Well, I am sure that those of you who know me know what I am going to say next. Let somebody shout hallelujah! God bless you. Please be seated. God is good. All the time.
A sister here told us a story about some children who were living in a place where it was always winter, and they kept saying: “Who was it that was moving?”
“Aslan.”
That story is prophetic, because God is moving in Nigeria.
Because of what was going on, when the pain became almost unbearable, and some people were accusing me of being quiet at a time when I should be talking, I was compelled to cry unto God.
We had been fasting and praying for a particular group of schoolchildren who had been captured. The kidnappers felt that the government was not reacting fast enough to give them the money they had asked for. So they slaughtered their teacher and showed the video to the rest of the world.
Then some people began to speak, challenging those of us who said: “We have been praying.” They said: “You have fasted. You have prayed. Where is your God?”
So I went to the Lord in prayer, in deep agony. I said: “Father, You have heard them. They are asking: ‘Where is our God?’”
And then God spoke to me. He told me that, as for the release of the children, it was going to be dramatic. He did not tell me the timing or the details. Then He told me that if I left that aspect by itself, He would talk to me a bit about what would happen after this particular incident.
Among the things he said, He mentioned what would happen to those who have been sponsoring terrorism and kidnapping in Nigeria. He also spoke about several other things. I did not have any idea of what was going to happen here. I only know that my son, the father of that young man who has been the organiser, told me about this meeting. He knew I would be in America for the American convention of our church, and I was supposed to have been on my way to Nigeria by last Sunday.
The programme will be taking place tonight, and I said I would wait. So, if I disappear before the programme is over, it is because another assignment is waiting, and it is not in America at all.
I am happy that you said this programme is not political. I am not holding this meeting to discredit the government, and so on and so forth. If we talk about what is happening in Nigeria, vis-a-vis Christianity, it is a bit difficult for me to bear all that is happening there.
But in Africa, the elders are the custodians of very deep philosophy. They may not be highly educated, but they have education, if you know what I mean.
They say that after an elder has eaten some soup, no matter what is happening, the soup will not shake in his stomach. The point is that an elder, to be called an elder, must be able to suffer long and just pretend that nothing is happening.
One of the things people were complaining about was that I am from the southern part of Nigeria, and the northern part is supposed to be predominantly Muslim. So they were accusing me, in particular, that because I am in the south, I am not paying enough attention to the churches in the north.
So I smiled in pain. I smiled in pain because, as of now, in the north, where the persecution is supposed to be toughest, I have more than 8,000 churches under my care. I have suffered things that, if the soup were to shake in the belly of the elder, we would not be having this kind of meeting.
One of my daughters, a pastor in the north, went for what we call morning evangelism. It is simply telling everybody, loud and clear: “Jesus loves you.” That is all she was doing. She was passing by the front of a mosque. Some people came out of the mosque and killed her. That was not hidden; it was news….
The younger generation of Christians made some suggestions. “The police will not come. They have done their own. Let us do our own.” They said: “We know the mosque. We know the chief imam. Let us do something. After all, the police will not come.”
And I smiled, because if I had agreed that we should do what they said we should do, you know young people now. All you need to do is give the go-ahead. By the time they finish, even you will say: “I did not ask you to go that far.”
But I told them: “If there is going to be a religious war in Nigeria, I will not be the one who will start it.”
As you saw in the video tonight, where some people were being slaughtered — I am happy they took it away very quickly — it reminds me of what happened in one of our churches in the north.
I have taught my own people: We do not run. Light does not run from darkness under any circumstances.
So Boko Haram drove away the churches in the Middle Belt. The pastors there fled, but my pastor refused to move. One day, they came to visit him at home. “He does not want to go. We know what to do.”
But he was not in. However, his wife was in, and she had just given birth to a set of twins. So they said: “Well, the husband is not home. We will leave him a gift that will cause him to move.” And they slaughtered the twins.
The soup was not shaking in the belly of the elder. When I heard, of course, the poor little mother nearly went mad. It was quite a terrible experience. So I told my son, the pastor, “Come to the south. You have already paid your price. I mean, when you get to heaven now, and Paul is bragging about how many times they beat him and how many times they stoned him, you can say, ‘Okay, you never married. You never had a set of twins. I had a set of twins, and I lost them for Christ’s sake.’”
I said: “You have made a mark. Come to the south. We will arrange for somebody else to take your place.” He looked at me and said, “Daddy, what are you saying? You also taught us that we do not run, and we did not run.”
They are still there. Not only are they still there, to mark the occasion, we established an IDP camp. The children have been there. We started a school for them, and they have been around now for years. As a matter of fact, by the grace of God, come this September, we are going to start a secondary school there.
The IDP camp had, of course, the mothers and the children. Where were the men? They can run, but they cannot settle. So we had to arrange for the mothers to learn something they could do, because, after all, one day, they are going back home.
Amen.
By the special grace of God.
