THE UNITY QUESTION (3)

KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com


In concluding paragraph of my piece on Church Unity last week, I had pressed into action a wonderful man of God, Pastor Kenneth Copeland by quoting one of his many exhortations on the issue. In it this widely traveled veteran, who runs one of the most efficient ministry machines in the world, pointed out that, standing alone, we would continue to under-perform for God. He showed from the word that the very best of us can only have a measure of faith which though adequate to meet our individual needs is grossly insufficient for the assignment the Lord Jesus gave the church, the Great Commission.

He had then asserted that joining together was the solution. According to him: “ Ephesians 4:13 says that when we all come together in the unity of the faith, we'll have "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. In other words, when the Body of Christ comes together and begins to function as one, we'll have the Holy Spirit without measure--just like Jesus did! We'll begin to see ministries functioning in the fullness of their callings. We'll begin to see manifestations of the Holy Spirit in full measure. We'll see Jesus in fullness as we've never seen Him before…” I had then urged that we should fix this “disunity thing” before it “destroys everything we profess”. I was quite content to leave the matter like that and move on to other issues. Then I received a book. Lent to me by one of the many wonderful members of my church family, Rev Moses ‘Segun Oyebola, a man with an uncanny ability to select the best, I found myself poring over the 178-page volume over and over again in the last few days. The book, I Dare to Call Him Father, is not new having been first published in 1978; I had heard bits and pieces of the story of the woman whose story it told, but somehow, I never got round to reading the book. Permit me to paraphrase the story of Bilquis Sheikh, the author and character of the book as briefly as possible. She was wealthy, aristocratic and therefore powerful. Wealth and happiness do not necessarily always co-habit. So by the time we meet her in this book, she was already a 46 year-old recluse, hiding away from the larger society in her Pakistani village of Wah. Still smarting from a very bitter divorce from her husband, a Pakistani Army general, with whom she had three children, she spent her time nursing her vast garden and harassing her retinue of servants. Then things started happening. An evil presence in her garden, a mystery illness affecting her four- year-old grandson and a visit by a muezzin to help out the Islamic way led Bilquis into a search for something or someone beyond her. For someone from a family which had some 700 years of Moslem heritage, she naturally began from the Koran. Eventually disillusioned, she started, with the seemingly ”harmless” curiosity of a child began to “meddle” with the Bible. Then she began to dream dreams and have visions of the Christian kind! In one of such dreams she had dinner with the Lord Jesus. It didn’t have much meaning to her at the time, but she found herself pressing on in the direction of finding out more about the Christian God. Then someone suggested to her to see, call and try to relate to God as a father. Though, at first staggered by the whole idea of seeing the creator of heaven and earth as a mere father, much against the belief of her erstwhile faith, she tried it or rather “dared to call him father” and she had a most thrilling experience of his presence in her bedroom.Next, she encountered Jesus. Not long after she was baptised in the Holy Spirit and later still, went for water baptism. For this writer, the core of the Bilquis story was her wonderful continuous experience of the Holy Spirit in her life right through the persecution that followed; her first trip to Singapore; her relocation to the United States of America and her extensive ministry in that country and beyond; through to her subsequent death in 1997 (not covered in this edition of the book). One little step out of the line of good Christian living and she would feel the divine presence leaving her and as she retraced herself she would sense the presence had returned! In case you are, by now, already telling yourself, “what an intriguing story, but what has it got to do with the subject matter of unity in the church, please come with me to this passage in the book’s foreword written by Catherine Marshall: “…The intensity of Madame Sheikh’s passion to witness for her Lord has fulfilled God’s primary condition for bestowing His special gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts, with the unction and authority that come with them are very apparent to all who hear her speak across the country (USA). Yet the fact that she fits no established pattern puzzles many who are more comfortable when any given leader can be tagged. “One Christian leader demanded in a letter that she state whether or not she was Charismatic. She sat at her desk thinking about that question and how even a single word can divide those who love Christ. Playfully, on impulse she picked up a quarter from her purse and said, ‘Well Father, You decide.’ “She flipped the quarter into the air saying, ‘Heads, I’m Charismatic; tails, I’m not. The silver coin spun blithely in the air, then dropped to her carpet. She could hardly believe what she saw. Kneeling down to make certain, she chuckled. What better proof could she have of the Lord’s sense of humor? The quarter had landed on its edge in the thick folds ad was standing straight up.” This is certainly not a usual way to resolve your doubts in things of the Spirit and I certainly do not recommend it what Bilquis was quoted as saying after this tiny episode in her walk with God struck me as key to our understanding what Christians should unite behind… what in contemporary lingo is the “koko”. Continues Marshall in the foreword: “The lesson Bilquis says, is that the important thing is not how we worship or what words we use or what tags we tie on, but do we love our neighbors? Are we guided by His Holy Spirit? Do we obey him implicitly? Do we weep for those who do not know Christ? Do we long to share our knowledge of Him?” Dear reader and respected Church leaders, how do you answer those questions? Those really are the basics of Christianity which qualifies anyone to be our brothers and sisters. But if Bilquis’ method of determining her tag or lack of it blinds you to the truth of her words, perhaps you won’t find Kenneth Copeland’s voice too strident, as I quote an even more recent exhortation of his on Church Unity.
According to him, anyone who knows, “how to listen to the voice of God can hear Him calling throughout the Body of Christ today. He is calling for unity. He is calling us to lay down our disagreements and come together in preparation for Jesus' return.” He admits that even the thought of uniting “scares some believers” and he could hear them saying: ‘How can I unify with someone from another denomination?’ ‘I'm not going to give up my doctrines and agree with theirs just for unity's sake!’ What they don't realize, continues Copeland, is that “scriptural unity isn't based on doctrine. Winds of doctrine, according to Ephesians 4:14, are childish. Winds of doctrine don't unify. They divide and blow people in every direction. The Word doesn't say anything about us coming into the unity of our doctrines. It says we'll come into the unity of the faith”. “In the past”, he said “we've failed to understand that and tried to demand doctrinal unity from each other anyway. ‘If you don't agree with me on the issue of tongues,’ we've said, ‘or on the timing of the rapture...or on the proper depth for baptismal waters, I won't accept you as a brother in the Lord. I'll break fellowship with you”. Brother Copeland decries that attitude as unrepresentative of “God’s way of doing things”. God, he says “doesn't have a long list of doctrinal demands for us to meet. His requirements are simple. First John 3:23 tells us what they are: to believe on the Name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another.” Copeland recommends that “you and I come to a place where we keep those requirements and quit worrying about the rest” so that, “we'll be able to forget our denominational squabbles and come together in the unity of faith” And as we do ”we'll grow so strong together that the winds of doctrine won't be able to drive us apart. When that happens, the devil's going to panic because the unity of the faith of God's people is a staggering thing. It's the most unlimited, powerful thing on earth.” In concluding this series on church unity, I end with these words of Kenneth Copeland: “Right now all over the world, the Spirit is calling the Church of the living God to unite. Hear Him and obey, and you can be a part of one of the most magnificent moves of God this world has ever seen”. May I add that Nigeria is destined to be in the vanguard of that move.

First published in a Nigerian Daily, the Sunday Independent, published in Lagos Nigeria.