From Era of Miracles to Era of Machines

By Dr Yemi Success

Africa must trade superstition for science if we want to survive this century.
1.) The next 50 years will not be kind to slow thinkers.
By 2075, nations will not compete on prayers, they will compete on patents.
Your children will not eat because you fasted; they will eat because you built something people will pay for.
Drones, AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing etc., these are the “miracles” of the next generation. And they will belong to whoever understands the natural laws that make them work.
2.) Let me be brutally honest: The countries that design microchips control the countries that buy them.
The nations that launch satellites control the nations that rent them.
The nations that make weapons control the nations that pray for peace.
China built 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail in 15 years. Nigeria has built less than 200 km in the same time, and most of it came from Chinese loans.
We are literally borrowing the miracles of another people.

3.) Poverty is not a demon, it’s a symptom of ignorance.
If you doubt this, look at the facts:
• The richest 10 countries in the world have less than one-third of Africa’s natural resources.
• The poorest 10 countries in the world are mostly African, sitting on gold, oil, gas, and fertile land – Congo DR, Nigeria, etc.
Our problem is not resources, it is thinking.
We treat corruption like a spiritual curse instead of a legal and systemic failure.
We treat under-development like witchcraft instead of bad planning.
We treat success like luck instead of the result of predictable processes.
‘Life is predictable’ – Dr Sunday Adelaja
4.) The miracle economy is killing us.
We celebrate pastors who buy private jets while our children study under trees.
We shout when we hear of “divine healing” while our hospitals have no oxygen.
We dance when we hear testimonies of “miraculous debt cancellation” while our GDP per capita is collapsing.
A miracle can change one person’s life.
A principle can change a nation.
That is why South Korea, a war-torn, resource-poor nation in 1953, is now richer than almost every African country.
Rwanda is following in same steps.
Not because they prayed more, but because they worked the laws of nature – principles.
5.) In the 21st century, the natural is your only passport to relevance.
The nations that will dominate the next century will be those that can:
• Build their own machines
• Process their own raw materials
• Write their own code
• Launch their own satellites
• Cure their own diseases
If you cannot do these things, you will be a servant-nation.
You will supply raw cocoa to Switzerland and import back chocolate at 10 times the price.
You will export crude oil and import petrol.
You will supply rare earth minerals and import back smartphones like Congo DR.
You will sit on gold and crude oil, and still be very poor like Nigeria.
This is exactly what is happening now.
6.) Heaven has already given Africa everything we need.
We have the sunlight to power our homes.
We have the soil to feed our people.
We have the rivers to electrify our cities.
We have the people to build our industries.
The problem is not God. The problem is not demons. The problem is us.
We refuse to think.
We refuse to learn.
We refuse to build.
Instead, we fast for breakthroughs in areas where God already gave us brains.
As I write this, Nigerians are everywhere gathering and praying for ‘breakthroughs’.
We have numerous prayer meetings but no ‘thinking meeting’.
7.) Every African leader should have these three words on their desk:
PROCESS BEFORE PRAYER.
You do not build a functioning airport by anointing the runway.
You build it by studying aerodynamics, investing in engineering, and enforcing safety laws.
You do not fix an economy by “decreeing prosperity.”
You fix it by building industries, and encouraging innovation.
8.) The miracle generation must give way to the machine generation.
Your child should know how to code before they know how to quote 1,000 “miracle scriptures.”
Your village should have a solar farm before it has another 5,000-seat crusade ground.
Your town should have a clean water system before it has another 50 “prayer mountains.”
I am not against prayer. I am against using prayer to cover for laziness and ignorance.
Faith without works is dead.
That was true in the first century, it is still true in the 21st century.
Works here, mean science, technology, engineering, innovation.
9.) Africa’s future is in the hands of the builders, not the beggars.
It lies with the thinking warriors, not the prayer warriors.
No nation has ever been developed by donations, aid, or imported miracles.
The British did not build the Industrial Revolution with foreign prophets.
The Americans did not reach the moon by “divine vision”.
They did it with math, physics, and courage.
The Chinese did not lift 800 million people out of poverty by “miracle offerings”, they did it by manufacturing.
10.) The next time you pray for a miracle, ask yourself: “Is there a principle I could learn that would make this miracle unnecessary?”
If the answer is yes, close your eyes, not to pray, but to think.
The earth is a giant machine with rules written into its code.
Those who learn the code will rule.
Those who ignore it will kneel, even if they spend their entire lives praying.
The 21st century will not reward those who wait for miracles.
It will reward those who become the miracle, by mastering the natural laws that run this planet.