THE WINDS AND THE MAKING AND
UNMAKING OF NATIONS
First, I would love to remind
you that the Most High cannot be crowded out of history because history is His
story. Kingdoms have emerged or disappeared, nations have risen or fallen,
great leaders have mounted and exited the stage, but none of these have
occurred without the direction or permission of God Almighty. Not only has He
authored history, He has also ordered the times and seasons for the unveiling
of the content of its pages, having predetermined the appointed time for each
nation. As though opening the pages of a book with His hands to reveal its
content, God orders and unveils the story of the nations with the stirring of
the winds. In the Bible, we see the destiny of nations unfold in response to
this stirring of the winds upon the earth and the sea. Whenever these winds
blow, changes occur in the governance of nations, for good or for evil.
In the Book of Daniel we see the
Four Winds of Heaven stirring up the Great Sea which represents the people,
multitudes, nations and tongues (Daniel 7:1-8). In
response to this stirring, four beasts came out of the Great Sea. These four
beasts were four kings and their kingdoms known today as the Babylonian
Kingdom, the Medo-Persian Kingdom, the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire. The
Four Winds of Heaven are the attributes of God: Mercy, Truth, Righteousness and
Peace.
Psalm 85:10-13 (NKJV):
10 Mercy and truth have met
together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. 11 Truth shall spring out of the earth, And
righteousness shall look down from heaven.
12 Yes, the Lord will
give what is good;
And our land will yield its increase.
13 Righteousness will go before Him, And
shall make His footsteps our pathway.
Ironically, when these forces
impact upon the earth, they expose the beasts in the rulers of nations. These
beastly rulers leave behind them a trail of devastation and dryness after which
the Four Winds of the Heavens are again prophetically stirred to expel these
beastly forces and bring restoration to the Valley of Dry Bones and its content
(Ezekiel 37: 1-14).
In the parallel Book of
Revelations, the Four Winds of the Earth are revealed as forces affecting the
nations. These forces result in the troubling or change of governmental orders.
The Four Winds of the Earth are politics, economy, military and
religion. These forces could be channeled to either the making or
ruining of nations depending on the dispositions of the leaders and the people.
For instance, national ruin was the result in many African states with the
emergence of tyrants after independence – the likes of Idi Amin Dada of Uganda,
Mobutu Sese Seko of Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean Bédel Bokassa of Central
African Republic, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, General
Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and many other ambitious men whose dreams, drives and
delusions unleashed a devastating storm into the political space of their
respective nations. This political storm resulted, or has resulted, as the case
may be, in economic ruin as these men enriched themselves at the expense of
their respective nations.
At some point in Uganda, for
instance, currency was printed just to satisfy the whims and caprices of Idi
Amin without recourse to any principle of monetary policy management. Mobutu,
on his part, amassed so much wealth through corruption that he was reportedly
richer than his country and appropriated many of his country’s assets as it
plunged into infrastructural collapse. Bokassa, intolerant of opposition
politicians whom he allegedly killed and ate or fed to crocodiles, diverted and
squandered the little wealth his country had. General Sani Abacha became the
most brutal dictator in the history of Nigeria, eliminating perceived opponents
by means of a deadly killer squad and stashing away over $3 billion of public
monies in foreign accounts. Obiang, who is still the president of Equatorial
Guinea, is reportedly worth $600 million. He is said to have taken full control
of his country’s national treasury and deposited more than half a billion
dollars into accounts controlled by himself and his family claiming that he did
this to prevent civil servants from being tempted to engage in corrupt
practices.
It will be observed that the
emergence of these African dictators was as a result of the invasion of the
military wind manifesting through coup d’états or civil wars which, in some
cases, resulted in counter-coups or extended civil wars. In more recent times,
especially since the turn of the century, the wind of religion and the wind of
the military have been unleashed upon the continent and upon the nations of the
earth like a genie in a bottle, manifesting in the form of terrorist
organizations from Boko Haram in Nigeria to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM) and Al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa; from Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda to
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); and from Hezbollah in Lebanon to
Hamas in Palestine.
Conversely, the Four Winds of
the Earth have also served in ushering nations into seasons of genuine or
perceived transformation. For example, the formation of the United States of
America was preceded by the stirring of the combined winds of religion,
economy, politics and military in Europe as well as in America. Many of the
colonies which formed the United States were created by settlers who fled
religious persecution in Europe. This quest for religious freedom and the
discipline that characterized the puritan migrants became the fuel for the
highly profitable agricultural and commercial activities that produced economic
prosperity in the colonies. The political wind blew when the colonies declared
independence and this declaration was accompanied by the war of independence
upon which was laid the foundation of a prosperous nation that has become the
most powerful country on earth today. Similarly, the formation of the Islamic
kingdoms, the largest of which was the Ottoman Empire that later transformed to
modern day Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was inspired
by this interplay of the four winds of the earth. Other cases in point include
the economic miracle of the Asian Tigers including Hong Kong, Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore as well as the Asian giant, China.
It is gladdening to know that
the Four Winds of the Earth, no matter how ferocious, are under the God’s
control:
Revelation 7:1-3 (NKJV):
1After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners
of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind
should not blow on the earth,
on the sea, or on any tree. 2 Then I
saw another angel ascending from the east,
having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four
angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth,
the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their
foreheads.”
NIGERIA AND THE FOUR WINDS OF
THE EARTH
Let us now bring this back home
by taking a brief look at the interplay of political, economic, military and
religious winds in the journey of the Nigerian nation so far. Our
pre-independence history saw the emergence of empires, kingdoms, fiefdoms and
communal political arrangements whose rise and fall were driven by military
expeditions motivated by economic interests and, in some cases, clad in
religious motives. Since independence, these winds, operating through political
power blocs, have produced governmental change from one regime to another.
Between 1966 and 1999, it was often a case of one military government taking
over from a civilian government or from another military government citing,
amongst other factors, economic mismanagement and political corruption, and
expressing a messianic mission to correct the blunders, even if insincerely. In
the democratic arrangements that preceded the return to civil rule in 1999,
such as the 1993 elections, religion was a much more silent factor among the
four winds in the determination of political outcomes. That was why the June
12, 1993 elections could produce victory for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. However,
following the return to civil rule, religion has become a major factor in the
determination of election outcomes especially since the 2003 elections in which
General Muhammadu Buhari first contested for the presidency, as he has often
been erroneously associated with religious fundamentalism. The import of this
factor got to what some might have thought would be a crescendo in the 2011
elections when, for the first time in Nigeria’s history, a pastor stepped into
politics as running mate to General Buhari.
Nevertheless, in the year 2015,
a crucial year in the unfolding history of our nation, the Four Winds of the
Earth are about to hit the nation in one combined storm that will not leave her
the same. The purpose of this broadcast is to give a timely warning before the
storm arrives like Apostle Paul did on that journey to Rome in the Alexandrian
ship (Acts 27) as well as to proffer an alternative pathway even if the
warnings and the proposals are rejected as occurred in Paul’s case. But first,
let us examine the state of the nation and show how we have stirred the ship of
state with difficulty (verse 7), ignoring the warning signs, laying
claim to fictitious economic achievements, celebrating political institutions
with weak foundations, allowing criminality and rebellion to fester in the
guise of religion, and denying the seeming comatose state of our military and
its inability to withstand the pressure, thereby subjecting our nation to a
depth of instability never before experienced since the Civil War.
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