PREAMBLE

How did great nations with good economy emerge? Did they come into being by accident? When a nation of nice people sustains a good socio-economic structure and elevated standard of living, that nation can rightly be qualified as prosperous. A prosperous nation is an exalted nation.

Every country will want to be prosperous and exalted, but unfortunately, only few would want to research to know what brings greatness. If we take the pains to study the nations that are great today, we will walk into a fact that the origin of that greatness started with their upright and disciplined generation. The bible says in proverb 14;2 “He who walks uprightly fears the lord” This confirms the same word of God in proverbs 14;34, “RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTS A NATION, BUT SIN IS A REPROACH TO ANY PEOPLE “. This is where the title of this book was picked.

Let us check the features. When these nations were emerging prosperous and great, there were hardly people who were killing their fellow human beings for rituals. There were no hard-hearted government officials who were embezzling the bulk of money in their public treasury. There were no premeditated political injustice and discrimination, no serious armed robbery operations or wide scale prostitution in their country. There were no mindless assassination, kidnapping and murder in their society.

The fine behaviour of most of their citizens suggested that they were a God-fearing people who carried out their daily duties with pure heart and commendable level of righteousness. Proverbs 14;14b says, “The good man reaps the fruit of his paths”. For this then, God gave them exaltation, his reward (as seen in Proverb 14;34). We should not bother so much about what is happening in some of those countries now (the situation exacerbated by extreme secularism). The important message for us is the development revolution they experienced as a result of their fore-fathers hard work and fear and love of God.

It does not matter which people or tribe are in question, once there is fear of God and righteousness, God will exalt that nation. On the contrary, if sin (athrocities and transgression) is in the lives of the people, suffering and distress will always be their portion and inheritance. These two conditions were very vivid in the lives of Israelites as we shall see in the Bible; books of Kings and the Chronicles. Moses had forewarned them of these in the book Of Deuteronomy 28:29; ”Thus then, shall it be if you continue to heed the voice of the LORD, your God, and are careful to observe all his commandments….the LORD your God, will raise you high above all the nations of the earth…. all these blessings will come upon you….You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. Blessed be the fruit of your womb, the produce of your soil and the offspring of your livestock….the LORD will beat down before you the enemies that rise up against you; though they come out against you from but one direction, they will flee before you in seven….blessing upon you, on your barns and on all your undertaking…. so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none….The LORD will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline. But if you do not hearken to the voice of the LORD, your God, and not be careful to observe all his commandments….all these curses shall come upon you….you be cursed in the city and cursed in the country….cursed be the fruit of your womb and the produce of your soil and the offspring of your livestock….The LORD will put a curse on you, defeat and frustration in every enterprise you undertake, until you are speedly destroyed and perish for the evil you have done in forsaking me….The LORD will let you be beaten down before your enemies….And the LORD will strike you with madness, blindness and panic…You will be oppressed and robbed continually, with no one to come to your aid. Though you bethroth a wife, another man will have her. Though you build a house, you will not live in it….The alien residing among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, not you to him. He will become the head and you the tail….The LORD will raise up against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, that swoops down like an eagle, a nation whose tongue you do not understand, a nation of stern visage, that shows neither respect for the aged nor pity for the young….All these curses will come upon you, pursuing you and overwhelming you, until you are destroyed, because you would not hearken to the voice of the LORD, your God, nor keep the commandments and statutes he gave you”.

We, Nigerians should examine our minds and pronounce which of these are befalling us now. The blessings of God or his curses. If we go to the book of Kings, we will see the practical demonstrations of all these, the Kings and the generations that were faithful to Gods commandments (fear of God) were prospered and exalted while those who perpetrated evil were punished in several ways. Evidently, those warnings of Moses came upon the Israelites when they began to sin against God after the reign of David and Solomon as stated in 2Kings 17;16-18, “They disregarded all the commandments of the LORD, their God, and made for themselves two molten calves; they also made a sacred pole and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. They immolated their sons and daughters by fire, practiced fortune-telling and divination, and sold themselves into evil doing in the LORD’S sight, provoking him till in his great anger against Israel, the LORD put them away out of his sight”.

In the book of 2 Chronicles 14, we see how King Asa walked right before God; him and all Israelites. He destroyed all the objects of Idol worship and commanded Judah to seek the LORD, the God of their fathers and to observe the law and its commands. As a result of these, God waged wars for him and his country had peace and security. They built walls that surrounded the cities, gates, towers and bars and prospered.

The opposite of King Asa was King Jehoram in 2Chroncile 21; Here, king Jehoram killed all his innocent brothers and some princes of Israel when he came to power. He did evil in the sight of the LORD: setting up high places in the mountains of Judah and led the inhabitants of Jerusalem into idolatry and seduction. As a result of this, God struck him and his people with a great plague. He suffered and died of incurable painful diseases of the bowels. The enemies that invaded his country carried away all the wealth found in the Kings palace, along with his sons and wives.

Again, the drama changed when king Hezekiah came to power. He instituted great reformations that brought the Israelites back to the true worship of God. 2 Chronicles 31;20 says, “He did what was good, upright and faithful before the LORD, his God. Everything that he undertook, for the services of the house of God or for the law and the commandments, was to do the will of his God. He did this wholeheartedly, and he prospered”.

This book is proving to everyone that evil begets evil. The reason why we have so much evil in Nigeria now is because we have turned our back to our God (do not mind the religious noise everywhere in the country) and have forsaken his commandments and ordinances. Yes, this is why we have in our country today; armed robbery operations, kidnappings, wide scale prostitution, hunger, poverty and diseases, mindless murder of innocent people, terrorism, assassinations; embezzlement of public and private funds, poisoning and ritual killings, pregnancies and babies for sale, political/economic injustice and inequality, election rigging, political thuggery/violence, bribery and corruption, advance fee fraud (419), hate, suspicion, rumour-mongering, rapping of young and small girls etc. The list is much.

God’s message in Isaiah 1 vs. 15-20 is the only chance He is giving to Nigeria, “When you spread out your hands, I close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood! Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil, learn to do good. Make justices your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the window. Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord. Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be crimson red they may become white as wool. If you are willing, and obey, you shall eat the good things of the land, But if you refuse and resist, the sword shall consume you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken!!

The question now is, what should we do? Should we continue this way or turn to the side of light? Definitely we need a change! And this is why this book was written. Let us go back to God in humility and repentance and ask him for mercy. He will indeed cast his merciful eyes on us and restore us as he promised in 2 Chronicles 7;13, “If I close heaven so that there is no rain, if I command the locust to devour the land, if I send pestilence among my people, and if my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear then from heaven and pardon their sins and heal their land”. Yes, and turn our country into a great and prosperous nation!