One day Daladem was alarmed to hear about a Bible study group in his village and went to investigate their activities.
“My original intent was to cause confusion and finally destroy the Bible listening group in Tamerko,” he told Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH), which produces audio Bibles.
But God had other plans for Daladem. “Things didn’t happen the way I planned,” he recounted. “One of my visits to the listening sessions left me with some serious thoughts. I heard clearly from God’s Word that unless someone accepts Christ, they are condemned to eternal damnation.”
The power of the Word and the conviction brought by the Holy Spirit began to soften his heart. “It dawned on me that the life I was leading was dark and evil, and I realized that if I did not repent and believe in Jesus Christ, I would suffer the consequences. My growing fear of hell deprived me of sleep that night.”
“The next morning, I hurriedly contacted the Bible listening group leader and told him I wanted to give my life to Christ.”
Daladem surrendered the control of his life to Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord and was born again!
In response to his new life in Christ he did something dramatic. “I gave up all my idols to be burned in a fire, then joined a church in Tamerko,” he told FCBH.
“Praise God for His power to save and transform! Deladem used to demand money, alcohol, animals, and food from his neighbors in payment for seeking favors for them from his old gods. Now he is the one seeking favor from the one true God,” according to the report by FCBH.
Pray that Deladem would be transformed like Paul in the New Testament and became an ardent defender of the faith; that he would preach the Gospel to his community daily by the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Pray that God would continue to provide for Deladem and his family, and that they would be an example of God’s goodness and trustworthiness.”
To know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
To learn more about Faith Comes by Hearing, go here
As of Fall 2018, every single nation on earth is represented at Arizona State University! Over 150 nations have someone on the ASU campus, while other nations are involved online – including North Korea and Antarctica! From this one place, Spirit-led believers have the potential to impact the entire family of nations, just as the apostles did on Pentecost!
This huge university, the largest in the United States, has been in the grip of a bona fide spiritual awakening.
By our definition, formed over twenty years of monitoring transforming revival around the world, a true awakening means the work of God is comprehensive. This stands in contrast to a human campaign or initiative where results are typically confined to a single category or location within the community.
At ASU [Arizona State University], God’s sweep is as broad as it gets.
Not surprisingly, united prayer has proven to be a major factor behind these happy developments. After several tough years where campus ministries tended to go their own way, things took a pleasant turn in the fall of 2017. Instead of the usual two to three ministries coming together before God, prayer events at the local Campus Christian Center were rocking a three-fold increase in intercessory participants.
This past spring, fully a dozen ministries united behind a forty-day prayer focus where petitions were lifted day and night from a tent erected near the main campus square. The initiative was so fruitful, the ministries decided to continue the effort over the balance of the academic semester.
This fall, the tally of participating ministries and campus churches reached seventeen, as a fresh fifty-six-day campaign drew prodigals, atheists, Muslims, New Agers, and students suffering from depression. In addition to witnessing numerous conversions, healings, and deliverances, the intercessors also watched God begin to move among the University faculty and administration.
One of the more significant breakthroughs involved the school’s Interfaith Council of Religious Advisors. For years, the woman directing the council was motivated to establish ASU as a model of the global interfaith movement. Unfortunately, this highly syncretistic vision proved to be a major hindrance to the gospel. As time went by, her attitude toward Christians hardened, and ministries found their access to campus facilities severely limited.
Faced with this opposition, students and ministry leaders began to pray that God would either change this woman’s heart, or install someone more sympathetic.
It did not take God long to act. Within a period of weeks, this woman who had so vexed campus leaders disappeared from the Interfaith Council. None of the Christians on campus seemed to know where she had gone, or why. She was simply no longer there. Her replacement, a man even more hostile to the Christian cause, was similarly prayed out. Today, the council is headed by the son of a Baptist minister!
Even more dramatic has been the departure from the university of notorious atheist Lawrence Krauss. Virulently anti-Christian, the highly-paid professor routinely packed out Gammage Auditorium on campus by bringing in atheist luminaries such as Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Hawking.
A theoretical physicist, Krauss founded the Origins Project in 2009 with the aim of placing the university at the forefront of the New Atheist Movement. By promoting hostile, anti-religious rhetoric and policies (“teaching Creationism to youth is child abuse”), Krauss bullied Christian students and faculty into silence.
During the worst of Krauss’s campaign, God assured one late-night intercessor that the professor would be brought low, and that the backbone of the atheist movement on campus would be broken.
Given Krauss’s fame and tenure, this prospect was almost unimaginable.
And yet, on Oct. 21, 2018, Lawrence Krauss announced his resignation after being stripped of his role as an academic chair and as the Director of the Origins Project. This action came in the wake of an impending termination procedure urged by the dean of ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
According to ASU provost, Mark Searle, action was taken because the physicist “violated the school’s sexual harassment policy and code of ethics.” In a July 31 letter to Krauss, Searle told the professor his behavior was “unprofessional, reflects a failure of leadership, and is extremely disappointing.”
As for the Origins Project itself, the university newspaper notes that “sources point to a very different future for the project.” The initiative has already lost its name.
With Krauss out of the picture at ASU, Christian faculty in both the arts and sciences are again raising their flag.
A March 2019 conference on Science and Faith allowed students to engage faculty in six fields, an approach being lauded by the university president. As one professor’s official profile declares: “Through his work he intends to glorify God, from whom all good things come.”
Transforming winds have also been coursing through the university’s athletic department. Just last month, over 100 Christian student athletes attended an all-sport gathering in the men’s football facility that featured worship, prayer, and inspirational messages.
Many athletes were touched at this student-led event as the room was charged with the Spirit of God. One of them, star wide receiver N’Keal Harry — whom many analysts peg as a top-15 pick in the upcoming NFL draft — gave his heart to Christ and is devouring the Word. He is arguably the most popular personality on the ASU campus.
And Harry is but one of an estimated twenty to thirty football players who have turned their lives over to Jesus in recent months.The wrestling team has also been impacted through the open witness of Austyn Harris and All-American Josh Shields, and encouraging reports are coming in from athletes associated with hockey, lacrosse, gymnastics, track, swimming, and volleyball.
Dorm and Greek life are likewise feeling the impact of the Gospel. As one knowledgeable source told me, “Before this year, it was hard to find any Christians in the Honors dorms. Now, it seems like they are everywhere!”Better yet, they are uniting in prayer that God’s purposes will be realized in the lives of these elite students.
So much more could be said, but I’ll leave you with the observation one student athlete shared with me earlier this month: “The identity of ASU is being flipped.”
As of Fall 2018, every single nation on earth is represented at Arizona State University! Over 150 nations have someone on the ASU campus, while other nations are involved online – including North Korea and Antarctica! From this one place, Spirit-led believers have the potential to impact the entire family of nations, just as the apostles did on Pentecost!
Here is how you can be a part.
First, we need people who will partner with us to supply transformation video libraries to the dorms and athletic teams at ASU. There is great interest in these stories, and I believe they will inspire students to embrace even more of God.
Second, we believe God has called us to document this unfolding story on film so it can stir up faith on other campuses. We began this effort during a short visit to the ASU campus two weeks ago, but we want to return in late January to film a much larger set of interviews and events that are being arranged.
This story has already stirred audiences in several states. Just last week, I was able to share highlights with campus ministers from all the Ivy League schools plus Stanford University. This coming May, these leaders will join us on a revival exposure tour to see more of God’s handiwork in the Fiji Islands.
We need approximately $25,000 for these undertakings. If you can make a year-end gift to the ministry on Giving Tuesday (November 27), this will allow us to capture and transmit this glorious story to thousands.
Finally, please continue to pray for us as we complete other important research, training, and media projects. It is our heart’s desire to offer up some much-needed good news in this dark and uncivil hour.
The warriors from the Skull Splitter tribe walked 10 days on foot from a village deep in the Amazon jungle because they wanted to find someone who would tell them about the Son of God.
“They sent out five guys,” says Larry Buckman, a veteran missionary. “The old men in the tribe said they were too old to go, so they sent the young guys out.
“Why did they decide to trek 10 days straight north to find somebody? They had no way of knowing there was anybody even up there. Of course the Holy Spirit was leading them.”
The Yanomami group that walked out of the jungle were among the worst Skull Splitters in the entire Amazon, from the Hakoma area, according to Larry. While there were a few Yanomami believers, the Hakoma area was unreached. Fifty-five years earlier, two missionaries named Bob and Steve had attempted to take the gospel to them.
When Bob and Steve first went to the Hakoma area in the sixties they reported that almost everyone was drugged, they had unsightly green mucous coming out of their noses, and they were vomiting all the time. “At night they would get possessed by demons, they would beat up on their wives and split their heads open with their clubs.
“The tradition was if a girl was going to get married to another man, the oldest man in the tribe had her first. If she let the young man have her first, they beat up on her,” Bob reported to Larry.
“They almost killed us then,” Bob said.
The five warriors arrived at the Palimi-ú River in September, 2012 after their 10-day journey.
They happened to enter a village where two Brazilian Christians, Luke and Martha* had been living for 14 years, learning the language and translating the New Testament.
Remarkably, the five arrived at the height of a celebration by the local church that involved food, dances, the Lord’s Supper and baptisms.
The believers immediately recognized them as the dreaded Skull Splitters, enemies of the village. The warriors were dressed in loincloths, armed with bows and arrows, blowguns and deadly poison darts. The celebratory mood suddenly shifted.
Are they going to kill us? they wondered. Surprisingly, the five got into the baptism line with 32 other new believers.
“I did not ask if they wanted Jesus; I baptized the five along with the others,” Luke recounted.
He and Martha invited the warriors into their house and spent the next five hours talking to them.
The men explained the reason they had traveled such a distance. “We are tired of living the way we have always lived,” they told Luke and Martha. “We have been killing people and drugging ourselves. We want to live a different life. Somebody told us about the Son of God. Do you know who that is?”
Luke told them about the Creator God—the Father, Jesus the Savior, and the Holy Spirit, the friend, comforter and guide. “We saw their eyes sparkle with wonder about everything we said,” Luke recounted.
After several days, Luke asked an MAF pilot to fly the men back to their village. “There was only one MAF pilot who dared to go in there,” Larry notes.
The pilot managed to locate a small opening in the jungle, an old gold miner’s airstrip that was very short and overgrown, but it was still a four-day journey through thick jungle for the warriors to reach their home.
Before they left the men begged Luke and Martha to come to their village soon and tell their people more about Jesus.
Months went by and God continued to impel their hearts about reaching the Yanomami in the Hakoma area. In early 2013, Luke and Martha began to plan an expedition to find their village. “It was a time of much prayer seeking the direction of God,” Luke recounted.
A couple months later, they received news that members of the same tribe had exterminated an entire village of other Yanomamis whom they considered to be enemies.
Then in October they learned that 46 gold miners had been killed in that region – also by the same tribe!
“Eighteen days after this massacre, on November 9, 2013, we were inside a small plane going in search of this people,” Luke recounted. “Many said do not go, others called us saying ‘this is suicide,’ ‘they are too dangerous.’”
After two hours in the air, their pilot found the same airstrip. The missionary expedition group included Luke, Martha, and three other mature Yanomami believers that spoke different languages. “We did not know for sure what awaited us; we were fearful, very afraid, but confident in the care of God.”
Air strip carved out of the jungle
The small plane deposited the passengers and left. “As the roar of the airplane engine disappeared on the horizon, fear and dread filled our hearts. We were literally alone, isolated and left in the dense jungle.”
They realized they were in the same place the miners had been killed only a few weeks earlier! The only answer was to turn to God in prayer.
Just as they started to pray, they heard a noise in the woods. “When we raised our heads we saw the most incredible scene. We were surrounded by men, women and children, armed with bows and arrows, blowguns and poison darts, but also rifles, cartridges, watches, tablets, cell phones and a lot of clothes from the miners that they had killed 18 days before us.”
Luke snapped a quick photo with his digital camera, but forgot to turn off the flash.
Interpreting the flash as a hostile sign, the crowd began walking towards the missionaries and lifted their weapons in a menacing fashion. “They took aim. I thought our time had come…” Luke recounted.
Then a lone voice shouted from the midst of the crowd. “Stop! Stop! Today is not a day of death.”
Another cried out, “Do not hurt them. These are the ones who say there is a True Creator.”
Out from the crowd stepped the five warriors that Luke baptized the previous year.
As quickly as the large crowd appeared, they disappeared, leaving the same five warriors who now approached with smiles on their faces. “We saw in their eyes the joy with our arrival,” Luke recounted.
After the tension receded, Luke communicated via satellite to the believers along the Palimi-ú River and two more planeloads arrived, bearing 10 more Yanomami believers.
The five led the new arrivals along a path and after 20 minutes they found a large structure with a crowd waiting for them.
On the afternoon of November 9, 2013, the 15 took turns preaching, teaching, and telling Bible stories, and the people listened with rapt attention about the history of the Creator.
Luke delivered the message that Jesus, the Son of God, was already among the Yanomamis. “Everyone was so stunned by what they heard that they began singing the message back and forth, their traditional way to spread news,” Martha recalled.
“Night after night people were repenting, sometimes going until 5:00 in the morning. This went on day and night. I answered so many questions and at the end we held another baptism. More than 400 Skull Splitters came to Christ!”
Luke and the other leaders went to a small river nearby and baptized 162 new brothers, then ministered communion, using “the Beijú of cassava and the juice of Açai.”
Baptism among the Yanomami
On November 12th, the team began discussing the idea of planting a church. They had many newly baptized converts, but few mature leaders to stay with them. “We needed to do something, so we choose the five that I had baptized in 2012 as their leaders in the faith,” Luke recounted.
In 2014 the team returned to the village, bringing solar audio bibles and a small solar projector with the JESUS Film in the Chamatari language. Eighteen villages within a 10-day walk were invited to the screening.
Every night they projected the movie JESUS. At the end of the visit they donated the solar projector and the five leaders said they would take the film and show it in surrounding villages.” There was regular follow-up with the believers every year.
Watching the JESUS Film
Three years later, the film had reached 4,600 people in 21 remote villages. “They report there are now believers in every region, in places where we are not allowed to go,” Martha noted. “The warriors are doing what we can’t. We are living a true revival in the heart of the jungle!”
Traveling to remote villages
The original missionary to the Yanomami in the Hakoma area, Bob, is amazed by what he sees. “I can’t believe what is happening now!” he exclaimed.
Bob and Steve watch baptisms
He and Steve were asked to serve communion to the new believers, 55 years after they first planted the seeds of the gospel.
“When you see those kind of things you think, Lord, you are so gracious to let us be here and see these things happen,” says Larry Buckman. “These old guys sacrificed everything and they deserved to see it in their lifetime. It is amazing to see how God has transformed that tribe and somehow is protecting those dear men that truck up and down to take the gospel to the next group of people.”
“There are 200 Yanomami villages that we know of. They plan to take the gospel to every one of those 200.”
*names changed
To find out more about the JESUS Film Project, go here
These Study Guides are adapted from former Distance Education materials produced by Citipointe Ministry College, the School of Ministries of Christian Heritage College in Brisbane, Australia. Now they are adapted into these books for your benefit. The current courses use different and updated materials as part of internet resources for students.
For information about current courses, contact the Principal,
Welcome to this Study Guide on Holy Spirit Movements throughout History.
Topic 1 Introduction
Topic 2 Movements of the Spirit in the Old Testament
Topic 3 Movements of the Spirit and Renewal in the New Testament
Topic 4 The Ante-Nicene Church and early charismatic renewal; Monasticism and renewal in the Middle Ages
Topic 5 The Reformation, Pietism and the Moravian revival
Topic 6 The Great Awakening and eighteenth-century evangelical revivals
Topic 7 The Second Great Awakening in America and England
Topic 8 The Third Great Awakening – mid-Nineteenth Century
Topic 9 The Pentecostal Revivals and Healing Evangelism – early mid-Twentieth Century Revivals
Topic 10 Charismatic Renewal in the Churches
Topic 11 Late twentieth-century revival movements
Topic 12 Revival movements in Australia
Topic 13 Twenty-first century Spirit movements
The concept of renewal and restoration as the process whereby God renews the spiritual vitality of the church and restores neglected truths to a central place in its life is foundational to Evangelical and Charismatic perspectives on church life. An examination of the movements of the Spirit through history gives students a sense of the history of theological and renewal movements, and locates particular issues in relation to a larger conceptualization of the development of the church. This places a renewal theology of the Spirit in the context of the historical moment in which it arises.
Students preparing to minister today need to be aware of the historical movements of the Spirit which lead to renewal and reformation and how this applies to ministry practice and contemporary contexts.
This subject builds on the biblical principles addressed in The Holy Spirit in Ministry and further identifies historical contexts in which the Spirit operated within the church. These understandings provide the student with an opportunity to develop an awareness of the movements of the Spirit for contemporary ministry situations.
We all can learn more together about effective ministry. That learning is enhanced and expanded rapidly when we share our experiences and learning together. The ‘teacher’ usually shares from his or her experiences, but others can do also. So the more that our ministry education fosters mutuality, the more we can learn from one another.
We call this open education, or open ministry education. It is open to everyone and everyone can be involved. It is not just for leaders. Our leaders can help us, but their main job is to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12). We can do these things in classes, small groups, seminars, training courses and home or church groups.
I have read many similar stories, but this one exceeds them all.
I read the online edition and was blown away by the response of the Solomon Islanders to the power of the Holy Spirit. It was amazing, or should I say God-planned. Geoff has done well to not only be in so many places and seeing God at work, but also writing a book about it all. It’s as if it has all happened in a world apart, but the events in Brisbane show that it could happen in Australia also. ~ Barbara Vickridge (Perth, Australia)
Charged with being a spy, Czech missionary Petr Jasek endured a 14-month imprisonment in Sudan where he was tortured by fellow cellmates. But Jesus supernaturally imparted peace during his confinement and he became a bold witness, winning many to Christ.
In his role as the Africa regional director for Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), Jasek went to Sudan to document the persecution of Christians, which was happening in the Nubah Mountains in clashes between the government and rebels.
He was detained by the Sudanese police at Khartoum Airport in December 2015. It seems immigration staff found a duplicate passport Jasek carried for security purposes, which led to his immediate arrest and imprisonment.
Jasek interviewed by Todd Nettleton at VOM
“I arrived at this cell at about 1:30 am,” he told VOM. He found the cell overcrowded, with people covering the floor. “They had to squeeze a little bit so they would create some small room for me to lie down on the floor.”
The conditions were sparse. “I had no blanket…two extra T-shirts and one extra pants and a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap; that was all.”
Guards refused him blankets or a mattress, because he was from the Czech Republic and they told him they thought he should be used to cold weather.
At 5:30 am he was awakened by the Islamic call for prayer. All six of his cellmates began praying fervently. “They showed me a place behind them where I was supposed to stand while they were praying. The rule is that me as a Christian, I had to stay behind them so they would not look at me while they are praying.”
After the prayers, they identified themselves as DAESH, the Arabic acronym for ISIS. All his cellmates were ISIS fighters!
“Two days later they started to openly torture me and beat me…I was hit with their fists into my face many times. They called me ‘filthy pig’ or ‘filthy rat.’”
One of the ISIS fighters barked an order: “Filthy pig, come here.”
“I decided at first I would not respond to these rude names and when I did not respond I got hit with a wooden stick they unscrewed from the sweeper that was there to clean the floor.”
Jasek was hit on the head, shoulders and fingers or they kicked him in the stomach and back with their boots. “At that time I was really thinking about the Lord Jesus what He had to go through when He was arrested and they also were beating Him with a wooden stick and were ridiculing Him, slapping Him.
“I became like their slave,” he told VOM. “I was really [made] to wash their clothes, wash all the dishes, clean the toilet with my bare hands. They were just making fun of me. I did not resist.”
“I could clearly see the Lord Jesus and how He suffered for us.”
Then Jesus imparted something to him that was amazing and unexpected, considering the circumstances. “I received a wonderful peace at that time and surprisingly, when I was physically attacked I was experiencing the greatest peace in prison time ever, all these 14-1/2 months.
“I could even pray during these beatings for my family members, I could pray for other fellow prisoners and I was not moved to the point when I used to be before, because I had this peace from the Lord at this time of the physical attacks on my body.
When Jasek began to exalt and and glorify the Lord’s name during his beatings, this made them even more furious. “They decided to torture me even in much worse way.
“Eventually, they decided to do waterboarding to me. It’s a way of torture where a person lays on his back and they cover his mouth and pour water, which gives you the feeling that you are getting drowned.
The Sudanese guards had not intervened to stop Jasek’s torture, because they were intimidated by the ISIS fighters. “It is [thought] that if these Islamists get released they will get revenge on those guards.”
Jasek didn’t have access to a Bible during his captivity, so he meditated on Scriptures he memorized as a young person.
“I was literally asking the Lord that He will keep my mind sound and that I wouldn’t lose my mind through the situation,” Jasek said. “The Holy Spirit kept reminding me some of the verses that I had memorized. This was just enough for me, to give me enough strength everyday to pray,” he told VOM.
He also thought about Jesus’ teaching about loving enemies. He was startled when he heard his abusers weeping late at night when they could not sleep.
“They were crying. They were also missing their family members. They were also crying to God for help,” he recounted. “That allowed me to easily continue to pray for them. I was praying for those fellow prisoners, the interrogators, for the guards, for the prosecutors and for the judge, that the Lord would reveal Himself as the Lord, Savior and God.”
Remarkably, one of the guards intervened to prevent the waterboarding. Jasek said he felt the Lord used the guard to move him out of the cell.
“Later on I told the guard that he saved my life and we became close friends,” Jasek said. “I gave my email address and I started to share the Gospel with him. He was very passionate. I told him that if he ever makes it to Europe, he can stay at my house and we will take care of him.”
Then Jasek was moved to another prison where conditions were even worse.
“We were squeezed in a small room — 15 by 18 feet. There were sometimes 40 of us. That was the situation and I was able to lead 40 Eritrean refugees to Christ,” he said. “It was like new revelation for me. I started to be courageous and openly shared the Gospel with other fellow prisoners. Later on, that resulted in them putting me in solitary confinement again.”
Shortly after being placed in solitary confinement, Czech consular officers were able to bring him a Bible.
“I didn’t have to do anything else but read the Bible all day. I could not read the Bible all day because I could only read when there was enough light, which was about 8 [a.m.] … until 4:30 p.m. I had to stand reading on the bars so that I could have enough light. I was so hungry for Scripture. I read from Genesis to Revelation within three weeks.”
Jasek noted that he gained a profound “new understanding of Scripture.”
He was eventually removed from solitary confinement and moved to a larger prison that can hold about 10,000 people.
“I went from solitary to a cell where there were like 100 people in one cell,” he explained. “We were squeezed. There were 75 beds. Only 75 could have a bed and 25 had to stay on the floor.”
Amazingly, guards at the new prison allowed him and two incarcerated Sudanese pastors to hold worship services.
“The first day I came to the chapel to spend time in Scripture with the Lord. They asked me to preach. I would preach once a week, sometimes twice a week,” Jasek said. “Of course, they were monitoring us and they were reporting what we were teaching about. There were two other pastors from Sudan and we knew that nothing worse could happen to us.”
Preaching in prison allowed Jasek and the other pastors to witness to “people that were hopeless.”
“They were real criminals — murderers, rapists, thieves, drug dealers. It was such a wonderful time,” Jasek said. “They responded to our teaching. We were just teaching the Gospel. It was so wonderful to see the changed life of those who dedicated their lives to Christ.”
In February 2017, he was granted a presidential pardon and Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir ordered his immediate release. He returned to the Czech Republic on February 26, 2017.
During the time Jasek was interrogated by the jihadis in prison his wife was in a Bible study back home and the leader stopped the study to pray for the “situation that he is right now in.”
“They stopped reading and started to pray for the Lord’s presence over the situation,” Jasek said. “When I came home, I realized that was exactly the time when I was on my knees before the Islamists and they were beating me. But I was experiencing a supernatural peace.”
“I came for four days to Sudan. But I was there 445 days,” Jasek told VOM. “When you think about all the hardships and seeing what the Lord was able to do through us, then what else can we say but the Lord’s ways are much better than our ways.”
“We know from the words of apostle Paul that everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. I felt like I received my life back. I was first threatened to be sentenced to be executed. [Then] later on, life imprisonment. Then, my life was returned back to me. I told the Lord, ‘My life does not belong to me anymore. It belongs to the Lord.’”
Iran: How two women brought hope in Tehran’s brutal Evin Prison
Podcast: Nicky Gumble with Maryam and Marziyeh at Holy Trinity Brompton church, London – a personal interview – 40 min.
Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh knew they were putting their lives on the line. Born and raised as Muslims, both women grew unsatisfied with the teachings of the Koran and converted to Christianity after personal encounters with Jesus. Though Islamic laws in Iran forbade them from sharing their Christian beliefs, in three years they’d covertly put New Testaments into the hands of twenty thousand of their countrymen. They’d started two secret house churches, including one for prostitutes – many of them women who had been abandoned by their husbands and had no other way to support themselves and their children.
“We both had the same vision from God for evangelizing Iranian people by distributing Bibles. God showed me how Iran is like a land that needs seed. He told me, ‘I will raise and grow this.’ Maryam also had a dream about this, so we became sure it was God’s will,” explains Marziyeh. “We decided to cover all parts of Tehran. We usually went at night and distributed Bibles into mailboxes. Every day we went shopping or to restaurants and talked to people, often handing them a New Testament. We also started a house church for young people and another for prostitutes. All of this is illegal and dangerous because no one is allowed to talk about any religion except Islam. During this time, we could see God’s miracles every day. We have many stories of how God protected us.”
But finally – perhaps inevitably – in 2009, the two young women were arrested. For some reason in the months before that, they were unable to hand out Bibles, as the Holy Spirit took away their desire to evangelize. “We knew something would happen, that there would be a change in our lives. Only after we got released we heard from one of the security police that they were watching us for two months before arresting us. But they couldn’t prove we were handing people Bibles. We believed it was God’s protection for us.”
“After hours of praying and singing, we felt God’s peace in our hearts.”
The two women were held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, a place where inmates are routinely tortured, and executions are swift and sudden.
“Our first night in prison, we both were so scared,” recalls Maryam. “We had no power to speak. The first thing the security police tried was physical torture. They put us in a dark, cold cell and said they would come to torture us. We just hugged each other and said goodbye, thinking it was the last day for us. We began to pray for each other. After hours of praying and singing, we could feel God’s peace in our hearts. But it was not easy. Every day was mental torture. In interrogation they threatened our families, which was even worse than hearing about execution.”
“One day they invited a university professor in to convince us to deny our faith. He told me that if I was one of his family members he wouldn’t wait for the court’s decision – he would have killed me himself,” says Maryam. “We went to something like 10 courts, and in each court the judges would threaten us with execution,” says Marziyeh. “But the hardest part was the execution of other prisoners. I never experienced such a difficult thing. After the execution, there was this spirit of sorrow and death everywhere, and sometimes we couldn’t say anything. Everyone was under pressure.”
But in the face of chilling interrogations and intimidation, something remarkable happened: instead of succumbing to fear, they chose to take the radical – and dangerous – step of sharing their faith inside the very walls of the government stronghold that was meant to silence them. They found the prison being fertile ground for the gospel.
“Prison was like a church every day. We gathered and prayed.”
“Prison is the place where most people are hopeless,” Marziyeh says. “They all need someone to save them. The prisoners were open to hear about Jesus and many were asking us to pray for them. Before we were imprisoned, we would ask God to show us whoever he chose, and that we would be able to talk to those people. But detention and prison increased those opportunities, since it was like a church every day. We gathered and prayed. It was easier to evangelize because we were already in prison.” “We just tried to love them,” Maryam says. “This had a great affect on most prisoners and even the guards.”
“Prayer was the only thing that helped us, strengthened us,” says Marziyeh. “Sometimes we couldn’t even pray in Farsi, our language. We didn’t even know how. Many times we were praying in tongues. We witnessed power in prayers, especially in difficulties. We could see the miracles of God every day and it made our faith stronger. We didn’t have a Bible with us in prison, but every day we could touch God. We could touch Bible verses inside the prison because we were living them. We learned how to forgive our enemies. We remembered how Jesus forgives our sins and how he suffered for us.”
After international pressure from the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other human rights groups, the women were released. They left Iran to continue ministry through writing and speaking in the United States. In their book ‘Captive in Iran’, Maryam and Marziyeh recount how God used their 259 days in Evin Prison to bring about a miraculous reversal: shining light into one of the world’s darkest places, giving hope to those who had lost everything, and showing love to those in despair.
In 2009 in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh were imprisoned and sentenced to death because of their Christian faith. Maryam and Marziyeh were born into Muslim families but converted to Christianity and began to share the Gospel with those around them. They were arrested in March 2009 after being accused of evangelism and apostasy. After 259 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison they were released. This is their story.
“All that I have been able to do, I owe to Jesus Christ. When you honor me, you are really honoring Him. Any honors I have received, I accept with a sense of inadequacy and humility, and I will reserve the right to hand all of these someday to Christ, when I see Him face-to-face.” —Upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, February 23, 1983
“So many people think that somehow I carry a revival around in a suitcase, and they just announce me and something happens—but that’s not true. This is the work of God, and the Bible warns that God will not share His glory with another. All the publicity that we receive sometimes frightens me because I feel that therein lies a great danger. If God should take His hand off me, I would have no more spiritual power. The whole secret of the success of our meetings is spiritual—it’s God answering prayer. I cannot take credit for any of it.”
“I’m counting totally and completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on Billy Graham. I’m not going to Heaven because I’ve read the Bible, nor because I’ve preached to a lot of people. I’m going to Heaven because of what Christ did.”
“There comes a moment when we all must realize that life is short, and in the end the only thing that really counts is not how others see us, but how God sees us.” —Speaking at the funeral for President Richard Nixon
“FOR THE SON OF MAN (JESUS CHRIST) IS COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH WAS LOST.” (LUKE 19:10 KJV)
“Someone asked me recently if I didn’t think God was unfair, allowing me to have medical problems when I have tried to serve Him faithfully. I replied that I did not see it that way at all. Suffering is part of the human condition, and it comes to us all. The key is how we react to it, either turning away from God in anger and bitterness or growing closer to Him in trust and confidence.”
“I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering.” —Speaking for the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, September 14, 2001
“I have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel … in most of the countries of the world. And I have found that when I present the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with authority, quoting from the very Word of God—He takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart.”
“I am not a great preacher, and I don’t claim to be a great preacher. I’ve heard great preaching many times and wished I was one of these great preachers. I’m an ordinary preacher, just communicating the Gospel in the best way I know how.”
“The greatest need in the world is the transformation of human nature. We need a new heart that will not have lust and greed and hate in it. We need a heart filled with love and peace and joy, and that is why Jesus came into the world. He died on the cross to make peace between us and God and to change us from within by His Spirit. He can change you, if you will turn to Him in repentance and faith.”
“The real story of the Crusades is not in the great choirs, the thousands in attendance, nor the hundreds of inquirers who are counseled. The real story is in the changes that have taken place in the hearts and lives of people.”
“I am convinced the greatest act of love we can ever perform for people is to tell them about God’s love for them in Christ.”
“I am a member of the human race. I am a world citizen. I have a responsibility to my fellow humans, whatever their religion. And I am convinced that only Christ can meet the deepest needs of our world and our hearts. Christ alone can bring lasting peace—peace with God, peace among men and nations, and peace within our hearts. He transcends the political and social boundaries of our world.”
“As Christians we have a responsibility toward the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the many innocent people around the world who are caught in wars, natural disasters, and situations beyond their control.”
“During all my years as an evangelist, my message has always been the Gospel of Christ. It is not a Western religion, nor is it a message of one culture or political system. … It is a message of life and hope for all the world.”“The most segregated hour of the week in America is the eleven o’clock Sunday morning Christian church service. It is natural for churches to organize and function along ethnic and nationalistic lines. … The sin comes when a church becomes exclusive and certain groups are refused admission or fellowship in worship because of race or color.” —Reader’s Digest, August 1960
“Jesus was not a white man; He was not a black man. He came from that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe. Christianity is not a white man’s religion, and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black. Christ belongs to all people; He belongs to the whole world.”
“If we are going to touch the people of our communities, we too must know their sorrows, feel for them in their temptations, stand with them in their heartbreaks.”
“Yes, it has been a privilege to know some of the great men and women of the latter part of this century. However, most of my time has been spent with people who will never be in the public eye and yet who are just as important to God as a queen or a president.”
“When my decision for Christ was made…the direction of my life was changed. I’m not going to Heaven because I’ve read the Bible, nor because I’ve preached to a lot of people, I’m going to Heaven because of what Christ did.”
BILLY GRAHAM, EVANGELIST TO THE WORLD, DEAD AT AGE 99
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 21, 2018—Evangelist Billy Graham died today at 7:46 a.m. at his home in Montreat. He was 99.
Throughout his life, Billy Graham preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to some 215 million people who attended one of his more than 400 Crusades, simulcasts and evangelistic rallies in more than 185 countries and territories. He reached millions more through TV, video, film, the internet and 34 books.
Born Nov. 7, 1918, four days before the armistice ended World War I, William Franklin “Billy” Graham Jr. grew up during the Depression and developed a work ethic that would carry him through decades of ministry on six continents.
“I have one message: that Jesus Christ came, he died on a cross, he rose again, and he asked us to repent of our sins and receive him by faith as Lord and Savior, and if we do, we have forgiveness of all of our sins,” said Graham at his final Crusade in June 2005 at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York.
While Graham’s primary focus was to take this message to the world, he also provided spiritual counsel to presidents, championed desegregation, and was a voice of hope and guidance in times of trial. In 2001, he comforted his country and the world when he spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At three global conferences held in Amsterdam (1983, 1986, 2000), Graham gathered some 23,000 evangelists from 208 countries and territories to train them to carry the message of Jesus Christ around the world.
During the week of his 95th birthday in 2013, Graham delivered his final messagevia more than 480 television stations across the U.S. and Canada. More than 26,000 churches participated in this My Hope project, making it the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s largest evangelistic outreach ever in North America.
Preferred Baseball to Religion
Graham, a country boy turned world evangelist, who prayed with every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama, was raised on a dairy farm in Charlotte. Back then, “Billy Frank,” as he was called, preferred baseball to religion. “I detested going to church,” he said when recalling his youth.
But in 1934, that changed. At a revival led by traveling evangelist Mordecai Fowler Ham, 15-year-old Graham committed his life to serving Jesus Christ. No one was more surprised than Graham himself.
“I was opposed to evangelism,” he said. “But finally, I was persuaded by a friend [to go to a meeting]…and the spirit of God began to speak to me as I went back night after night. One night, when the invitation was given to accept Jesus, I just said, ‘Lord, I’m going.’ I knew I was headed in a new direction.”
Several years later, Graham’s “new direction” led him to the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College of Florida), and later, Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, where he met fellow student Ruth McCue Bell, the daughter of medical missionaries in China. The couple graduated and married in the summer of 1943. Mr. and Mrs. Graham and their five children made their home in the mountains of North Carolina. They were married for 64 years before Ruth’s death in 2007.
After two years of traveling as a speaker for the Youth for Christ organization, Billy Graham held his first official evangelistic Crusade in 1947; but it was his 1949 Los Angeles Crusade that captured the nation’s attention. Originally scheduled to run for three weeks, the “tent meetings” were extended for a total of eight weeks as hundreds of thousands of men, women and children gathered to hear Graham’s messages.
On the heels of this campaign, Graham started the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was incorporated in 1950. Since 2000, Graham’s son, Franklin, has led the Charlotte-based organization, which employs some 500 people worldwide.
Billy Graham may be best known, however, for his evangelistic missions or “Crusades.” He believed God knew no borders or nationalities. Throughout his career, Graham preached to millions in locations from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Zagorsk, Russia; and from Wellington, New Zealand to the National Cathedral in Washington. In 1973, Graham addressed more than one million people crowded into Yoido Plaza in Seoul, South Korea—the largest live audience of his Crusades.
Breaking Down Barriers
Preaching in Johannesburg in 1973, Graham said, “Christ belongs to all people. He belongs to the whole world.…I reject any creed based on hate…Christianity is not a white man’s religion, and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black.”
Graham spoke to people of all ethnicities, creeds and backgrounds. Early in his career, he denounced racism when desegregation was not popular. Before the U.S. Supreme Court banned discrimination on a racial basis, Graham held desegregated Crusades, even in the Deep South. He declined invitations to speak in South Africa for 20 years, choosing instead to wait until the meetings could be integrated. Integration occurred in 1973, and only then did Graham make the trip to South Africa.
A 1977 trip to communist-led Hungary opened doors for Graham to conduct preaching missions in virtually every country of the former Eastern Bloc (including the Soviet Union), as well as China and North Korea.
Graham authored 34 books, including his memoir, Just As I Am (Harper Collins, 1997), which remained on TheNew York Times best-seller list for 18 weeks.
In 1996, Graham and his wife, Ruth, received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award Congress can bestow on a private citizen. He was also listed by Gallup as one of the “Ten Most Admired Men” 61 times—including 55 consecutive years (except 1976, when the question was not asked). Graham was cited by the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute for his contributions to race relations and by the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith.
Throughout his life, Graham was faithful to his calling, which will be captured in the inscription to be placed on his grave marker: Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“There were a few times when I thought I was dying, and I saw my whole life come before me…” said Graham at his Cincinnati Crusade on June 24, 2002. “I didn’t say to the Lord, ‘I’m a preacher, and I’ve preached to many people.’ I said, ‘Oh Lord, I’m a sinner, and I still need Your forgiveness. I still need the cross.’ And I asked the Lord to give me peace in my heart, and He did—a wonderful peace that hasn’t left me.”
Billy Graham is survived by his sister Jean Ford; daughters Gigi, Anne and Ruth; sons Franklin and Ned; 19 grandchildren; and numerous great-grandchildren. His wife, Ruth, died June 14, 2007, at age 87, and is buried at the Billy Graham Library. A private funeral service is planned at the Billy Graham Library, on a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to the ongoing ministry of evangelism at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, online at BillyGraham.org or via mail, sent to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Charlotte, NC 28201. Notes of remembrance can be posted at BillyGraham.org
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is a nonprofit organization that directs a range of domestic and international ministries, including: Franklin Graham Festivals, Will Graham Celebrations, The Billy Graham Library, The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, SearchforJesus.net, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team of crisis-trained chaplains, My Hope with Billy Graham TV ministry and others. Founded in 1950 by Billy Graham, the organization has been led by Franklin Graham since 2000. The ministry employs some 500 people worldwide and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, with additional offices in Australia, Canada, Germany and Great Britain.
“HE WHO HEARS MY WORD AND BELIEVES IN HIM WHO SENT ME … HAS PASSED FROM DEATH INTO LIFE” (JOHN 5:24 NKJV).
South Korea: How Koreans evangelized their own nation
The spread of the Gospel is usually attributed to foreign missionaries, but the story is different in the Korean peninsula. Here the Gospel was brought by Koreans themselves.
The ‘Pyongyang Revival’ or ‘Korean Pentecost’ in 1907 was a seminal religious movement for Korean Protestant Christianity. “Some of you go back to John Calvin, and some of you to John Wesley, but we can go back no further than 1907 when we first really knew the Lord Jesus Christ,” Korean Christians were recorded as telling missionaries in 1913.
Kil Sun-ju (1865–1935) was the central leader of the revival. As foreign powers encroached on Korea, Kil searched for a religion that was socially engaged and offered hope for the future. Kil was introduced to the Gospel by a Christian friend who asked him whether he could pray to God as father. Kil answered, “How could man call God Father?” But three days later, while praying, he heard a mysterious voice call his name three times. Kil was afraid and prostrated himself, crying out, “God the Father who loves me, forgive my sin and save my life!” After his conversion, Kil became an ardent Christian.
The Pyongyang Revival broke out in Kil’s church, Jangdaehyeon Church, after Kil publicly confessed his personal sin to church members. Hundreds of others followed his example of repentance and forgiveness to save their souls. Kil and others preached across the country as the revival spread further to China and Manchuria. The religious movement also took on political overtones and became increasingly associated with Korean nationalism. Kil was one of the key leaders in the Independence Movement of March 1, 1919, against the Japanese colonization of the country.
With about 480,000 members the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul is said to be the largest Pentecostal Christian congregation in the world.
The revival had lasting effects on Korean Christianity and on Korea. Indigenous Christian rituals such as sagyeonhoe (Bible study and the Bible-examining meetings), saebyoek gido (dawn prayer meetings), and tongseong gido (collective audible prayer) were formulated as part of Protestant practice. Korean Christian leaders led nationwide educational movements with the vision of making Korea a Christian nation.
The Great Revival transformed Protestantism from a foreign religion to a new national religion, laying the foundation for the most remarkable church growth in Asia in the 20th century and positioning South Korea as a global center of the Christian faith. Christians make up more than a quarter of South Koreans and the country is responsible for one of the world’s largest missionary movements.
Source: Kirsteen Kim and Hoon Ko, summarized by Joel News International
More often than elsewhere in the Middle East young people in Egypt turn their backs on Islam. Despite the original conservative opposition, they become atheists or Christians.
This observation comes from Dutch Christian and Middle East correspondent Mounir Samuel in a long article (Google Translate version) in secular magazine ‘De Groene Amsterdammer’.
Egypt is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to decline or to convert as a Muslim. A Muslim who openly expresses his faith doubt or desire to convert to another religion can expect a lot of social and political repercussions. Dismissal, rejection by the family, loss of friendship, threats by fundamentalists, arrest, torture, imprisonment or murder by family members or other relatives are the rule rather than the exception.
But there is a growing undercurrent, Samuel observes: the country is Islam-tired. The dominant presence of Islam in every aspect of life, the hypocrisy of clergy and politicians and the rise of salafists and jihadists have made many young Muslims think. They are massively searching for the true essence of religion, which leads roughly to two outcomes: they become more religious than their parents have ever been, or the opposite.
‘The peaceful response of Christians to terror has evoked public sympathy and admiration.’
There is a rising interest in Christianity. The terror waves against Christians in the summer of 2013 and the spring of 2017 have made many young Egyptians think. Not only did the media pay ample attention to the precarious position of the Christian minority in Egypt for the first time; the peaceful response of the leaders also evoked great amazement and public sympathy. A video clip in which Christians sing a message of peace and love in a burnt cathedral went all over the world and forced the Egyptian government to set up a support fund for the reconstruction of churches. Speeches from Christian women who publicly forgave the murderers of their husbands and children, elicited admiration in many talk shows.
New bookstores are popping up in Cairo. There’s a growing interest in Bibles and Christian literature.
The number of Egyptian churches is growing steadily. “Western analysts who predicted the end of Christianity in the Middle East were wrong,” says Reverend Andrea Zaki Stephanous, president of the Protestant churches of Egypt and head of all evangelical churches in the Arab world. “The church in Egypt, whether it is Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, is one of the strongest in the world. She has had oppression since her inception and has always survived. It’s a true ‘miracle on the Nile’.” With an estimated 15 million Christians, Egypt is the Arab country with the largest Christian minority.‘After every bomb attack, the churches are fuller. It’s a true miracle on the Nile.’
“The different churches in Egypt have excellent mutual relationships,” Zaki says. “We try to speak to the government, the media and society with one voice. In 2013, when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, we established an Egyptian Council of Churches, uniting the leaders of all churches in the country. We work together in the field of church building legislation, anti-discrimination, government consultation and crisis consultation. We have grown and opened many new churches in recent years. In the past month alone, I have confirmed at least ten new pastors in various local churches.”
The old Christian saying that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’, certainly seems to be true for Egypt. “After every bomb attack, the churches are fuller. Have you seen the images from last year?” Zaki asks. “Twelve thousand people came together for a public worship service directly behind Tahrir Square. The streets were full. The same applies to the Easter service, directly after the attacks on Palm Sunday. People had to stand because there was no more space in the banks.” Christians have been revived in their faith, and many Muslims convert to Christianity.
When Greg Kernaghan, a writer for OM International, travelled through Egypt several years ago, he discovered how prayer is transforming lives and communities.
He met Fatima, a great-grandmother who can recall a life spent in tents. Illiterate, she has heard the dramatised Bible on tape and seen mighty answers to Christians’ prayers for her family in Jesus’ name. She confided that she knows several Muslim locals who also follow Jesus.
Then there was Khalid, a serious man who worked for the secret police. Yet others in his family had become friends with new Christian neighbours. When they experienced a problem, their religious leaders had no solutions or answers but, when the Christians prayed, they were solved instantly. To counteract the perceived shame to his family’s religion, Khalid attempted to drive the Christians from his neighbourhood through fear. However, this backfired and word of the Gospel and God’s interventions spread rapidly throughout the community.
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