That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 41: ANOTHER ALARM!

It is encouraging thus to know that our prayers have not been in vain, but I confess that as I hear again and again the cases of angelic interventions in the jihads against the Church, especially in Jos, I have wondered to myself why God would not perform those miracles in every attack against His people. In the northern Nigeria city of Maiduguri, Borno State, the jihadists invaded the house of Rev. A.  He had lived in that city for thirty-six years. They broke through his doors into the house, looted it to their full, poured petrol all over the place, and apprehended him.  Deaf to his pleadings, the knife went up to cut off his head; his three grown daughters, shut up in the toilet, were praying their last prayers.  Just then, the leader of the mob asked that they leave the man alone. The knife came down, but they did not leave before they had taken all his money.  Part of the house had already gone up in flames. 

Mercifully, soon as the jihadists left, the fire was put out, but Rev. A. did not sleep another night in the city.  His precious church of much labour had already been looted and razed down.  Rev. A says his deliverance was a miracle.  But my head worries, “Lord, why did You not perform the same miracle for the more than thirty other pastors that were killed in the same city within the same days?”  Down this pastor’s street, Sister Halitu had her eight children locked up in the house and burnt to death.  When the children saw that their attackers had trapped them to die, they held hands and began to sing.  They died singing.  After the flames, their corpses were found with the hands still held together tightly in death. Young martyrs.

We are told that there are no more than three churches remaining in the city of Maiduguri; the others have already been destroyed or are “under lock and keys.” What more shall we say?  The Sunday morning sanctuary at the Bayero University in Kano, whose altar the enemy drenched in the blood of the worshippers?  In some untouched cities I see plush car stickers that announce loudly, “Clergy,” or “Missionary,” or “Pastor,” and I think of the many places where that has become a dangerous and audacious invitation for trouble.   The enemy is getting desperate.  Kenya in East Africa has begun to be stirred, too, with bombs.  That is one Gospel bastion in East Africa that Islam has been targeting, like Nigeria in the West and the Republic of South Africa in southern Africa.

From about the close of last year, an alarmist sms has circulated Nigeria every other month.  Purporting to originate from the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) in Abuja, it screams that Yobe State is “boiling again,” and that churches and Christians are at the moment being annihilated.  While we do not deny that the killing of Christians takes place in many places in northern Nigeria, my head (not the Lord) tells me that that sms is the tactical device of our enemies, to decoy us from targeted prayers; to divert attention through false alarms of “Wolf! Wolf!” so that by the time the wolf truly comes, as I fear he intends soon to, we would have received the sms so many false times that we would not give attention to the true cry for help.   In fact, that sms has already been used early this year by their patrons in high places to score a point of propaganda against the leadership of the Church in that state, and to cover up their nefarious activities.  We should discern even the calls to prayer, so that we do not run into the very snares we flee.

At the beginning of April, about a month ago, Boko Haram boasted on the Hausa service of the BCC that in three months, the regime of the loathed Christian president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, would be ‘brought down.’  What do you hear?  Another  threat?  I hear a coup, in the recent fashion of Mali; then they would fault the elections that had brought in that President, and showing themselves ‘democratic,’ would declare a timetable for future fresh elections (that would not come very soon, because they will need time to revise the losses during the ‘Christian tenure’).  They will claim in their post-coup speech that they had been forced to step in to save the nation from imminent collapse and deterioration into the sectional and sectarian crises that had brought about the first civil war; that being officers trained and entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the security and unity of the nation, they could not stand by and watch our beloved nation and the labours of our revered fathers wasted by selfish politicians and their terrorist tools.  Their package to the nation will be very impressive. They will not be about to leave in a hurry.  They will commence immediate ‘reforms’ intended to earn applause, even from the sceptical, who would be standing aloof to watch the drama.  After gaining acceptance, they will begin to unfold their agenda, in slow but determined cruel phases.  Too late then to cry.