That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 31: On the Spirit of Sudan

How soon the picture plays out. God be praised for how far He has spread the word He gave, on “The Spirit of Sudan,” to which there have been several responses from far and near.  May God bless everyone who played a part in spreading the word.  One reader added: “Please remember to pray against ‘the spirit of Ivory Coast’ also.”

How soon the picture plays out.  A few months back, it was only a prophecy.  Right now, it is a clear agenda. A few days after sending out the online message, “The Spirit of Sudan,” just before Christmas, Yahoo news repeated the same interpretation of the Boko Haram handwritings. It said again, “…Boko Haram… is trying to ignite sectarian strife in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and top oil producer.”  (http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-president-declares-emergency-north-164323735.html).

Yesterday, I got an sms from a missionary in the city of Jos, citing a Boko Haram threat in The Vanguard newspaper, ordering Southerners/Christians to leave the north in three days. Today, January 3, 2012, it is the headline in many dailies: The Moment: “Boko Haram issues 3-day ultimatum to southerners”; This Day: “Boko Haram asks Christians, Southerners to Leave the North”; Vanguard: “Boko Haram gives Christians 3 days to quit North,” etc. A retired military officer who saw the first civil war remarks in the papers that these are all the signs of the first civil war. It is no more just a prophecy.  It is a deliberate agenda stirring provocation so as to repeat in Nigeria what Sudan has painfully gone through in more than 20 years of what has been described as Africa’s longest civil war.

Thanks to those who prayed, and those who still pray. Earlier in the day, I asked the Lord, “You have asked us to pray.  How do we pray this prayer?  You have identified the spirit to confront in this conflict as the Spirit of Sudan, but with what weapons do we engage this spirit?”  I have not got an answer yet, but these were my deep thoughts: if God asks us to pray, then the matter must be something that is avertable; something that prayers can handle.  The danger is, if we do not pray; if we merely complain or threaten, having confidence in means other than the Divine…  I have not received an answer yet on how this prayer should be prayed, but while we pray our various prayers and all manner of prayers, I am consoled in Romans 8:26:

And in the same way — by our faith — the Holy Spirit helps us with our daily problems and in our praying. For we don't even know what we should pray for nor how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with such feeling that it cannot be expressed in words (The Living Bible).

Again, thanks for all the prayers so far.  A number of bomb attempts have been frustrated already, significantly in the south of Nigeria, as warned in the prophetic word in the message, “The Spirit of Sudan.” For instance, attempts were frustrated at undisclosed locations in Makurdi, Benue State; according to the Vanguard newspapers of today (page 12), also at Winners Chapel in Benin City, Edo State, etc.

In the afternoon of December 31, 2011, on my way from a prayer crusade in a riverine community, I suddenly got overwhelmed by a prayer burden and realized a fast had begun. I sensed in my spirit it might not be unconnected with the issues in the nation.  Where we stopped to pick my car and for the children to eat, I was offered a meal but could not eat.  I began to pray in the spirit, trying to relieve the burden that had come upon my soul.  On the way, I had to stop at a pastor’s house.  I begged him and his wife to please, pause all they had to do for us to lift the undefined burden together. As we prayed, he saw a vision of a ship whose helm had pulled off, heading out of control towards a rock, and a second vision of the sons of Ishmael on their way to plant bombs in certain specific locations in the south of the country, against the New Year celebrations the next day. We all prayed more focus, even the children, until there was a brief relief.

In 2 Samuel 7:14, God not only promised to be a Father to Solomon the new king, but also specified the prophetic instrument of chastening that He would use on that son if he erred.  That instrument of chastening He described as “the rod of men,” and “the stripes of the children of men.”  I have usually said, from experience over the years, that the rod God uses to wake up the Church in Nigeria each time we are about to slumber, is the rod of Islam.  We would be about to sleep when we hear that a Moslem President wants to smuggle Nigeria into the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and all the churches would unite in spite of differences and begin to pray, and God would use those prayers to achieve a great landmark for us. Soon as that battle is won, we would be about to slip back into sleep before we are again jolted by sharia threats from the north. That would galvanize us back into prayers by which some fresh gains are made for the Kingdom, and so on.  The last stirring before the recent Boko Haram whip was the matter of Islamic banking in Nigeria, over which some of their nobles also threatened a war.  About Islamic baking, we protested, we prayed, then fell silent. 

It is my persuasion that God did not raise President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan for nothing.  He was borne out of prayers, but is at present at risk of being abandoned by those whose prayers birthed him, so again, God has had to wield His peculiar “rod” for stirring the Church in Nigeria into prayers by which He can do what next He is about to do in Nigeria, otherwise we would miss the full gains of Jonathan’s presidency.  What threatens every Christian in this season specifically targets President Jonathan himself, who well understands the dynamics, for which from thence prayer requests have gone out to the Church, specifically to those spiritually more disposed to national intercessory concerns.  God needs the prayers of men and women on which to ride into any land (Ezekiel 22:30).  I still recall the Kenyan/Somalia experience, as recounted in message “The Spirit of Sudan.”  If God heard and saw the response of Nineveh to His message through the prophet Jonah, may He also look upon us favourably, in Jesus name.  Amen.

I have just had a trance as I paused and shut my eyes a moment ago while reading over to conclude this piece, and wondering still on how to fight the present battle.  I saw the silhouette of the naked torso (upper body) of a colossal reddish creature like a man, with long jagged hairs like dread locks, flailing in the air as he staggered dazed, like a wrestler or boxer staggers under sever blows before he crashes to the ground and passes out or is counted out.  I seem to understand that it is the Spirit of Sudan, already tottering under the blows of our prayers, but not yet down, not yet out. Warriors in death throes are never lightly to be ignored.  Their every blow could carry the desperate deadliness of a dying man; and if they should recover back to their feet, it gets tougher.