In recent times I have been asking myself a lot of questions
and a certain burden for the Church (the Body of Christ) particularly in my
native country Nigeria. One story that I heard, which sparked some of these
questions, was about a young Christian lady, who was in an office where some
money had been stolen and no one knew who the thief was. A member of staff
suggested that all the staff would be subjected to a test, by a juju man,
assuring the owner of the company that this fail-safe method would reveal the
thief. This Christian lady followed the other members of staff to the place and
allowed herself to go through all the rituals the man said were necessary. I
asked myself a simple question, how come this tongue-talking, Spirit-filled,
church worker couldn't provide any solutions to the problem at hand but instead
submitted herself to such base things? Couldn't she have “activated” a gift of
the Spirit? That is what leads me to the reason for this post.
Recently I heard a prophetic teacher say something about a
very popular scripture. What caught my attention is that I had never considered
in this light he was bring before. Matthew 16:18, 19 says:
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
I have always seen that scripture as the Church trying to
defend itself against an onslaught of the kingdom of darkness. However when you
consider that the keys of the kingdom of heaven has been given to the Church,
to bind and loose God’s desires on the earth, then it gives you another
outlook. In fact Jesus describes the church as advancing (keywords: BUILD MY
CHURCH), which is obvious that we are the ones attacking and not defending. At
the time Jesus spoke these words, the gates signified the group of people who
determined the course of a society (its language, way of life, education, etc).
In fact it was the Romans who invented this ekklesia, which was their
way to change the culture of a people, to resemble Rome, without using force
but by infiltration.
Secondly, notice the word used here is gates (plural) which
means that the forces are not singular. Over the years, what we as God’s people
have focused on is trying to bring the influence of God into our society by
taking the religious mountain. We conclude that if people can attend church, we
can easily penetrate our culture. If we do more prayer and fasting, hold more
worship concerts and revival meetings, then our society would be aglow for
Jesus. What we are not aware of is the fact that the things that influence behavior
(and culture) are more than these Christian activities. I’m sure we may have
heard about the 7 mountains or culture shapers namely, Education, Government,
Media, Arts & Entertainment, Family, Religion and Economy.
Over the years our strategy, in my own observation, has been
to get Christians heavily involved in the church community and environment,
hoping that this would prepare them to take over in the other places of
influence. What we have seen, from experience, is that our guys enter into the
Arts & Entertainment Mountain and get swallowed up completely leading to
choir directors coming out to say that they are now inspirational singers and
not gospel singers anymore. People from the church enter politics and are
swallowed up by the corruption in that mountain and you wonder if this guy, who
ran for senatorial seat in Abuja and was an active worker in the church you both attended, is still a believer in Jesus and His ways of
doing things.
What our spiritual warfare, in the form of prayers, worship,
fastings, etc do is actually put angels in operation to disallow satanic powers
from taking up the ruling power at the gates (where the outcomes of the
mountains are decided). At such a time in our nation Nigeria, what the church
should be doing is raising men and women who are like David; their spirituality
not only delivers access into the divine but also the taking over of territories
and the ousting of the oppressors of the people, Philistia. What the church
needs to do is to ensure that men and women of maturity and wisdom get to the
tops of these mountains of influence and bring God’s kingdom to bear on the
earth or else perversion will sweep the nations and eat up the people of God.
The devil’s agenda in the last days is simple, take over the earth by putting people
he can control in places of leadership and influence. If he does this, then he
can easily legislate and legalize evil and find people who will help him
express the lawlessness he wants to proliferate.
