By Reno Omokri
I am afraid I will have to strongly disagree with Pastor Adeboye. No “Fire of God will consume all those trying to mess around with our traditional rulers.” The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God is a much loved and respected elder in the Lord. However, we cannot keep outsourcing to God what He has equipped us to deal with by ourselves. That is complacency and fatalism. And faith without works is dead!
We call upon the God of Israel to deal with kidnappers and bandits. But Israel, whose God we call upon, calls upon their army to deal with their own version of kidnappers and bandits.
Miracles are for things we cannot do for ourselves. What was God’s response to Moses? “The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?”-Exodus 4:2.
Nigeria ought to answer that question God asked Moses.
If the Southwest and, indeed, the rest of Nigeria want security, we must all support Senator Ned Nwoko’s bill proposing that Nigerians be authorised to bear arms in self-defence. Because our gallant military is overstretched, we must now help them by stretching ourselves. That is better than calling for God to secure us when God gave us hands and trigger fingers.
Self-defence is an inelianable right vested in every human being according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And we see it in Scripture. “Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other.”-Nehemiah 4:17. Nehemiah would have died if he had waited for God to do for him what God had empowered him and Israel to do for themselves.
If bullets start flying in the other direction, bandits and kidnappers will begin looking for a different profession. When Apostle Johnson Suleman was attacked, it was bullets that terminated the bandits.
Times have changed since the days of Elijah, but God has not changed. The God that answers by fire is still God. But today, He has given us the wisdom to answer by firepower in registered weapons if our lives are threatened.
And finally, God does not love traditional rulers more than professional beggars. Everybody’s life is important to God and is sacrosanct, except they themselves took a life. So, let us not act as if the life of an Oba is more sacrosanct than the life of another. The killings must stop. Full stop!
Reno Omokri Is a Gospeller, Deep Thinker,he writes from Lagos.
