On several occasions, you have been directed, even from birth, on what you should do. You are aware of your divinely assigned duties in the service of God, but you have persistently disobeyed the Voice of the Holy Spirit. Your problems, your ill health, your afflictions and tribulations, your worries and difficulties are neither attributable to apparition, nor mermaid, nor witchcraft, nor any diabolical means, but to your refusal to comply with the instructions of the Holy Spirit.

The children of God are everywhere in the world, and as a child of God, you have specifically been directed by the Holy Spirit to come out from the world, forsake the earthly things and serve God, but you have persistently refused. This has been the crux of your trouble. Having been deliberately recalcitrant to the directives of the Holy Spirit, tell Me how you can have peace in this life or in the life to come, either in this generation or in the generations to come. As long as you do not listen to and obey the Holy Spirit, you cannot have peace nor can your life be worth living. If you disobey the Holy Spirit how will you please Him?

Whenever you are in the confines of the Kingdom or in the world but refuse to listen to the Holy Spirit, your problems became compounded. The reason, you find people in prisons, in psychiatric homes, hospitals, prayer houses, receiving treatment with necromancers and consulting oracles is that they are disobedient to the Holy Spirit.

A few years ago the Holy Spirit sent a message to the President of the United States of America, and he refused to comply, and the Nixon Watergate scandal is still fresh in your mind. In 1979, the Holy Spirit again sent a message to General Ignatius Achampong, the Head of State of Ghana. He was directed by the Holy Spirit to do certain things, and also to see the Father in Calabar. He refused to comply with the instruction of the Holy Spirit. Even though he was no longer the Head of State when Rawlings staged a coup which ousted the Military Head of State, Achampong was assassinated along with the former Head of State. That was punishment for his disobedience. Further, the Holy Spirit sent a message to the Liberian President and Head of State, William Tolbert, but he also disobeyed the Holy Spirit and did not comply with the provisions of the message. He was ousted in a coup d'etat staged by the army under Sergeant, now General, Samuel Doe, in which he also was assassinated.

During the same period also the Holy Spirit sent a message to Alhaji Ahmadu Adhijo the President, and Head of State of the Cameroons. As a moslem and one who believes in idolatry, he did not accept the message. The resulting effect of that refusal was the many problems which he could not grapple with and which were instrumental to his abrupt resignation. These are living testimonies, from which we have to learn and take stock of our lives. We should learn from the mistakes of others, and remold our lives.

In Nigeria, several messages have been sent on several occasions to the Head of State as well as to the State Governors, since after the civil war and even at the attainment of Independence in 1960, but none of them had thought it expedient to carry out the message and you are aware of the turbulent periods of history in Nigeria since 1963. There have been four coup d'etats in two decades and two which took lives of two Heads of State. Apart from killing, intertribal wars, internal squabbles, gross disrespect to constituted authority, highway robbery, there have been moral bankruptcy, unstable successive governments, economic recession, and general poverty styled "austerity." There is everywhere a sign and feeling of unrest. Examine the situations throughout the world. There is no peace. Whatever happens in the world, therefore, is the result of disobedience to the Holy Spirit. The inhabitants of the world have rejected the Holy Spirit, and you, who were elected out from the world by God unto Himself, have also rejected Him. Do you know it is better to obey God rather than man?

Your fall is that you listen and obey the voice of men rather than that of God. Whatever your problems are, they are attributable to your disobedience to, and lack of belief in God, but you rather obey man and believe in Him.

At Etinan, God sent a certain lady to deliver a message to a certain pregnant woman, what she should do for a safe and smooth labour and delivery. The lady refused to carry out the message. The consequence of the disobedience was disaster for the two ladies. The lady who refused to deliver the message became lame and the pregnant woman delivered a stillborn child. Many visioners complain that they have no money, husband or wife, they only suffer because of their disobedience to the Holy Spirit. Take note that this message comes from high heavens unto you, and you have to rearrange your thinking because your problems arise from your disobedience to the Holy Spirit. But when you obey Him you have no problems.

There is one thing you have not understood. If you quarrel with somebody in Calabar, and after sometime you leave for Lagos, the man will not see you again and it will mean that you have escaped from him. In the same token, you can have conflict with the Government of Nigeria, but while the Government is processing your prosecution, you escape to the Cameroons, since the Government of Nigeria does not see you and since you have escaped, the government will stay action on your prosecution. But with God the situation is quite different. If you oppose God, He will pursue you to the matter's absolute conclusion within this world, in this generation and in any other generations. You blaspheme against God and refuse to serve Him because you complain that He has not yet done certain things for you. This is erroneous.

It seems that you have so soon forgotten what befell Jonah when he disobeyed the Holy Spirit, the ship in storms, his being eventually thrown overboard, the whale which swallowed him up for three days and three nights and being deposited on the bank of Nineveh. (Jonah 1:17) Remember also what befell Nebuchadnezzar when he disobeyed the Voice of God. (Dan 4:31-37) Do not forget also what happened to King Herod, (Acts 12:23), and Pharaoh (Ex 14:17) as a result of disobedience to God's instructions. Remember also what happened to Zacharias when Angel Gabriel told him that his wife Elizabeth would be conceived and would bear him a son and would call his name John. (Luke 1:13-20) He started quarreling with the angel asking him how such a thing could happen seeing that he was an old man, and his wife-well stricken in years. For his stubbornness and insubordination he was stricken and he could not speak until the day John was born.

Have you seen what is happening in Nigeria or in Africa or in the whole world? If you go to deliver to any person a message from the Holy Spirit, he will drive you out that he himself belongs to a church denomination. From now on, whatever the Holy Spirit reveals to you, obey it promptly so that you obtain peace not only for yourself but for the whole world. Do not listen to the advice of your wife or husband or any other persons who try to hinder you from serving God. Do not listen to your friend or master or teacher or father or mother who attempts to stop you from serving God. Do not consult an oracle or a soothsayer. Do not go to the hospital or to the necromancer, whatever is your problem, go back home, search yourself diligently, you will discover that you have disobeyed the Holy Spirit which directs you to go to serve God. After you have discovered this snag, be born again and go forth to serve God in order to obtain peace for your soul. Take note that in God's case there is no appeal, His judgement is final.

I want to use an earthly situation to illustrate an heavenly situation for you. Once upon a time, there was a certain widow who had four children, two male and two female. It was the will of God that her husband should die to afford her the opportunity of serving Him. If the husband were alive, he would not have allowed her to serve in the temple of God. What happens to you now? You so stick yourself to your wife or husband or children that you fail to serve God, and at the end you perish.

Whoever prevents the children of God from serving their Father, will be destroyed, and all his ways will be closed. If it is the government that prevents you from serving Him, God will cause confusion, reshuffle the ministries and cause you to lose your job. If it is the husband that prevents the wife from serving, the Father will remove the husband to afford the wife the opportunity of serving God. If the wife wants to hinder her husband in the service of God, then the Father will either remove her or call a halt to the marriage. If it is a mother who prevents her children from serving God, He will remove your mother in order to allow you the free hand of serving Him. Whatever stands in the way of any person who decides to serve his God, whether it is government, or church, or village, or relations or society, will be completely eliminated.

To continue with our story, the Voice of God reached this widow, that she should forsake all worldly things and serve Him. She argued, as you would argue today, that the children, left for her by the late husband, have to be trained, brought up and maintained. She pleaded that she be given time to educate her children first and then prepare them for life before going to serve God. Since the Father had given her the instruction, He was not perturbed by her flimsy argument.

After sometime, God again directed her to abandon what she was doing in order to serve Him. God told her that what she was doing was not the assignment God had kept for her, and that she was wasting her time educating her children. She again complained bitterly and argued that she be engaged in contract work in order to be able to educate her children. She pleaded that she would serve God after educating her children.

God appeared to her the third time and told her that she was sent to the world to serve God, and that she should forsake all that she was engaging in, because they would not benefit her in any way. But she again pleaded that she be permitted to educate her children until they graduated, and take up employment, and marry and build a house for themselves. Only then could she serve God. After the third warning, God quietly left her and did not talk to her again. The moral of this anecdote, is to convey to you, what it is to disobey the Will of God. The ways of God are very mysterious and incomprehensible, that is why I do not toy with the Voice of God. When you toy with the Voice of God, you suffer.

At the end, all her four children graduated with degrees. They got lucrative employment. The two boys married and two girls were also married. A great many people regarded the woman as a very intelligent and wise woman having educated her children to that high level. She then embarked upon building a family house to accommodate all her children, their husbands and wives. Both the mother and her children, their husbands and wives continued to work and lived in the family house. Very soon the house was converted into a brothel and hotel and the woman was at the height of her enjoyment in life. She was very popular with the presidents, governors, lawyers, and millionaires. She started attending ballroom dances and clubs. She was now given to licentiousness, voluptuousness and sensuous snares. God was laughing at her.

The Bible says, "As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity..." (Ps 125:5). It has always been your feeling that if one does not work for the government or for the company, if one does not enjoy life, if one does not fornicate, if one does not engage in contract work, if one does not marry and accumulate a lot of wealth, he cannot live, but do you remember where your soul shall be?

The Bible provides that if you walk according to the promptings of the flesh you will die, but if you use the works of the spirit to mortify the flesh you will live. (Rom 8:13) The choir of 10 Ikom Bethel has a song which advises people to accept their poor position but follow God.

When this widow was at the height of her life enjoyment, and when she thought that she still had many years to enjoy, she suddenly reached her wits end. As she returned from the hotel and pub one night, she dropped down and died. This is indicative of the fact that whenever God calls you, you must answer. Your life is not in your hands, and your life does not consist in the abundance of the possessions you have. Your life is in the hands of God. No man can take your life and you cannot take your life. It is in the hands of God. As the story of the death of the prominent widow rang in the air, the community was in confusion. She was buried. This was the beginning of a tragedy.

At the close of her funeral, and the day of her memorial service, the first son died. He was also buried. During his memorial service, the first daughter died. The whole community was thrown into a great confusion. The other two children followed in the same way without sickness but at the climax of enjoyment, they all died. The tragedy did not end in this world but in the other world, they also suffered because they were accommodated in a congested, narrow and non-ventilated house in darkness.

God is to be feared. If you do not fear Him, you are but abominable. That is why the Scriptures advise that you should not fear one who kills the body but cannot put the soul in hell; but that you should fear Him, who after destroying the body, casts the soul in hell. (Matt 10:28). It is not important to think of your present life but be much concerned with your next life to come.

In the final analysis, the five of them were accommodated in hell. God had warned her that she was wasting time educating her children and building houses and accumulating wealth. Now that all of them had died, what was the purpose of her children's education, the family building and the wealth accumulated?

Do not be stubborn with God. Obey whatever the Holy Spirit directs you to do, but I will never be stubborn with Him. Have a change of heart and obey always the Voice of God.

If you walk according to the promptings of the Spirit you will live.

Obedience is the first order in heaven. Therefore, obey God and carry out His instructions.

Let those who have ears, hear the Voice of the Spirit. God Bless His Holy Words. Amen!