Hello once again, dear friends, and all fellow members of God’s family reading from across the world.
As you must have already known by now, my name is Joseph Achi, from Nigeria.
I serve the God who made the heavens and the earth, through His Son, my Lord and personal Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Today I am sharing with you the fourth part of my encounters with the saving power of God through His Son, Jesus the Christ.
I am sharing these testimonies with you for the sole purpose of glorifying the name of Almighty God, and His Son, Jesus Christ, and to encourage faith and commitment in His name all over the world among all who have already believed in Him, and also among those who would believe through these testimonies.
Romans 10:11-12:
“For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Sometimes in the year 2010, while working in the City of Lagos, in the southwest of Nigeria, I received a revelation from the Lord about an impending danger to my life. This was revealed to me while I was asleep.
In that dream I saw myself in a strange place with very high walls.
I was tied both hands and feet with ropes. There was a large cauldron with boiling liquid not too far from me, and a very old woman was attending to it. She looked fetish; I’d say she seemed to me like a witch doctor . The whole place looked like a ritualist’s shrine and I had a clear understanding that I was going to be killed and used as a sacrifice unless I was delivered by some stroke of luck from that hopeless situation.
While the woman was going about her fetish procedures I suddenly discovered that my bands were loosed, and that I could move. So I waited until the unsuspecting witch doctor came to stand opposite me with the cauldron of boiling liquid between us. Then I quickly rose and pushed it over against her, thus spilling the whole hot liquid on her as she lay sprawled on the ground. This resulted in her death instantly.
Her attendants made attempts to apprehend me, but somehow I was able to scale that high wall, and made good my escape. Then I woke up with a start.
I shared this terrifying dream with my wife and, after we had prayed about it, I subsequently forgot all about it over time. However, sometimes later , probably that same year, I received a phone call from a very wealthy man whom I had met and became acquainted with while I was still working in the northern part of the country. I’d lost contact with him for some years due to some problem with my phone, so it was a pleasant surprise to me when he called. I told him that I had relocated to the city of Lagos, owing to an external transfer from my place of work.
He told me he’d be coming to Lagos, anyway, and that he’d be happy if I could come and visit him when he was there. Of course I looked forward to it too because he had been a good family friend.
When he eventually arrived Lagos, it was at a time when I was so busy at my place of work, with virtually no spare time for visits except to refresh myself, eat some food, and sleep after returning very late from work.
He kept calling, and I kept making promises to visit him, but each time my work schedule would drag way beyond my normal closing time, and late into the evening.
At some time he began to sound so desperate to see me, so much that I became suspicious because, given that he was a very rich man; in fact he’s from one of the wealthiest families of the Muslim elites in the far north of my country; so it seemed rather strange to me that he would need my attention so much that he’s be worried. Well, I decided to handle the situation with extreme caution.
He kept calling me relentlessly, and the more he did, the more my spiritual senses suggested to me that all was not well.
At this point I like to shed more light on my relationship with this man so that the reader can better understand why I had my reservations about him. I came to know him when I was privileged to officially serve him at a very critical time when that service mattered so much to his reputation as a highly placed Director-general of a government establishment, at the federal level. Actually, at that time, it wasnt my schedule to attend to him but the only staff, whose schedule it was, was unavoidably absent and no one else was trained to handle that schedule; not even me. However, my superior authorized me to attend to him, so after studying a few precedents for guidance I was able to draft and have certified the documents he needed, just in the nick of time. To say the least, he was overjoyed at my ability to execute the official documents exactly as was expected, and since that time he took a liking to me. Sometimes he would invite me to his house, and we would go out to see his friends, or just drive around to some places of interest to him.
But, fast forward, at this material time that he had asked to see me at Lagos, his desperation betrayed something, which I sensed were
hidden motives, because given that he was not only rich, but was older to me, at least, in my estimation, by not less than twenty years; and also given the pedigree of a typical rich person in this part of the world, it was out of place for him to want to see me that much for nothing. In fact he had never called me that much time before, or was he ever so desperate to see me at any other time before this time under review.
At a point he became very angry that I could not keep my appointments to see him, the fact notwithstanding that I had tried to explain my own predicaments to him.
At his last call to me, he sounded so worried at not going to see me. He said he’d be leaving for the north the next day and earnestly implored that I should try by all means to see him. Much against the restrictions I felt in my spirit I decided to make a sacrifice that day to see him, not minding my own inconveniences.
So when I got home at night, I made out time to go and see him.
He lived in a very high brow estate in Lagos island. He described to me that his house was not too far from the first of two entrances to the estate. He gave me his house number.
When I got to the estate, the security guards at the main entrance quizzed me and, after being satisfied with my answers, gave me direction to the house, which was close by. Indeed it had a very high wall and a massive gate, just like the one I saw in my dream, but at that time I didn’t even remember that I had had such a bad dream. I walked straight towards the house, but as I drew near, it was as if something just switched off in my brain. I only came to myself after I had walked a considerable distance deep into the estate. I had never entered that estate before, so I did not even know where I was heading to anymore, and it’s not a kind of a place that you could start asking someone to show you your way as everyone was cocooned in the comfort of their luxury homes.
While still roaming aimlessly in the estate , his call came through to me: I had earlier on called to tell him that I had been shown his house by the guards, so he now asked why it was taking me so long to reach it.
In my own innocence I tried to explain to him that I did not know when I walked past his gate, and that I’m somehow lost in the heart of the estate. After asking for some certain clues around me, he told me that I had gone way too far and was closer to the second gate, and that it would be easier for me to exit the estate via that gate, take a vehicle and come back to the first gate. He said he’d detail his guard to come outside and assist me to come inside.
I was, in my innocence, grateful to him for the gesture.
When I got to the first gate the second time, I spotted the house just nearby and was surprised that I had missed it the first time. So this time around I fixed my gaze steadfastly on it and proceeded to walk up to the gate. The number of the house was clearly written on it.
Please, bear with me that I’m avoiding to specifically mention certain things in my narrative; it is due to some security concerns.
True to what he had said he’d do, there was a man standing in front of the gate to guide me in. He was a hulk of a man, about six feet plus, and I could even see that one of his eyes was bad. I looked at him intently and he returned the look, but that was all I remembered again. By the time I came to myself I was once again roaming in the heart of that big estate. My would be host’s call came again after sometime, and he was saying something like his guard said someone ( obviously me) approached the house but simply walked past it.
Well, by this time I was somehow feeling embarrassed at not being able to simply walked to the gate of a house which was clearly in my view. Even the security men had been surprised when I had returned to the first gate that second time to say that I had missed my way. They still pointed at the house emphatically to me.
Once again my check revealed that I was closer to the second gate of the estate. My host, who now seemed upset, simply asked me to go to the entrance of the second gate, and wait for him to come and pick me up in his car.
I did.
After some time he called to say that he was at the second entrance of the estate, where I said that I was waiting. He said he was in a white car with tinted glasses, but after looking around I couldn’t sight any car. I told him I could not see any car around. He also said that he could not see me either. He proceeded to asked me to describe what I could see around, so I proceeded to describe my immediate environment, right to the spot where I was standing in front of some ornamental trees by the gate. At that point, also, some commercial motorcyclists had parked outside the gate and I included them in my description.
He agreed with everything I said, except that he still maintained that I was no where to be seen in that place.
Then the scales fell off my eyes!
By this time he was very angry. But I was just perplexed. Why couldn’t we see each other?
Why was he angry instead of being surprised that we seemed to be invisible to each other?
Could it be that he was angry probably because he thought that I was only lying that I was there at the gate? But bearing in mind that I had clearly described the current scenes at the gate , to which he had also admitted to seeing, I believe that he was also convinced that I was truly at the gate, just as he was at the time. But because he was, nonetheless, angry after all those facts, I started sensing that something evil was brewing: he must be angry because of something else; something he feared he was going to loose. But as to what it was, your guess is as good as mine.
It was at this point that the Lord clearly spoke to my heart: He simply said, “ Go back home”.
So I left that place for my house.
It was at that time that I became afraid at the whole thing that had transpired.
I became aware that it was God that was preventing me from walking into that house. Who knows what would have become of me if that had happened?
I became aware that the event of that day was linked to the dream that I had had earlier on.
As I took a commercial motorcycle back home, the man kept calling my phone, but I refused to answer his calls.
I was so afraid, but I was equally grateful to God for “switching off my brain” those two times, and also for putting a veil between me and my adversary at that final meeting place.
PRAISE THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!!!
After that incident, he went ahead to reclaim a choice plot of land he had earlier gifted to me in a government reserved area, but I didn’t care much when I got to know about it, even though I had invested some money in trying to develop it.
He never called me again, until many years after, and when he did, he sounded like he missed me; but my unenthusiastic response must have been the reason he hasn’t called again ever since for over a decade; and, to say the least, I am the happier for it.
Praise God!
If you’re out there, and are having a hard time believing that God exists, or that He does not care for those who trust in Him, then this is my question to you: who restrained me, twice, from my ill-fated purpose that night? Who put a veil between me and my would be abductor, and possible killer? Even though the unfolding drama was not consummated to its planned conclusion by my adversary, yet was it not God, Who sees the end of a thing from its beginning, that showed me in a similitude, via a dream, how that incident would have happened even before it came to pass?
Who spoke to me at the entrance of that estate, asking me to go home?
It was my God , “That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish;”
Isaiah 44:25.
I sincerely and passionately call upon everyone reading this narration to put their faith and trust in Him, and to accept Jesus Christ His Son as their Lord, and personal Saviour, if they have not truly done so before.
Jesus Christ is just a fervent prayer away!
John 17:3 :
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
God bless you for reading.