Good or Evil

At age twenty-five, Walter
Gowans
arrived in Nigeria,
the southwestern edge of the wide sub-Saharan territory that stretched from
the Atlantic ocean to
the eastern border of Ethiopia. That vast, mysterious region had been named Sudan,
“Land of the Blacks” by early Muslim settlers.

A few decades later, that vast landmass was
being divided into
separate nations. But that didn’t change Walter’s providential vision of the “Sudan Interior Mission” (SIM). God had given the young missionary a passionate
love for the oppressed natives, and
he was willing to give his life for their salvation. In spite of ominous
warnings from established mission organizations, he
chose to spread the gospel in one of the world’s “most treacherous regions.”[1] 
And indeed, he did — though he didn’t
live to see the amazing results.

Neither of the two friends who shared his
vision escaped the
fury of the dreaded malaria. Tom Kent, like Walter, died within a year. But
Rowland Bingham survived and, by God’s grace, he made Walter’s dream of the SIM
mission a reality. It would indeed spread
God’s saving love across Africa.

It
wasn’t easy. Though Bingham never gave up, his early years were filled with
disease, discouragement and depression. Yet, in the midst of such training
in endurance,
God gave him the faith, strength and resources (meager, yet always
sufficient) to carry on and spread His Word!

Keep
in mind, the native tribes of central Africa were NOT the free and simple “natural man” popularized by Western idealists
like Rousseau. Instead, their tribal beliefs, rituals and deadly sorcery brought paralyzing fear
and misery.

 

For
example, the Dinka tribe (in what is now the nation of South Sudan) believed in a cluster of “gods.” Their reigning deity was Nhialic, the
“sky god.”
That heartless master ruled all the other dark spirits that manifested their power through village sorcerers.[3]

 

Nhialic’s
spirit “mother” was the serpentine Abuk. Since the natives believed that spirits lived in
serpents, the punishment for killing a snake — poisonous or not — was death by
sword or spells. After all, the serpent spirit might take revenge on the
whole village.[3]

 

Many years ago, Bingham
shed some light on that darkness:

“There is the
constant invisible warfare….It is
fashionable in the Western world to relegate belief in demons and devils
to the realm of mythology, and when mentioned at all it is a matter
of jest. But it is no jest in West Africa…. One has not
to go far in the jungles of Nigeria, the Sudan
or Ethiopia and visit a few of the African
villages to believe in devils and demons. They
are all around you….Fetish men, devil men, ju-ju, lycanthropy, witches, wizards, ordeal by
poison all flourished unchecked.”[4]

The reality of this spiritual war should serve as a warning
to all of us. Countless missionaries have testified to the dark power behind
real sorcery. Those forces still keep countless villages in bondage to
mental and physical torments that Westerners can hardly imagine.

“O our God… we have no power against this great multitude that is
coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon
You.” 2 Chronicles 20:12

Denying the Devil and Ignoring
the Battle

 

Before we return
to the Sudan mission, let’s remember that spiritual warfare rages in our midst as
well as in Africa. In a document
titled “Spiritual Warfare and Worldviews,” Dr.
Paul G. Hiebert, Professor Emeritus Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,
wrote:

“…much literature on spiritual warfare has
been written by western missionaries who have been forced to question
their Western denial of this-worldly spiritual realities through
encounters with witchcraft, spiritism, and demon possession. Too
often they base their studies in experience and look for biblical texts
to justify their view. They fail to examine the worldviews they use to
interpret both Scripture and experience….

“The Gospels clearly demonstrate
the existence of demons or unclean spirits who oppress
people. The
exorcists of Jesus’ day used techniques to drive spirits away. Jesus, in
contrast, simply drove the demons out on the basis of his own
authority.”

[5]

[6]

God’s Victory over evil
 

While God’s Truth is fading from Western consciousness, faithful missionaries
continue to spread the light across
Africa. It
reminds me of the wonderful news revealed by Isaiah about twenty-seven centuries ago,

“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;

Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined.” (Is 9:2)

By 1930, God had raised up an
army of missionaries across Africa. Bingham’s friend,
Dr. Tom Lambie, started a medical
SIM mission in Wallamo, Ethiopia. His team saw few conversions the first few years.
But that would
change! 
This amazing testimony should bring
joy to your hearts!

“…in
1935, when the Italian military forces [sent by communist Mussolini] moved against
Ethiopia, the situation became grim. The American and British
embassies advised all their citizens to leave immediately, but the SIM
missionaries stayed on—with the blessing of their general director, Rowland
Bingham, who wrote.

“You are under higher orders
than those of the King of England or the President of the United States.
Get your instructions from Him…”[6]

“At this time there were only
seventeen baptized believers in Wallamo, and the missionaries realized
that their days were numbered, ‘Because we knew our time was short,’ wrote
one missionary, ‘we did everything we could to teach the Christians and
get the gospel message out…. It was unsafe to leave the mission
compound, but the urgency and importance of using the little time which
remained to further train the young Christians warranted the danger.”

“The last nineteen missionaries and seven children remaining in
Ethiopia were forcibly evacuated in 1937—giving them nearly two
years of ‘borrowed time’ to build the little Wallarno church. But even with
the added time the number of believers remained small—only forty-eight—and
the missionaries left with a deep sense of sadness and doubt:

“As we turned the last corner
around the mountain and saw in the distance the wave of their hands in
farewell, we wondered what would happen to the little flickering flame
of gospel light that had been lit in the midst of so much darkness.
Would these young Christians, with no more of the Word of God in their
own language than the Gospel of Mark and a few small booklets of
selected Scripture portions to guide and teach them, be able to stand
under the persecution that would inevitably come?”[6]

“And persecution did come—severe
persecution that tested even the most faithful as it had in the early
church. But despite the oppression the church rapidly grew. ‘The warm
love displayed by the Christians toward one another in the times of severest
persecution made a great impression on the unbelievers. Word of such love…spread far and wide.”

“By 1941 the war in Ethiopia was over, and the following year the first
missionaries were allowed to return….The
forty-eight Christians they
had left
five years before had

grown to
some
ten thousand, and
instead of one fledgling church there were nearly one hundred congregations
spread out across the province.“[6]

You don’t find this information in
contemporary history books. It’s not politically correct in a world that is bent
on squeezing religions into the UN blueprint for

global solidarity. (See

UNESCO’s declaration on religion)
The new global
standards for tolerance
have virtually banned references to supernatural evil in Africa or elsewhere.
Perhaps the only belief system that is freely
criticized today is uncompromising Christianity. 

When we
see our faith mocked and vilified through movies, video
games, books and schools, the reality of dark forces that hate our God
becomes increasingly real. A trip to Africa’s more remote villages can bring the
same awareness.

In
November,
1962, Andy and I traveled up the Nile through Sudan on a
barge pushed by an
old-fashioned, mail-carrying paddle boat — the kind that once paddled up and down the
Erie Canal. We slept on one of four large barges and explored the others. The one next to
ours carried Dinka and Shilluk natives who slaughtered and cooked their food on the
deck. Their tattooed faces helped us identify their tribes.

We stopped at
a Sudanese village just in time (surely God’s perfect timing) to providentially meet a missionary who was sharing the gospel in a nearby village. He asked
us to come to his home and meet his wife who hadn’t seen “a white woman” for
two years. Later, he would use his little motorboat to catch up with the mail boat
up river somewhere.

We
happily hopped into his old jeep and bounced along the dirt “road” to his
“inland” village. We were met by his wife and the welcoming smiles of their Christian
“neighbors.”
Those who were inside their huts came out to greet us. Their faces
radiated the joy of freedom from fear and demonic bondage. God had
truly accomplished great wonders in their midst.

The “food” section of another village
we photographed from our
barge:          

When
His life brings such love, why would anyone turn away? It
doesn’t make sense unless we acknowledge today’s raging spiritual war.
So let us take a stand against the evil, put on the whole
Armor of God, and
practice resistance through His victorious Word!  

“Thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your
labor is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians
15:57-58

Our Spiritual Warfare Series: