The Criteria for Governance

A Sermon Excerpt from 

Dr Martins Atanda 

Government is established by God for divine purposes. Without the right people in government, the program of God will die. I will show you two scriptures. Romans 13:1

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities…...” How will God say everyone must submit if government is not of God? He said everyone, nobody is left out, whether you are a pastor or not, everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has establish. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Government is not a “wayo-wayo” matter, if you are not planning to get into politics, you are deceiving yourself. Sinners will continue to rule over you and mess up your life, then when they begin to mess you up, you will start doing prayers for them, the prayer you would have saved if you were the one there or if your brother is there who has been instructed on how to govern.

You heard what Paul said in I Timothy 2:1

I urge, then, first of all, that request, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for every one

2 For kings and those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 

You cannot practice godliness or holiness except there is peace. And how do you want to live in peace except you pray for those who are in government. Churches cannot do late night meetings any more: if you want to do any meeting, you must end 7pm or 7:30pm, because there are armed robbers around, the police seem to encourage robbers, you know that all these police that are collecting bribes will also give account to their “Ogas”.

Apostle Paul says we need prayers for kings and for those in authority if we want to live in peace. That means it doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are baptized in the Holy Ghost fifty times a day, without the right government, your life is in crisis. Go to Lagos and see the ministers living in Lagos, go and see fear. Some of them have high wall fences with electric barb-wire all around to protect themselves, because it is not safe. Any Pastor in Lagos, who thinks he’s very anointed, let him bring down the fence of his house; he will die in one week.

Right now as I’m speaking to you, there are five Pastors in UCH Ibadan, who were shot by armed robbers. Armed robbers entered the church during service, and the church member have to smile when they see gun, where is the man of God? Where is the tithe and offering? They will open the bag and by himself the pastor would use his hand to pour the money and then they will walk out of the church. The Pastors who resisted them are the ones they shot, they broke the bones of their legs, some of them will never walk again in life, half of them are laying critical in the hospital right now in Ibadan. 

The police commissioner called the ministers together in Ibadan, Oyo state and said “Please Pastors, change your messages. We are tired of these armed robbers; can’t you preach the word of God? Must you tell people that you have 5 million, must you be telling people that you bought jeep for 15 million?” that was what the police commissioner called the ministers to address them in the month of November.

It does not matter how many Holy Ghost you have, as long as wrong people are in government, they will make wrong polices and you will suffer friends. You can laugh at me today that he’s doing leadership, he’s doing leader, leader what? You don’t need any leader, you don’t need it.

One man shared with me, he said “Look, the pain in my heart is not what I’m seeing; the pain in my heart is my children. If I die what world will my children grow into? He said “My children have come to see a different world; I preach a message to them, I show them the Bible but what they see physically is different from what I show them in the Bible. They see a world where the man who is married is going out with another girl friend. They see a world where a man who is supposed to be paid salary will be collecting bribes before he passes your file across somebody else” He says his children come to him and say “Daddy, tell us the truth, we are tired that you are deceiving us” he said I’m not deceiving you, didn’t you read it from the Bible?” Because what the children can see is completely opposite to what they hear from their father, what they hear in church and what they read in the bible. So, they cannot even trust the Bible any more.

Listen to me, the Bible says the generation shall come, who will have itching hears, who will heap up teachers for themselves, they will discard the word of God. He says a time will come there will be scarcity, not scarcity of bread, but the scarcity of the word of God. Do you know why, because people will not believe the word of God anymore, because what they see cannot tally with the word of God? When a man says he has married three wives, divorces two and is living with one now, is that in the Bible? He’s still preaching and laying hands on the sick, and the sick is recovering, they want to keep God aside.

The solution is right people in government friends, right people to man different sectors of our economy. When we have right thinking people, things will change. Government is established by God for divine purposes. Let me establish that again to you that it’s established by God, let’s read some more scriptures. Daniel 2:19

19 During the night the misery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven 

20 and said: praise be to the name of God forever and ever; wisdom and power are his

21 He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them………

You see he sets up kings, God sets up kings; the issue of kings is the work of God. In verse 46

46 Then king Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him.

if God set up kings that means what you will be tomorrow is in the hand of God and God is interested in government. Verse 48

48 Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all his wise men.

Who was doing that? God organized that, don’t just sit down in your house and say anything they are doing in the ministry of education is alright, it’s not alright, the church needs to raise people to enter those places.

God want us to know that he ordains government, he establishes government. Daniel 4:34-35

34 At the end of that time, I Nebuchadnezzar raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation

35 All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: what have you done.

Government; don’t be satisfied with a low life down there, government; that some of you will become a commissioner is ordained by God, don’t run away from it. If George Bush had not become the President of America, America would have gone down the rain I tell you. A lot of things that have been restored in America today was restored because a godly man came there, without George Bush America would have finished. Because righteousness exalts the nation, sin is a reproach.

See how they were killing American soldiers everywhere, any nation that abhors sin will die, friends. Babylon, as great as it is in the Bible, where is Babylon today on the face of the earth. With all their resources they will become nothing, because the word of God cannot change. Let me read Numbers 27: Just showing you from the scripture, even Gentile kings confirming the fact that kingship and government is of God, ordain of God, established by God.

The error that the Nigerian churches are doing today is every brother in church who can sing or preach or lead prayer is made a Pastor, it’s an error my friend, an error. Everybody who looks good in tie is made a Pastor, it’s an error. We don’t have elders in church anymore, all the elders have been made Pastors, you don’t call anybody elder, and how many elders do you have in your church? Everybody is a Pastor. We have a church of twenty Pastors; everybody is struggling to go and take offering, struggling to give announcement, its confusion.

When the spirit leaves the people that’s what you see. II Chron. 7 says “if my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways” that means you can be a people of God and still be wicked. I didn’t quote this one from just my Bible; it is in your Bible too, “shall turn from their wicked ways”. Go and read the Hebrew’s translation “of their wicked ways” means the way of a man; man’s way is wicked that’s what God is saying.

Man’s way; what the church in Nigeria is doing today, we are practicing the way of a man. Can I take you back a minute; at the time that Arch Bishop Idahosa’s ministry started some thirty something years ago, what did it produce for us in Nigeria? Benin City, Edo people are the highest percentage in prostitution, some of those prostituting were born in the period of Idahosa’s ministry, you have not thought about that? I said it in a meeting; one leader jumped at me and said “whoa! Oh boy, you blew my mind!” The Bible says by their fruit you shall know them. A mango tree does not say “ehh! I’m a mango tree, I’m a mango tree!” No - when you pass by, the fruit shows you this is a mango tree. 70% of prostitutes in Nigeria are produced from Edo State and all of them are within that range of age of when Idahosa’s ministry was on. What did that ministry do for Edo State? I preached a message somewhere, I said “I’m afraid several of you listening to me may not go to heaven because you are exposed to a wrong kind of Christianity, did you hear me?” if you grew under a wrong kind of Christianity, you have not lived under a right kind of Christianity where people preach the word of God, you have lived under fables. Listen, wearing trouser to church and not covering our hair started in the seventies in America during the age of the hippies, they brought it into the church and the church accepted it and it became a common norm. It is not common in Africa for you to see a respectable woman walking on the street with his hear uncovered. In Cabval herols in Argentina, there was a conference there last year, this is what he was saying, he said “God is using Africa, particularly Nigeria, because they have a culture that fits with the Bible: the culture of respecting others, the culture of covering our hair...”, he said the reason while the white countries are backward in the things of God is because their culture does not fit with the Bible. But God is easier to move with the African nations because their culture fits with the Bible.

But Americans, the hippies who are sinners, rebellious young people, who sings rock music and in church today, if you want to get young people, you have to sing rock, and that is what some of us are buying and I cry in my heart. I was preaching to the leaders, and I said my prayer is that the leaders will go to heaven, number one, and I look at multitudes of people in Nigeria who are on their way to hell, they have church membership, they pay tithe but friends I’m sorry where they are going. He says by their fruits and it keep ringing in my heart, a mango tree never shout ehh I’m a mango tree, you have to shout and tell the people you are a Christian before they know you are a Christian, no, he says by their fruit, once you see a mango tree you know this is mango, this is mango.

I said God have mercy over my life, where am I going and I’m using the remaining season of this year just to repent before the Lord and retrace my life back. I was in a meeting and Kumuyi wanted to start preaching and he began to cry, while he was crying, I was wondering why in this man crying? And then everybody in the whole audience began to cry, I didn’t even cry, they saw him crying and everybody started crying, I said if I started crying and they asked why I’m crying? What will I say? So I refused to cry, a moment after, Kumuyi said heaven, heaven, I must go there, I must go there, I mean for 45 minutes there was no message that man was sobbing and crying saying God I must get to heaven. I cannot leave my job as a lecturer, I cannot leave this, leave that and loose heaven, and he couldn’t preach anymore, people were just crying and I said my God, how many of our ministers will go there?

You heard the testimony of that guy in Onitsha that man that came back to life, he’s a pastor, and he had died and gone to hell. If he didn’t come back to life, he would have gone to hell. Where are you going? Who are you following? I’m sorry for you, you can laugh at me today no problem, you can say I’m a Jew guy no problem, God bless you. Right now I’m not bothered about how many people came to my meeting, whether they are twenty, fifty, hundred, it’s not my problem, if you like let fifty thousand come, if you like let there be two, it’s that alright, I want to make sure I get them to heaven.

The Bible says if your work is burnt by fire, you yourself will escape by fire. I just began to make an assessment, the man of God in those days who used helicopter to share tracts in Nigeria when they are doing programs, he’s still alive today, he’s no longer in ministry, he’s marrying his secretary, he’s still alive, he has not died. When I saw people like that, I become afraid those days in the seventies. What can you do now that can beat what they have done, if they want to do crusade in Enugu, they will hire helicopter to share hand bills, they will fly into every corner of Enugu with helicopter and be sharing  hand bills.

So what can a minister have now, I look at this “small – small” ministers, I just laugh, I say this one wasn’t born again in those days. Those of us who were born again, we have seen that you cannot use car to do “shakara”, Praise the Lord, you know I bought a brand new jeep for some millions of Naira, come on! I just laugh and say is that Christianity? God help me, heaven I must get there, nobody is going to lead me astray, nobody, I won’t follow any man, I will follow the Bible. Numbers 27:12

12 Then the lord said to Moses, go up this mountain in the Abarim range and see the land I have given the Isrealites.

13 After you have seen it, you too will be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was

15 Moses said to the Lord

16 May the Lord, the God of the spirit of all mankind, appoint a man over this congregation

18 So the Lord said to Moses, take Joshua the son of Nun 

Take Joshua, God is going to take you today in the name of Jesus, amen.