THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER

1.0 INTRODUCTION

"That we may see the light". Luke 8:16

In the June 1999 issue of the Lampstand Letters-THRONES OF NATIONS – we identified the spirit of the horse and its rider as one of the main powers behind the throne of Nigeria. Likewise in the November 1999 issue of the Lampstand Letters EGBESU, ORO AND ANCESTRAL THRONES – we promised to focus an edition on the Fulani/Jihad spirit, a major spirit threatening the corporate existence of the geographical. The carnage in Kaduna over the sharia has necessitated a biblical analysis of the spirit of the horse and its rider. We want to examine why the spirit is so war-like and aggressive, and how the LORD dealt with the spirit in the scriptures. Our objective is to apply the biblical pattern to deal with the spirit in Nigeria, that He might be glorified. Noting that the horse is the power behind rider, we also want to distinguish between the Islam and the Muslim, and between the Caliphate and the Hausa-Fulani. From historical perspectives we highlight a longstanding Arab and Far East involvement that is more than a hundred year old.

2.0 THE HORSE

The horse is described as a fearless animal which rushes into battle with all its strength fearing noting nor is turned back from the sword (Job 39:19-25, Jer. 6:23, 8:6). Horses are carriers of the enemy invasion from the north. Jeremiah 4:11-13, 8:16 and 50:41-41 describes the cruel and merciless enemy from the North, riding on horses; coming to plunder and devour the lands, causing whole land to tremble at the sound of the horses’ neigh. The strength of Egypt was in her chariots. After God forced Egypt to let go His children by great judgments against the gods of Egypt (Exo 12:12), Pharaoh reached for what he thought could do what the gods of Egypt could not. Harnessed his chariots and chased them with his horse, horsemen and the whole army (Exo 14:6-9, 15:19).

In contemporary times, the victory of the nomadic Fulani over settled villages took place “after the domestication of the horse and the used of cavalry by the savanna nomads” (Oduyoye 1984:70). Haggai 2:22 let us know that just as the throne is the power (strength) behind kingdoms; chariots are the strength of those who ride them; and horses the power of its riders (the plane is the power of its pilot, the car the strength of its riders not horse and the riders. Indicating that the riders were dependent on the horse. Thus when god troubled the army of Egypt taking off the wheels of the chariot the Egyptians knew that God was fighting even though its riders have not yet been dealt with. (Exodus14: 24-25).

Micah 5:9-13 also illustrates this principle: - Once sorcery (witchcraft) is cut off from the land, there will be no soothsayers, once idols and graven images are cut off from the land, there will no longer be their worship. In the same way once horses are cut off and chariots destroyed, the strength of the enemy is dealt with. Once the weapons of battle – arrows of the bow, the shield and the sword of battle are dealt with, then the stout hearted are plundered … none of their mighty men find used of their hands, strength or skill (Ps. 76:1-5). God did not have to bother himself with the riders, all He needed to do was to rebuke both the chariot and the horse and all were cast into deep sleep (Ps. 70:6, Zech. 12:4 & Nahum 2:13). Thus He cuts off the spirit of the princes (Ps. 76:12) by dealing with weapons of war.

Recognition of this divine strategy will help the church in effectively dealing with the problems posed to her by the spirit of the horse and its rider. Most times we have fought (physically and otherwise) the Muslim without fighting (spiritually) the spirit of Islam. We have fought the Hausa-Fulani and left the spirit of the caliphate. We have fought the Ishmaelite and ignored the spirit of the bondwoman. Whereas in all these cases, it should have been the other way round.

3.0 GOD’S COVENANT WITH ISHMEAL

In our zeal to deal with the nuisance and destruction the spirit of the bondwoman have become in our land (Gen. 16:12), we readily/forget that Ishmael, the progenitor of Arabs and the spiritual father of Muslims had a covenant with God, initiated by God himself. Gen. 16: 10 and Gen. 21:12-13 clearly records God’s promise first to Hagar (Ishmael’s mother) and later to Abraham his father. The promise to multiply Israel’s descendants and make a nation out of him was predicated on one fact – Ishmael also is a seed of Abraham Gen. 21:13. Hence God was with the lad (Gen. 21:20) and the Bible listed Ishmael’s genealogy in same passage as Isaac’s (Gen. 25:12-19). Indeed, Paul recognized that both children were products of covenants even if different covenants (Galatians 4:24).

When Sarah told Abraham to cast out the bondwoman and her child, she was not thinking of the covenant or the promise, which God made with Abraham concerning his descendants. Rather, she was thinking carnally only in terms of the property and physical wealth of Abraham. See Gen. 21:10 in the Good News and Living Bible editions). That is probably why God told Abraham to do what Sarah suggested, because God was concerned with the spiritual blessing and inheritance of Abraham’s descendants, not his wealth or property (Gen. 21:12-13). Gen 25:5-6 tells us that Abraham gave all his physical property to Israel as Sarah wanted, but gave gifts to all the others children.

The promise of God to Abraham, which was fulfilled through Isaac, was for God to be a God and Father to Abraham and his descendants, and they to be His worshippers and children (Gen. 17:7 and Roman 9: 7,8). That explains why even though Arabs and Muslims are the seed of Abraham through Ishmael; they dare not call God Father. They see themselves as servants/slaves of God, rather than children. Only the Jews, but particularly the Christian can call God Father, and see themselves as His children. (I John 3:1-2, John 1:12).

4.0 UNDERSTANDING THE FULANI

The same confusion and misplaced aggression, which Christians direct towards the Muslim instead of Islam, is directed towards the (Hausa -Fulani) rather than the Caliphate. To most Nigerians, the Hausa – Fulani are the problem with Nigeria. We care less to make a distinction between the caliphate system and the Fulani as a person. Our generalization is made easy by the fact that it was the Fulani that established the Caliphate system, and the most Fulani are Muslims. Despite the small number of Fulani who are Christians, to most Nigerian the Fulani is a pest who feels he is a “born to rule” especially if he/she is a Muslim. The ancestors of the Fulani have been traced to Eber the same ancestor of Hebrew, Gen. 10:21, 24, 11:14-27 (see Modupe Oduyoye: The Sons of Eber and the Sons of Qayin). According to him, what the Hebrew were in Egypt and Canaan (the land of Ham), the Fulani Abore/Bororo have been all over the West African Savanna in the land of Ham. To him, Abel the first feeder of sheep and goats stands for all nomadic people.

The following lines are Oduyoye’s (1984:69-84):

The godly life is a nomadic life... The best life is the life of the nomadic herdsman. They are the eternal passerby. This is the meaning of –b-r, pass on, passerby in Judges 19:12b, 19:18a and in Ruth 4:1; and of Eber: Abore Bororo; the name of the first Hebrew.

...To be in the world and not in it is to live like a Bororo among the Hausa or among the Bachama... Farmers are in the world and are of it. You do not need to preach to the Bororo that they must live a life of pilgrimage. They naturally live such a life. ... Those who declare themselves Christians today are those who love the settled life. In missionary times, this could not have been so. All missionaries have left home and homeland. When John Wesley observed that the Anglican priesthood in England was full of settlers, he devised in the Wesleyan church, the circuit system which required every Wesleyan minister to be moved from his station after a stay of no more than five years. Is he stayed longer in one station, he would soon become a Fulani ngida, a town Fulani settled and sedentary. If the Hebrews stopped being wandering Arameans long ago, the sons of Eber in Africa (the Fulanis) are still moving on their cattle from Fouta Jallon and Futa Toro in Senegal through every country of West Africa”

5.0 THE ARAB CONNECTION – HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The Fulani were among the first people to embrace Islam in Western Sudan. As traders, Pilgrims and pastoralists, they spread the Islamic faith wherever they went. By early Northern Nigeria and established the largest empire in the Caliphate under the leadership of Usman Dan Fodio. Determined on pushing their conquest coastward until they could “dip the Koran in the sea” the Fulani forces marched into the heart of the Yoruba empire of Oyo until they were halted and repulsed by Ibadan in 1840 (Buah 1973: 114). The (Madhist) fundamentalists came into Nigeria through Bornu in 1894 from Sudan through a man named Rabah Jibrella, slave of Suleman the son of the famous slave trader (Zuber Pasher) who was deported from Cairo Egypt to Sudan in 1878. Rahab completely occupied the Bornu Emirate until he was killed in 1900 by the French troops in the battle of Kusseri. The next main courier of fundamentalist Islam was Hayatu Ibn Saheed, great grandson of Usman Dan Fodio whose father moved to Yola when he lost out to the 3rd Sultan Atiku, his cousin. Hayatu became a Madhist and sent a message to Mahdi Mohammed at Omdurman Sudan offering allegiance. The Mahdi assigned Hayatu the whole territory of Adamawa and Mandara Fulani in the present Bornu, Yobe and Adamawa states and neighboring Cameroon.

In 1902, Fulani forces under the fugitive Sultan of Sokoto, Attahiru I were defeated by the British at Burmi near Gombe. Attahiru had left Sokoto before the arrival of the British to avoid being subjected to the “Christian/British infidels”. Consequently large bodies of Fulani migrated from Nigeria to Sudan and settled at Fellata (Takari) on the Blue Nile and as for as Hajer (S. Arabia), Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Ethiopia and Eritrea (where they all are till today). The flight of Sultan Attahiru I from Burmi to Sudan was described as his “Hijera” (Holy flight) after Prophet Mohammed’s flight to Mecca from medina. The battle at Burmi was described as a “Jihad” and the Sultan Attahiru himself as a Mahdi (martyr). Many Princes and Emirs of Northern Nigerian towns including Katagum, Missau, Hadejia, Gombe, Bauchi & Adamawa joined him in the flight and settlement in Sudan. According to legends and prophecies, the caliphate believe that all Fulani will one day unite as a nation at Burmi (near Gombe, Gombe State, Nigeria) and march to the Nile valley and Mecca (through Maiduguri?). In 1921, a Fulani migrant in the Sudan Fellata called “Mai Wurno” told the Emir of Kastina that armed with a flag from Mecca, he will lead a jihad to Nigeria to drive the British out. Pilgrim activities (from Nigeria) were another factor that led to the concentration of anti-Christian Fulani/Kanuri propagandist in Egypt, Sudan, on Red Sea, the Hijera and the Takaris/Felletas of these places. The Fulanis and Kanuris are at the arrowhead and believe they will lead a jihad into Nigeria one day. “The political ambition of the Caliphate Fulani to rule is not dead and will not die” thus reported an intelligence report some seventy years ago. Also, the Maguni (old Bornu El-Kanemi kingdom) though scattered since 1810 from Yemen to the Atlantic have never ceased hoping to regain their Bornu kingdom. Thus the Caliphate Fulani and Bornu Kanuri up to date believe they are “born to rule” and draw active support from their kinsmen and supporters from North Africa up to Saudi Arabia. Writing in 1924, the progenitor of the Sanusshi – Tarrika Islamic political propaganda sect, Sidi Ahmed wrote, “our purpose is to obtain the sovereignty of all the land between Egypt and Malawi”. Even though the British defeated the Caliphate in 1902, the colonialists “favoured Islam, often consciously, to the detriment of Christianity” (see Boer 1988). But the Caliphate has controlled every regime in Nigeria except the present one. That is the political aspect of the present situation.

6.0 DEALING WITH THE HORSE AND ITS RIDER

How then do we respond to the matters arising? II Cor. 10:4-5 tells us clearly that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. See also Zechariah 4:6. The following biblical principles constitute strategic warfare in dealing with the horse and its rider: -

1. Evangelism and Missions: the declaration of the Prince of Peace to all men. Zechariah 9:9-10 and Isaiah 9:2-7 link the cutting off of the chariot the horse and battle bow with the declaration of the Prince of Peace.
2. Related to above is continual prophetic prayers declaring the Lordship of Christ over the nations Psalm 2, Psalm 24, Psalm 76, Psalm 110, and Micah Chapter 1, among others are relevant in this regards.
3. The next major strategy is to “contend with the horses” (Jer. 12:5a) in sustained prayers and intercessions to provoke God by His Spirit to rise against the horse and its riders through:
4. Striking every horse with confusion and its riders with madness. Zech. 12:4
5. Dealing with them as He did to Pharaoh’s host Exodus 14:4-9, 24:25, Isaiah 43:17
6. Breaking/Cutting off the battle bow and weapons of war by His rebuke Ps. 46:9, 76:2-6.
7. Shaking Islam like He shook communism by natural and supernatural means Haggai 2:21-22. Amen.

7.0 CONCLUSION

Christians should not see the Muslim or the Fulani as the enemies. However, they should not be surprised that the spirit of the horse described in Job 39:19-25 and of the wild donkey (Gen. 16:12) will turn the Muslim or the Fulani into murdering and destructive arsonist when matters of the faith are involved, as demonstrated in Kaduna last week. While legal and political measures are being taken by government, our response as Christians should be spiritual as we strike the underbelly (weak point) of the horse like Ehud did (Judges 5:21-22). May the feet of clay of the kingdom of Ishmael crumble in Jesus name (Dan. 2:31-35). Amen.

8.0 LET US PRAY

1. Ask that the church in Nigeria will be like Dan: “a serpent by the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse’s heels, so that its rider falls backwards” (Gen. 49:17), as we deal with the horse and its rider in strategic prophetic prayer and evangelism.
2. Commit yourself and the Church to strategically deal with the issue at hand as highlighted in Section 7.0 above.
3. Prophesy that the gates of Northern Nigeria, North Africa, the Middle East and of Islam will lift up their heads so that the King of glory may enter Ps. 24 and Isaiah 19:23-25.

9.0 BENEDICTION

Oh, that Ishmael might live before You (O Lord)!” Gen. 17:18

References

1. Boer J.N. 1988 Christianity and Islam under colonialism in Northern Nigeria. Institute of Church and Society, Box 6485, Jos, Nigeria. 68pp.
2. Buah F.K. 1973. West Africa since AD 1000. Book One, Macmillan Press. P17-22, 111-118
3. Oduyoye M. 1984. The Sons of the Gods and the Daughters of Men. Orbis Books New York. Daystar Press. Ibadan. Nigeria. PP 66-78
4. Tomlinson G.J.T. and Lethan G.J. History of Islamic Political Propaganda in Nigeria. Waterloo & Sons Ltd. 93 pp.