She had been told that God will always protect his own, hence she was not bothered when the kidnappers had taken her, after she went preaching in her neighbourhood and was returning home by 4:30pm. She felt she would come out safely. 

At night things took a different turn when one of her kidnappers who became horny and saw the need to relieve the tension in his lower abdomen came into her room. 

Bimpe who was just 16 years thought it was a joke until he landed a slap on her face and spread her legs apart.

She prayed to God expecting lightening to strike him dead. She thought he will drop dead or probably run mad or even fall asleep. She thought "God knows I am a virgin and I want to remain so till I get married".

She struggled and kicked, but her strength was no match for her assailant. Another slap to her face stunned her and kept her a bit calm. She thought, " God, where are you? 

As she lay on the ground, she felt the man penetrate her, "ahhhh...." she shouted as the sharp pain spread through her body. She winced in pain with clenched teeth as he continued to have his way. 

He finished off with her and walked away. Bimpe was shocked with tears in her eyes. She could not believe she had been raped by her assailant. She thought God would have killed him during the act since he did not act before he penetrated her, but nothing happened.

Was God going to kill him after? Was God waiting for him to carry out the act. So it will be said that he had sinned? Was God going to kill him for touching his daughter?

God why? I have been faithful. I have preached the gospel. What have I done wrong? Several thoughts ran through her head, with no answers. 

How will she still preach and tell people to remain chaste and wait for their wedding night? How? What if she gets pregnant what will people say? How will she handle it? God why? She laid on the ground and thought, indeed God must be wrong or I must be wrong. Yet she got no answers.

Bimpe cried through the night till she fell asleep. Two days later she was released with no reason. Her kidnappers could not bear to keep her, they felt evil will befall them. They dropped her off at a junction close to her house around 11pm and zoomed off.

She got home, and everyone was glad to see her. Her mother cried with tears of Joy, and praised God that her daughter was alive. She looked at her daughter's body and scanned for injuries, seeing none praised God the more.for answering her prayers. As she had been fasting and praying since the day her daughter was abducted. She was glad her daughter did not have any physical injury.

But if only she knew that her daughter was already bleeding on the inside from the incident that took away her virginity. She was bleeding in her soul from the incident that took away her virginity. She was dumbfounded and did not say a word. She thought, "which God was her mum praising, the God that failed her or was is it a different God". 

She kept mute, took her bathe and stayed quiet believing that no one will know her plight. She had been cut in her heart and was bleeding profusely. Will she ever be able to heal? 

Some persons by now would have also been asking God about Bimpe story by now. They would probably be wondering, "should we put our trust in God?"Can he really save his own? And so many other questions.

The way men view persecution is not the way God view things. We might feel, "God has failed me" but his plans are beyond our thought. 

When God looks at a man he looks at what he will become in eternity. And not what he is currently. If a man is killed for the sake the gospel we should not be bothered so much because eternity is bigger than what we think. The mindset of men have been configured to "time". So we think he is dead and gone but to God, 200 years on earth is like 20 seconds.

Can you compare 20 seconds with 24 hours? Hmm....I am sure that it looks quite small. If you were told to wait for 20 seconds for you to receive an 1 billion dollars. I wonder who would complain. Some will even be willing to wait a month. This shows that the time spent on earth is negligible before God. Our main life is in eternity that is more than 1000 years. Sorry did I say 1000....it is more than 1 million. Hmm.... It is without end

The things that happens to us in this few 20 seconds of our life should not stop us from believing in God.

God protects his own when he deems fit. He chooses those he allows to live and those he wants to come home (heaven) to him. Sometimes, he is willing to save us but can not because we have not prayed but murmured. I will speak on this in another article.

When we consider that God had to let his own begotten son die, which we see as one of the worse things that can happen to man, it becomes obvious that God could allow a lot of things happen to believers for the sake of the gospel.

He did not hold the sins of those who killed his son against them. Instead the same person (Christ) they killed was the way to their salvation. Saul who went about killing people who where christians was also shown the same way to salvation as other christians. 

Maybe you have not yet gotten it. Saul who also planting bombs (If it was in our own days) and beheading christians was also shown the same way to salvation. God did not hold any sin against him. 

God is interested in that rapist being saved because his life in eternity will be in hell if he died that instant. The 20 seconds of that rapist should yield to eternal life and not death based on the choice of the rapist. Hence, God gives him more time to repent.

Peradventure he will become a greater than Paul in the Bible. Life in eternity matters more than 20 seconds on the earth.

When I consider how men like John Hus, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther and some other reformers were persecuted because of the gospel or for translating the Bible to various languages, I know that what matters most to God is that lives are being saved as the gospel is being preached.

And the men who are being killed have great rewards that will be beneficial to them in eternity. Since the 20 seconds we live on this earth is to amass great treasure that will be useful to us in eternity. God's silence is because he wants the wicked to change.

Everything that happens to us in life happens to our body which will definitely decay. Hence, we must be eternally conscious. Our lives on earth matters to him. But what is the benefit of a life, if souls are not saved? 

When we are faced with cases of rape, armed robbery, false accusations and so on don't become angry and begin to ask God, "why me?". Instead, ask God, "what do you want me to learn from this circumstance?" Or what do you want me to do?

Please, do not say it was God that brought this evil upon you. God  does not do evil as we see in the book of James. Instead he might use evil situations to bring forth goodness. Life circumstances happens to all humans. For Christ learnt obedience from the things he suffered.

God teaches Christians how to utilize the fire or challenges to bring out the best in us. He can use premarital sex which he hates to produce a child of honour and valour. Simply because they obeyed a principle of sperm meeting ovum.

Hmm...truly you must have seen that God sees persecution differently and you must do your best to stay steadfast. Learn all you can learn from the events in your life and encourage others.

In the next episode, I will write on how to overcome some certain challenges. Because we are not unaware of the devices of the devil.

God loves 

KingHenzy cares