The Case of Nigeria: If You Live by the Sword, You Will Die by the Sword (Edited by ChatGPT)

  

You could sell your garment of faith and be naked in the sight of God to buy the sword, but you will live and die by the sword. However, since most faithful do not live by the right standard of faith, how far we sell our garment and how naked we are is a relative term. Holiness said if they take your cloth, give them your coat also; but most of us take them to court. Some get ugly and may fist-fight them, and others may start civil war to exchange the blood of their youth for a worthless garment.

 

We are told to love those who hate us, to pray for those who persecute us, and to feed the mouth of the hand that starved us. We are told to never resist evil but to die in the hand of evil while doing what is holy, so light can defeat darkness — not by more darkness, but by pure light. But that demands great faith that most of us lack. God is not a liar, but we are incompetent because our faith is shallow. The sword in our tiny and weak hand seems to us to be much mightier than the sword in the mouth of the Lord Jesus. We are faithless and also very spoiled to go in the footsteps of the Lord and his disciples. We all are faithless, and nobody in this age is an exception because Jesus is not a liar and his word is the word of truth.

 

Yet because I take a thief to court, it should not mean I should fist-fight him or kill his family in revenge. I am sure many wise, educated, and knowledgeable people will think what I say is foolishness and wrong faith — too idealistic — but I take the Bible seriously and I take the word of God seriously. Besides, if Jesus said it, it is the gold standard of my faith. I am sorry this is not pragmatic religion; it is faith. In simple words, the quality of our faith is measured by our distance from the word and life of the apostles — like Paul, Peter, and John — as an intermediate target, and our distance from the word and life of the Lord Jesus Christ as the final goal.

 

If a thief robs us and we chase him with the police, we should not understand it as holiness but as justice. So our justice needs to know a holy and just God is watching us, and we should be careful in our judgment. It would be holy to save him by grace, but we are below standard as he is a sinner. So now let us work for his reformation and salvation to the kingdom of God, so the thief can work and even help others, as it is written.

 

Having the right mindset about holiness and justice is always critical because no matter how much we fool ourselves and others, a God who is both holy and just is watching over us and knows our heart. How we measure others, it will be measured to us. He will give us back by our cup, and besides he will shake it, press it, and pay us back with interest. After all, a thief and a robber who shouts and speaks in the name of God, and who uses justice and holiness for sin, is neither holy nor just in the sight of God. God created not only the outside but also the inside, and he knows it all. Dears, he knows it all.

 

So when we pick the sword of the law and the sword of blood — because of our weak faith to die for the faith, to suffer for the faith, and to be persecuted for the faith without fighting back, so we can fight by the sword in the mouth of the Lord, which is the word of God — we need to remember we are naked in the sight of God, and we need to be very careful not to profane the good name of God by our act.

 

If our legal faith and warrior Christianity are for promoting human ends like power and wealth, and to plant fear and obedience in the weak, rather than for justice and equality, I guess God has to be God and will judge us as such. God is not an average voter or a cadre of a communist party to be deceived by our folly; he is God. He knows it all and he judges all.

 

The evil of the Israel people and Jerusalem was paid by the invasion of Assyria and Babylon. Yet the evil of Assyria and Babylon was also paid back by the Persians and Medes, who were paid back by the Greeks. The evil of Rome was also paid by Jesus, and the story goes on. God will never leave the unjust without justice. If God judges the faithful, how harshly will he judge the faithless? If God judges his own children, how harshly will he judge the evil world? It is not wise to do evil to anyone because there is a God who judges in heaven.

 

World powers are weak and silly. Take them to one or two wars and the great British Empire is history, a surplus nation becomes a heavily indebted nation, and so on. World powers are chess players trying to make the right move to be at the top, but God is God. When God is fighting you, he will not end bankrupt — but you will be broken, broke, and in hell while God takes over. Look at the history of the world: a government that persecutes the faithful never lasts because God is not a foolish king of this world; he knows what he is doing.

 

It is not wise to persecute anyone because of their religion — like Catholicism, Orthodox, Islam, or traditional religion — or their faith if they are born-again faithful. To persecute the faithful is to persecute Jesus, and to persecute Jesus is to persecute God. Look how many years the Jewish people suffered for killing God — Jesus — and the nightmare they passed through in the hand of God who tried to give them salvation. If God is this harsh on the flesh of Abraham, you can imagine his judgment on others who persecute Jesus by persecuting the born-again faithful. Let alone his own, God also cares about followers of other religions — be it Catholicism, Orthodox, Islam, or traditional religion — because Jesus, the God, died to save all humanity by grace through faith, though none of them know him to have faith in him as the only road to heaven.

 

It is better if Catholics, Muslims, and other traditional religions who do not belong to God are given life. Rather than fire on their home and gun on their head and bombs on their village, I wish we give them the word of God and Jesus to their spirit. Why do we condemn Catholics and Muslims and other traditional religion followers to go to hell without knowing Jesus — the God and the Lord, and the only way to salvation by grace through faith?

 

Can you imagine looking at Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox, Jewish people, Asians, blacks, and whites burning in hell forever — and remembering you could have preached the gospel to them to save them? Really, you want to kill them now rather than giving them the gospel? Rather than preaching salvation by faith only and that it is by believing Jesus is Lord and God, and rather than giving them the free gift of salvation by the blood of the Lord, you want to kill them on this earth? That is really ignorance.

 

No, we want Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox, Jewish people, and the faithless around the world to live in peace so they can listen to the gospel — that salvation is only by faith and that there is no other name given to us for our salvation except the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They should live in peace so they can be saved for the Lord.

 

Now when you think about the number of people who follow prosperity gospel, word-of-faith, and those “faiths” of power, money, and respect; plus those dead religions like Islam, Catholicism, Orthodox, Buddhism, Hinduism, whatever cult the Jewish people follow, or whatever dead things people follow — we have a lot of work ahead of us. Billions upon billions (over generations) are going to hell, and what we never and ever need is another religious war. Only criminals, robbers, and thieves love war — but their judgment is near.

 

Criminals are looking at the oil and how they could use it. Religious heretics are praying for war and working day and night to sponsor another bloodbath. Devils are happy because what food does the devil have other than sin and human misery? Politicians are worthless big mouths as usual (how could you be broke and poor while having wealth unless the criminals are at the top of the government?). And on both sides the worthless are trying to burn you down into nothing. Be smart before the devil takes over, and change your direction before the devil takes you to the gates of hell. Please, live and let others live.

 

You have your religion — which you think is the truth — and we have the truth. But why should we kill each other rather than letting our word, life, and the power of the Holy Spirit witness which is from God and which is not? Why? Can anyone win in war? And especially those who are looking for war — could they win it? The best they can do is split the nation into a landlocked Muslim nation and another “Christian” nation, which means nothing useful, but a nations made of faithful, pseudo-faithful (all gospel of money, power, and respect), and Catholics. We would just have two sinful and hateful nations without God rather than one.

 

That is the best achievement of those who are praying for war — to be the Taliban of Africa: poor, broken, backward, savage, and foolish. The worst case is that you will be hunted like a rat and will end the way ISIS ended — buried in a rat hole. Either way, you will destroy the lives of millions and destroy your nation into the ground.

 

So how foolish do you have to be to think the gun is the way in your own land? You have oil, and the thieves and criminals have a million reasons to be angry at you because they just look at your open check that they could write to themselves (this is true whether the devil calls himself Christian or Muslim).

 

So please live and let others live so you can be saved to Jesus; otherwise you will end in eternal hell — and how much worse your hell will be if you kill Jesus. To touch one faithful is to touch Jesus, but Jesus also deeply cares about all the lost sheep: be they Catholics, Muslims, traditional religion followers, or even those who worship money, power, and respect “in the name of Jesus.” Please live in peace and let others live so the dead can listen to the word of God and be saved from eternal condemnation in everlasting hellfire. May God open your eyes to what the devil is cooking and what the criminals on both sides are looking at.