Terminator Genes

But when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah. (2Chronicles 22:10)

I want us to look at God’s promise and the enemy’s relentless effort to bring it to an end.

And he has been doing it since the garden of Eden by subtly, yet powerfully, pushing the recipient of that promise to be part of that nullifying.

It is important, however, to realise that God is competent enough to carry His promise to fulfilment.

That is amplified by how He is able to use the enemy’s grandest designs to accomplish His purpose. That comes out clearest when we read verses like this.

For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. (Revelation 17:17)

Here the Bible is dealing with three enemies of God’s purpose.

But allow me to get to that promise.

If you look at Abraham, you will realise that the enemy knew that Isaac was coming since he was the promise.

What did the enemy do?

He brought around Ishmael, the single most troublesome character in this world to date.

You also remember Amalek and his schemes.

But I want us to look in glancing at a few such incidences in the holy writ.

Remember Judah and Jacob’s prophecy? By prophecy I mean simply repeating what God has already said, though it at times appears so new.

‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah’, simply means that Judah will provide an unbreakable leadership to Israel.

Yet see what happens to Judah at the very beginning.

He gets a Canaanite for a wife who gives him three sons.

The first is wicked and God kills him. The second one (and you will allow me to wade into controversy) uses a condom and God also kills him.

I suspect that even the third could have gone that way since they were raised by a Canaanite mother.

But in the process they had gotten a God-seeking wife that I think God did not want to pollute with the wickedness in those sons.

Eventually, this God-seeker deceives Judah to give her the seed, or the promise if we go by what I am writing about. And this woman becomes the carrier of the promise.

Look also at David

He is offered a wife by a heathen king.

Isn’t it interesting that one of her sons overthrows him and the second one seeks to shortcut the process of becoming king?

Solomon was even worse. Do you realise that his heir was of Moabite stock? No wonder backsliding for him was almost automatics.

Allow me to get to the focus of this post.

Jehoshaphat was a godly king. Or do you not remember he was the one who sent a choir ahead of the army to war?

He becomes friends with the king of Israel, the most wicked of them.

As per those times, he was given a girl by the king, Ahab’s own daughter.

For one reason or the other, he decides that it was his son who needed that girl for wife.

But that son did not have the spiritual stamina of his father. Meaning he was ‘sat on’ by that wife from hell, if you allow me to say that.

This means that this daughter of Jezebel (the original Jezebel) called the shots in his leadership as recorded in the scriptures.

But that was not the end game.

You see he also got married to other wives and produced sons. You will also realise that even Athaliah’s sons had David’s seed that couldn’t be utterly corrupted as to nullify the promise or kill God’s program.

She knew her assignment before she was released into David’s court as queen. And it was to terminate David’s seed and thus nullify God’s program for not only Israel, but the entire world as was envisaged by Genesis 3:15 and all the resulting covenants.

I want you to realise that God continuously narrowed that promise or covenant as time went on and the devil knew it because there was always a proclamation.

She became queen mother when her husband died and wielded even more power on her son who became king. I believe she became the power behind the throne, anybody who needed to access the king had to be in her good books.

Or do you not remember her mother killing an innocent man and his lineage when the king sulked after being denied some piece of land?

That is what I think she was like, amassing the ultimate power of the kingdom without holding any title.

Then her son died.

And you must know that her grandson was the automatic choice for the new king.

Yet that was not her assignment.

Her single assignment was to kill the promise. Her assignment was to terminate God’s redemptive agenda. Her assignment was to nullify all of God’s promises.

That is why she used her power to literally kill all the males in the kingdom, including her children and grandchildren because that was the sure way of terminating the promise. And since she had ultimate power in the kingdom, there was no one who could have stopped her.

And she almost succeeded.

And the reason she didn’t was because God’s program cannot be stopped.

You see, God had known of her assignment long before she embarked on it and had adequately prepared for it.

Or do you not remember the same thing happening during Moses’ time?

Why am I writing all this?

God has released something in your life. God has a purpose for your life. God has released a call for you. And God has you in His program. And the devil knows that, most likely better than you do.

You see, Athaliah did not just happen. Even Jezebel did not just happen.

They were in the devil’s long-term program to terminate God’s redemptive one. Call it ultimate sabotage.

I will not have succeeded in writing all this if I do not challenge you to look at what God has told you. Do you know it? Do you know its reach? Do you know your part in it?

That is because that is the single most important target for the enemy of our souls.

He does not mind you riding the longest limousine or having visas to all the countries of the world. He does not mind you having billions, even trillions of dollars in your accounts or jaw dropping investments wherever anybody cares to look. He does not mind you having the best family on earth.

Provided he can disconnect you from what God has in store for you. Provided you disconnect from your assignment. Provided you are a wandering star sampling everything the world has to offer.

He in fact will ensure you have everything you could ever desire if it could disconnect or even distract you from God’s assignment.

We have this story because Jehoshaphat, in all his spiritual stature, had no idea that his association with Ahab had a longer-term target. He could never have imagined that that beauty was a bride from hell with the single purpose of destroying everything Jehoshaphat held dear. He had no idea that the innocent girl before him was being brought for the single reason of destroying the program of the God he worshiped.

I hope you are getting something so far.

This because I am not just writing about Athaliah. I am actually writing about me and you.

You see, we all have a godly seed in us, especially us who are following Christ.

We all have a prophetic mandate that God has set in place for our completion. And the devil has some inkling of the same.

He therefore released the strategy to abort it from the day we believed and will never stop pursuing it until we exit this world.

This of course means we are in a continual state of war with the enemy of our souls and that his central focus is our assignment or prophetic mandate as I have mentioned earlier.

It therefore means that there are always Athaliahs being packaged and released to us.

As was with Jehoshaphat, Athaliah was not a direct threat to the king or even his son. She was patient enough to wait for the opportune moment, when she had amassed power and the kingdom was at its weakest.

He does that with us all the time when we are not watchful, eternally watchful.

Athaliah may be that deal too sweet for your pocket. She might be that piece of land too irresistible for its attractiveness. She might be that relative too eager to please you even before you request anything. She might be anything and anyone.

Her most potent weapon is her patience. She is not demanding. She is not pushy. She is the all beautiful and submissive wife.

All that because she is biding her time. She is waiting for her time to come.  She is waiting for her plan to mature.

Then she will release her whole power. She will leave nothing to chance.

What is the conclusion of this whole issue?

Connect with what God has for you and nothing else.

Seek to know what that is will be your only redemption. Not knowing that will lead you to play in Athaliah’s league.

Losing focus of what God wants of you may appear innocent and even harmless. It may even be fulfilling since the enemy will withdraw his arsenal from you since not being against him is actually being in his team.

Your erstwhile enemies might even seek your friendship, sometimes even apologizing for disagreeing with you since they really need you to be outside what God has in store for you.

But they, like Athaliah, are simply biding their time. Then they will knock you down cold because they have been able to get into your sanctum even as you were thinking they were a part of your team.

I am presently dealing with such a case in the church I fellowship in.

Some very close friends of the pastor, boasting of a friendship spanning over two decades, have finally unleashed an arsenal on him that only God can rescue him from. They have cooked allegations and clear falsehoods and disregarded plain scriptural admonitions and even simple logic to smear to smear an old man with so much muck as to deny him any breathing space.

But I know that as happened with Athaliah’s scheme, this too will fail because God is about glorifying His name through His servants. But it is a tough call on some of us who have joined the fray because the same rotten characters have now started smearing me and creating stupid allegations to stop me from questioning their wickedness. And they can lie so blatantly without batting an eyelid. They can say something in a meeting and say the exact opposite in another meeting.

But suppose this pastor had suspected them of being in Jezebel’s employ when they met. Would he have allowed them so much leeway? Would he have even allowed them in his ‘neighborhood’, leave alone his confidence?

But he didn’t know. He had no idea that there was a Jezebel in his team, a Jezebel whose only agenda was to abort God’s program for him.

But as I have said earlier, they will not succeed. And that because God’s program cannot be aborted. And that is what I use to encourage him even as things have been so hard for him over a few months.

This in itself confirms one key thing; that warfare is the product of an obedient life. That people and structures will fight you for the simple reason that you are submitted to Christ and serving Him.

Otherwise you could be having the time of your life, even in ministry.

As per the common saying, it is the tree laden with fruits that the boys throw stones at.

But I want to finish this by repeating what I have said again and again in this post; the devil’s sole purpose is aborting, weakening, distracting and when he succeeds, terminating God’s assignment for you. Everything else is a side show to keep you occupied with other things.

Will you focus on your assignment or will Athaliah be allowed room to gain leverage?

Do you know your assignment?