Inside Story: Unreached Town in Nigeria
Inside Story for Friday 7th of June 2024
By Andrew McChesney
The Nigerian town of Umuacha is located at a strategic crossroads. The town boasts a big market that attracts daily crowds from neighboring towns. But it lacked a Seventh-day Adventist church.
The absence of an Adventist church was astonishing because Adventist churches had been established more than 70 years earlier in all of the surrounding towns. Even the headquarters of the Adventist Church’s Aba North Conference was located nearby. But Umuacha had no church.
Why?
The first church opened in Umuacha more than 80 years earlier, and it resolved to be the only church in town. As the years passed, however, townspeople sold their land to outsiders who, in turn, constructed their own churches. The oldest church accepted the newcomers, but all declared that Adventists, who worshiped on a different day, would never be welcome.
Adventist churches in the neighboring towns struggled to reach Umuacha. When they sought to organize evangelistic meetings, no one would give them a meeting place. Hopes were raised when the church in nearby Mba conducted a two-week evangelistic meeting outside the town and afterward opened a branch Sabbath School. But the Sabbath School closed after only three months. Later, Mba young people held Bible studies that brought several Umuacha families to the Mba church on Sabbaths. But the families stopped attending when their neighbors threw stones at them.
In 2021, the Aba North Conference laid new plans for evangelistic meetings in Umuacha but again struggled to find a site. One landowner agreed to host tent meetings but then abruptly changed his mind. Additional attempts provided unsuccessful that year and in 2022. It seemed hopeless.
Then a church member, Christian, made a new attempt to find a site. While searching, he met Chilaka, the owner of a school.
“You who are running around, what are you looking for?” the school owner asked.
“It seems that I am looking for you,” Christian replied.
After a discussion, the school owner offered the property for the meetings. Christian gratefully accepted.
For a month, Adventist preachers proclaimed the Word of God in Umuacha. They were joined by a medical team that cared for the sick. In the end, 29 precious souls were baptized. Then someone donated land, and an Adventist church opened in Umuacha.
“Today, the church is progressing to the glory of God,” said Caleb Uchenna Onyendi, evangelism director for the Aba North Conference.
God’s timing is perfect, he added, pointing to Exodus 9:5, which says, “Then the Lord appointed a set time, saying, ‘Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land’ ” (NKJV). The Lord did just that in the town of Umuacha.
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We should not give up In evangelism I had the same experience here in kacheliba ,kenya the people ridiculed us and said nobody will accept adventist faith unless we change to Sunday! We never relented and now we have many adventists and we have build a church ! Glory be unto God.
Praise God! His timing is perfect!
I would like to receive more communication of what goingin the church.
In an old interview with Roger Morneau, he described what the Satanist priest had told him about how the demons and Satan were to be revealed. He said that the demons would appear first as aliens from other planets telling the earth that unless they change to Sunday, they would all be lost. The Satan would appear as Jesus. Is not Hollywood preparing the earth for this deception in many of their movies?
Alice A. Bailey, a Satanist, said that the demons will be revealed in 2025. Interesting.
When I read such things, I wonder, should we believe the satanists? Might it not be better to leave the unknowns to God?
Satan may be a good guesser, but he can also use our belief in his agents to deceive us - and he most likely will.
(It is this tendency to present what satanic agencies as factual that always bothered me about Roger Morneau.)
I'm in a agreement with Inge. Satan neither knows nor determines when the end comes. He would already be doing all these things if he was not held back. Now, he is very perceptive and probably has some sense but it's not up to him. I think we often forget that. God is always in control.
The glue that is drawing all the world religions into the ecumenical movement is just a common religions feeling, an ecstatic, Pentecostal experience. This experience is usually combined with speaking in tongues. Both protestant and Catholic churches as well as many pagan religions speak in tongues. These are not other languages as described by the Apostle Paul but are demonic inspired speech.