It happened in my daddy’s church years ago. The little church had bought a piece of land facing the town’s main market. It was part of a big stretch of marsh that no one wanted.
It took them several years of prayer and painstaking contribution to gather enough money to start the project. Construction had already begun. The church members had started worshiping in the yet-to-be-completed building. Everybody was happy that God’s work was going on.
That was a until a fiery young man from the family of the original land owners became greedy and wanted to be paid the second time for the land. He came to disrupt the services. He was a real nuisance who cared for neither God nor man. He said church was just a business, and he must get more money from it. “Bullsh-t” was what he called the whole thing.
This guy led a pack of miscreants to harass the small church. He believed churches had a lot of money and were fleecing people, and he wanted to fleece the church. He saw himself as the conscience of society.
I knew this church well. It was a congregations of mostly struggling people trying their best to make ends meet. They had no lawyers or any powerful person among them. They were mostly artisans. Just simple folks.
One peaceful weekend after a prayer vigil, the angry man came with a long tape measure and began to measure the land. “This church has trespassed,” he bellowed. “You people must move your church from here.”
He marched menacingly up and down, ferociously pounding the wooden scaffolds jutting out of the walls with his fists and kicking up dust. He knew he was operating in a place where law enforcement was weak, and he wanted to milk that reality dry.
The elders and other church members, including my father, were there, trying to reason with him in as peaceful a manner as they could. They brought out the plan of the church. They showed him the boundaries. They begged and pleaded. They tried to calm him down, but he was absolutely implacable.
One of the elders said the unthinkable. “Sir, the church is already here, and we have paid for the land. We need to work out this problem. It is not realistic to ask us to move the church away…”
The angry man had had enough. In a very loud voice he shouted, “OVER MY DEAD BODY! Over my dead body would this rickety church stand here! OVER MY DEAD BODY!”
At that very moment, a gun shot was heard. Then another, and another. People crouched and some people crawled. But the damage had been done already.
The angry man lay in the dirt, lifeless, his ruler still in his right hand. The first bullet somehow found his head. As though from a sniper’s gun, it picked him as he stood among the elders and church members that were pleading with him. When the people stood up bewildered, trying to understand what was happening, the angry man’s body was on the ground. He would never speak again. His last words were, “Over my dead body!”
That was the last time anybody came to disturb the little flock.
The incident shook the whole family of the land owners. None of them came near the church again.
You may be wondering who shot the man. I wondered too, when my daddy was telling me the story. He waited for me to ask, for the dramatic effect, I guess.
The unfortunate incident took place somewhere close to the market. While the angry man was banging the scaffolds, some policemen were chasing some armed robbers about a half kilometer away from the church. The armed robbers were speeding towards the direction of the market. When they got near the market, the cops, obviously not minding the safety of the people, started to shoot at the robbers. Somehow, one of the bullets found the angry man’s head.
No one shot at the angry man. It was a stray bullet from the gun of a stray cop.
That church is still standing today, over his dead body.
It is still a little church of mostly simple, imperfect folks, but a peaceful one.
Did God kill him? I think not.
Did the devil kill him? I think so.
Or how else does one explain a thing like that?
Nobody prayed against the man or his people. The church only asked for mercy. And mercy, my dear friends, has two sides. It sometimes works as described in the following passage.
Give thanks to the one who killed the firstborn males in Egypt — because his mercy endures forever.” (Psalm 136:10 GW).
It sometimes happens that some men, through their ignorant arrogance, step out from under the protective goodness of God that is available to both saints and sinners alike. Then the devil is just too happy to shoot them down.
Any loss of life is unfortunate, but unfortunately, Satan deals in unfortunate situations.
One thing I learnt from this? It seems that God sometimes allows the devil to deal with the oppressors of His people, especially those who cannot defend themselves. This may not always be the case, but it happens. Herod was eaten of worms and died a miserable death, and that was because he oppressed God’s people.
Well, let me answer the questions I know will be forming in some people’s minds. No, I don’t know why it doesn’t happen all the time God’s people are oppressed. And no, I am not ready to get into an argument about whether or not God kills people. Anyone can make up their mind however they want. I am convinced, however, that God does defend His people when He wants to, and that those who oppress God’s people and remain unrepentant can experience very terrible things.
The reason I am not bitter against the persecutors of God’s people today is that I know God is watching, and He is a righteous judge. He knows what to do. The same God who sent his angels to walk Peter out of a maximum security prison permitted Paul to remain in prison, and be eventually beheaded. Paul’s faith wasn’t weaker than Peter’s, for Peter himself died by crucifixion for refusing to deny Christ. Whether we live of die, it is for Christ.
I am happy that God knows the big picture, which us puny men don’t always see. The Roman Empire that did its best to stamp out the faith of Paul and Peter is no more. Yet the faith is still standing and spreading. Every force that is standing in the way of that faith will still go the way of the Roman Empire, even if its leaders are ten times as murderous as Emperor Nero.
Let the faithful take heart. From the North of Nigeria to the South of China; in the sandy lands of Arabia and the icy stretches of Siberia, the Messiah shall yet rule with a rod of iron. Yes, it is getting tougher by the day, but know this: the tougher it gets, the nearer our redemption.
“When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes.” Psalm 105:13-14)
