THE KINGDOM WAY TO FIGHT BOKO HARAM, ETC

Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor
President, CAN

"Earlier at the site of the carnage, he told reporters that, while he does not support reprisal attacks, Christians need to rise up and defend themselves. That was not the first time he would be making such a call. Nor has he been alone. Other Christian leaders are on record as saying the same thing. Problem is they never say how!"

In the aftermath of the Christmas day bombing of St Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, near Abuja, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), was livid with anger. His Tuesday statement said that much:

"I am extremely angry. This is a barbaric and most uncivilised action of human beings in a civilised world. Even animals have respect for each other. It is inhuman, it's barbaric! It's satanic…Christmas is a day when over 80 million Nigerians join billions of fellow Christians across the globe to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, wouldn't you just respect that?...”

Earlier at the site of the carnage, he told reporters that, while he does not support reprisal attacks, Christians need to rise up and defend themselves. That was not the first time he would be making such a call. Nor has he been alone. Other Christian leaders are on record as saying the same thing. Problem is they never say how!

This was why I wrote a four-part serial, “Understanding Kingdom Warfare,” last February. And that is why I am reproducing much of the concluding part of that serial this wonderful New Year’s Day in the hope that somebody out there will catch the vision.

“…The following points can bear repeating: One; that the call upon our brothers and sisters in northern Nigeria, who have been the target of brutal, fatal attacks to rise in self-defence, has come not a moment too soon. This is because the aberration of children of a warrior God known and addressed liberally in scripture as Jehovah Sabaoth (the Lord of the Armies of Heaven), being made mince meat, as it were, by agents of a defeated cowardly foe has gone on for too long.

“Two, support for that point of view is not support for physically arming Christians with guns and machetes and bombs and forming militias. It is quite simply a call upon children of God to rise up and utilize those weapons that are already available to them as identified in the Bible; weapons, which are in no way physical or carnal; yet they are no less potent. This much is clear from these words of Apostle Paul: “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

“Three, the resort to spiritual, rather than physical weapons, is necessitated by the biblical insight that the men and women who stalk, attack, maim and kill are not the real enemies. They are mere tools in the hands of an evil general known as satan, who is a spirit and can therefore only be dealt with in the spirit realm. Again Apostle Paul offered us that insight when he wrote: ‘For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the despotisms, against the powers, against [the master spirits who are] the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere (Ephesians 6:12)…’  

“Four, the same Paul identified what he called the whole armour of God clearly in verses 14-17 of Ephesians 6 from which we have already quoted as follows: ‘Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (emphasis added).

“Five…all but the last component of the ‘whole armour of God’ are defensive weapons. Only the sword of the spirit is a weapon of offense. Yet, a very critical part of defensive warfare is attack, preemptive attack or to put in street language ‘attack is the best form of defence’.

“The point was also made that the Church, generally speaking, cannot be found guilty of failing to teach on truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith and salvation. This, as I noted, is understandable because, they are “basic and foundational to our faith”…Unfortunately the word as the sword of the Spirit is not as comprehensively taught as it ought to be, and that is what has given the enemy the victory he continues to enjoy, not just in northern Nigeria, but in virtually every part of the world.”  Happy new year, Nigeria.

Yet, the Bible didn’t mince words about the place of the word in Kingdom warfare. The writer of the book of Hebrews said of this power-packed weapon: “The word is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword… (4:12). The Good News translation of the latter part of Ephesians 6:17 urges us to “accept…the word of God as the sword which the Spirit gives you” while the Amplified version in that same verse described the word as “the sword that the Spirit wields…” 

At least two verses in the book of Revelations throw further light on this subject. First, the Lord Jesus was not armed any differently. It was said of him that …”out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword” (1:16), and then described tellingly as “he which hath the sharp sword with two edges” (2:12).”

Two things become apparent here. The Lord won all his victories not by using bazookas and ICBMs. He won by using the word. Two, he won by doing the one thing that you do with words: spoke them out of his mouth, using his tongue, allowed them beyond his lips. In other words our mouths serve as the rocket launchers. That explains why the Bible has such verses as:  “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” (Proverbs 18:21); “…the lips of the wise shall preserve them (Proverbs 14:3)…”

The critical point to note in all of these, however, is that the mouth is not a free agent. It does not speak of its own volition; it speaks what the mind says to speak. The mind, on the other hand, is, at every given point, fed by one of two sources: the Spirit of God though the heart, or the spirit of satan through the senses.  The Bible puts it this way: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart (mind) bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart (mind) bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh (Luke 6:45; parenthesis added).

It takes knowledge to grasp these truths and run with them. That is why teaching is very critical and urgent, if we are to rise from the current helpless victim mentality that pervades the church.