Our Today's Sermon: Jesus May Not Come Soon

My Dad would allow me make contributions during our morning devotions now and again; and today is one of such days. We've been dipping into the revelation for almost a week now and his emphasis and my mum's had been on the end time that we are now in. That Jesus will come soon: that the hot water we (Nigerians) now find ourselves in is a result of the world nearing its end.

I'm not recent to end time spiels anyway, I've heard a whole lot about the rapture since my childhood days. I'm also up on some typical christians, who would neither contest in an election, participate in any way nor vote. They see the world coming to an end right away, and would not be a part of governance, since only the reign of Jesus can guarantee peace, happiness and the good life we all crave. Maybe they are not wrong in toto.

So, when my Dad demanded that I said something on the verses of revelation we just read, it was an opportunity to shake the table; and good enough, a prophet family friend was with us in the devotion, so I spoke not only to my family members, also to a gentle man of the clergy. Jesus may not come so soon was the title I never gave my sermon, and it was almost a teary session for a people whose only cheer was the next-minute coming of Christ.

If Christ doesn't come in few years' time, what becomes of Nigerian Christians? If the world does not end very soon, what hope have Nigerians in general? Let me tell you more about the book of revelation here: John wrote it sometimes around 96 A.D. towards the terminus of Domitian's reign in Rome. It was written with a primary intent of comforting the christians, who were in the depths of a cruel persecution that saw the seer himself banished to the island of patmos, hence the tune-that the christians remained true to their faith amidst pains, with an assurance that the return of Christ, who would wipe their tears and avenge their torture, was at hand.

As expected of an oppressed and frustrated people whose only hope was in sharing the pleasures of Christ's Kingdom, and watching their oppressors given to judgement; the early christians, and the seer himself, seemed to have shared a fallacious expectation that Christ would return in their generation. It was a fantasy, a mistaken hope, as the Master whose return some must have expected the next day, and some others, few months after John's vision, is not back even in 2018.

It is on this first century hope that Nigerian christians, and Nigerians as a whole, dwell today, in the midst of diverse challenges- hunger, torture, killings, poverty, nepotism, intimidation, displacement; unemployment, embezzlement, marginalisation, abuse of rights and privileges, and every ill one can think of.The christians think Christ will soon come and deliver them from Bokoharam and herdsmen, so, they wouldn't raise a finger while few islamic extremists slain them in dozens, they watch themselves displaced, they watch their wives and children raped and some others abducted, they also watch their priests slaughtered and their churches burnt.

Nigerians watch their own leaders play games with power, they watch them brush off pre-election promises. Nigerians watch governments owe backlog of salaries and pensions. Nigerians watch their roads uncared for, they accept to pay a huge some of money for an epileptic electricity. Nigerians watch themselves packed like sardines in taxis, they accept an hike every now and then in petrol price. Nigerians watch their politicians pay themselves huge sums as salaries, allowances and security votes, they watch their leaders handle security issues with levity. Nigerians watch unemployment grow and education devalued, they also watch justice shortchanged.
Nigerians accept all these fruits of misrule as inevitable end time things.They expect that Jesus will come soon, and deliver them from their own leaders. They imagine God visiting their Governors and Senators with the ten plagues of Egypt and judging their leaders on the soon-to-come last day. But, what if the last day doesn't come next year? What if Jesus does not come in this century? What if rapture doesn't happen in another five hundred years? Then, this generation of Nigerians will endure till death, they will also pass a worse Country on to their children and many generations after them will continue to suffer.

When the earlier Christians finally woke up to reality, years were gone and innocent lives with them. They eventually came to knowledge anyway, and understood that Jesus might not come so soon. Also, that God would not do for man what he should do himself made sense to them, and they fought for themselves henceforth. They resisted the Muslim conquests of Christian lands of the Byzantine empire. They rose up to the hostile invasion of Christian Nations and persecutions by the Arab and Turks. It was a brave move, a war of resistance, that liberated the Eastern Christians and recovered the Holy Land from Muslim rule in the middle ages.

Therefore, Nigerian Christians need be ready to resist ruthlessly those who slaughter them in hundreds in the North-east, and not wait till the final day. They should be brave enough to defend themselves and be liberated once and for all from the cold fists of extremists under any guise. Nigerians as a whole need fight and demand from their leaders the good life that they deserve with an ultimatum. Freedom and liberation are two things worth dieing for, and by all means, a people must get it. Jesus may not come anytime soon, with the celestial soldiers that we imagine. Remember, there are still many flourishing countries in this supposedly end time, where citizens enjoy life to the fullest. It does not come without a price wrapped in blood, yet, if we want it, we'll surely get it.

Ayenj Faith Damilola is a writer, public speaker and eulogist.
faithdamilolaayeni@yahoo.com

Well said