At what stage will God answer our prayers 100 per cent? Is it when our leaders are 100 per cent righteous or when the whole nation becomes righteous? 

I believe that time will come when a certain percentage, not all of us, of the nation will be 100 per cent committed to seeking Him. I will illustrate that one. When God was going to destroy the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, and He visited Abraham, His friend and He told Abraham, this is what I am going to do.

Abraham began to plead for the city because he had relatives there who were precious to him. He started by saying, ‘God, if you can find 50 people in the two cities, will you destroy the 50 with the unrighteous multitude? God said, if I find 50 there, I will spare the city. Abraham kept on pressing until he got to 10 and God said if I can find 10 people in the city doing My will, I will because of them, spare the city.

Unfortunately He couldn’t find 10. In other words, God is not going to wait until the whole nation – leaders and followers – have become committed to Him. He is looking for a percentage. Unfortunately, we don’t know that percentage. He knows that one and that is one of the reasons why everyday, we are struggling to get more and more souls saved. I am convinced beyond all doubt, that while we could apportion some blame to the leadership, a big blame also belongs to the followership. I have always said that in a nation of thieves, the leader will be a thief because a nation will get the leader it deserves. If we are all transparent people, if we are all honest people, if we are all against corruption, we will only vote into office people who are not corrupt. But if during the preparation for election, for example, somebody comes to you and says he wants you to vote for him and you say ‘fine, where is my bread’; and he gives you some money and you pocket it. When he gets to office, he will want to recoup the money that he has spent and when he begins to steal you don’t have any mouth with which to talk.

But if all of us say to someone, we are voting you into office, we are not demanding anything from you now, we don’t want your money; but when you get there, spend our money to take care of us. If he gets there and he begins to enrich himself, then we can rise up as one, and ask him, ‘what money are you stealing and what is the purpose of stealing it? We did not take any money from you’.

But as long as getting to office is going to be dependent on how much money you can spend on us before you get in there, when they get there, they will regard getting there as an investment and they will want returns for their investment.

So, the problem is not just with the leadership, it is also with those of us who vote them into office.