This is the fifth of a six-part series that considers the issue of prophecy and human justice. Read Parts One, Two, Three, and Four here. They provide the background to this present article that seeks to understand and learn from why God has intervened to bring the leadership of Sweden’s Lundin oil company to court for complicity in war crimes in Sudan, compared to many other and similar situations of gross injustice and human rights abuse.

To do this analysis, I have assessed the campaign against Lundin through the lens of Scripture to pinpoint possible reasons behind its success. The resulting observations can be summarised as fllows:

1. The victims included many Christians
2. The campaign was based on compassion rather than selfish political motives
3. The campaign was predominantly driven by Christians working in unison
4. The campaign involved people from the perpetrator society
5. Christians worked tenaciously to achieve the objective

1. Many Christian and/or Jewish victims

The Sudanese victims of the oil wars in South Sudan were primarily Christian (ca. 60% in 2020 according to Pew-Templeton). This may have been a deciding factor behind the success in bringing Lundin to justice, because Bible passages that refer to God hearing and responding to the cries of the oppressed refer to them as ‘my people’ (e.g. Ex 3:7; 1 Sam 9:16; and Jer 8:19). In other words, the Almighty intervenes when people make their appeal directly to Him rather than to a vague god. To do that, they have to know Him and accept Him as Lord, i.e. fear Him (Ex 1:17; Ps 103:13). We thus see how Scripture underlines the paramount importance of evangelism, even above prophetic calls for justice, because an oppressed group needs to know and call out to God — i.e. they need to be Jewish or Christian — in order for the Lord to bring about their earthly rescue.

We thus see how Scripture underlines the paramount importance of evangelism, even above prophetic calls for justice, because an oppressed group needs to know and call out to God

The Bible also tells us that eternal salvation is even more important than temporal liberation/restitution. At the time of Jesus, the Jews wanted a military messiah to free them from Roman oppression (Matt 27:15–21; Mk 15:7; Josephus, Jewish Wars 6.5.4 §312-314), yet Jesus ignored this issue because people’s primary need is to be freed from the yoke of sin. This is probably the reason why Jesus and the apostles are not recorded to have said anything against Roman occupation or misrule. Their silence on this issue does not, however, nullify the instructions given through the Old Testament prophets to establish human justice, when applied to the correct context.

2. A campaign based on compassion rather than selfish political motives

The campaign to bring Lundin to trial was brought about by Christian civil society groups motivated by compassion for the suffering of the Sudanese, rather than to achieve political or personal goals. This correct motive thus meets God’s charge to His people in Philippians 2:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others (v.4)

3. A campaign predominantly driven by Christians working in unison

Christians — individuals, churches, and organisations — have dominated the fight against the oil companies in Sudan, from the first formal complaint published in February 1995 until the June 2010 publication by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS) of the report Unpaid Debt that triggered the opening of a criminal investigation into Lundin’s activities in Sudan by the Swedish State Prosecutor. These efforts started with a cooperative venture in 1994 between Sudanese and Canadian ecumenical groups, later joined from 1999 by an anti-slavery organisation rooted in Afro-American churches in the US. ECOS was then formed in the year 2000 at the request of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum that is sponsored by the World Council of Churches with support from the Protestant Church in Germany. Three of the four leading members of ECOS are Christian faith-based organisations: Pax Christi, Christian Aid, and DanChurch Aid, as are many of its smaller members.

The campaign to bring Lundin to trial was brought about by Christian civil society groups motivated by compassion for the suffering of the Sudanese, rather than to achieve political or personal goals.

In John 17, Jesus prays for unity among all believers (20-21), while Psalm 127 reminds us that unless our plans and efforts meet God’s will, we labour in vain (v.1). God’s desire is revealed in His command for His people to ensure justice, so it makes sense that when Christians together do God’s will, these efforts will lead to success.

4. A campaign involving people from the perpetrator society

During the year 2000, the Sudan Ecumenical Forum requested their European and American partners for assistance to halt oil development. The Dutch Catholic peace organisation Pax Christi (now Pax) then volunteered to coordinate the group that became ECOS, which later allied itself with the Swedish organisation Global Reporting to bring Lundin to justice. The campaign thereby includes representatives of the nation from which the wrongdoers operated.

We see the same principle in the Bible. Moses was raised as an Egyptian prince, which must have made him a more effective voice against Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Also, with the exception of Jonah, Old Testament prophets only spoke to Israelite leaders (including priests and false prophets), while prophetic judgments on other nations were uttered to demonstrate that God would judge them too, but were not addressed directly to them. Finally, Jesus notably only rebuked Jewish rulers and religious leaders, rather than their Roman overlords.

Today, many pressure groups condemn foreign governments for the abuses they perpetrate, while often ignoring the wrongs of their own country. They mirror the hypocrisy that Jesus condemned in His teaching about the plank and the speck (Matt 7:3-5). This does not mean Christians should not speak out prophetically against abuses by foreign entities, but it requires us to also address similar wrongdoings in our own nations. The current court case in Stockholm against Lundin avoids this hypocrisy, as it only addresses the wrongs committed by a Swedish company in Sudan; the prosecution of Sudanese government officials, military personnel, and militias is a matter for the Sudanese people to take up.

5. Christian endurance to achieve the objective

The ECOS campaign against Lundin includes a group of Sudanese Christians — Rev. James Ninrew Dong Kuong, Rev. Matthew Mattiang Deang, and Chief Peter Ring Patai — who have fought a decades-long struggle against the oil industry to seek redress on behalf of their people, despite suffering many setbacks along the way. Yet they have not given up, even after losing a class action civil law suit against Canadian oil company Talisman in 2010 following nine years of expensive legal wrangling.

This does not mean Christians should not speak out prophetically against abuses by foreign entities, but it requires us to also address similar wrongdoings in our own nations

Ever since ECOS took on the Lundin dossier in 2006 under the determined leadership of Egbert Wesselink, it has expended huge resources and much effort to complete the satellite investigation of Lundin’s oilfield, to write and release the report Unpaid Debt in the face of serious threats of litigation, and to then follow up with persistent lobbying of institutional investors to persuade them to divest from Lundin and to pay compensation to the Sudanese victims. The organisation Pax Christi has provided steadfast financial support to ECOS for the 17 years of its key involvement in the campaign.

God expects such steadfastness from His people in undertaking the tasks He requires of them (Gen 26:18-24; 2 Kings 13:18-19; Matt 25:19). 2 Thessalonians 3 and Hebrews 10 explicitly tell us:

Brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good (v. 13) and

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised (v. 36)

Concluding thoughts

The observations listed above demonstrate the huge potential for bringing positive change to our societies if Christians humbly, steadfastly, and unselfishly work together to both evangelise and to end oppression and injustice. This has happened in the past, most notably in the UK during the great evangelical revival, when William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham sect successfully laboured to end slavery, vice, cruelty to animals, the penal code and press gang, as well as the regulation of factory conditions.

Christians and the Church should therefore heed this warning by ensuring the exercise of all forms of prophecy today, including God’s demand for human justice

Their example challenges how we practice Christianity today, which has largely ignored the pursuit of human justice. Have we become as hard-heartedly religious as the Israelites to whom Zechariah spoke?

And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: “This is what the Lord Almighty said:

‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other. But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry' (7:8-12).

Christians and the Church should therefore heed this warning by ensuring the exercise of all forms of prophecy today, including God’s demand for human justice, as summarised in Micah 6:

He requires of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (6-8).

Phil Clarke is a former aid worker and executive director of the Danish branch of Médecins Sans Frontières, and is currently the director of the independent war crimes investigation agency Bloodhound that he co-founded in 2006. He has been closely involved with efforts to bring Lundin to justice since 2001, and produced the report Justifying Blood Money in 2013 to expose Lundin’s lies to shareholders while it explored for oil in Sudan. His debut novel Falling Night was published in 2023, based on the experiences that led him from humanitarian aid to documenting war crimes.