Travail of a Nation — John Mulinde

Hello, greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus. When you just turn around and look someone in the eye and smile, it tells them how much God loves them. I bring you greetings from Uganda, Kampala, from my wife and children.

We've got a big family of six children, and a bigger family of the church congregation, which is found right in the center of Kampala City. And a bigger family of a ministry which embraces a number of Christian denominations in Uganda and beyond our boundaries.

Just to tell you a little bit about myself before I share with you, the ministry that God has graciously allowed me to lead is called the World Trumpet Mission. I've got two people here with me from the same...

Let me just ask them to stand up and wave to you. There's Enoch, one of the Christian businessmen in Uganda. And there's Rika, who is our administrative secretary here in Pretoria. And God has allowed us as a ministry to go to a number of African countries, not just because we want to extend our borders as a ministry.

Actually, whatever we do outside our country, we don't do so much under the banner of our ministry, but under the banner of our nation. Because he showed us that there is a redemptive calling on the nation, and the nation needs to reach out to other nations with that gift.

So when we go out to the country, we go out not as Trumpet Mission, so much as Trumpet Mission, but as ministers of the Lord from the nation of Uganda. And the Lord has been linking us up with prayer networks and intercessors in different nations of Africa, and in Israel, in about now four nations of Europe, America, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, and the South Pacific.

A Worldwide Spiritual Battle for the Church

But we believe that what God is doing is just a time for the last days, linking the body of Christ to join hands in an onslaught attack upon the powers and the works of the enemy, that in these days of ours, God is going to release the greatest manifestation of his power that we have ever seen in man's history.

We believe that all that God prophesied about the latter days and the glory of the church and the house of God being greater than the latter days and the former days, that it's going to come in the days that God has allowed us to see.

And if we would join hands across denominational barriers, across racial barriers, tribal barriers, national barriers, even continental barriers, God is building an army worldwide that is going to bring about the greatest manifestation of his glory in our day.

I've been in the country for about ten days now. I'm leaving tomorrow to go to Zimbabwe to be in yet another prayer conference in the city of Blue Isle. I think Benny will be there too. And I count it a great privilege to be given an opportunity to speak in this congregation.

Benny, I appreciate it, and I consider it a great privilege. And I just ask God that he will use my lips to communicate his oracles and fulfill his purposes during this time that he has gathered his servants together for his great purposes.

Isaiah’s Promise of National Travail

I want to ask that you open your Bibles and go with me to two scriptures, which I'm going to read before I share anything. Isaiah chapter 66, verse 8 says, and I'll read verse 8 and verse 9. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day? Or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children. Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?

Says the Lord. Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery? Says your God. And if you go with me also to the second book of Chronicles, that's a very famous scripture with intercessions, 7 .14. If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and I'll forgive their sin and I will heal their land.

I've called my sharing tonight, the travail of a nation. God says, shall I bring a nation to the point of delivery, to the point of labor, to the point of travail, and deny them the power to deliver? Shall I cause a nation to go into the crossroads where it is in need of assistance for delivery and yet deny them my hand of delivery?

But as soon as they begin to travail, I will come forth and bring them to the point of delivery. And what kind of thing does he want us to do? But, says, if my people, if, I mean the nation is made up of so many people and the majority of the nations are not people of God.

But God says, that doesn't worry me. If the people who are called my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I'll hear from heaven and I'll forgive their sin and the sins of the land, and I'll heal their land.

Let's pray. God Almighty, we submit ourselves into your presence, Lord. And I just want to say, Lord, join us together and give your grace to every one of us, men and women alike. And may your spirit minister to us, wisdom and understanding.

Father of heaven and earth, please fill this place with your presence. And Lord, let your words, the words that you will allow to come out of my lips, let them bring forth your purposes and oracles, that we may see clearly what you want to happen.

Give life to these words, Lord. They shall bring you glory and bring your people to where you want them to go. Let your name be glorified, Father. In Jesus Christ we pray. Let me begin by giving you a brief history of my country.

Uganda’s History of Suffering and Restoration

My country is called Uganda. It used to be referred to as the pearl of Africa. A time came when it was referred to as the reproach of Africa. During the darkest hours of our history, especially the 70s and the 80s.

But today, God has been doing a mighty work in the nation. That today, the name pearl of Africa is again being applied to the nation. And in addition, different leaders are coming and they are using terms like the beacon of Africa, hub of Africa and other things like that.

Not just to excite us, but those are the words they are using to describe the nation that has seen pain, shame and degradation. But out of God's mighty grace, God is healing the nation and is raising it back into the place that he intended it to occupy.

Recently, a number of leaders, including the President of America and other leaders have been coming and referring to the nation as the beacon of light in Africa, hub of the region and things like that.

But when you look back in what Uganda as a nation has gone through, every time we share the history, our contemporary history, the suffering, the pain, the shame, the degradation, the hopelessness of the situations that we went through and what God has done to heal our nation and to bring it this far, when you finish, people turn around and say, well, with God, all things are possible.

I mean, it's the greatest realization of God's infinite power when you look at how far the nation went and how everybody gave up on the nation and the people of our nation became ashamed of being called Ugandans.

I have many people, some of whom are my relatives, who denied their citizenship. Not because they were being persecuted in the nation, but they felt ashamed to be called Ugandans because of all that was happening in our country.

There are things I just cannot go naming. Some of them are just too hideous even to name publicly. And sometimes we have shared what's happening in our country, leaving out things we thought, no, we cannot say this publicly.

It's out of, I mean, there's no way you can say some of these things. And yet, even the little that we chose to say, when other people are writing in magazines and quoting, they find that even that little you shared is a bit too much to put in print.

We are a people who have known what it means to suffer. When we talk about suffering, we don't talk about a theoretical suffering. We know what it means to have pain, not as one person, but as a nation.

We know what it means to live a hopeless life, where you look around and say, where is the hope going to come from? We know what it means to be downtrodden, degraded, living in total loss of your identity.

We know what it means to live in fear, where men were ashamed to be men in their households because they could no longer defend their women folk, neither their children. Where they stood trembling in face of death, and there, sometimes their women had to hide them away, and their children had to stand, sometimes just to defend, and sometimes their children died trying to hide away their fathers being hunted by murderers, soldiers and other authorities.

But in all this, when you see the turning ground of God, you say, Lord, you are able. And if you could do one thing in one land, and you are no respecter of persons, then you can do it anywhere, where people will dare to believe you, where people will dare to hang on the rope of your hope that comes from your word.

If my people, anywhere, if my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, seek my faith, and forsake their wicked ways, then I'll hear from heaven, and I'll forgive their sins and heal their land.

The Failure of Human Solutions Under Idi Amin

When our nation was going through all this suffering, and all the things you heard about Idi Amin, people thought that they could save themselves in a human way. Many, many people who were able fled the country, they went into exile.

But that was not the answer for the nation, and that can never be the answer for the nation. Others thought if they made friends with people in government, with Idi Amin and his henchmen, they would survive.

But there are many people that were very close to government circles, who ended up beheaded or killed in torture and torment. Others thought, if we encourage our people to obey and obey everything the government wants, everything Idi Amin wants, maybe we shall have peace.

But even that was not the answer. The more we submitted, the more we were downtrodden. The more we tried to hide away, the more we were sought out. And the people of Uganda are generally a very submissive people.

It takes much to make them rise up in opposition to anything. And I think the last straw was in 1975. In 1972, the Jews were cast out of the country, the Indians were expelled. In 1973, our country joined forces in fighting against Israel.

We sent soldiers from Uganda to Egypt to fight Israel. In 1975, you know about the Entebbe raid, when the PLO hijacked a plane and brought it to Entebbe and was under the guard of Ugandan soldiers. And you know about the rescue.

And all that, you know when things are going on like that, and you go out as a Ugandan, having suffered so much, you go into a world which rejects you, identifies you with everything Amin is and has done.

You are identified with all the abuses as if you were the one doing them rather than the one suffering them. And you can picture the situation of hopelessness that our people had. And in 1973, all the evangelical churches were banned.

And then in 1975, all the remaining churches, except the Catholic church and the Anglican church, all the remaining ones were banned. And even the two remaining ones were denied the privilege of praying any other time.

They had to pray only on Sunday and at prescribed times. The nation was declared an Islamic state. We have less than 10 of our population Muslim, but the nation was declared Islamic. And there were Muslim prayers every day and all the time.

And everything was done in an Islamic way. And I think that was the last straw. Many people who persisted in being Christians were being persecuted. And we have many people who turned to Islam to save their lives.

But there were a few, a few people who were called by the name of the Lord that said, No, if there is God in heaven and if He lives, let's call upon His name. And they began to pray. It was illegal to pray in the churches.

Many churches were left empty because they were banned. So pastors turned their houses into prayer houses. And they began to pray. And very soon the soldiers cracked down upon them, began to arrest them from their houses.

So they couldn't pray anymore in houses. But so deep was the desperation, they went into the jungles, into the forests. And they would go in the night, pray the whole night and come back in the morning and go to work.

And this went on for some time. I think it went on for about a year. Then the government began cracking down on these people, calling them guerrillas fighting the government. And many people were arrested.

I have got friends, pastors were arrested, some of them killed. A close friend of mine is now an old man who was among the first to say, Let's go in the jungles and set up permanent prayer houses there.

And he went in the jungle and he declared an area sealed and said, This is holy ground. It is going to be given to the Lord for the travail for our nation. And people would go there day and night. And he did not come back to his house until after two years.

He lived in the forest. And there are many, many others like him who chose to go into the exile of the forest so as to have the freedom to pray and cry out in intercession for the country. This was not some small civilized prayer where you recite some wonderful words and you think out everything to say it very well.

This was prayer of desperate people. A people that would not be denied. A people that went down on their knees and cried in loud groans, loud wails. People who would sometimes find themselves, not by design, not by theology.

There was no time for theology in the forest. They would pray like the spirit within them drove them in desperation. Sometimes they found themselves wriggling on the ground. Sometimes they found themselves crawling deep into bushes.

Not by design, but by the travail, the pain, the struggle in their hearts to lay down before God. Oh God, have you forgotten us? So deep was the travail that many people came back. We have a few that even were impaired physically.

But men and women who have discovered a joy with the Lord that is beyond physical. But two years after this kind of travail was going on, God provided a way. And there was a change in our nation. Idi Amin was got rid of.

And suddenly, it was through the forces that came from Tanzania. Tanzania joined up with the exiles from Uganda, from other nations. And they invaded the country. And what appeared impossible came to pass.

Amin at that time was declared having one of the most formidable forces in Africa. Most mechanized forces in Africa. And yet, his forces were vanquished. And he was expelled from the country. So, once again the country was back in peace.

Prayer Ceases and Violence Returns

But you know what? Once this change came, and the peace came, prayer stopped. And for two, three years, we had this peace without prayer. But very soon we were back, and the problems began again. They didn't begin one night.

They began slowly. Murders here, murders there, robberies here. Highway robberies and assaults here. And just kept increasing and increasing. And then people were saying, Oh, where are we going? Where is the nation going?

Oh, we don't want to go back in the old times. What are we going to do? But no one was praying. Everybody was talking about it. But none was praying about it. And this went on until then they broke out a civil war.

So now there was a very brutal government. And then there was a civil war. And things were very, very bad. To the people outside the nation, they think Idi Amin was the worst news Uganda had. To those who are inside the country, this time in the 80s was even worse.

It is in those times that whole villages, whole villages were massacred. Sometimes, army vehicles would come and pour out petrol. Petrol drums. Because they would put a petrol drum in a Land Rover and open it and drive around the village.

The petrol would be spilling in the village. And after they do this again and again, they would set the village on fire. And when people wake up in the night, find their village on fire, they try to run out to save their lives.

And the soldiers would be shooting at random. Many, many people died and their bodies were scorched in the fire. My wife, when she was still with her parents, experienced this kind of thing. They woke up in the night and the whole village was on fire.

And their father just shouted and said, Everybody wake up and run for your lives. Don't wait for any other. Run for your life. And he got out with a few children, ran one direction, the mother got out with the others, ran another direction.

They never saw each other for two years. They were totally separated. And they lived in the forest for more than 18 months. Running for their lives. One day being hunted from one direction, the other day being hunted from the other direction.

Personally, my wife tells me that she saw more than four babies whose mothers had been shot dead. And the babies did not understand death. And they were hungry and were sucking the breasts of their dead mothers.

In the forest. Some people died from bullet wounds. Some people died from hunger. Some people from diseases. Some people from snakes. And things like that. And she witnessed many people that she grew up with in her village being shot dead or dying from something or other.

And they were not buried because there was no time for burial. They just had to keep running for their lives. It is in this time that we witnessed in broad daylight at roadblocks roadchecks where you find people being asked for identity cards including the baby.

If you found the soldiers are bloodthirsty they would ask where is the identity card of the baby? And of course babies don't hold identity cards. But sometimes they just wanted to kill. And they would get the baby throw the baby in the air and put a knife and the baby would come back and plant another knife.

And they would take that baby and give him back to the mother. They go. And some babies of course never made it. Died. And on a few occasions there were pregnant women who were asked what is inside your womb?

Of course it is a baby. How do we know it is a baby? We are going to check. And they had their bowels opened. And everything. Their insides poured out. I am saying this just to show you how demonic these forces were.

And one thing we did not understand we thought we were dealing with men. Bad men. We thought we were dealing with flesh and blood. And it took us a long time to look back and say oh no it is not men who are fighting.

It is the forces of evil and darkness that were operating through men. So many things were done. I have got friends I have got two friends who are living in the war area who witnessed their father dying in a very hideous way with a hammer and a nail being hammered into his head just to deter the children from supporting fighting forces.

And other things women, children watching their mothers being raped then killed in sadism and things like that. Lots and lots of things. I could go on and on and on. But I myself have escaped a number of times.

There are times I was I stood at the point of death and I was not in the villages where the fighting was taking place. I was right in the city center. I was born in the city center. I grew up in the city center.

And I started working in the city center. And there are many times I stood at gunpoint sometimes with a knife on your throat. And you know that this man has got no respect at all for life. And there is no one who will question him if he kills him.

No one is going to ask him a question. They just have got to say well whatever he says you do and you just call upon the name of the Lord. But a time came in 1985 they began killing church men. And then suddenly people began to say hey this is how our man started.

He started with killing normal people then he got on to church men. Where are we going? How long is this going to go on? And people would say that but there was no prayer going on. Until one day there was a young university graduate.

The Murder of a Young Preacher and a National Prayer Awakening

He was very vehemently preaching against the social injustices. And he preached in open air meetings in the middle of the city for a week. And many people gathered to hear him. And was speaking out against the injustice.

Then on Friday after he had preached around 2 at around 3 3 or 3 within the hour of 3 he was driving back to his home with another person in the car. And they were blocked by a Land Rover. Soldiers got out and told him get out of the car.

And he got out of the car. His hands up. They shot him in broad daylight. In the middle of a town everybody was watching. They killed him and they killed the second man and they left the bodies there.

And they took the car. And that night it was a Friday that night Christians gathered in the church where this young man went. And they were just crying. Just crying. The following day was Saturday. And it was a day of a monthly prayer meeting.

Ten thousand people would gather around just to have prayer. It was a monthly prayer meeting. And there would be a lot of healing and deliverance and the Holy Spirit moving. But this day was different.

There was just crying and wailing and mourning. And no one could preach. Whoever tried to come up to preach would break down into tears. And I remember someone narrated and said in the middle of the night one old person who was heartbroken came walking forward and faced the pastor and said Pastor!

Where is the God that you always preach? Where is the all powerful God? Is the God of Elijah dead? Couldn't we pray for a change in this country? Are we going to die off like this? And when he said that the whole church who lifted their voice just cried.

And later one of the pastors who was sitting on the pulpit stood up and said How many people here believe God answers prayer? And everybody raised their hands and said We are going to pray from today.

We want a change in this land. And we are not going to make a secret of it. We are willing to pray until the change comes. And it was like bushfire. The call went out across the whole country. And churches began to pray.

Prayer was going on during the day. Prayer was going on during the night. Of course not every church prayed. But the majority of the churches were praying. Women would come from their homes and pray in the churches all day.

Men would come back from work and spend the night praying. And as the prayers continued whole churches prayed throughout the land. The prayers continued and they were building in temple. More and more people were coming.

And Muslims and other people were beginning to come to the churches to give their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ without anybody going out to preach. They were just coming in. Being moved by the power of God.

Then something began to happen in many churches. The presence of the Lord began to be manifest. You would walk into a building. A church like this auditorium. And you would see the presence of the Lord like a mist.

Feeling the whole area like smoke moving. There was no fire. No candles. Nothing burning. Just the prayers of the saints. You would find people lying down. Kneeling down. Bent over. On their faces. There was no style.

No theologically approved or disapproved way. It was just cry to the Lord in the way you think is proper. What you feel in your heart. Let it come out. Sometimes you found people buried down. Burying their faces on the ground.

At the same time you find them lifting their faces with tears flowing. And there are some churches where you entered and as you came into the church you felt like you were crossing a curtain. It hit you.

But it was just the presence of the Lord. Just an invisible curtain you walked through. And the power of God so intense. When people went into prayer they were crying out in repentance for their sins for their families for the nations the sins of the nations.

They were crying out to God have mercy upon us. If you heal our nation this time Lord we promise you we shall serve you. We shall do anything you want. And they were crying out to the Lord. Some soldiers were sent to churches to arrest the pastors because they were praying for an open change right from government through everything.

And when they would be taken away others would take their places and say let's continue praying. Prayer was not stopped. They tried to intimidate and they couldn't stop it. And many soldiers and policemen who gave their lives to the Lord Jesus they would come into the meetings with their guns.

But they would be overwhelmed by the presence of the Lord. And they would walk through the aisles to the front and lay their guns on the altar and lift their hands in the air and say to the pastors we want to see we want to get this Jesus you have this power that you have we want also to be like you.

And they would repent of what of having been sent to intimidate and torture and that kind of thing. Well after a full year of this kind of travail why do I give you the time? Because sometimes the churches pray and they think if it doesn't work in a week's time in a month's time in three months it's no use let's give it up.

The first time the whole nation prayed it took two years. The second time the whole nation prayed it took a whole year before the change came. But God moved and the change came. And we used to the nation believe it from this this forces and the healing of the nation began.

The restoration of the nation began. And for the last twelve years also we have been just going through the healing of the land and the land being restored to God's glory. But after the change came again prayer stopped.

Spiritual Warfare Over Uganda’s Future

And again everybody went back into their comfort zones. Now in the early 90's around 1991 we began to see another killer in the country. Suddenly there was a very high rise of AIDS. And this was killing of men and women.

Not only the men it was taking men and women. Leaving many orphans. And this is the point at which God helped us to open our eyes and begin to understand the spiritual confrontation involved in nations.

We did not understand until this point. Now we were faced with things which you can find in almost all nations. We had orphans all over the country. We had street children increasing in our streets. And they were turning to crime.

They were turning to drug addiction. They were turning to prostitution. Armed robbery and things like that. And suddenly we realized the nation was decaying. Not from a bad ruler but from something we could not control.

We did not know how to deal with this. And eventually government appealed to the churches to help with the orphans and the situation of moral decay. I remember there was a time when pastors gathered from all over the country to spend time before God praying for AIDS to go.

And it was in that conference that the spirit of the Lord spoke to us and said up to now you do not understand the spiritual confrontation over your country. Up to now you are still fighting against flesh and blood.

And your minds are about oh that evil man Amin. Oh that evil man Obote. All those murderers. And you still feel the bitterness and said you don't understand. And in that situation you can't overcome. You can't win the war.

And said you need to understand one thing. You can pray now against AIDS. You can pray and you can pray about the problem. It will go. Thank God today of all the nations of the world World Health Organization has got a report.

There's only one nation in which AIDS has been coming down over the last three, four years. Coming down. And that's Uganda. The only nation in the whole world. But that's because of the intensive prayer.

But the Lord said to us one thing. You can choose to pray about problems. Problems will go. But other problems will come. He said if you want to learn how to change a nation stop praying merely about problems.

And start praying for my prophetic destiny for your nation. And we said Lord we don't understand. And I want to begin here to share with you some of the lessons that the Lord taught us about nations and the warfare that goes on for the control of the destiny of nations.

I'm going to be very brief. We can't do it in the time we have to go into the detail of each topic. But I'll just mention each one as we go on. And maybe God will just take it from there and go deeper and take us deeper using other speakers and other experiences we have.

Praise the Lord. The Lord said to us that when you pray about problems you are missing you are touching the branches and not the root. And we began to pray as pastors. Lord show us teach us teach us how to pray for our nation.

And the Lord began to give us a number of principles to understand. One was the suffering and all this pain you see in your country is just the manifestation of a spiritual battle that is going on for the destiny of your people.

There is a spiritual battle that is between the powers of darkness and the powers of light. There is no time now for me to go into the history. If we went into the history you would see the history of Uganda right from the time when the first missionaries came into the land.

Uganda’s Spiritual History and Redemptive Calling

If you read the history of the region of East Africa the core of power was in the Lake Victoria region which later on became the center of Uganda. Mission I mean discoverers like John Speake and David Livingstone say at Mombasa they were told about rulers right in the center of what today is Uganda.

Uganda was the center of spiritual ancestral worship and if you talk about lay lines and concentration points Uganda was the center of power of powers of darkness in the region in the whole region of East and Central Africa.

The river Nile is one of the greatest landmarks in the world and the Lord has been was showing us that the source of the Nile being in Uganda was a great lay point for concentration of forces of darkness and the forces of darkness were claiming the whole of the river Nile as a lay line so one of the greatest lay lines you find in the world which have such a concentration of power when you go in the Bible you find again and again the Nile being used by different rulers and worshipers to draw power to give you an example Indira Gandhi I think grew up in this nation of South Africa later went back to India and became a great ruler yet when he was about to die he said when I die let not my ashes the ashes of my bones be buried in this country let them be taken at an appropriate time into Africa to the source of the Nile and let them be buried there and then scattered.

The remains are scattered all across all over the Nile from the source to Cairo and I want to say to you beloved that sometimes we don't understand these things and yet the servants of the enemy forces understand them.

Three years ago two years ago I think they brought the ashes of Indira Gandhi to Uganda and the Shamiran and other leaders came to Uganda. They offered sacrifices at the source of the Nile and they buried some of the ashes there.

They built a monument there and then they scattered those ashes from Jinja the source of the Nile up to Cairo and they tried to bring in many leaders to be there to witness. At the moment we were not fully in understanding what was going on until the Lord revealed it to us and right now we are dealing with it and we are still dealing with the spiritual force a new kind of principality that was brought into the country.

Well the spiritual confrontation began when the missionaries came in to do the gospel. The people believed the gospel and the confrontation was so powerful between the powers of light and darkness that in 1886 the early believers of the gospel in Uganda were all put to death by fire.

They are today known as the Uganda martyrs. They all died for their faith. They had the king of Uganda gave them an ultimatum to deny Jesus or to be killed. And they chose to be killed. And they were killed 36 young men all of them less than 30 years they died for the faith.

And a decade later the first revival took place in 1893 in the city. Another came on in 1910 then again in 1920 and then the greatest which was the explosion which came out as the East African revival in the 1930s which started in Uganda then went into Rwanda using a French missionary.

The fire exploded and then came back when the Christians in Rwanda and the Christians in Uganda united to wait upon the Lord for 2 weeks in this border town of Kabali. And there was such an explosion of spiritual power it spread across the whole country of Uganda Sudan the southern Sudan Kenya Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Zaire even to Zambia and Malawi.

And I'm saying all this to show you there have been waves when the powers of light have taken precedence then have been vanquished and the power of darkness has risen vanquished and then the power of light.

And the Lord showed us that you need to look back in the history and understand the dynamics of the spiritual affair over your nation. These are powers of darkness and light containing for the land. Now you have an open heaven you've been praying but you are surrendering the ground back to the enemy.

So he said Lord teach us how to walk. And then the Lord said the reason why forces of darkness and light contained for nations is one because God has got a redemptive gift or calling a prophetic destiny for every nation that he has created on earth.