The World Has Nothing on Us (Edited by ChatGPT)

  

It is a well-known fact that the Lord has a plan from the Horn of Africa to the world. But what is special about the faithful in the Horn of Africa? The faithful here grew their faith with minimal interaction with the external world, flourishing under the oppression of a monarchy that promoted the national religion of Orthodox “Christianity,” and later under a socialist regime that classified most Protestant faiths as Western idealism and weapons of imperialism.

 

Their foundation was never the depth of theology or the complexity of thought, but the purity and biblical nature of their faith. They read the Bible as children of God, understanding it without bias and without the complex theologies of a lost world. Their faith was justified by the work of the Holy Spirit, which not only justified them and grew them into millions, but also united them beyond denominational differences.

 

They were faithful rescuers, drawing people out of dead religions like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and traditional devilish practices, and bringing them to the biblical foundation of the gospel. They focused on Scripture and the work of evangelism rather than the petty theological battles of a dying world. In this Horn, whether Adventist, Lutheran, Baptist, or otherwise, differences were set aside. Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-Day Saints, and similar groups were excluded. Instead, they built biblical faith on the core truths of the gospel, not on denominational pride.

 

These soldiers of God were hunted by both society and the state. They were persecuted, imprisoned, killed, labeled agents of imperialism, and condemned to poverty and suffering. They were the most hated and rejected members of society, yet they built a faithful people in the image of Jesus, transforming the nation from within. When government changed in 1991 and freedom of worship was granted, the greatest problem was not oppression but the lack of space — the number of believers had multiplied through house-to-house discipleship, and leaders themselves did not realize how vast the movement had grown.

 

These disciples of the Lord were the real thing — true followers who walked as He walked. They did not wage war, but loved their enemies. They blessed when cursed, loved when hated, and gave all to gain Christ. They suffered in the flesh but grew in the Spirit, becoming millions shaped in the image of the Lord. It was the authentic church, made by Jesus Himself, through a disorganized yet Spirit-driven house-to-house gospel.

 

Yet with freedom came bureaucracy, church politics, and polluted theology imported from West, East, and Africa in heavy doses. The old generation became politicians of religion, driving out the Heavenly Fire, while the younger generation embraced strange fire and confusion. God was mixed with the devil, the Bible with human abominations, and the Spirit’s fire with the devil’s counterfeit fire. Church politics quenched the Spirit, while the youth embraced chaos, boasting of “fire” but lacking the Word of God. The old lost heaven; the young remade the world.

 

Now the old are dogmatic Pharisees, worshiping themselves and pointing to the failures of the young. They stand in assemblies like the Pharisee in the temple, thanking God that they are not like the youth. The young, meanwhile, look with admiration to the failed faith of the West, East, and Africa because it seems to have fire and prosperity. They claim divine approval for this fire, but only God knows what fire it truly is. The result has been the retreat of the Holy Spirit and a deterioration in the quality of faith across the country. The fruit of the Spirit is rarely seen, while the works of the flesh are mislabeled as spiritual gifts.

 

What is good about the Horn is not our present state, but our roots — roots that go back to Jesus Himself and can sustain the pure gospel. Just as Jesus, the Root of Jesse, brought forth David, there remains here a root of the Lord that can sustain His way. Our theology is not borrowed from the world but grown from within. That foundation can carry the true gospel in ways that many places around the world cannot.

 

That is why, standing on the shoulders of the giants before us, we must rebuild their path — the way of the Lord, the way of the true disciples of the first century — guided by biblical knowledge and the hand of the Holy Spirit. We have been given the chance to understand the gospel in its purity, and this is our contribution to the global church. Ours is a faith not only read in Scripture but lived in practice.

 

We know we can love our enemies, because we have seen it done. We can die for the faith and suffer for it, because we know those who lived that way. We can give all for the Lord, because we come from those who gave all for Him. The world finds it impossible to follow in Christ’s footsteps, but we have seen it done by those who went before us. We are not heirs of those who complain about poverty while building prosperity gospels, but of those who embraced poverty, persecution, isolation, and endless suffering, dying to the world so that millions might live to Christ. They crucified the world and themselves to the world, and harvested heavenly fruit in the form of millions who not only confess Jesus as Lord but also live as His disciples.

 

This is why we are in a special position to preach the gospel to the world — the real gospel, not the counterfeit that is destroying faith elsewhere. It means returning to our foundation: the Bible, the Lord, the disciples, and our local giants. It means building on that foundation with the Word of God and the Spirit, so that we might help rescue Protestant faith from sinking into the sea of worldliness.

 

The problem is that some among us, both old and young, are trying to reshape us into the image of the lost world. They say, “Look to the West” — but that is seed sown among thorns and choked by the flesh. They say, “Look to the East” — but that is faith on stony ground, fading as fast as it sprouts. They say, “Look to Africa” — but much of it is a vast field of the devil. Saddest of all, they call this death “spiritual growth” and urge us to imitate it. But we must instead show the world the image of Jesus, of Paul, Peter, John, and of our own giants of faith. To a dying world we must say: we are not of the world, and we will not listen to the world. We are of heaven, and we will awaken what is heavenly in the earth. And we are certain that those truly born of God will understand the Word of God.