A True Story of Unwavering Faith
I asked myself this strong question everyday: Can I really lay down my life for the sake of Christ and His gospel? Please take time to read this, it will definitely help.
This is a true story. During the period of the persecution, a certain woman determined that nothing would make her to recant her faith in Christ. She had opportunity to run away from her country, but she was there until the persecutors captured her; over 300 angry people with big sticks and cutlasses specially designed to administer excruciating deaths to condemned people.
However, this woman was also pregnant with twins. Her husband had already denied her publicly. One of her daughters had already been killed, yet, she was not moved.
Until that evening, when the men of the council came, it was a big show. The most painful part is that her husband led the persecutors to where his wife was. With those big sticks, they started hitting her. When they were through for the day, they tied her on the tree. She was there until the next evening.
She was crying for she was hungry. She was enduring excruciating pains. The children in her womb were hungry too but there she was, tied under ant-infested tree. Ants were biting her. There was no food or water for her so she cried until the next morning.
When the day broke, passersby were going to beat her for fun and mock her because she was accused of being bewitched. For the fact that this woman was well educated and massively respected, it took her persecutors over two hours to decide how best to kill her, so that her death would be shameful and very painful.
Only a handful few had pity on her but were afraid to identify with her for fear of death. While she shivered because of hunger and thirst, yet the smiles on her face was radiating so much that the men who were torturing her became furious. “How could someone we have tortured this way for a whole day look happier than us?” they asked themselves. They could not understand it! Finally, they brought her out and told her, “Look at this man, he is your husband. Look at that man, he is your church leader.” They showed her all those that have denounced Jesus and renounced that He did not rise from the dead; that he was an impostor. “We give you the final opportunity to denounce this man Jesus, we will set you free and restore to you all your privileges, and you shall be promoted in the council and compensated handsomely for all the pains inflicted on you. But if you refuse to denounce Jesus, we shall look for more gruesome ways to kill you in other to tell the whole council that you died like a fool,” they told her.
As they threatened, her face was lighted up with radiating smiles. At the moment she heard that word ‘fool’, she looked up and asked her Pastor and her husband, “Did you hear them? Have you forgotten that God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise? Is it not a privilege to be a fool in the hand of God than to be wise among men?”
She quickly turned to her executioners and said to them, “Officers, instead of denouncing Jesus to gain properties and privileges from the king, I rather die joyfully.” She further begged them to employ the best brains in the land to think out the cruelest way to kill her. “This Jesus you want me to denounce was killed in more gruesome way than you can ever imagine. I cannot denounce a man that left eternity and came to die for me to be saved because of few properties you have promised. Make haste to end my life in whichever way you wish. For the moment my eyes are closed, a better life will begin for me, where this Jesus shall wipe out all tears from my face,” she said.
“Threaten me not with death for I died this death the day I accepted that He died for me. Threaten me not because of the children in my womb. Whatsoever betides them, I leave them before God. As for me, it is better I die with them than to die and leave them behind in a world that has turned her back on her Savior,” she concluded.
As they put her inside a drum with water, and lit a fire under the drum, she began to laugh. Hundreds of people gathered to witness her execution; how she was going to boil with her unborn babies. As the water got hotter and hotter, the smiles on her face got broader and brighter. The chief executioner could not take it. He commanded them to stop and bring the woman out and when they required from him the reason, he said to them that whatever this woman believed in and was ready to die such death was worth dying for. He took the woman’s hand and placed them on his head, and begged the woman to pray for him.
Under the pains, the woman muttered words of prayer for him. With that anger, the next in command ordered that the man and the woman be tied on a horse. The woman was already burned halfway. Looking at her, one can see that the babies in her womb were about to burst out. Her body was gone. Her breasts were gone yet the smile on her face was broad. As they tied them on the horse, they rode the horse throughout the rough and hilly parts of the province. By the time the riders came back, they were already torn to pieces with some of the part of the bodies of the unborn babies picked from different parts of the road.
That was how that woman gallantly died. She did not compromise even in the face of unimaginable torture. But like Jesus, even at the point of death, she converted another gallant man who made a choice to live for Jesus even though it cost him his life.
The Call to a True Gospel
Man and woman of God, we must stop telling the body of Christ the gospel of how people sowed into our television ministries and became commissioners in governments. We must stop preaching the gospel of how people sowed into our programs abroad and got unmerited promotions in their offices. That is why the hearts of many Christians today are far from God. They do not love God. They only love what God is willing to give to them.
That is why somebody has to beg them to come to church when it is raining. That is why somebody has to beg them to come to choir practice because they have not bought new clothes. Yes, that is why the women have threatened that if God did not give them their husbands by the end of the year, they would go and live with any man of their choices. Why are we blaming them? Since they joined our churches, all we have been telling them has been about miracles, riches, marriage, jobs, contracts, scholarships etc. Do they even know that there is hell fire? How many of all these sons and daughters we brag about as members can say “If I perish, I perish” for the sake of the Cross?
Sir, you and I know that some of these people following us did not come because of the love they have for God. They are here because of the miracles we promised them. We are well aware of numerous churches they have attended previously before joining our churches. We know how many other prophets in town they were patronizing before they discovered us. And we know that they will soon stop attending our churches too if we do not deliver sharp miracles to them. Do you not think it is time to tell our people the truth? If it is only in this world that we have hope, then we are of all men most miserable.
We do not really need members who cannot be able, if need be, die for Jesus. Let us not be deceived by large crowds attending our church services. People may be calling us mega churches, but when God looks down from heaven, He may be seeing the likes of abortion clinics, where spiritual destinies of men and women are being aborted on daily basis. We may have succeeded in building wonderful and very expensive churches, but of truth, inside these our church buildings may be real decaying of souls going taking place. We now entertain sinners when they come to church. The situation has gotten so bad that worldly entertainers are now given opportunities to climb holy altars to entertain people. We now sing unholy songs in the churches. That the name ‘Jesus’ is mentioned in a song does not make the song gospel. Let God help us.
Our general overseers must be reminded that gathering huge crowds is not really the issue after all. It is not about the quantity, but bringing quality into the quantity.
From year to year, if none of your members in your crowd has come to tell you that he is hungry to invade places to win souls for Christ, sir, heaven may have put ‘caveat emptor’ on your ministry.
A Call to Action
If an Imam could teach his followers how to live and be ready to die for Mohammed, a prophet that died and could not conquer the grave, and you see these boys wielding weapons, killing and dying in defense of a randy prophet, why would none of your members, who has been sitting under you for years be able to defend the cause of the Cross, even in the face of martyrdom? Something must be wrong with the gospel you preach or the heart from where it is coming from. Greater than what hit America and even turkey is coming to hit Nigeria if the Truth did not get back to our pulpits.
I speak as a prophet: In the next five years, if there is no spiritual awakening in Nigeria, then, fifteen years from now, you will not be able to use microphone to call Jesus on any street in Nigeria. Somebody is saying it is not possible and all the big churches and big men are deceiving you now when Moslems are busy carrying out their Agendas little by little. May God help all of us. That was the case in Turkey, but today, Christianity has gone underground in Turkey. There were also great men and women of God in Indonesia. But it got to a point when some young boys and girls whose hearts God touched were crying against compromising of the word of God in their churches and the level of spiritual comatose their ministers plunged into, but that generation called them ‘sadists’ who were not happy that churches were being built everywhere in town. These young men and women were accused of being jealous of the exotic cars men of God were riding because they do not have any.
But today, you cannot mention the name of Jesus in public places in Indonesia. The same Indonesia where men were miraculously walking on waters. Where even government officials were calling Christians to come and help them preach to the armed robbers in their prisons. Now, where are all those big auditoriums? It all happened because that generation did not care to raise a generation after them that would be ready to defend Jesus with their lives.
Brother, the same evil wind that blew in Turkey and Indonesia is threatening our continent Africa. But as for some of us, we have made a vow that we will not be here and watch Satan wreck the legacy of our fathers. We may not know what will happen when we would have gone to be with the Lord, but we are asking God for the grace to pay commensurate price, such that our children, even the ones unborn, will not inherit big auditoriums without God inside them.
Even if we are not able to leave behind private jets and acres of lands individually, we trust God to leave behind boys and girls that would hate sin and would not be afraid to call it sin, no matter how popular it has become.
We must raise boys and girls, men and women who will open more churches. But we will also raise boys and girls who will close many more churches. They may not be perfect, but in their weakness, grace will be speaking for them and they will never compromise.
They will have money and money will not have them. We shall raise celebrities who will be signing autographs, but you will still be seeing them in malls preaching the gospel and persuading people to accept Jesus.
Sir, that generation will soon be on earth. God has not released them to us yet because He has not seen Himself in our hearts. The only thing He sees in our hearts are vain things that will not secure His glory in our lives.
Pray like this: Oh God, give me grace. I promise to raise a generation for you that will not denounce Your Holy Son Jesus, even in the face of death – Amen.