of arts” as Piss Christ - a picture of a crucifix dipped in urine. Such fine, creative arts, hun? (see vol 9 no 2; http://www.churcharise.org/archives/Vol%209%20No%202,%20March%20-%20April%202006,%20print%20version.doc)

One question for all the sharp-mouthed suddenly- bold commentators hauling insults and invectives at the Church in their bid to get at the President: could any of them have DARED to write half of what they are writing, were it a mosque that was involved? Certainly none who has been in journalism by the time of the 2003 Miss World riot saga (http://www.churcharise.org/archives/6_3.pdf) . Thank God, there is no iota of possibility of a journalist being hounded by any Christian group – fanatical or mainstream.

The point of this article is not to protest or instigate Christian reactions to these antics of frustrated pawns of the new age movement. It is to encourage the Church to appreciate the level of desperation of the enemy as he watches the little time he has left ebbing away (see Rev 12:11-12). It is also to remind these foot soldiers of the New World Order that they are on a futile assignment - and will be better off considering relocation from their current placement on the wrong side of history. The Lord Jesus has said it, and so has it been written: “I will build my Church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against her.”