The Rev. Manasseh Mbafe, secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Hong, confirmed the church's destruction and said eight Christian communities have been driven out completely. Another count puts the Oct. 8 raids at three mostly Christian villages, with at least one person killed and church buildings, homes and community facilities burned. The two figures have not been reconciled, and the Nigerian government and military have not confirmed either one.
Residents said shops and pharmacies were looted. Several villagers are still missing, and no one outside the region can yet say whether they were killed or taken captive. The number of abducted students is also unknown.
The violence has not stopped. Local officials in Hong said a night raid on Oct. 18 destroyed about half of the Christian community of Graha, and neighboring villages are bracing for more. In a separate case this month, villagers said an evangelist named David Barnabas was locked inside his own house and burned alive. Farther south, gunmen kidnapped a parish priest in Benue State on Oct. 13, and families near Kaduna lost five members to kidnappers on Oct. 6, a six-month-old baby among them.
Nigeria's military said it repelled one assault in Adamawa this month and killed six attackers. Church leaders say that is small comfort to a farmer who has lost his field, his house, and his place of worship in a single night.
What a burned church cannot burn
Think about what a church building is in a village like Hong. It is where the babies are dedicated and the dead are mourned. It is the only room in the community where every person, rich or poor, stands on the same floor. When raiders set it on fire, they are not just destroying timber and tin. They want to tell a people that they have no place here and no future.
But they have made a mistake as old as Pharaoh. The church was never the building. The Lord said so plainly, and He said it to people who knew what it was to be hunted.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
Notice the tense. He did not say theirs will be. He said theirs is. The family sleeping in a field tonight, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, holds a kingdom that no gunman can take, burn, or loot. That is not a pretty phrase. It is the hard promise of the Savior who was Himself driven from town to town and hung on a Roman cross.
My friend, we in America have a duty here, and it is not complicated. The Bible says to remember.
"Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yet in the body." (Hebrews 13:3)
As being yet in the body. Those villagers are not statistics. They are brothers and sisters, and they feel the heat of the fire. A man who reads of such things over his morning coffee and feels nothing has forgotten that he belongs to the same body.
Honest remembering has some practical shape. A free nation ought to speak plainly when believers are slaughtered for their faith, and it ought to use its influence, through those whom God has set in authority, to press for protection of the innocent. The Christian, for his part, can give to relief work he trusts, speak the names of the suffering in his own home, and refuse to let the news cycle move him on.
Understand, too, what the persecutors cannot do. They can take a roof. They cannot take the Lord's presence from a man who loves Him. History shows that the church has grown in the very soil where it was burned. The blood of the faithful has never ended the gospel. It has only carried it farther.
If you are a believer, hear the comfort in this: your Savior knows the smell of smoke and the sound of a mob. If you are not yet a believer, look at those who keep singing in the ashes and ask what they have that you do not. They have a Lord who died for sinners, rose on the third day, and offers eternal life to anyone who will turn from sin and trust Him. That offer stands for the gunman and the villager alike, and it stands today.