Fire in the Outbackby John Blacket (Albatross, 1997)
From the Foreword by Alan Maratja Dhamarrandji of Galiwin’ku, Elcho Island.
As a Christian aboriginal, it’s a great privilege for me to acknowledge in this book some of the great things that God has done in our time. In 1979, we had revival that began at Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island and it affected the whole of Arnhem Land. It spread south-west to Warburton Ranges, and then north-west to the Kimberleys. We also had teams going to north Queensland to minister and spread the revival.
This has set a course for the church at Galiwin’ku to become an outreach church. Ever since that revival, we have been going to places and sharing what God has done and what he is still doing. I am one of the products of that revival and I’m not the only one. There are a few of us still on fire for the Lord. Every year, on March 14, we celebrate that spiritual awakening and pray for a fresh touch from God through the power of his Holy Spirit. These are exciting times for the church in Australia. We must repent more and more so that times of refreshing will come to our churches.
Since 1977-1978, I have had the privilege of working as community worker with John Blacket. He is one of the Balanda (white man) staff who witnessed that revival from the very beginning. My perception is that John is a different man now since the revival. John is one of those people who can communicate to an Aboriginal person anywhere, because he has learned to listen and understand Yolngu (Aborigines), then takes the time to share with them. I admire him for this task and particularly for his endurance and patience with people. Now God has given him this important ministry of reconciliation and bridging of Christian Balanda and Yolngu in Australia. We want to see unity come to the church of God right across the land, then we will see revival come to the whole of this Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. This book is a milestone for that revival. I would like to commend John in his careful efforts in documenting and compiling these anointed stories. I’m sure you are going to enjoy reading this book and will be blessed by the Lord.
Chapters in Fire in the Outback
1 Gathering firewood: The background to the Aboriginal revival
2 Lighting the fire: The Arnhem Land Aborigines and Christianity to 1970
3 A strong wind fans the flame: The preparation for the revival during the 1970s
4 Creating a hot fire: The Arnhem Land Revival, 1979
5 Sustaining the hot fire: The Arnhem Land Revival, 1979-1981
6 Igniting the tinder-dry desert: Revival spreads to Central Australia
7 Lighting many new fires: The rapid spread of renewal in Central Australia
8 Fuelling a raging bushfire: The crusades across Western Australia
9 Stirring the smouldering embers: The first years after the Aboriginal revival
10 Fighting and lighting fires: The late eighties and early nineties in the Aboriginal church
11 The coming of rain: The legacy of revival in today’s Aboriginal church
The Making of a Leader: Recognising the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development. By J. R. Clinton. Colorado: Navpress. 1988.
Reviewed by Andrew Staggs
Dr Robert Clinton has done the body of Christ a great service by researching and writing The Making of a Leader. He skilfully deals with questions like “where do leaders come from?; what does it take to be a leader?; and when does leadership begin? Clinton believes that leadership is not confined to position, title, or training, nor is it limited by experience. It can be these things that sometimes the cloud the real issues of leadership. In The Making of a Leader Clinton identifies the patterns God uses to develop a leader. By studying hundreds of historical, biblical, and contemporary leaders Clinton has determined the six stages of leadership development and had established checkpoints for people to clarify where they are in the process.
By examining Clinton’s principles and case studies the reader will begin to recognise that the ministry of leadership flows from a person’s being, and that being is moulded by God throughout a lifetime. Clinton’s book, as a result, is a book about spiritual dynamics. The book has a focus on identifying those with leadership characteristics, directing the development of maturing leaders, recognising where people are in the development process, and counselling those who are experiencing periods of trial and frustration.
Clinton states that “leadership is a dynamic process in which a man or woman with God-given capacity influences a specific group of God’s people toward His purposes for the group.” He also explains the use of the preferred term of “leadership development”. Development includes all of life’s processes not just formal training. Leaders are shaped by deliberate training and by experience. “Leadership development” is a much broader term than leadership training because leadership training refers to the narrow part of the overall process focusing primarily on learning skills. Leadership development includes this and much more. Leadership development theory does what a good map is supposed to do. It is a set of well-integrated ideas (p 24) to help:
organize what we see happening in leaders’ lives
anticipate what might happen in future development
understand past events so as to see new things in them
better order our lives
Clinton summarizes his leadership development theory (p 25) as follows:
“God develops a leader over a lifetime. That development is a function of the use of events and people to impress leadership lessons upon a leader (processing), time, and leader response. Processing is critical to the theory. All leaders can point to critical incidents in their lives where God taught them something very important.”
A time-line is an important tool for analysing the life of a leader for it reveals the overall pattern of God’s work in a life. A time-line is a linear display along a horizontal axis that is broken up into development phases. A development phase is a unit of time in a person’s life, and they are not absolutes. They are helpful because they force one to analyse what God is doing during a given time in a person’s life. Clinton identifies five significant units of time labelled as sovereign foundations, inner-life growth, ministry maturing, and convergence.
Sometimes, though rarely, there is a sixth phase called “afterglow” or “celebration.” In real life, the development of Phases III, IV and V often overlap.
In Phase I God providentially works foundational items into the life of the leader-to-be. Personality characteristics, good and bad experiences, and the time context will be used by God. The building blocks are there, though the structure being built may not be clearly in focus. Character traits are embedded. These same traits in mature form will be adapted and used by God. Many times personality traits will be seen to correlate with the spiritual gift-mix that God gives. Usually the boundary condition between Phase I and Phase II is the conversion experience (or an all-out surrender commitment) in which the would-be-leader aspires to spend a lifetime that counts for God.
In Phase II an emerging leader usually receives some kind of training. Often it is informal in connection with ministry. The basic models by which he or she learns are imitation modelling and informal apprenticeships, as well as mentoring. There can also be formal and academic training. Closer analysis reveals that the major thrust of God’s development is inward. The real training program is in the heart of the person, where God is doing some growth testing.
In Phase III (Ministry Maturing) the emerging leader reaches out to others. The emerging leader gets into ministry as a prime focus of life. He is beginning to experiment with spiritual gifts even though he may not know what this doctrine is. He may get training in order to be more effective. Ministry is the focus of the rising leader at this stage. Many of his lessons will zero in on relationships with other people or on the inadequacies in his personal life. God is developing the leader in two ways during this time. Through ministry, the leader can identify his gifts and skills and use them with increasing effectiveness. He will also gain a better understanding of the Body of Christ as he experiences the many kinds of relationships it offers. Ministry activity or fruitfulness is not the focus of Phase III. God is working primarily in the leader, not through him or her. Many emerging leaders don’t recognise this and become frustrated. They are constantly evaluating productivity and activities, while God is quietly evaluating their leadership and ministry potential. He wants to teach us that we minister out of what we are.
During Phase IV the leader identifies and uses his or her gift-mix with power. There is a mature fruitfulness. God is working through the leader using imitation modelling (Heb 13: 7-8). That is, God uses one’s life as well as gifts to influence others. This is a period in which giftedness emerges along with priorities. One recognises that part of God’s guidance for ministry comes through establishing ministry priorities by discerning gifts.
During Phase V convergence occurs. The leader is moved by God into a role that matches gift-mix, experience, temperament, etc. Geographical location is an important part of convergence. The role not only frees the leader from ministry for which there is no gift, but it also enhances and uses the best that the leader has to offer. Not many leaders experience convergence because often they are promoted to roles that hinder their gift-mix. Further, few leaders minister out of what they are. Their authority usually springs from a role. In convergence, being and spiritual authority form the true power base for mature ministry.
During all the developmental phases God processes a person by bringing activities, people and problems into his or her life. These are called process items and include integrity check, isolation, prayer challenge, power encounter etc . The list is numerous and refers to providential events, people, circumstances, special interventions, inner life lessons and/or anything else that God uses in the leadership selection process of a person to indicate leadership potential, to develop that potential, to confirm appointment to ministry role or responsibility, or to move the leader toward God’s appointed ministry level for realised potential. A key process item is an integrity check which tests inner character for consistency. A successful integrity check results in a stronger leader able to serve God in a wider sphere of influence. Integrity and faithfulness are preludes to success and giftedness.
Clinton identifies two of the major lessons of leadership development as follows:
1. effective leaders recognise leadership selection and development as a priority function; and
2. effective leaders increasingly perceive their ministries in terms of a lifetime perspective.
These must be deliberately actioned for a leader to function effectively.
One of the striking characteristics seen in an effective leader is their drive to learn. They learn from all kinds of sources. Effective leaders, at all levels of leadership, maintain a learning posture throughout life. They also have a dynamic ministry philosophy that evolves continually from the interplay of three major factors: biblical dynamics, personal gifts, and situational dynamics. Clinton believes that it is the ability to weave lessons into a philosophy that makes leaders effective. One strong indicator of leadership is a learning posture that reflects itself in a dynamic ministry philosophy. Leaders must develop a ministry philosophy that simultaneously honours biblical leadership values, embraces the challenges of the times in which they live, and fits their unique gifts and personal development if they expect to be productive over a whole lifetime (p 180).
One significant feature of the book is a comprehensive glossary of terms used by Clinton in his insightful leadership development philosophy. These have been summarised in Appendix A. For example, giftedness set describes the influence capacity elements of a leader. These include spiritual gifts, natural abilities and acquired skills. The focal element in a giftedness set refers to the dominant influence capacity elements, either spiritual gifts, natural abilities or acquired skills, that dominates the ministry efforts of a leader. For some leaders, spiritual gifts will dominate ministry; for others, natural abilities or acquired skills will dominate.
The Making of a Leader can be a great encouragement to lay, professional and future leaders as they begin to see the direct hand of God in their development. They will learn of the providence of God and will sense a continuity of God’s working in their past to develop them as a leader. There will also be a high degree of anticipation of what is going to do in the future. The insights gained from this excellent resource will cause people to perceive themselves and others differently, and will cause people to be more deliberate in using these insights for the development and training of others.
The Holy Spirit IN US is one thing, and the Holy Spirit ON US is another – D. L. Moody
Many Evangelicals, especially those who doubt the genuineness of the current awakening, look to people like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles H. Spurgeon, and Dwight L. Moody as exemplars of true Christianity, or genuine revival. However, these figures, and others to whom they look, such as G. Campbell Morgan, or D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, do not at all conform to the preconceptions of late twentieth-century Evangelicalism.
Critics of today’s move of God complain that it is inappropriate to spend time soaking in the presence of God; rather, we must be about the Father’s business, seeking and saving the lost. But such an idea would have been completely foreign to Dwight L. Moody, who believed that to be effective for God, people must first wait upon God for His power and anointing.
Here’s what he said: “Some people seem to think they are losing time if they wait on God for His power, and so away they go and work without unction; they are working without any anointing, and they are working without any power. . . . The Holy Spirit IN US is one thing, and the Holy Spirit ON US is another; and if these [first-century] Christians had gone out and went right to preaching then and there [at the time of Christ’s ascension], without the power, do you think that scene would have taken place on the day of Pentecost? Don’t you think that Peter would have stood up there and beat against the air, while these Jews would have gnashed their teeth and mocked him? But they tarried in Jerusalem; they waited ten days. What! you say. What, the world perishing and men dying! Shall I wait? Do what God tells you. There is no use in running before you are sent; there is no use in attempting to do God’s work without God’s power. A man working without this unction, a man working without this anointing, a man working without the Holy Ghost upon him, is losing his time after all. So we are not going to lose anything if we tarry till we get this power” (Secret Power, pp. 44-45).
Critics have raised objections to the laughter that has characterized the present move of God. They have said that weeping, not laughter, is appropriate for revival, since it is appropriate to weep over one’s sins in coming to a place of repentance. But Charles H. Spurgeon has said otherwise. In his Autobiography (Zondervan, 1946), p. 124-125, he writes, “I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry, and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God, while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin and so evince a holy earnestness in the defense of the truth.”
“I am not so afraid of excitement as some people” – D. L. Moody
Rodney Howard-Browne was severely criticized for his comments to the effect that he would rather have some form of life in his meetings than no life at all, implying that it would be worth it, even if there were a risk that the life was of the flesh. Yet, one would be hard-pressed to see how Rodney’s comments along these lines differed from one of Moody’s sermons, “Revivals,” in which he said essentially the same thing: “I am not so afraid of excitement as some people. The moment there comes a breath of interest, some people cry, ‘Sensationalism, sensationalism!’ But, I tell you what, I would rather have sensation than stagnation any time. . . . Don’t be afraid of a little excitement and a little ‘sensationalism.’ It seems to me that almost anything is preferable to deadness. . . . Where there is life, there will always be a commotion” (Moody’s Latest Sermons, pp. 111-112).
Critics claim that John Arnott opens people up to deception by quoting Luke 11:11 in order to calm peoples’ fears about the current move of God. Yet, this is precisely the language that Moody used when he said, “I believe that if we ask God for a real work, He won’t give us a counterfeit. If we ask God for bread, He isn’t going to give us a stone” (ibid., p. 114).
Still other critics complain that, in an age of Microwave ovens, we are far too accustomed to the instantaneous. Because we are not satisfied unless things are done immediately, the quick fixes that we see in today’s revival are suspect, and won’t last. On the other hand, Spurgeon’s outlook was just the opposite. He believed that revival and its results are instantaneous. In a sermon entitled “The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit” (June 20, 1858), he said, “There is no power in man so fallen but that the Holy Spirit can raise it up. However debased a man may be, in one instant, by the miraculous power of the Spirit, all his faculties may be cleansed and purged.”
“Follow the guidance of the Spirit” – Evan Roberts
Some people criticize the idea of the leading of the Holy Spirit during a church service as too dangerous or too subjective. Rodney Howard-Browne has often been severely criticized for claiming to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit during his meetings. This may be problematic for many twentieth-century Evangelicals, but it was most decidedly not a problem for Evan Roberts during the Welsh revival. G. Campbell Morgan, in his sermon, “Lessons of the Welsh Revival” (December 25, 1904) said of one of the meetings that he attended in Wales, that all the while, there was “no human leader, no one indicating the next thing to do, no one checking the spontaneous movement. . . . Evan Roberts is no orator, no leader. What is he? I mean now with respect to this great movement. He is the mouthpiece of the fact that there is no human guidance as to man or organization. The burden of what he says to the people is this: It is not man, do not wait for me, depend on God, obey the Spirit. But whenever moved to do so, he speaks under the guidance of the Spirit. His work is not that of appealing to men so much as that of creating an atmosphere by calling men to follow the guidance of the Spirit in whatever the Spirit shall say to them.”
Charles Spurgeon also believed that the leading of the Holy Spirit was absolutely essential in all of his church meetings. He said, “I have constantly made it my prayer that I might be guided by the Spirit even in the smallest and least important parts of the services. . . . I might preach to-day a sermon which I preached on Friday, and which was useful then, and there might be no good whatever come from it now, because it might not be the sermon which the Holy Ghost would have delivered to-day.”
“A blessed fanaticism . . . a heavenly enthusiasm” – C H Spurgeon
Some people assert that today’s awakening cannot be a genuine work of God since there are clear problems within it, and many indications that it is tainted by the work of the flesh. Such people do not realize that every awakening of history has been a mixture of the good and the bad. Here’s what Spurgeon wrote of the awakening of 1857-58: “We have received continually fresh confirmations of the good news from a far country, which has already made glad the hearts of many of God’s people. In the United States of America there is certainly a great awakening.. . . There may be something of spurious excitement mixed up with it, but that good, lasting good, has been accomplished, no rational man can deny.” Along similar lines, Jonathan Edwards, in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of The Spirit of God, wrote of the Great Awakening that critics who “wait to see a work of God without difficulties and stumbling blocks . . . will be a like the fool’s waiting at the river side to have the water all run by. A work of God without stumbling blocks is never to be expected.”
In a sermon entitled “The Great Revival” (March 28, 1858), Spurgeon said that revival is like a hurricane, bringing chaos wherever it goes: “The mere worldly man does not understand a revival; he cannot make it out. Why is it, that a sudden fit of godliness, as he would call it, a kind of sacred epidemic, should seize upon a mass of people all at once? What can be the cause of it? It frequently occurs in the absence of all great evangelists; it cannot be traced to any particular means. There have been no special agencies used in order to bring it about – no machinery supplied, no societies established; and yet it has come, just like a heavenly hurricane, sweeping everything before it. . . . When there comes a revival, the minister all of a sudden finds that the usual forms and conventionalities of the pulpit are not exactly suitable to the times. . . . And there are sobs and groans heard in the prayer meetings. . . . And then the converts who are thus brought into the church, if the revival continues, are very earnest ones. You never saw such a people. The outsiders call them fanatics. It is a blessed fanaticism. Others say, they are nothing but enthusiasts. It is a heavenly enthusiasm. . . . It is not orderly, you say. . . . You may try to stop us, but we will run over you if you do not get out of the way.”
Spurgeon was decidedly in favor of revival, but he was opposed to some of the more controversial manifestations. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the manifestations that he disliked had taken place under the ministry of George Whitefield: “In the old revivals in America a hundred years ago, commonly called ‘the Great Awakening,’ there were many strange things, such as continual shrieks and screams, and knocking, and twitchings, under the services. We cannot call that the work of the Spirit. Even the great Whitefield’s revival at Cambuslang, one of the greatest and most remarkable revivals that were ever known, was attended by some things that we cannot but regard as superstitious wonders” (ibid).
Spurgeon is certainly not alone. One of the greatest bones of contention during the important revivals of the past has been controversial manifestations of this kind, such as people falling under the power of God, shaking and trembling, experiencing speechlessness, drunkenness in the Spirit, or holy laughter. In a 1959 sermon, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said with respect to revival that “Under the influence of this mighty power, people may literally fall to the ground under conviction of sin, or even faint, and remain in a state of unconsciousness, perhaps for a considerable time. . . . Then there are people who seem to go into trances. They may be seated or they may be standing, and they are looking into the distance, obviously seeing something, and yet they are completely unconscious, and unaware of their surroundings. They do not seem to be able to hear anything, nor to see anything that may be happening round and about them.” Lloyd-Jones lamented that “there are people who dismiss and denounce the whole notion of revival because of these phenomena” (Revivbal, pp. 134-136). He also said (pp. 136-144) that for many years, people had attempted to explain revival in terms of brainwashing, mass hysteria, mesmerism, hypnotism, or demonic activity, but that all of these attempted explanations leave many questions unanswered and fail at major points.
“A kind of ecstasy” – Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards had to deal with criticisms of the Great Awakening because of phenomena of this kind. One of his critics, Charles Chauncy, insisted that because these things were integral to the Great Awakening, that it could not possibly be a genuine outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
In his several works in defense of the Great Awakening, Edwards repeatedly pointed out that the presence of these manifestations neither proves nor disproves that God is at work. In our own day, critics attempt to argue that Edwards, especially in his later works, was against the manifestations. But any careful reading, even of his Treatise on Religious Affections (1746), will indicate that his viewpoint was always that, while the manifestations do not indicate that a work is of God, neither do they indicate the opposite. According to Edwards, the true sign as to whether a work is of God would be the positive effects in peoples attitudes and behavior, or the fruit of the Spirit in their lives and character.
Nevertheless, the writings of Edwards do demonstrate that the manifestations were a component of the Great Awakening. He made clear references in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of The Spirit of God to “tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of body, or the failing of Bodily strength.” He wrote, “some who are the subjects of it have been in a kind of ecstasy, wherein they have been carried beyond themselves, and have had their minds transported into a train of strong and pleasing . . . visions, as though they were rapt up even to heaven, and there saw glorious sights. I have been acquainted with some such instances, and I see no need of bringing in the help of the devil into the account that we give of these things.”
“Outward signs . . . accompanied the inward work of God” – JohnWesley
George Whitefield also played an important part in the Great Awakening. At first, Whitefield did not believe that the manifestations should be encouraged. On June 25, 1739, he wrote a letter to John Wesley about them, saying, “I cannot think it right in you to give so much encouragement to those convulsions which people have been thrown into under your ministry. Was I to do so, how many would cry out every night! I think it is tempting God to require such signs. That there is something of God in it, I doubt not. But the devil, I believe, does interpose.”
But about two weeks later, John Wesley had a talk with George Whitefield about these matters, and Whitefield changed his mind. On July 7, 1739, Wesley wrote of him in his Journal, “I had an opportunity to talk with him of those outward signs which had so often accompanied the inward work of God. I found his objections were chiefly grounded on gross misrepresentations of matter of fact. But the next day he had an opportunity of informing himself better: for no sooner had he begun (in the application of his sermon) to invite all sinners to believe in Christ, than four persons sunk down close to him, almost in the same moment. One of them lay without either sense of motion; a second trembled exceedingly; the third had strong convulsions all over his body, but made no noise, unless by groans; the fourth, equally convulsed, called upon God with strong cries and tears. From this time, I trust, we shall all suffer God to carry on His own work in the way that pleaseth Him.”
“God manifested Himself much amongst us” – George Whitefield
As can be seen in George Whitefield’s own Journal, from that time onward, the manifestations were one of the components of Whitefield’s ministry. On August 3, 1740 he wrote, “Before I had prayed long, Br. B. dropped down, as though shot with a gun. Afterwards he got up, and sat attentively to hear the sermon. The influence spread. The greatest part of the congregation were under great concern. Tears trickled down apace, and God manifested Himself much amongst us at the Sacrament.” The following day, Whitefield wrote, “I asked, ‘what caused him to fall down yesterday?’ He answered, ‘The power of God’s Word.’”
Whitefield wrote that during the same year in New York, on Sunday, November 2, “After I had begun . . . the Spirit of the Lord gave me freedom, and at length came down like a mighty rushing wind, and carried all before it. Immediately, the whole congregation was alarmed. Crying, weeping, and wailing were to be heard in every corner; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and many were to be seen falling into the arms of their friends.”
Similar things happened two days later in Staten Island: “Oh, how did the Word fall like a hammer and like a fire! One poorcreature in particular was ready to sink into the earth. His countenance was altered, till he looked, as it were, sick to death. At length he said, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ Others were dissolved in tears around him; and one of my fellow- travellers was struck down, and so overpowered, that his body became exceeding weak. He could scarcely move all the night after. God, I believe, was working powerfully in his soul.” Whitefield wrote that a day afterward, in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, “I had not discoursed long, when, in every part of the congregation, some one or other began to cry out, and almost all were melted into tears. . . . Most of the people spent the remainder of the night in prayer and praises.”
The following week, on Saturday, November 15, in Philadelphia, “the Word seemed to smite the congregation like so many pointed arrows. Many afterwards told me what they felt; and, in the evening I was sent for to a young woman, who was carried home from meeting, and had continued almost speechless.” Whitefield said that a week later, at Fagg’s Manor, “God’s presence so filled my soul that I could scarce stand under it. I prayed and exhorted and prayed again, and soon every person in the room seemed to be under great impressions, sighing and weeping. At last I was quite overpowered.” Whitefield couldn’t move, and a friend had to help him go to bed that night: “A dear friend undressed me. The Lord gave me sweet sleep, and in the morning I arose with my natural strength much renewed.”
There is an interesting quotation in The Biography of Barton W. Stone (1847) with respect to the manifestations of the Great Awakening and its aftermath: “Mr. Benedict, in his Abridgment of the History of the Baptists, on page 345, speaking of the great revival that began among them, on James River, in 1785, says, ‘During the progress of this revival, scenes were exhibited somewhat extraordinary. It was not unusual to have a large proportion of the congregation prostrate on the floor, and in some instances they lost the use of their limbs. . . . Screams, groans, shouts, hosannas, notes of grief and joy, all at the same time, were not unfrequently heard throughout their vast assemblies. . . . It is not unworthy of notice, that in those congregations where the preachers encouraged them to much extent, the work was more extensive, and greater numbers were added. . . . . Among the old fashioned Calvinistic Baptists of the Old Dominion these strange bodily agitations obtained; and many of the preachers “fanned them as fire from heaven,’ and the excitement and confusion that pervaded their vast assemblies well nigh fills Mr. J. L. Waller’s measure of a “New Light Stir” in Kentucky.’”
“He never saw a more glorious sight” – Barton Stone
According to Barton Stone (pp. 360-361), not only did George Whitefield encourage such things, but Charles Hodge wrote about them in his History of the Presbyterian Church, pages 85 and 86. Stone also wrote that “the manner in which Whitefield describes the scenes at Nottingham and Fagg’s Manor, and others of a similar character, shows he did not disapprove of these agitations. He says he never saw a more glorious sight, than when the people were fainting all around him, and crying out in such a manner as to drown his own voice.”
In his Journals and in his sermons, George Whitefield alluded frequently to the new wine of the Spirit. In New Hampshire, on one Friday and Saturday in March of 1745, “All [were] seemingly hearty friends to and great sharers in the late blessed work of God. Their accounts of it were very entertaining. Every time the Lord was with us, but he seemed to keep the good wine till the last, for on Saturday, many of God’s people were filled exceedingly.” In these cases, he is speaking with specific reference to God-given joy, and preached about it at considerable length in his sermon, “The Kingdom of God,” in which he said, “I have often thought, that if the apostle Paul were to come and preach now, he would be reckoned one of the greatest enthusiasts on earth. He talked of the Holy Ghost, of feeling the Holy Ghost; and so we must all feel it, all experience it, all receive it, or we can never see a holy God with comfort. . . . The apostle not only supposes we must have the Holy Ghost, but he supposes, as a necessary ingredient to make up the kingdom of God in a believer’s heart, that he must have ‘joy in the Holy Ghost.’ There are a great many, I believe, who think religion is a poor melancholy thing, and they are afraid to be Christians. But, my dear friends, there is no true joy till you can joy in God and Christ. . . . We are told that ‘Zaccheus received Christ joyfully,’ that ‘the eunuch went on his way rejoicing,’ and that ‘the jailer rejoiced in God with all his house.’ O, my friends, what joy have they that know their sins are forgiven them! What a blessed thing is it for a man to look forward, and see an endless eternity of happiness before him, knowing that everything shall work together for his good! It is joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
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Spurgeon, Charles H. “The Great Revival.” In The New Park Street Pulpit, containing sermons preached and revised by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, minister of the chapel during the year 1858, vol. 4, pp. 161-168. London: Alabaster and Passmore, 1859.
Spurgeon, Charles H. “The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” In The New Park Street Pulpit, containing sermons preached and revised by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, minister of the chapel during the year 1858, vol. 4, pp. 161-168. London: Alabaster and Passmore, 1859.
Wesley, John. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley edited by Nehemiah Curnock. Vol 2. London: Charles H. Kelly, n.d.
Whitefield, George. Journals. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960.
Whitefield, George. “The Kingdom of God.” In The Revivals of the Eighteenth Century. D. Macfarlan, ed. Edinburgh: Johnston & Hunter, 1847. Repr. Wheaton: Richard Owen Roberts, 1980.
Whitefield, George. Letters of George Whitefield for the period 1734-1742. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, n.d.
This unedited version of this article was first written for the Destiny Image Digest.
Kevin Pate, a member of a Vineyard ministry team, reported in April 1998 on their visit to Mexico City with Pastor Wes Campbell, including a weekend mountain retreat with 18,000 Mexicans.
The week and a half that we spent in Mexico City ministering to the people there I would have to say was the most amazing time of my life. I know that is a pretty dramatic statement but I hope that you will understand as you read the rest of this account. But first a little background.
Monte Maria’s history
The following history is as best as I understand from what was shared with us while we were there: The church that we went down to help out is called Monte Maria. The history of the church is quite interesting.
Back in about 1979 a Catholic priest in Mexico City by the name of Father Gilberto was at a point in his life where he was very dry and seeking God intensely. One time in prayer he was overcome by the presence of God and started weeping greatly for the lost and hurting of the world. This weeping continued on for a year! During this time as he would perform mass, interesting things would happen – people who were in the congregation as normal were healed of a variety of sicknesses and infirmities. News of this sort travels quickly and soon people were bringing their sick relatives and friends to the church and many of them became healed too.
Unfortunately, some people in the church and surrounding area complained about the increased number of poor people tromping through their neighborhood and church (riffraff they felt) and soon Father Gilberto was told by the higher-ups at his diocese that he was no longer welcome at that church. So, Father Gilberto went down to the local city dump and started to perform mass there and minister to the poor. There was in essence a city of poor people at the dump because this was the only place where many of them could live (they were very poor!) and could get stuff to survive on (food scraps, clothes, etc.). The healings continued and many came to belief in Jesus Christ as their savior.
Simple church building
So many people came to Father Gilberto for ministry that he then started another church in Mexico City. I believe that he bought a dump (obviously he could get it cheap!), cleaned it up, and constructed a church. The church building is a very simple concrete structure — basically just concrete walls and floor, and sheet metal roof with insulation (to keep it from being an oven in the summer), folding chairs for the folks to sit on, and simple platform at the front. The air conditioning is a bunch of open windows. This church building holds about 3,000 people. There is also an outdoor area that can seat 5,000 people – the outdoor part is used for Sunday morning services because the building is no longer large enough to hold everyone.
The prayer mountain
Monte Maria has also planted about 12 other churches in the Mexico City area; each church plant has about 100-200 people. Monte Maria has home groups during the week to help the people bond together, get discipled, and minister to each other. More recently they also received 293 acres of land outside the city in a mountainous area (donation from someone) – they call this “The Mountain”. They use this for monthly (7 times per year) meetings where people from all over Mexico City and surrounding area gather for a time of worship, listening to preaching, and to receive prayer ministry. The truly poorest of the poor come to this. Many of them band together and chip in a few pesos each and rent a bus to get there. They camp out in a variety of ways – in tents, under tarps, or just sleep under the stars. The weekend we were there, there were about 20,000 people at the Mountain; in the past there has been as many as 50,000 people.
Father Gilberto has now changed his name to Pastor Aurellio Gomez since the Catholic church has told him he can no longer minister in the Catholic church. Pastor Aurellio has taken a very strong stand on preaching against idolatry (which permeates portions of the Catholic church) and this has not be popular amongst the Catholic leadership in Mexico. Pastor Aurellio has been very much a proponent of church reform and ministry to the poor but with this frequently comes much criticism from the establishment.
Wesley Campbell and team
A couple of years ago, Wes Campbell travelled down to Mexico to see what God was doing down there. Wes was the pastor of a Vineyard church in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Back in 1984 his church was strongly touched by God and has been in moving powerfully since then. Wes promised God that if this same sort of touch would come to the church in general around the world, he would do everything he could to fan the flames of renewal and revival. Wes and his wife Stacey met Father Gilberto and found a very hungry Mexican people who were in the midst of revival – many thousands of people being reached with the gospel, many being healed of all sorts of infirmities, and many set free from the power of the demonic enemy. Father Gilberto invited Wes and Stacey to come back with a ministry team to help out at their monthly gathering meeting at the Mountain and to help out at meetings at their church in Mexico City. The ministry team that was assembled was about 30 people from Westside Vineyard in Tigard, Oregon (including Arlan Askew the senior pastor), 5 from the Albany Oregon Vineyard, and 5 from the San Diego California Vineyard.
Prior to going on the trip, I shared with some friends here that I hoped to be able to see and experience first-hand what I have heard was going on down there and elsewhere in the world. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and many people are reached with the gospel of Christ. Well, I am not exaggerating when I can now say that we indeed did see and experience first-hand all of this! As the Mexicans would shout – “Gloria a Dios!” (Glory to God!). And the best part was that we got to participate in what God was doing in the people – we were the prayer ministry team who were privileged to be able to pray for people for these types of healings and lead them to the Lord!
Prayer ministry
The first weekend we were there we went to the Mountain. When we got there we were very warmly welcomed by the people. After a bit of orientation, we got to work… praying for people. There were literally thousands of people ready and waiting for prayer — lined up desiring a touch from God. It was a staggering feeling. But we all just plunged in and started praying for them one at a time, knowing that it wasn’t just a crowd, but it was individuals who deserved individual attention because God loves each of them equally. So one by one we ministered and started to see an awesome move of the Holy Spirit.
Nearly everyone we prayed for was visibly touched in some way – overcome by the power or presence of God and couldn’t stand anymore, touched by a physical healing, or even some deep touch in their emotions and spirit evidenced by tears streaming down their face. Young and old, men and women, almost all were touched! It was astounding to me to see so many people so touched by the Holy Spirit! It had to be partially due to their great hunger for God. These are the poorest of the poor and really don’t have any other options. They are too poor to be able to seek a doctor for their sicknesses and infirmities; God is their only hope.
It certainly wasn’t due to any great faith that most of us had – I was rather nervous going into the trip. It was really God’s work. Essentially all of us were able to pray for all types of problems in the people’s lives – blindness, deafness, lameness, and countless other problems. In many, many cases we were able to see immediate improvement and in many cases complete healing of the people. We had some translators available to help us communicate with the people while we were praying for them which helped immensely. At other times we had to wing it on our own without a translator.
The meetings at the Mountain started at about mid-day Saturday and lasted until late Sunday afternoon with only a two or three hour break in the middle of the night Saturday night to Sunday morning. We prayed for the people during the worship and prayer ministry time, but did not pray during the preaching time since the people needed to focus on that. Wes preached about the revival occurring all over the world, and more specifically about what God was doing in their midst there in Mexico. Arlan preached about receiving the Father’s love, intimacy with God, our relationship with God made possible by Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, and how this relationship/intimacy is the most important thing that we must seek. Everything else in our life and ministry will flow from that.
Healing and deliverance
During the week we were also able to minister at three days of meetings at their church. These meetings were more focused on teaching and training, receiving God’s love, intimacy and relationship with him, moving in the prophetic gifts relative to ministering to people, and praying for healing for each other. In the evenings we sometimes had opportunity to gather together as a team and share what experiences we had during the ministry times during the day. The following is a short listing of some of the testimonies that I was able to write down. There were many more that I didn’t write down or hear, and of course there was much more that God did that we don’t even know about:
— Woman had ears healed (was hearing a fuzz or static that was interfering with her hearing), after praying for her she could hear clearly; in addition, a pain she was having in her chest was gone too.
— Lame man who had pain in his legs healed and could walk without any pain. This was kind of a humorous incident. After praying for a while, the pain in his legs was gone and the man just sat in his chair happy that the pain was gone. The person doing the praying then reminded the man that he might now be able to walk. The person looked surprised since he had been confined for so long in his chair that he hadn’t even thought to try walking. He did and was overjoyed to find that he could indeed now walk!
— Another person in a wheel chair walked. The person had suffered an embolism 3 years earlier and was paralyzed on one side of the body. While being prayed for, the paralyzed leg and arm started shaking significantly – the power of God was evident! After a while the person was able to get up out of the wheelchair and walk.
— A man who had cataracts (obvious by clouding in the lens of the eyes) was prayed for. Gradually the clouding disappeared and the man ended up being able to see clearly.
— A woman had a tumor on one side of her body that could be felt from the outside was healed — no more tumor detected.
— A little boy who was blind in one eye, after prayer began to see, then sneezed three times and could see perfectly.
— A young boy who was controlled by a demonic spirit (thrashed about quite a bit), the demon finally acknowledged its name was the “god of hatred”, the boy finally denounced the demon, accepted Jesus into His life, and was delivered and filled with the Holy Spirit.
— More deliverances of people bound by demons.
— Woman with paralysis on one side, limped seriously, couldn’t speak, arm wouldn’t work. Interviewing determined the woman had very poor self-esteem (because of the stroke). After spiritual counselling and prayer for healing, she was overcome by the presence of God and went down on the concrete. After a little while the woman started screaming with joy, leapt up and found that the paralysis was gone and she could speak clearly.
— Woman’s eyes healed to perfect seeing.
— Woman’s knees that were in severe pain, couldn’t walk well at all. After prayer felt heat in her knees, then was able to get up and walk without pain, and even was able to jump up and down. She was very excited about this since she wanted to be able to dance during worship. What joy on her face!
— A woman with hurting feet was improved.
— A woman with hurt shoulder was healed, could move it all ways without pain.
— A woman with bum knees, after prayer got up very happy, joyfully hugged the person praying for her and said she could now bend her knees without pain, has not been able to do this for years.
— Woman with bulge and pain in her stomach (didn’t exactly know what it was
all about), after prayer the bulge and pain disappeared.
— Woman who was being prayed for started throwing up (a common manifestation of someone releasing a demonic spirit), continued praying for her and asking God to fill and cleanse her with His Holy Spirit, she then started weeping and then praising God. Very visibly changed.
— Many people were led to Jesus Christ and prayed to receive Him in their heart. It certainly helped having translators available to help in this communication.
It was awesome to be able to participate in what the Lord was doing. I was particularly happy to see the four teenagers who were part of the ministry team get right out there and pray for the people. And they saw and experienced every bit as dramatic move of the Spirit amongst the people they prayed for as any one else on the team! What a life-changing experience for them (and the rest of us of course)!
Life changing experience
With the extended prayer times that we had, I found that due to tiredness I would sometimes sort of lose focus on the person I was praying for and get distracted by other things and people around me. I would then look back at the person I had my hand on and found that there were tears streaming down their face – God was moving and touching them in spite of my tiredness and lack of focus. It was also neat to see the next person in the line that I was working down get visibly touched by God prior to me even getting there to pray for that person. It reminded me that it wasn’t really me who was doing the work in their life: rather it was all God.
It was astounding how the prayer lines would never end. As people would leave after being prayed for, others would step in where they were standing and ask for prayer. We’d be walking amongst the people and many would come up to us requesting prayer for themselves, or one of their family or friends. It was a joy to bless them since they were so hungry for God. We couldn’t get tired of that.
During some of the preaching sessions, Wes and Arlan asked who desired to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into their life. It was awesome to see hundreds and hundreds of hands raised and hear them pray to ask Jesus into their lives.
On the last teaching session at the church Arlan taught about praying for healing. For the ministry time, he told all the people to break up into groups of about eight people and form a circle. He then told each group to put one of the people in the centre who needed physical healing and to pray for them. He asked the prayer ministry team (us) to go around and coach and pray for them.
It was so neat teach them how to stepwise go through the healing prayer — 1. first the interview to find out what was wrong;
2. then seek God for guidance, dealing as necessary with any underlying issues such as the need to give and receive forgiveness;
3. then soaking prayer for healing;
4. after a while interviewing the person to see what was happening and whether there was improvement;
5. if there was, blessing and praising God for what he was doing and continuation of prayer for complete healing.
I just went around, coached, and blessed what each person and the Holy Spirit was doing. It was exhilarating to see essentially everyone they prayed for in the circle receive healing!
It was great to be able to tell all of them that the same Holy Spirit that is in us (the prayer ministry team) was also in them and that they could continue do this kind of ministry with each other, their families and friends, and the lost around them. It was wonderful to know that this and other teachings and anointings were truly imparted to them and that they will continue to grow after we’ve left.
The worship
One of the things that impressed us so much was the way these people worship. Mexican people have Fiesta (party!) in their blood and in church they integrate it into their worship. Once they get the worship going, you can’t help but be up and dancing along with them. Picture thousands of people dancing their heart out before God. The church didn’t have a choir. The whole church was the choir.
They had a wonderful dance/worship team which consisted of about a dozen beautifully dressed women with tambourines with streamers, and another dozen with flags and streamers. Their synchronized dance/worship was truly beautiful! It’s also the first time I saw toilet paper used as a worship aid. They would tear off a lengths of it and pass it around to everyone and they would wave it in the air as a streamer and praise God. It reminded me of a football game, but of course it was unto God! Oh, we can learn so much from their joy and worship!
The culture
Mexico City is a huge city; I believe the biggest city in the world – 27 million people. I heard that the entire metropolitan area is about 80 miles x 100 miles. The pollution is quite bad — Mexico City is at about 6,000 feet and in a mountainous basin which traps the air pollution in an inversion layer much of the year — quite a brown layer of smog over the city. The traffic and roads are also interesting — very congested and very bumpy. Hard to complain about our traffic and roads after being there!
Our visit to Mexico City was most interesting from a cultural standpoint. The food was of course a wonderful experience! I found the language barrier a fun challenge. The people of Mexico were VERY warm. They have a gift of hospitality that we have rarely encountered. After a few days with them, it was very difficult to leave them. When we were departing, some of the people gave us little gifts that in themselves one might say they had little value, but considering how poor most of the people are, were of utmost significance to us because we knew how much of a sacrifice it was for them.
For all that our God is doing in Mexico and all over the world – “Gloria a Dios!” and “Mas Senor!”
Pastors Raju and Samita Sundras founded Hosanna Church in Kathmandu, Nepal, in the mid-nineties which is now one of the largest churches in Nepal. Raju is active in planting churches in Nepal and Tibet and caring for a growing network of pastors and leaders. He spoke on national television in a service celebrating the first declaration of Christmas Day as a public holiday in Nepal from 2009.
They told how two young pastors who had been away at Bible School for three years returned to West Nepal in November 1998, were arrested, accused of being spies, and shot. Many pastors have been threatened or imprisoned. They pray for the sick and cast out demons constantly. They expect miracles and see many. It is the book of Acts lived today. Churches continue to multiply.
Here Raju reports on some revival meetings and ministry at the turn of the century.
Christmas in West Nepal
Happy new year. We all are lifting the name of the Lord Higher and Higher. Thank you for your prayer regarding my trip to west Nepal. It was the greatest time for us. I had opportunity to speak the Word of God at three places.
Events at the first meetings were unexpected, for me. Four hundred people were gathered to listen the Christmas Message. I shared on “Why are we celebrating Christmas?” While I was closing the message, for 10 minutes one 18-year-old boy wept loudly and said, “My both eyes are closed – I’m blind.” We were all filled with awe and fear and we were praying constantly.
The Lord told me to bring him to the front so I did. I asked him, “Why are your eyes are closed?”
He was walking on the Bibles and on the song books on the floor. [In most churches there everyone sits on the floor]. Then he said, “Forgive me, forgive me, Lord for what I have done.” He confessed and said to the Lord, “I have fallen into sexual sins for many months and I lost my witness too.” When he was confessing to the Lord, his eyes were opened again. Praise the Lord!
All of us started to pray. The Spirit of God came upon the people and one pastor went to another pastor to ask forgiveness about things in their past.
Then 50 people were healed. Among them was one girl who is 17 years old who had not talked for the last three years. She prayed like this, “Jesus save me.” Another girl who was suffering from headache for the last seven years said. “I was touched, touched. One hand came. God extended his hand to my headache and told me in my spirit, “From today you are healed and you will be healing many people.” When she laid her hands on others, the people were healed on the spot. Many people started to be healed.
I was experiencing something as if the roof of the church building was not there because people were talking to God like saying, “How are you?” just as people talk to each other. While all the participants were weeping more people started to come. All the windows were packed. All the churches were packed. I don’t know how so many people came and wept, saying, “I want to accept Christ as my personal Saviour. Help me. Help me.”
Three strong people who had been giving trouble to Christians accepted Christ, all of them praying and weeping. I told the people we had to stop the meeting because we had started from 12 o’ clock noon and it went to 6 o’clock. Then I went to speak at another meeting.
That meeting started from 7 o’clock. I did not say anything to them about what happened at the other churches. I just spoke for ten minutes and the Spirit of God came onto the people. The meeting went up to 12 o’clock midnight. I only slept for five hours then people came to me saying, “Let’s pray.” And they told me, “You must still go to other churches to speak.”
That was first time in my life I spoke at a meeting that was started from six o’clock in the morning. The same things happened there also. So we came back home on the 24th Dec and I spoke to my church at Kathmandu on 25th Dec. I just shared what had happened and that meeting went up to 4 o’clock at afternoon. Among the four hundred people, 70 people were repenting of their sins to the Lord. A boy who was not even able to walk for two years danced to the Lord.
We had baptized 35 people in the first week of December. Now within one week 45 people accepted Christ and 15 people are ready to take baptism. Praise the Lord for doing all this greatest work even though lots of persecution is going on. At the same time we have been seeing the great work of the Lord.
I want to say very, very much thank to you for your prayer. From the beginning the devil wanted to stop us from going to visit West Nepal. After we rode 40 kilometers we were in such accident that my wife and I fell down from our motorbike. We both were badly injured. Her hand and right eye were damaged, and my wife is still in treatment. I still have a problem in my knee. Our bike which helped us to go to minister in all parts of Nepal has been totally damaged. Now we are without a bike, but praise the Lord we didn’t feel any pain during the meetings.
On the way to the meetings after that accident I told my wife, “Let’s not go to West Nepal, but let’s go back to home.” She said to me, “The Lord told me we need to go to speak anyhow.” So we obeyed and went. So we have seen the mighty work of the Lord. So I want to share my prayer requests with you. Thank you for your prayer and for your cooperation.
Hosanna Church, Kathmandu
Warm greetings to you in the highly exalted name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. After 144 hours non stop prayer in our church in January I went to Tibet for two weeks from Kathmandu. Praise the Lord I had a wonderful time in Tibet and there were many ministry opportunities. We have been visiting Tibet each month. But this time we had a golden time to share the gospel and easily I entered inside to handout the tracts. Praise the lord even an 80 years old man also accepted Christ.
Just as I was ready to leave to home from the bus park, one 18 years old boy was standing with me. The Holy Spirit told me to give Gospel tracts to him. That boy told me things like ‘Where is the Jesus I have been waiting for from three years.’ On the spot we went on the mountain and spent two hours together. After that he accepted Christ.
Whatever Geoff shared during his visit in Nepal is coming true now. You know when our people are watching the video tape [taken during the mission trip] after that our people were inspired to pray. That’s why we conducted 144 hours of non stop prayer.
After that our people have a vision to share the gospel to the king also. So there is lots of persecution going on but it’s no problem. People are enjoying the blessings.
Today was a historic church day in our Church. We requested to them to do what they can do for the Lord. We have seen in the offering box lots of watches, a gold ring, even a pen and pencil also. Praise the lord that Saturday Rs 8567/- was in the box [a huge amount in a poor country].
If the Lord leads you to assist this independent work in Nepal, India or Sri Lanka, we can send your message on to them. The Renewal Journal will continue, by God’s grace, to bring you information and inspiration concerning renewal and revival around the world.
Raju (right) with their worship leader and some of the team at roadworks on the trip to West Nepal
Easter in West Nepal
Kathmandu pastor Raju Sundras reports on meetings around Easter 2000 with an Australian mission.
Greetings in the name of our Almighty God Jesus Christ from the land of Himalayas!
The Lord continues to do great things in this land, we have not much to do but to praise Him and thank Him for every good gift raining on us from Him and only Him.
It was a great blessing from the Lord to send us a team from Australia mid April. The fellowship, the Word from God, the mighty touch of the Holy Spirit, the love of Christ flourishing from our Australian brothers and sisters, the awesome presence of the Lord throughout the rushing schedule of conferences, trips, visits and etc., all were overwhelmingly expressing the great love of our Lord Jesus Christ towards this nation.
During the short stay of about two weeks with the team of eight people we had the privilege to see the ministry of the Holy Spirit through them in several occasions.
On 18 April some of the group along with me had a short trip to the Tibetan border. We started early morning and arrived there about noon time. The towns of Liping on the Nepali side and Khawsa on the Tibetan side are practically connected through a bridge on Bhotekoshi river and right in the midst of the bridge is the border white line showing the boundary of each country. At the end of the bridge on Tibetan side is the entry gate which is controlled by Chinese guards and immigration officials. After praying on the bridge we approached the Chinese officials to get a permission to enter Tibet. The first official refused but the second one nodded approvingly, taking the four Australian passports from my hand as security. The official received them and let us go free of charge! This could happen only by the supernatural intervention of our Almighty God, Hallelujah! We had good prayer inside Tibet specially on those individual shopkeepers whom I would grab and pray on without any resistance from them!
On 21 April all the 8 of Australians and I had a trip to Gochadda in west Nepal and held a three days conference over there at Easter. While driving toward the destination I shared the Word with the driver of the private bus and during the inauguration of the conference he approached the altar and accepted Christ as His personal Savior. On the same day a Christian brother whose hand was sort of crippled for six years was touched by the Holy Spirit and healed absolutely, shaking in his whole body and raising his hands, even the crippled one already healed, praising the Lord with all his strength he glorified the Lord for His greatness, Hallelujah!
Out of about two hundred participants in the conference by the grace of God a hundred of them were baptized in the Holy Spirit praising the Lord, singing, falling, crying, and many other actions as the Holy Spirit would prompt them to act. About ten of them testified that they had never experienced such a presence of power and love of God. Some other testified being lifted to heavenly realms by the power of the Holy Spirit, being surrounded by the angels of the Lord in a great peace, joy, love toward each other and being melted in the power of His presence. Many re-committed their lives to the Lord for ministry by any means through His revelation.
On the second day of the conference the trend continued as the people seemingly would fall down, repent, minister to each other in love of Christ, enjoy the mighty touch of the Holy Spirit, singing, prophesying, weeping, laughing, hugging and all the beauty of the Holy Spirit were manifested throughout the congregation by His grace and love. One woman of age 65 testified that she never had danced in her life in any occasion even in secret but the Lord had told her that she should now dance to Him and she was dancing praising Him with all her strength. For hours this outpouring continued and the pastors of the churches were one by one testifying that they had never experienced such a presence and power of God in their whole Christian life and ministry.
Some sixty evangelists from Gorkha, Dhanding, Chitwan, Butwal declared that they were renewed in their spirits by the refreshing of the Holy Spirit and they are now going to serve the Lord in the field wherever the Holy Spirit will lead them to be full fledged in His service. In the last day of the conference while praying together with the congregation and committing them in His hands, many prophesied that the Lord was assuring them of great changes in their ministry, life and the area, while the power of God was at work in our midst three children of 6-7 years old fell down weeping, screaming and testifying about a huge size of hand coming on them and touching their stomachs and healing them instantly. After the prayer all the participants got into the joy of the Holy Spirit and started dancing to the Lord, singing and praising Him for His goodness.
Before leaving Gochadda while we were having snacks in the Pastor’s house a woman of high Brahmin caste came by the direction of the Lord to the place claiming that she was prompted by a voice in her ear to go to Christians and ask for prayer for healing of her chronic stomach pain and problems and that is why she was there. We prayed for her and she was instantly healed and we shared the Gospel, but she stopped us saying, “I need to accept Christ as my Saviour so don’t waste time!” And she accepted Jesus as her personal Savior being lifted in spirit even the body as she said she wouldn’t feel anymore burden in her body, and spirit, Hallelujah!
On 25 April we held another conference in the Nazarene Church in Kathmandu, pastored by Ringi Lama, where ten churches unitedly participated in the two days gathering where about 100 people participated. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit continued in this conference refreshing many in their spirits and bringing much of re-commitment. Some cases of healing were testified, and in one case the brother testified that he had received healing from the Lord and his swollen feet and the high Uric Acid had disappeared from his body, confirmed by the Holy Spirit. We showed the Transformation video brought from Australia! All committed themselves for constant prayer to bring transformation to their cities too by His power.
Transport on the road to West Nepal and India
Leaders’ group in West NepalPrayer with pastors and leaders in West NepalCongregation worshipping in West Nepal
On 27 April we held a one day conference in Hosanna Church where the touch of the Holy Spirit was tremendous and people blessed by the Holy Spirit and His might were manifesting His power and presence in the place. While people were worshipping and praising the Lord a prophecy came and the Lord said, “What happened to the vision given to you six years ago? You have forgotten to pray about it but I have not forgotten what I have promised to you through the vision!” And I was reminded by the Holy Spirit that I had seen a vision where I was taken over the highest mountains in this country with few of my foreign friends and some of our evangelists and as we put our step on the top of the mountain it started shaking and melting and my friends and the evangelists started disappearing, then I cried out, Lord where are my friends? And He said open your eyes and see, and I saw all my friends and the evangelists were scattered all over the mountains and they were coming towards me with multitudes of people behind them. I started weeping and with a feeling which words cannot explain I was thanking the Lord for His goodness, I was laughing in the Spirit for the repetition of the vision which I could see again. Hallelujah!
I have to thank the Lord for His great outpouring of the Holy Spirit and I have to thank the Lord also for my Australian brothers and sisters who took all the burden to come over to this place and minister to our people.
Worship at Hosanna Church in KathmanduGrandfather, Father and Son – all pastors in Nepal who have suffered opposition and imprisonment
2014 Return Visit
Geoff Waugh comments on his return visit to Kathmandu.
Andrew Chee was with me on Pentecost Island in July, and was also free in August, so after a few quick email inquiries we were off to Kathmandu and northern Thailand (following up on earlier invitations).
We ‘happened’ to arrive on the first Sunday that Raju Sundas had his first afternoon service, with a full church of a thousand or so. Previously they only had a morning service, but now they have two with a full church each time. I got to share briefly and challenged them to give their lives to God, be baptised, and filled with the Spirit in a 5 minute word. The day before we left, Raju’s two children were baptised and we shared an extended family meal together.
Raju’s Hosanna Church now has a Christian school with dormitories on nearby properties and we ‘happened’ to be there for their first cultural dance program, as a witness to the surrounding community.
We had a powerful week at their Bible School. They take in about 40 (from all over Nepal) twice a year for three months full time and we ‘happened’ to be there for the first week of the new group. The translators told us that is was the most powerful start they had seen. Of course we prayed for them often, and got them praying for each other, with many healings and deliverances. Many of them were Andrew’s age and were inspired by his faith and obedience.
Raju has 55 satellite churches now, and we both preached at different ones on our second Sunday there, again with large numbers responding for prayer and healing.
Then on Monday we flew to Bangkok and on to Chiang Mai where Don & Kay Fox met us On the Wednesday they drove us the 5 hours up into the mountains of northern Thailand to the Musekee Centre where they have been arranging support for orphans and others for 20 years now, and living there for over 10 years.
We had teaching and ministry sessions with 50-60 of their pastors and leaders, and again a lot of prayer for empowering, anointing and healings. Deaf ears were opened in many meetings among other significant healings. Then on the Sunday we both preached at different churches and again prayed with many people. Later I had an email from one of our interpreters telling me how those prayed for have been testifying to answered prayers, and one woman is back at work even though the doctors said she would need 3 months off work to recover.
I am constantly aware that it is God who does it all, and together we all are a part of what he is doing.
Pastor Enéas Araújo and Simone at Valentina Baptist Church
The story began in the Valentina Baptist Church located in the coastal city of Joao Pessoa, Brazil. The congregation there was small and very poor, but this did not prevent them from being preoccupied with a broad range of religious activities. Most of the congregants were also quite conservative – neither believing in nor experiencing anything supernatural.
God, however, began to deal with this busy, self-absorbed congregation. A deep conviction set in and the people repented of their sin and small-mindedness. Many cried out for a fresh move of God – and as they did so, the Holy Spirit broke their hearts and inclined them to his purposes.
Vitoria with Steve Loopstra (Sentinel Group)
One nondescript member of the church choir, a woman (Vitoria), began to have dreams about a town or encampment called Algodao de Jandaira. Although she had never even heard of the place, the dreams were so vivid – revealing local terrain, troubled faces, and other considerable detail – that the entire congregation received them as a divine revelation. The problem was that no one had the slightest idea where this community might be. The place was not identified on any map.
One day, however, a church member mentioned this story in passing to an acquaintance. The man confirmed that indeed there was such a place, and that it was in fact not far away. The reason it did not show up on any map was because it was in a desert area with no proper roads.
Excited by this news, the poor Baptist congregants took up a collection that was just enough to purchase one tank of gas. This allowed a small team to head out on an investigatory trip to Algodao de Jandaira. The trip took nearly an entire day owing to the fact much of the driving was in dry river beds.
When the team arrived at the outskirts of the community, they were shocked by what they saw. Not only were the 2,200 inhabitants poorer than the Baptists themselves, they looked like they were starving. There were no visible crops, the animals looked emaciated, and the people were dressed in rags. Everything, including a young girl walking around in red shorts and a blue shirt, was exactly as had been described in the dream.
The people had attempted to put in a community well, but each time they drilled, the hole was dry. It had not rained in the area for 24 years, and there was no water table. As a consequence, water had to be trucked in from the outside. The main dietary item was cactus, but the people had no money to buy salt for flavouring.
Faced with this trauma – which was likely precipitated by the people’s idolatry – the community had turned even more sharply to spiritism. All manner of rituals and sacrifices were linked to the spirits of nature.
As the team approached the town, they were viewed with great suspicion. The people of Algodao de Jandaira felt vulnerable, and they were not used to outsiders. Unfortunately, the day was waning and the team needed a place to stay. Not knowing what else to do, they approached a small home and knocked on the door.
A woman answered and the team explained the purpose of their visit and asked if she knew of a place where they could bed down for the night. Immediately the woman called the other family members to the door where they welcomed the team inside. Without realizing it, the team had approached the only evangelical home in the community! It was an answer to prayer for both parties.
When the investigation team returned to Joao Pessoa and reported what they had seen to their fellow congregants, the people made a vow. They would return to the troubled community once a month with whatever supplies they could muster. These follow-up trips continued through 2003, with each successive visit serving to further break down the initial suspicion and hostility.
At the end of each visit, after they had delivered their meagre supplies of food, salt, and clothing, the team would walk up to a rock outcropping above the village to pray. Overwhelmed by their inadequacy, they asked God why he didn’t give the mission to a larger church that, presumably, could do much more for these needy people. They also began to pray that God would speak to government leaders about helping the people of Algodao de Jandaira.
God responded by saying the Christians’ prayers were off target. It was not his intention to use either rich churches or the government. Rather, he wanted to work through weak vessels in order to demonstrate his power.
The Baptists’ prayers began to take on a real urgency in late 2003. Despite their efforts, the situation in Algodao de Jandaira was deteriorating rapidly. The little water on site was extremely brackish, and many animals were starting to die. After prayer, the congregation decided to forego their traditional Christmas feast and family gift-giving in order to help the people of Algodao de Jandaira. Through this sacrifice, the people were able to purchase 80 gift baskets containing food staples like rice, beans, and pasta.
After delivering these Christmas baskets, the team returned home with heavy hearts. Even this gesture seemed futile in light of the enormous needs. Algodao de Jandaira’s inhabitants needed so much more – especially a relationship with Christ.
As Valentina Baptist Church began to collect funds for their next visit, the spirit of intercession began to rise within the congregation. God was not one to play games, and they were not about to quit.
On January 24, 2004, the team headed out again on the day-long trek to Algodao de Jandaira. This time, however, something was different. About five miles from the community they approached a riverbed they had crossed dozens of times before. But not this day. For the first time in a quarter century, raging waters were coursing down the channel. Parking their vehicle, the ecstatic believers hoisted supply sacks onto their shoulders and waded across the river.
As they walked the final stretch to town, a spirit of worship overcame them. Reaching the edge of the village, the team stood in astonishment.
Algodao de Jandaira now
From the rock outcropping that served as their prayer station, a waterfall was pouring forth life-giving water upon the community below. Children were running in the river, splashing and laughing all around. Men were watering their horses, while goats drank their fill. It was almost too good to be true.
Upon reaching their friends, the Joao Pessoa team heard more of the story. Shortly after their last visit, they were told, the heavens over Algodao de Jandaira had unleashed a deluge. Water had exploded out of previously dry wells with such force that huge boulders were tossed into the air like pebbles. Young people who had never before seen rain or running water were dumbfounded. Their longsuffering parents were delighted.
After the “Flood of Blessings” – the mayor’s term for the recent miracle – 45 wells were drilled to tap what hydrologists now say is a substantial water table under Algodao de Jandaira. All now provide potable water.
Baptisms at the dam, Pastors Joao Soares left, Enéas Araújo right
The once arid and infertile land has been transformed and is now producing fava beans, papaya, guava, and other crops. At the same time, bees are generating high-quality honey, goats are yielding record amounts of milk, and the local river is filled with fish and shrimp. Not only does this bounty provide for the immediate dietary needs of the people, but for the first time ever they are able to sell their overflow to public schools and outside distributors.
Buoyed by these developments, Algodao de Jandaira has seen its population rise to 3,000. The Valentina congregation has planted a church and social centre in the community and holds joint services every other month with a local Assembly of God congregation.
Today, a substantial majority of Algodao de Jandaira’s citizens follow Christ as their Lord and Saviour. When glory is to be given, it is given to God rather than their former patron saint, Padre Cicero.
The Mayor (left) and Pastor Enéas outside former mud brick houses
The town’s 24-year-old mayor – recently selected to head a 29-town mayoral association – is happily serving the Lord along with his staff and a majority of the town councilors. Under his leadership, Algodao de Jandaira has landed multiple federal grants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. During a recent trip to meet with federal officials, the mayor turned on the TV just in time to hear a preacher declare: “You are to go before government leaders and fight for your people.”
When he presented his case the following day, Algodao de Jandaira was the only community in the state of Paraiba to win a grant.
Although Algodao de Jandaira has a small police force, the constables have very little to do. It seems that crime has all but vanished in the aftermath of the 2004 “Flood of Blessings.” To celebrate this victory – and their other manifold blessings – the town plans to erect a monument to the Lord in the spring of 2008.
Algodao de Jandaira town after the miracle
In the meantime, local believers are watching The Sentinel Group’s Quickening video to better understand the principles that animate transforming revival. For while there is no shortage of gratitude for their recent breakthrough, there is also a growing sense of responsibility toward neighbouring communities still lost in their sin.
Steve Loopstra at the rock where water flowed after 24-year droughtAlgodoa de Jandaira after the miracle of 2004
In June 2008, I saw something of God’s mighty work in Brazil. George and Lisa Otis and the Sentinel Group hosted a conference in Belo Horizonte and a group of us visited communities that have been transformed in Brazil. We worshipped in the Valentina Baptist Church, now powerfully Spirit-filled, and also in the Christian pioneers’ home in Algodao de Jandaira, and out on the street in front of that home.
That family hosted us. We worshipped and praised God on the rocky outcrop near the town, where their prayer teams had prayed each month. And I swam in the cool fresh water, now flowing through the low dam beside the town.
God answers prayer! Not always as soon as we want, and not always the way we want, but he does. I left Brazil filled with awe once again. Revival has made Brazil the country with the third largest number of Christians, after America and China.
George Otis Jr presents vivid stories of the transformation of cities and regions in the two videos Transformations 1 and 2. This article about some of those cities is from Chapter 1 of his book Informed Intercession.
For some time now, we have been hearing reports of large-scale conversions in places like China, Argentina and Nepal. In many instances, these conversions have been attended by widespread healings, dreams and deliverances. Confronted with these demonstrations of divine power and concern, thousands of men and women have elected to embrace the truth of the gospel. In a growing number of towns and cities, God’s house is suddenly the place to be.
In some communities throughout the world, this rapid church growth has also led to dramatic sociopolitical transformation. Depressed economies, high crime rates and corrupt political structures are being replaced by institutional integrity, safe streets and financial prosperity. Impressed by the handiwork of the Holy Spirit, secular news agencies have begun to trumpet these stories in front-page articles and on prime-time newscasts.
If these transformed communities are not yet common, they are certainly growing in number. At least a dozen case studies have been documented in recent years, and it is likely that others have gone unreported. Of those on file, most are located in Africa and the Americas. The size of these changed communities ranges from about 15,000 inhabitants to nearly 2 million.
Given the extent of these extraordinary stories I have limited my reporting to select highlights. Despite their brevity, these abridged accounts nevertheless offer glorious “snapshots” of the Holy Spirit at work in our day. Readers interested in more details can find them in books like Commitment to Conquer (Bob Beekett, Chosen Books, 1997), The Twilight Labyrnth (George Otis, Jr., Chosen Books, 1997) and Praying witb Power (C. Peter Wagner, Regal Books, 1997).
Miracle in Mizoram
One of the earliest and largest transformed communities of the twentieth century is found in Mizoram, a mountainous state in northeastern India. The region’s name translates as “The Land of the Highlanders.” It is an apt description as a majority of the local inhabitants, known as Mizos, live in villages surrounded by timbered mountains and scenic gorges.
The flora is not entirely alpine, however, and it is not uncommon to see hills covered with bamboo, wild bananas and orchids. The Mizos are hearty agriculturists who manage to grow ample crops of rice, corn, tapioca, ginger, mustard, sugar cane, sesame and potatoes.
But it is not farming prowess that sets Mizoram’s 750,000 citizens apart. Nor, for that matter, is it their Mongol stock. Rather it is the astonishing size of the national church, estimated to be between 80 and 95 percent of the current population. This achievement is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Mizoram is sandwiched precariously between Islamic Bangladesh to the west, Buddhist Myanmar to the east and south, and the Hindu states of Assam, Manipur and Tripura to the north.
Before the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century, local tribes believed in a spirit called Pathan. They also liked to remove the heads of their enemies. But in just four generations Mizoram has gone from being a fierce head-hunting society to a model community – and quite possibly the most thoroughly Christian place of comparable size on earth. Certainly in India there is no other city or state that could lay claim to having no homeless people, no beggars, no starvation and 100 percent literacy.
The churches of Mizoram currently send 1,000 missionaries to surrounding regions of India and elsewhere throughout the world. Funds for this mission outreach are generated primarily through the sale of rice and firewood donated by the believers. Every time a Mizo woman cooks rice, she places a handful in a special ‘missionary bowl.’ This rice is then taken to the local church, where it is collected and sold at the market.
Even the non-Christian media of India have recognized Christianity as the source of Mizoram’s dramatic social transformation. In 1994 Mizoram celebrated its one-hundredth year of contact with Christianity, which began with the arrival of two missionaries, William Frederick Savage and J. H. Lorraine. On the occasion of this centennial celebration, The Telegraph of Calcutta (February 4, 1994) declared:
Christianity’s most reaching influence was the spread of education … Christianity gave the religious a written language and left a mark on art, music, poetry, and literature. A missionary was also responsible for the abolition of traditional slavery. It would not be too much to say that Christianity was the harbinger of modernity to a Mizo society.
A less quantifiable but no less palpable testimony to the Christian transformation of Mizorarn is the transparent joy and warmth of the Mizo people. Visitors cannot fail to observe “the laughing eyes mid smiling faces,” in the words of one reporter, on the faces of the children and other residents of Mizoram. And nowhere is this spirit of divine joy more evident than in the churches, where the Mizo’s traditional love of music and dance has been incorporated into worship. The generosity of the people is also seen in their communal efforts to rebuild neighbours’ bamboo huts destroyed by the annual monsoons.
Eighty percent of the population of Mizorarn attends church at least once a week. Congregations are so plentiful in Mizoram that, from one vantage point in the city of Izol, it is possible to count 37 churches. Most fellowships have three services on Sunday and another on Wednesday evening (1).
The state of Mizoram is governed by a 40-member assembly that convenes in the capital of Aizawl. Although there are different political parties, all of them agree on the ethical demands of political office in Mizorwn. Specifically, all candidates must be:
persons with a good reputation
diligent and honest
clean and uncorrupt
nondrinkers
morally and sexually unblemished
loyal to the law of the land
fervent workers for the welfare of the people
loyal to their own church
How many of our political leaders could pass this test? For that matter, how many of our religious leaders could pass?
Almolonga, Guatemala
Jesus is Lord of Almolonga
In the mid-1970s, the town of Almolonga was typical of many Mayan highland communities: idolatrous, inebriated and economically depressed. Burdened by fear and poverty, the people sought support in alcohol and a local idol named Maximon. Determined to fight back, a group of local intercessors got busy, crying out to God during evening prayer vigils. As a consequence of their partnership with the Holy Spirit, Almolonga, like Mizoram, has become one of the most thoroughly transformed communities in the world. Fully 90 percent of the town’s citizens now consider themselves to be evangelical Christians. As they have repudiated ancient pacts with Mayan and syncretistic gods, their economy has begun to blossom. Churches are now the dominant feature of Almolonga’s landscape and many public establishments boast of the town’s new allegiance.
Almolonga is located in a volcanic valley about 15 minutes is west of the provincial capital of Quetzaltenango (Xela). The town meanders for several kilometres along the main road to the Pacific coast. Tidy agricultural fields extend up the hillsides behind plaster and cement block buildings painted in vivid turquoise, mustard and burnt red. Most have corrugated tin roofs, although a few, waiting for a second story, sprout bare rebar. The town’s brightly garbed citizens share the narrow streets with burros, piglets and more than a few stray dogs.
Although many Christian visitors comment on Almolonga’s “clean” spiritual atmosphere, this is a relatively recent development. “Just twenty years ago,” reports Guatemala City pastor Harold Caballeros, “the town suffered from poverty, violence and ignorance. In the mornings you would encounter many men just lying on the streets, totally drunk from the night before. And of course this drinking brought along other serious problems like domestic violence and poverty. It was a vicious cycle.”
Donato Santiago, the town’s aging chief of police, told me during an October 1998 interview that he and a dozen deputies patrolled the streets regularly because of escalating violence. “People were always fighting,” he said. “We never had any rest.” The town, despite its small population, had to build four jails to contain the worst offenders. “They were always full,” Santiago remembers. “We often had to bus overflow prisoners to Quetzaltenango.” There was disrespect toward women and neglect of the family. Dr. Mell Winger, who has also visited Almolonga on several occasions, talked to children who said their fathers would go out drinking for weeks at a time. “I talked to one woman,” Winger recalls, “whose husband would explode if he didn’t like the meal. She would often be beaten and kicked out of the home.”
Pastor Mariano Riscajché one of the key leaders of Almolonga’s spiritual turnaround, has similar memories. “I was raised in misery. My father sometimes drank for forty to fifty consecutive days. We never had a big meal, only a little tortilla with a small glass of coffee. My parents spent what little money they had on alcohol.”
In an effort to ease their misery, many townspeople made pacts with local deities like Maximon (a wooden idol rechristened San Simon by Catholic syncretists), and the patron of death, Pascual Bailón. The latter, according to Riscajché, “is a spirit of death whose skeletal image was once housed in a chapel behind the Catholic church. Many people went to him when they wanted to kill someone through witchcraft.” The equally potent Maximon controlled people through money and alcohol. “He’s not just a wooden mask,” Riscajché insists, “but a powerful spiritual strongman.” The deities were supported by well-financed priesthoods known as confradías (2).
During these dark days the gospel did not fare well. Outside evangelists were commonly chased away with sticks or rocks, while small local house churches were similarly stoned. On one occasion six men shoved a gun barrel down the throat of Mariano Riscajché. As they proceeded to pull the trigger, he silently petitioned the Lord for protection. When the hammer fell, there was no action. A second click. Still no discharge.
In August 1974 Riscajché led a small group of believers into a series of prayer vigils that lasted from 7 P.M. to midnight. Although prayer dominated the meetings, these vanguard intercessors also took time to speak declarations of freedom over the town. Riscajché remembers that God filled them with faith. “We started praying, ‘Lord, it’s not possible that we could be so insignificant when your Word says we are heads and not tails.’”
In the months that followed, the power of God delivered many men possessed by demons associated with Maximon and Pascual Bailón. Among the more notable of these was a Maximon cult leader named José Albino Tazej. Stripped of their power and customers, the confradías of Maximon made a decision to remove the sanctuary of Maximon to the city of Zunil.
At this same time, God was healing many desperately diseased people. Some of these hearings led many to commit their lives to Christ (including that of Madano’s sister-in-law Teresa, who was actually raised from the dead after succumbing to complications associated with a botched caesarean section).
This wave of conversions has continued to this day. By late 1998 there were nearly two dozen evangelical churches in this Mayan town of 19,000, and at least three or four of them had more than 1,000 members. Mariano Riscajché’s El Calvario Church seats 1,200 and is nearly always packed. Church leaders include several men who, in earlier years, were notorious for stoning believers.
Nor has the move of God in Almolonga been limited to church growth. Take a walk through the town’s commercial district and you will encounter ubiquitous evidence of transformed lives and social institutions. On one street you can visit a drug-store called ‘The Blessing of the Lord.’ On another you can shop at ‘The Angels’ store. Feeling hungry? Just zip into ‘Paradise Chicken,’ ‘Jireh’ bakery or the ‘Vineyard of the Lord’ beverage kiosk. Need building advice? Check out ‘Little Israel Hardware’ or ‘El Shaddai’ metal fabrication. Feet hurt from shopping? Just take them to the ‘Jordan’ mineral baths for a good soak.
If foreigners find this public display of faith extraordinary, Mariano sees it as perfectly natural. “How can you demonstrate you love God if you don’t show it? Didn’t Paul say, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel’?”
The contents of the stores have also changed. Mell Winger recalls visiting a small tienda where the Christian proprietor pointed to a well-stocked food shelf and said, “This was once full of alcohol.” Town bars have not fared any better. Harold Caballeros explains: “Once people stopped spending their money on alcohol they actually bought out several distressed taverns and turned them into churches. This happened over and over again.” One new bar did open during the revival, but it only lasted a couple of months. The owner was converted and now plays in a Christian band.
As the drinking stopped, so did the violence. For 20 years the town’s crime rate has declined steadily. In 1994, the last of Almolonga’s four jails was closed. The remodelled building is now called the ‘Hall of Honour’ and is used for municipal ceremonies and weddings. Leaning against the door, police chief Donato Santiago offered a knowing grin. “It’s pretty uneventful around here,” he said.
Even the town’s agricultural base has come to life. For years, crop yields around Almolonga were diminished through a combination of and land and poor work habits. But as the people have turned to God they have seen a remarkable transformation of their land. “It is a glorious thing,” exclaims a beaming Caballeros. “Almolonga’s fields have become so fertile they yield three harvests per year.” In fact, some farmers I talked to reported their normal 60-day growing cycle on certain vegetables has been cut to 25. Whereas before they would export four truckloads of produce per month, they are now watching as many as 40 loads a day roll out of the valley.
Nicknamed “America’s Vegetable Garden,’ Almolonga’s produce is of biblical proportions. Walking through the local exhibition hall 1 saw (and filmed) five-pound beets, carrots larger than my arm and cabbages the size of oversized basketballs (3). Noting the dimensions of these vegetables and the town’s astounding 1,000 percent increase in agricultural productivity, university researchers from the United States and other foreign countries have beat a steady path to Almolonga.
“Now,” says Caballeros, “these brothers have the joy of buying big Mercedes trucks -with cash.” And they waste no time in pasting their secret all over the shiny vehicles. Huge metallic stickers and mud flaps read ‘The Gift of God,’ ‘God Is My Stronghold’ and ‘Go Forward in Faith.’
Some farmers are now providing employment to others by renting out land and developing fields in other towns. Along with other Christian leaders they also help new converts get out of debt. It is a gesture that deeply impresses Mell Winger. “I think of Paul’s words to the Thessalonians when he said, “We not only gave you the gospel of God but we gave you our own souls as well.’” (4).
Caballeros agrees: “And that’s what these people do. It is a beautiful spectacle to go and see the effect of the gospel, because you can actually see it – and that is what we want for our communities, for our cities and for our nations.”
Despite their success, believers in Almolonga have no intention of letting up. Many fast three times a week and continue to assault the forces of darkness in prayer and evangelism. On Halloween day in 1998, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 believers gathered in the market square to pray down barriers against the gospel in neighbouring towns and around the world (5). Many, unable to find seats, hung off balconies and crowded concrete staircases. Led by the mayor and various Christian dignitaries, they prayed hand in hand for God to take authority over their lives, their town and any hindering spirits.
How significant are these developments? In a 1994 headline article describing the dramatic events in Almolonga, Guatemala’s premier newsmagazine Cronica Semanal concluded “the Evangelical Church … constitutes the most significant force for religious change in the highlands of Guatemala since the Spanish conquest (6).
Almolonga produce
The Umuofai of Nigeria
The Umuofai kindred are spread out in several villages situated near the town of Umuahia in Abia State in southeastern Nigeria (7). A major rail line links the area with Port Harcourt, about 120 kilometers to the south. Like most parts of coastal Africa, it is distinguished by dense tropical flora and killer humidity.
It is possible, even likely, veteran travellers will not have heard of the Umuofai or their homeland. This is not surprising seeing that the kindred’s claim to fame has virtually nothing to do with their size or setting. While their history does claim centuries-old roots, the truly newsworthy events are still tender shoots.
Indeed the interesting chapter of the Umuofai story began as recently as 1996. Two Christian brothers, Emeka and Chinedu Nwankpa, had become increasingly distressed over the spiritual condition of their people. While they did not know everything about the Umuofai kindred, or their immediate Ubakala clan, they knew enough to be concerned. Not only were there few Christians, but there was also an almost organic connection with ancestral traditions of sorcery, divination and spirit appeasement. Some even practiced the demonic art of shape-shifting. Taking the burden before the Lord, the younger brother, Chinedu Nwankpa, was led into a season of spiritual mapping. After conducting a partial 80-day fast, he learned that his primary assignment (which would take the good part of a year) was to spend one day a week with clan elders investigating the roots of prevailing idolatry – including the role of the ancestors and shrines. He would seek to understand how and when the Ubakala clan entered into animistic bondage. According to older brother Emeka, a practicing lawyer and international Bible teacher, this understanding was critical. When I asked why, Emeka responded, “When a people publicly renounce their ties to false gods and philosophies, they make it exceedingly undesirable for the enemy to remain in their community.” (24).
The study was finally completed in late 1996. Taking their findings to prayer, the brothers soon felt prompted to invite kindred leaders and other interested parties to attend a special meeting. “What will be our theme?” they asked. The Master’s response was quick and direct. “I want you to speak to them about idolatry.”
On the day of the meeting, Emeka and Chinedu arrived unsure of what kind of crowd they would face. Would there be five or fifty? Would the people be open or hostile? What they actually encountered stunned them. The meeting place was not only filled with 300 people, but the audience also included several prominent clan leaders and witch doctors. “After I opened in prayer,” Emeka recalls, “this young man preaches for exactly 42 minutes. He brings a clear gospel message. He gives a biblical teaching on idolatry and tells the people exactly what it does to a community. When he has finished, he gives a direct altar call. And do you know what happens? Sixty-one adults respond, including people from lines that, for eight generations, had handled the traditional priesthood.
“Let me give you an idea of what 1 am talking about. There is a local spirit that is supposed to give fertility to the earth. The people of the community believed this particular spirit favoured farmers who planted yams – an old uncle to the potato. A male from each generation was dedicated to this spirit to insure his blessing. When this priest was ready to die, he had to be taken outside so that the heavenly alignment could be undone. He was buried in the night with his head covered with a clay pot. Then, a year after the burial, the skull was exhumed and put in the shrine. These skulls and other sacred objects were never allowed to touch the ground. Of course, sacrifices were also made from time to time. This was the way of life in our community for eight generations.”
When the minister finished the altar call, the Nwankpa brothers were startled to see a man coming forward with the sacred skull in his hands. Here in front of them was the symbol and receptacle of the clan’s ancestral power. “By the time the session ended,” Emeka marvels, “eight other spiritual custodians had also come forward. If I had not been there in the flesh, I would not have believed it.”
As Emeka was called forward to pray for these individuals, the Holy Spirit descended on the gathering and all the clan leaders were soundly converted. The new converts were then instructed to divide up into individual family units – most were living near the village of Mgbarrakuma – and enter a time of repentance within the family. This took another hour and twenty minutes. During this time people were under deep conviction, many rolling on the ground, weeping. “I had to persuade some of them to get up,” Emeka recalls.
After leading this corporate repentance, Emeka heard the Lord say, ‘It is now time to renounce the covenants made by and for this community over the last 300 years.” Following the example of Zechariah 12:10-13:2, the Nwankpas led this second-phase renunciation. “We were just about to get up,” Emeka remembers, “and the Lord spoke to me again. I mean He had it all written out. He said, ‘It is now time to go and deal with the different shrines.’ So 1 asked the people, ‘Now that we have renounced the old ways, what are these shrines doing here?’ And without a moment’s hesitation they replied, ‘We need to get rid of them!’”
Having publicly renounced the covenants their ancestors had made with the powers of darkness, the entire community proceeded to nine village shrines. The three chief priests came out with their walking sticks. It was tradition that they should go first. Nobody else had the authority to take such a drastic action. So the people stood, the young men following the elders and the women remaining behind in the village square. Lowering his glasses, Emeka says, “You cannot appreciate how this affected me personally. Try to understand that 1 am looking at my own chief. I am looking at generations of men that I have known, people who have not spoken to my father for thirty years, people with all kinds of problems. They are now born-again!”
One of these priests, an elder named Odogwu-ogu, stood before the shrine of a particular spirit called Amadi. He was the oldest living representative of the ancestral priesthood. Suddenly he began to talk to the spirits. He said, “Amadi, I want you to listen carefully to what 1 am saying. You were there in the village square this morning. You heard what happened.” He then made an announcement that Emeka will never forget..
Listen, Amadi, the people who own the land have arrived to tell you that they have just made a new covenant with the God of heaven. Therefore all the previous covenants you have made with our ancient fathers are now void. The elders told me to take care of you and I have done that all these years. But today I have left you, and so it is time for you to return to wherever you came from. I have also given my life to Jesus Christ, and from now on, my hands and feet are no longer here (8).
As he does this, he jumps sideways, lifts his hands and shouts, “Hallelujah!”
“With tears in my eyes,” Emeka says, reliving the moment, “I stepped up to anoint this shrine and pray. Every token and fetish was taken out. And then we went through eight more shrines, gathering all the sacred objects and piling them high.
“Gathering again back in the square I said, ‘Those who have fetishes in your homes, bring them out because God is visiting here today. Don’t let Him pass you by.’ At this, one of the priests got up and brought out a pot with seven openings. He said to the people, ‘There is poison enough to kill everybody here in that little pot. There is a horn of an extinct animal, the bile of a tiger and the venom of a viper mixed together.’ He warned the young men, ‘Don’t touch it. Carry it on a pole because it is usually suspended in the shrine.’ This was piled in the square along with all the ancestral skulls.” Soon other heads of households brought various ritual objects-including idols, totems and fetishes-for public burning. Many of these items had been handed down over ten generations.
Emeka then read a passage from Jeremiah 10 that judges the spirits associated with these artifacts. Reminding the powers that the people had rejected them, he said, “You spirits that did not make the heavens and the earth in the day of your visitation, it is time for you to leave this place.” The people then set the piled objects on fire. They ignited with such speed and intensity that the villagers took it as a sign that God had been waiting for this to happen for many years. When the fire subsided, Emeka and his brother prayed for individual needs and prophetically clothed the priests with new spiritual garments. Altogether the people spent nine hours in intense, strategic-level spiritual warfare.
Emeka recalls that when it was over, “You could feel the atmosphere in the community change. Something beyond revival had broken out.” Two young ministers recently filled the traditional Anglican church with about 4,000 youth. And in the middle of the message, demons were reportedly flying out the door! Having renounced old covenants, the Umuofai kindred have made a collective decision that nobody will ever return to animism. “Today,” Emeka says, “everybody goes to church. There is also a formal Bible study going on, and the women have a prayer team that my mother conducts. 0thers gather to pray after completing their communal sweeping.” (9).
In terms of political and economic development, good things have begun to happen but not as dramatically as in Almolonga. Still, there is evidence that God has touched the land here much like He has in the highlands of Guatemala. Shortly after the public repentance, several villagers discovered their plots were permeated with saleable minerals. One of these individuals was Emeka’s own mother, a godly woman whose property has turned up deposits of valuable ceramic clay.
Hemet, California
For years this searing valley in southern California was known as a pastor’s graveyard. Riddled with disunity, local churches were either stagnant or in serious decline. In one case, street prostitutes actually transformed a church rooftop into an outdoor bordello. The entire community had, in the words of pastor Bob Beckett, “a kind of a nasty spiritual feeling to it.”
When Beckett arrived on the scene in 1974, Hemet had the personality of a sleepy retirement community, a place where people who had served their tour of duty came to live out a life of ease (10). Having achieved most of their goals, people simply wanted to be left alone. Though a fair number attended church, they had no appetite for anything progressive, much less evangelistic. Spiritually lethargic clergy were content to simply go through the motions.
But things were not all they seemed. Underneath the surface of this laid-back community was a spiritual dark side that was anything but lethargic. “We discovered,” said Beckett, “that illegal and occult activity was thriving in our community.” It was a rude awakening.
The Hemet Valley was fast becoming a cult haven. “We had the Moonies and Mormons. We had the ‘Sheep People,’ a cult that claimed Christ but dealt in drugs. The Church of Scientology set up a state-of-the-art multimedia studio called Golden Era, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi purchased a property to teach people how to find enlightenment.” The latter, according to Beckett, included a 360-acre juvenile facility where students were given instruction in upper-level transcendental meditation. “We’re not talking about simply feeling good; we’re talking about techniques whereby people can actually leave their bodies.”
These discoveries got Beckett to wondering why the Maharishi would purchase property in this relatively obscure valley and why it would be located in proximity to the Scientologists and the spiritually active Soboba Indian reservation. Sensing something sinister might be lurking beneath the town’s glazed exterior, Beckett took out a map and started marking locations where there was identifiable spiritual activity.” Noticing these marks were clustered in a specific area, he began to ask more probing questions. “I began to wonder,” he said, “if there was perhaps a dimension of darkness I had failed to recognize. 1 didn’t realize it at the time, but I was led into what we now call spiritual mapping.”
The deeper this rookie pastor looked, the less he liked what he was seeing. It seemed the valley, in addition to hosting a nest of cults, was also a notable centre of witchcraft. And unfortunately this was not a new development. Elderly citizens could recollect looking up at the nearby mountains on previous Halloweens and seeing them illumined by dozens of ritual fires. In Hemet and the neighbouring community of Idyllwild, it was not uncommon to find the remains of animal sacrifices long before such matters became part of the public discourse.
Nor were cults the only preexisting problem. Neighborhood youth gangs had plagued the Hemet suburb of San Jacinto for more than a century. When pastor Gordon Houston arrived in 1986 the situation was extremely volatile. His church, San Jacinto Assembly, sits on the very street that has long hosted the town’s notorious First Street Gang. “These were kids whose dads and grandfathers had preceded them in the gang. The lifestyle had been handed down through the generations.”
The danger was so great around the main gang turf that the police refused to go there without substantial backup. “One time I was walking out in front of my church,” Gordon recalls. “Three First Street guys came up behind me, while four others closed in from across the street. They moved me to the centre of the street and asked, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” It was a scary scenario.
“We were one of the first school districts that had to implement a school dress code to avoid gang attire. It was a big problem. There were a lot of weapons on campus and kids were being attacked regularly. The gangs were tied into one of the largest drug production centres in Riverside County.”
It turns out the sleepy Hemet Valley was also the methamphetamine manufacturing capital of the West Coast. One former cooker I spoke to in June 1998 (we’ll call him Sonny) told me the area hosted at least nine major production laboratories. The dry climate, remote location and ‘friendly’ law enforcement combined to make it an ideal setup. “It was quite amazing,” Sonny told me. “I actually had law officers transport dope for me in their police cruisers. That’s the way it used to be here.”
Sonny cooked methamphetamine in Hemet from 1983 to 1991. His minimum quota was 13 pounds every two weeks – an amount capable of supplying more than a quarter of a million people. And there were times when he and his colleagues doubled this production. Most of the deliveries went to Southern California, Arizona or Utah. Often the deadly powder was trucked out of town disguised as 4×8-foot forms of Sheetrock. “It was fascinating to see it done,” Sonny remembered. “Even the paper backing was torn off afterward and sold to people in prison.”
The spiritual turnaround for Hemet did not come easily. Neither the Beckerts nor the Houstons were early Valley enthusiasts. “I just didn’t want to be there,” Bob recalls with emphasis. “For the first several years, my wife and 1 had our emotional bags packed all the time. We couldn’t wait for the day that God would call us out of this valley.”
The Houstons didn’t unpack their bags to begin with. When the San Jacinto position first opened up in 1984, they drove into town in the middle of summer. Gordon remembers it being scorching hot that day. “We had our six-month-old baby in a Pinto Runabout with vinyl seats and no air-conditioning. We drove down the street, took one look at the church and said, “No thank you.” We didn’t even stop to put in a resumé.”
It would be three years before the Houstons were persuaded to return to the Hemet Valley. “Even then,” Gordon says, “we saw it as a chance to gain some experience, build a good resumé, and then look for other opportunities. God, of course, had something else in mind. I remember him saying, “I have a plan, and I’ll share it with you – if you will make a commitment to this place.” And I’ll be honest with you. It was still a tough choice.”
For a while, Bob Beckett’s spiritual mapping had provided certain stimulation. Then, it too reached a dead end. “The flow of information just seemed to dry up,” he remembers. “That was when God asked if we would be willing to spend the rest of our lives in this valley. He couldn’t have asked a worse question. How could I spend the rest of my life in a place 1 didn’t love, didn’t care for and didn’t want to be a part of?”
Yet God persevered and the Becketts eventually surrendered to His will. “As soon as we did this,” Bob reports, “the flow of information opened back up. In retrospect I see that God would not allow us to go on learning about the community’s spiritual roots unless we were committed to act on our understanding. I now realize it was our commitment to the valley that allowed the Lord to trust us with the information (12).
“Once we made this pact, Susan and 1 fell in love with the community. It might sound a little melodramatic, but 1 actually went out and purchased a cemetery plot. I said, “Unless Jesus comes back, this is my land. I’m starting and ending my commitment right here.” Well, God saw that and began to dispense powerful revelation. I still had my research, but it was no longer just information. It was information that was important to me. It was information I had purchased; it belonged to me.”
One new area of understanding concerned a prayer meeting Bob had called 15 years prior. Unable to interpret his spiritual site map or a recurring dream that depicted a bear hide stretched over the valley, he had asked 12 men to join him in prayer at a mountain cabin in nearby Idyllwild. Around two o’clock in the morning the group experienced a dramatic breakthrough – just not the one they were expecting. Rather than yielding fresh insight into the site map or bear hide, the action stimulated a new spiritual hunger within the community.
Now that the Beckets had covenanted to stay in the community, God started to fill in the gaps of their understanding. He began by leading Bob to a book containing an accurate history of the San Jacinto mountains that border Hemet and of the Cahuilla Nation that are descendants of the region’s original inhabitants. “As 1 read through this book I discovered the native peoples believed the ruling spirit of the region was called Tahquitz. He was thought to be exceedingly powerful, occasionally malevolent, associated with the great bear, and headquartered in the mountains. Putting the book down, I sensed the Lord saying, “Find Tahquitz on your map!”
“When 1 did so, I was shocked to find that our prayer meeting 15 years earlier was held in a cabin located at the base of a one-thousand-foot solid rock spire called Tahquitz peak! I also began to understand that the bear hide God had showed me was linked to the spirit of Tahquitz. The fact that it was stretched out over the community was a reminder of the control this centuries – old demonic strongman wielded, a control that was fuelled then, and now, by the choices of local inhabitants. At that point I knew God had been leading us.”
Bob explained that community intercessors began using spiritual mapping to focus on issues and select meaningful targets. Seeing the challenge helped them become spiritually and mentally engaged. With real targets and timelines they could actually watch the answers to their prayers. They learned that enhanced vision escalates fervour.
When I asked him to compare the situation in Hemet today with the way things used to be, he did not take long to answer. “We are not a perfect community,” he said, “but we never will be until the Perfect One comes back. What I can tell you is that the Hemet Valley has changed dramatically.”
The facts speak for themselves. Cult membership, once a serious threat, has now sunk to less than 0.3 percent of the population. The Scientologists have yet to be evicted from their perch at the edge of town, but many other groups are long gone. The transcendental meditation training centre was literally burned out. Shortly after praying for their removal, a brushfire started in the mountains on the west side of the valley. It burned along the top of the ridge and then arced down like a finger to incinerate the Maharishi’s facility. Leaving adjacent properties unsinged, the flames burned back up the mountain and were eventually extinguished.
The drug business, according to Sonny, has dropped by as much as 75 percent. Gone, too, is the official corruption that was once its fellow traveller. “There was a time when you could walk into any police department around here and look at your files or secure an escort for your drug shipment. The people watching your back were wearing badges. Man, has that changed. If you’re breaking the law today, the police are out to get ya. And prayer is the biggest reason. The Christians out here took a multimillion-dollar drug operation and made it run off with its tail between its legs.”
Gangs are another success story. Not long ago a leader of the First Street Gang burst down the centre aisle of Gordon Houston’s church (San Jacinto Assembly) during the morning worship service. “I’m in the middle of my message,” Gordon laughs, “and here comes this guy, all tattooed up, heading right for the platform. I had no idea what he was thinking. When he gets to the front, he looks up and says, “I want to get saved right now!” This incident, and this young man, represented the first fruit of what God would do in the gang community. Over the next several weeks, the entire First Street family came to the Lord. After this, word circulated that our church was off limits. ‘You don’t tag this church with graffiti; you don’t mess with it in any way.’ Instead, gang members began raking our leaves and repainting walls that had been vandalized.” More recently, residents of the violent gang house across from San Jacinto Assembly moved out. Then, as church members watched, they bulldozed the notorious facility.
Nor are gang members the only people getting saved in Hemet Valley. A recent survey revealed that Sunday morning church attendance now stands at about 14 percent – double what it was just a decade ago. During one 18-month stretch, San Jacinto Assembly altar workers saw more than 600 people give their hearts to Christ. Another prayer-oriented church has grown 300 percent in twelve months.
The individual stories are stirring. Sonny, the former drug manufacturer, was apprehended by the Holy Spirit en route to a murder. Driving to meet his intended victim he felt something take control of the steering wheel. He wound up in the parking lot of Bob Beckett’s Dwelling Place Church. It was about 8 o’clock in the morning and a men’s meeting had just gotten underway. “Before I got out of the car,” Sonny says ruefully, “I looked at the silenced pistol laying on the seat. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing.’ So I covered it with a blanket and walked into this prayer meeting. As soon as 1 did that, it was all over. People are praying around me and I hear this man speak out: ‘Somebody was about to murder someone today.’ Man, my eyeballs just about popped out of my head. But that was the beginning of my journey home. It took a long time, but I’ve never experienced more joy in my life.”
As of the late 1990s, Hemet also boasted a professing mayor, police chief, fire chief and city manager. If this were not impressive enough, Beckett reckons that one could add about 30 percent of the local law enforcement officers and an exceptional number of high school teachers, coaches and principals. In fact, for the past several years nearly 85 percent of all school district staff candidates have been Christians.
The result, says Gordon, is that “Our school district, after being the laughing stock of Southern California, now has one of the lowest drop-out rates in the nation. In just four years we went from a 4.7 drop-out rate to 0.07. Only the hand of God can do that.”
And what of the Valley’s infamous church infighting? “Now we are a wall of living stones,” Beekett declares proudly. “Instead of competing, we are swapping pulpits. You have Baptists in Pentecostal pulpits and vice versa. You have Lutherans with Episcopalians. The Christian community has become a fabric instead of loose yarn.”
Houston adds that valley churches are also brought together by quarterly concerts of prayer and citywide prayer revivals where speaking assignments are rotated among area pastors. “Different worship teams lead songs and salvation cards are distributed equally among us. It is a cooperative vision. We are trying to get pastors to understand there is no church big enough, gifted enough, talented enough, anointed enough, financially secure enough, equipped enough, to take a city all by itself. Yes, God will hold me accountable for how I treated my church. But I am also going to be held accountable for how I pastored my city.”
One fellowship is so committed to raising the profile of Jesus Christ in the valley that they have pledged into another church’s building program. To Bob Beckett it all makes sense. “It’s about building people, not building a church. In fact, it is not even a church growth issue, it is a kingdom growth issue. It’s about seeing our communities transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Cali, Columbia
For years Colombia has been the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine, sending between 700 hundred and 1,000 tons a year to the United States and Europe alone (13). The Cali cartel, which controlled up to 70 percent of this trade, has been called the largest, richest and most well-organized criminal organization in history (14). Employing a combination of bribery and threats, it wielded a malignant power that corrupted individuals and institutions alike (5).
Randy and Marcy MacMillan, copastors of the Communidad Christiana de Fe, have labored in Cali for more than 20 years. At least 10 of these have been spent in the shadow of the city’s infamous drug lords.
Marcy inherited the family home of her late father, a former Colombian diplomat. When illicit drug money began pouring into Cali in the 1980s, the Cocaine lords moved into the MacMillan’s upscale neighbourhood, buying up entire blocks of luxurious haciendas. They modified these properties by installing elaborate underground tunnel systems and huge 30-foot (10-metre) walls to shield them from prying eyes-and stray bullets. Video cameras encased in Plexiglas bubbles scanned the surrounding area continuously. There were also regular patrols with guard dogs.
“These people were paranoid,” Randy recalls. “They were exporting 500 million dollars worth of cocaine a month, and it led to constant worries about sabotage and betrayal. They had a lot to lose.”
For this reason, the cartel haciendas were appointed like small cities. Within their walls it was possible to find everything from airstrips and helicopter landing pads to indoor bowling alleys and miniature soccer stadiums. Many also contained an array of gift boutiques, nightclubs and restaurants.
Whenever the compound gates swung open, it was to disgorge convoys of shiny black Mercedes automobiles. As they snaked their way through the city’s congested streets, all other traffic would pull to the side of the road. Drivers who defied this etiquette did so at their own risk. Many were blocked and summarily shot. As many as 15 people a day were killed in such a manner. “You didn’t want to be at the same stoplight with them,” Randy summarized.
Having once been blocked in his own neighbourhood, Randy remembers the terror. “They drew their weapons and demanded to see our documents. I watched them type the information into a portable computer. Thankfully the only thing we lost was some film. I will always remember the death in their eyes. These are people that kill for a living and like it.”
Rosevelt Muriel, director of the city’s ministerial alliance, also remembers those days. “It was terrible. If you were riding around in a car and there was a confrontation, you were lucky to escape with your life. I personally saw five people killed in Cali.”
Journalists had a particularly difficult time. They were either reporting on human camage – car bombs were going off like popcorn – or they were becoming targets themselves. Television news anchor Adriana Vivas said that many journalists were killed for denouncing what the Mafia was doing in Colombia and Cali. “Important political decisions were being manipulated by drug money. It touched everything, absolutely everything.”
By the early 1990s, Cali had become one of the most thoroughly corrupt cities in the world. Cartel interests controlled virtually every major institution – including banks, businesses, politicians and law enforcement.
Like everything else in Cali, the church was in disarray. Evangelicals were few and did not much care for each other. “In those days,” Rosevelt Muriel recalls sadly, “the pastors’ association consisted of an old box of files that nobody wanted. Every pastor was working on his own; no one wanted to join together.”
When pastor-evangelists Julio and Ruth Ruibal came to Cali in 1978, they were dismayed at the pervasive darkness in the city. “There was no unity between the churches,” Ruth explained. Even Julio was put off by his colleagues and pulled out of the already weak ministerial association.
Ruth relates that during a season of fasting the Lord spoke to Julio saying, “You don’t have the right to be offended. You need to forgive.” So going back to the pastors, one by one, Julio made things right. They could not afford to walk in disunity – not when their city faced such overwhelming challenges.
Randy and Marcy MacMillan were among the first to join the Ruibals in intercession. “We just asked the Lord to show us how to pray,” Marcy remembers. And He did. For the next several months they focused on the meagre appetite within the church for prayer, unity and holiness. Realizing these are the very things that attract the presence of God, they petitioned the Lord to stimulate a renewed spiritual hunger, especially in the city’s ministers.
As their prayers began to take effect, a small group of pastors proposed assembling their congregations for an evening of joint worship and prayer. The idea was to lease the citys civic auditorium, the Colisco El Pueblo, and spend the night in prayer and repentance. They would solicit God’s active participation in their stand against the drug cartels and their unseen spiritual masters.
Roping off most of the seating area, the pastors planned for a few thousand people. And even this, in the minds of many, was overly optimistic. “We heard it all,” said Rosevelt Muriel. “People told us, ‘It can’t be done,’ ‘No one will come,’ ‘Pastors won’t give their support.’ But we decided to move forward and trust God with the results.”
When the event was finally held in May 1995, the nay-sayers and even some of the organizers were dumbfounded. Instead of the expected modest turnout, more than 25,000 people filed into the civic auditorium – nearly half of the city’s evangelical population at the time! At one point, Muriel remembers, “The mayor mounted the platform and proclaimed, ‘Cali belongs to Jesus Christ.’ Well, when we heard those words, we were energized.” Giving themselves to intense prayer, the crowd remained until 6 o’clock the next morning. The city’s famous all-night prayer vigil – the ‘vigilia’ – had been born.
Forty-eight hours after the event, the daily newspaper, El Pais, headlined, “No Homicides!” For the first time in as long as anybody in the city could remember, a 24-hour period had passed without a single person being killed. In a nation cursed with the highest homicide rate in the world, this was a newsworthy development. Corruption also took a major hit when, over the next four months, 900 cartel-linked officers were fired from the metropolitan police force (16).
“When we saw these things happening,” Randy MacMillan exulted, “we had a strong sense that the powers of darkness were headed for a significant defeat.”
In the month of June, this sense of anticipation was heightened when several intercessors reported dreams in which angelic forces apprehended leaders of the Cali drug cartel. Many interpreted this as a prophetic sign that the Holy Spirit was about to respond to the most urgent aspect of the church’s united appeal.17 Intercessors were praying, and heaven was listening. The seemingly invincible drug lords were about to meet their match.
“Within six weeks of this vision,” MacMillan recalls, “the Colombian government declared all-out war against the drug lords.” Sweeping military operations were launched against cartel assets in several parts of the country. The 6,500 elite commandos dispatched to Cali (18) arrived with explicit orders to round up seven individuals suspected as the top leaders of the cartel.
“Cali was buzzing with helicopters,” Randy remembers. “The airport was closed and there were police roadblocks at every entry point into the city. You couldn’t go anywhere without proving who you were” (19).
Suspicions that the drug lords were consulting spirit mediums were confirmed when the federalés dragnet picked up Jorge Eliecer Rodriguez at the fortune-telling parlour of Madame Marlene Ballesteros, the famous ‘Pythoness of Cali” (20). By August, only three months after God’s word to the intercessors, Colombian authorities had captured all seven targeted cartel leaders – Juan Carlos Arminez, Phanor Arizabalata, Julian Murcillo, Henry Loaiza, Jose Santacruz Londono and founders Gilberto and Miguel Roddguez.
Clearly stung by these assaults on his power base, the enemy lashed out against the city’s intercessors. At the top of his hit list was Pastor Julio Ceasar Ruibal, a man whose disciplined fasting and unwavering faith was seriously eroding his manoeuvring room.
On December 13, 1995, Julio rode into the city with his daughter Sarah and a driver. Late for a pastors’ meeting at the Presbyterian Church, he motioned to his driver to pull over. “He told us to drop him off,” Sarah recounts, “and that was the last time I saw him.”
Outside the church, a hit man was waiting in ambush. Drawing a concealed handgun, the assassin pumped two bullets into Julio’s brain at point-blank range.
“I was waiting for him to arrive at the meeting,” Rosevelt remembers. “At two o’clock in the afternoon I received a phone call. The man said, ‘They just killed Julio.’ I said, ‘What? How can they kill a pastor?’ I rushed over, thinking that perhaps he had just been hurt. But when 1 arrived on the scene, he was motionless. Julio, the noisy one, the active one, the man who just never sat still, was just lying there like a baby.”
“The first thing 1 saw was a pool of crimson blood,” Ruth recalls. “And the verse that came to me was Psalm 116:15: ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’ Sitting down next to Julio’s body, I knew 1 was on holy ground.
“I had to decide how 1 was going to deal with this circumstance. One option was to respond in bitterness, not only toward the man that had done this terrible thing, but also toward God. He had, after all, allowed the early removal of my husband, my daughters’ father and my church’s pastor. Julio would never see his vision for the city fulfilled. My other choice was to yield to the redemptive purposes of the Holy Spirit, to give Him a chance to bring something lasting and wonderful out of the situation. Looking down at Julio I just said, ‘Lord, 1 don’t understand Your plan, but it is well with my soul.’”
Julio Ruibal was killed on the sixth day of a fast aimed at strengthening the unity of Cali’s fledgling church. He knew that even though progress had been made in this area, it had not gone far enough. He knew that unity is a fragile thing. What he could not have guessed is that the fruit of his fast would be made manifest at his own funeral.
In shock, and struggling to understand God’s purposes in this tragedy, 1,500 people gathered at Julio’s funeral. They included many pastors that had not spoken to each other in months. When the memorial concluded these men drew aside and said, “Brothers, let us covenant to walk in unity from this day forward. Let Julio’s blood be the glue that binds us together in the Holy Spirit.”
It worked! Today this covenant of unity has been signed by some 200 pastors and serves as the backbone of the city’s high profile prayer vigils. With Julio’s example in their hearts, they have subordinated their own agendas to a larger, common vision for the city.
Emboldened by their spiritual momentum, Cali’s church leaders now hold all-night prayer rallies every 90 days. Enthusiasm is so high that these glorious events have been moved to the largest venue in the city, the 55,000-seat Pascual Guerrero soccer stadium (21). Happily (or unhappily as the case may be), the demand for seats continues to exceed supply.
In 1996 God led many churches to join in a collective spiritual mapping campaign. To gain God’s perspective on their city, they began to gather intelligence on specific political, social and spiritual strongholds in each of Cali’s 22 administrative zones (a scene reminiscent of the 41 Hebrew clans that once rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem). The results, stitched together like panels on a patchwork quilt, gave the church an unprecedented picture of the powers working in the city. “With this knowledge,” Randy explained, “our unified intercession became focused. As we prayed in specific terms, we began to see a dramatic loosening of the enemy’s stranglehold on our neighbourhoods.
“A few weeks later we used our spiritual mapping intelligence to direct large prayer caravans throughout Cali. Most of the 250 cars established a prayer perimeter around the city, but a few paraded by government offices or the mansions of prominent cartel leaders. My own church focused on the headquarters of the billionaire drug lord, José Santacruz Londono, who had escaped from Bogota’s La Picota prison in January (22). His hacienda was located just four blocks from my home. The next day we heard that he had been killed in a gun fight with national police in Medellin!” (23).
In partnership with the Holy Spirit, Cali’s Christians had taken effective control of the city. What made the partnership work are the same things that always attract the presence of the Lord: sanctified hearts, right relationships and fervent intercession. “God began changing the city,” according to Ruth Ruibal, “because His people finally came together in prayer” (24).
As the kingdom of God descended upon Cali, a new openness to the gospel could be felt at all levels of society – including the educated and wealthy. One man, Gustavo Jaramillo, a wealthy businessman and former mayor, told me, “It is easy to speak to upper-class people about Jesus. They are respectful and interested.” Raul Grajales, another successful Cali businessman, adds that the gospel is now seen as practical rather than religious. As a consequence, he says, “Many high-level people have come to the feet of Jesus.”
During my April 1998 visit to Cali, I had the privilege of meeting several prominent converts, including Mario Jinete, a prominent attorney, media personality and motivational speaker. After searching for truth in Freemasonry and various New Age systems, he has finally come home to Christ. Five minutes into our interview Jinete broke down. His body shaking, this brilliant lawyer who had courageously faced down some of the most dangerous and corrupt figures in Latin America sobbed loudly. “I’ve lost forty years of my life,’ he cried into a handkerchief. “My desire now is to subordinate my ego, to find my way through the Word of God. I want to yield to Christ’s plan for me. I want to serve Him.”
Explosive church growth is one of the visible consequences of the open heavens over Cali. Ask pastors to define their strategy and they respond, “We don’t have time to plan. We’re too busy pulling the nets into the boat.” And the numbers are expanding. In early 1998, 1 visited one fellowship, the Christian Centre of Love and Faith, where attendance has risen to nearly 35,000. What is more, their stratospheric growth rate is being fuelled entirely by new converts. Despite the facility’s cavernous size (it’s a former Costco warehouse), they are still forced to hold seven Sunday services. As I watched the huge sanctuary fill up, I blurted the standard Western question: “What is your secret?” Without hesitating, a church staff member pointed to a 24-hour prayer room immediately behind the platform. “That’s our secret,’ he replied.
Many of Cali’s other churches are also experiencing robust growth, and denominational affiliation and location have little to do with it. The fishing is good for everybody and it’s good all over town. My driver, Carlos Reynoso (not his real name), himself a former drug dealer, put it this way: “There is a hunger for God everywhere. You can see it on the buses, on the streets and in the cafes. Anywhere you go people are ready to talk.” Even casual street evangelists are reporting multiple daily conversions – nearly all the result of arbitrary encounters.
Although danger still lurks in this city of 1.9 million, God is now viewed as a viable protector. When Cali police deactivated a large, 174-kilo car bomb in the populous San Nicolis area in November 1996, many noted that the incident came just 24 hours after 55,000 Christians held their third vigilia. Even El Pais headlined: “Thanks to God, It Didn’t Explode” (25).
Cali’s prayer warriors were gratified, but far from finished. The following month church officials, disturbed by the growing debauchery associated with the city’s Feria, a year-end festival accompanied by 10 days of bull fighting and blowout partying, developed plans to hold public worship and evangelism rallies.
“When we approached the city about this,” Marcy recalls, “God gave us great favour. The city secretary not only granted us rent-free use of the 22,000-scat velodrome (cycling arena), but he also threw in free advertising, security and sound support. We were stunned!” The only thing the authorities required was that the churches pray for the mayor, the city and the citizens.
Once underway, the street witnessing and rallies brought in a bounty of souls. But an even bigger surprise came during the final service which, according to Marcy, emphasized the Holy Spirit “reigning over” and “raining down upon” the city of Cali. As the crowd sang, it began to sprinkle outside, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the month of December. “Within moments,” Marcy recalls, “the city was inundated by torrential tropical rain. It didn’t let up for 24 hours; and for the first time in recent memory, Feria events had to be cancelled!”
On the evening of April 9, 1998, I had the distinct privilege of attending a citywide prayer vigil in Cali’s Pascual Guerrero stadium. It was no small event, even in the eyes of the secular media. For days leading up to the vigilia, local newspapers had been filled with stories linking it to the profound changes that had settled over the community. Evening newscasters looked straight into the camera and urged viewers, whatever their faith, to attend the all-night event.
Arriving at the stadium 90 minutes early, I found it was already a full house. I could feel my hair stand on end as I walked onto the infield to tape a report for CBN News. In the stands, 50,000 exuberant worshipers stood ready to catch the Holy Spirit’s fire. An additional 15,000 ‘latecomers’ were turned away at the coliseum gate. Undaunted, they formed an impromptu praise march that circled the stadium for hours.
Worship teams from various churches were stationed at 15-metre intervals around the running track. Dancers dressed in beautiful white and purple outfits interpreted the music with graceful motions accentuated by banners, tambourines and sleeve streamers. Both they and their city had been delivered of a great burden. In such circumstances one does not celebrate like a Presbyterian, a Baptist or a Pentecostal; one celebrates like a person who has been liberated!
Judging from the energy circulating in the stands, I was sure the celebrants had no intention of selling their emancipation short. They were not here to cheer a championship soccer team or to absorb the wit and wisdom of a big-name Christian speaker. Their sole objective on this particular evening was to offer up heartfelt worship and ask God to continue the marvellous work He had been undertaking in their city for 36 consecutive months.
“What you’re seeing tonight in this stadium is a miracle,” declared visiting Bogota pastor Colin Crawford. “A few years ago it would have been impossible for Evangelicals to gather like this.” Indeed, this city that has long carried a reputation as an exporter of death is now looked upon as a model of community transformation. It has moved into the business of exporting hope.
High up in the stadium press booth somebody grabbed my arm. Nodding in the direction of a casually dressed man at the broadcast counter he whispered, “That man is the most famous sports announcer in Columbia. He does all the big soccer championships.” Securing a quick introduction, I learned that Rafael Araújo Gámez is also a newborn Christian. As he looked out over the fervent crowd, I asked if he had ever seen anything comparable in this stadium. Like Mario, he began to weep. “Never,” he said with a trembling chin. “Not ever.”
At 2:30 in the morning my cameraman and I headed for the stadium tunnel to catch a ride to the airport. It was a tentative departure. At the front gate crowds still trying to get in looked at us like we were crazy. I could almost read their minds. Where are you going? Why are you leaving the presence of God? They were tough questions to answer.
As we prepared to enter our vehicle a roar rose up from the stadium. Listening closely, we could hear the people chanting, in English, “Lift Jesus up, lift Jesus up.” The words seemed to echo across the entire city. I had to pinch myself. Wasn’t it just 36 months ago that people were calling this place a violent, corrupt hell-hole? A city whose ministerial alliance consisted of a box of files that nobody wanted?
In late 1998, Cali’s mayor and city council approached the ministerial alliance, with an offer to manage a citywide campaign to strengthen the family. The offer, which has subsequently been accepted, gives the Christians full operational freedom and no financial obligation. The government has agreed to open the soccer stadium, sports arena and velodrome to any seminar or prayer event that will minister to broken families.
As remarkable as the preceding accounts are, they represent but a fraction of the case studies that could be presented. Several others are worth mentioning in brief.
Kiambu, Kenya
Topping this list is Kiambu, Kenya, one-time ministry graveyard located 14 kilometres northwest of Nairobi. In the late 1980s, after years of profligate alcohol abuse, untamed violence and grinding poverty, the Spirit of the Lord was summoned to Kiambu by a handful of intercessors operating out of a grocery store basement known as the “Kiambu Prayer Cave.”
According to Kenyan pastor Thomas Muthee, the real breakthrough came when believers won a high profile power encounter with a local witch named Mama Jane. Whereas people used to be afraid to go out at night, they now enjoy one of the lowest crime rates in the country. Rape and murder are virtually unheard of. The economy has also started to grow. And new buildings are sprouting up all over town.
In February, 1999, pastor Muthee celebrated their ninth anniversary in Kiambu. Through research and spiritual warfare, they have seen their church grow to 5,000 members – a remarkable development in a city that had never before seen a congregation of more than 90 people. And other community fellowships are growing as well. “There is no doubt,” Thomas declares, “that prayer broke the power of witchcraft over this city. Everyone in the community now has a high respect for us. They know that God’s power chased Mama Jane from town” (26).
Vitória da Conquiste, Brazil
The city of Vitória da Conquiste (Victory of the Conquest) in Brazil’s Bahia state, has likewise, experienced a powerful move of God since the mid 1990s. As with other transformed communities, the recovery is largely from extreme poverty, violence and corruption.
Vitória da Conquiste was also a place where pastors spent more pulpit time demeaning their ministerial colleagues than preaching the Word. Desperate to see a breakthrough, local intercessors went to prayer. Within a matter of weeks conviction fell upon the church leaders. In late 1996 they gathered to wash one another’s feet in a spirit of repentance. When they approached the community’s senior pastor – a man who had been among the most critical – he refused to allow his colleagues to wash his feet. Saying he was not worthy of such treatment, he instead lay prostrate on the ground and invited the others to place the soles of their shoes on his body while he begged their forgiveness. Today the pastors of Vitória da Conquiste are united in their desire for a full visitation of the Holy Spirit (27).
In addition to lifting long-standing spiritual oppression over the city, this action has also led to substantial church growth. Many congregations have recently gone to multiple services. Furthermore, voters in 1997 elected the son of evangelical parents to serve as mayor. Crime has dropped precipitously, and the economy has rebounded on the strength of record coffee exports and significant investments by the Northeast Bank.
San Nicolás, Argentina
Ed Silvoso of Harvest Evangelism International reports similar developments in San Nicolás, Argentina, an economically depressed community that for years saw churches split and pastors die in tragic circumstances. According to Silvoso, this dark mantle came in with a local shrine to the Queen of Heaven that annually attracts 1.5 million pilgrims.
More recently, pastors have repented for the sin of the church and launched prayer walks throughout the community. They have spoken peace over every home, school, business and police station and concentrated intercession over 10 “dark spots” associated with witchcraft, gangs, prostitution and drug addiction. The pastors have also made appointments with leading political, media and religious (Catholic) officials to repent for neglecting and sometimes cursing them.
As a result of these actions the Catholic bishop is preaching Christ and coming to pastors’ prayer meetings. The mayor has created a space for pastors to pray in city hall. The local newspaper has printed Christian literature. The radio station has begun to refer call-in problems to a pastoral chaplaincy service. The TV station invites pastors onto live talk shows to pray for the people. In short, the whole climate in San Nicolás has changed.
Villages, cities, countries
In other parts of the world God has been at work in villages (Navapur, India; Serawak, Malaysia [Selakau people]; and the North American Arctic) in urban neighbourhoods (Guatemala City; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Resistencia, Argentina; Guayaquil, Ecuador) and even in countries (Uganda). The United States has witnessed God’s special touch in places as far-flung as New York City (Times Square); Modesto, California; and Pensacola, Florida.
Early in my ministry I never thought of investigating transformed communities. I was too preoccupied with other things. In recent days, however, I have become persuaded that something extraordinary is unfolding across the earth. It is, I have come to realize, an expression of the full measure of the kingdom of God. Finding examples of this phenomenon has become my life. And the journey has taken me to the furthest corners of the earth.
NOTES
1. Most of the churches are either Baptist or Presbyterian. But there are also Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Salvationist and Pentecostal congregations.
2. Although these confradías are no longer welcome in Almolonga, they can still be found in the nearby communities of Zunil and Olintepeque.
3. Almolonga’s fields also grow cauliflower, broccoli, radishes, tomatoes, squash, asparagus, leeks and watercress. Their flower market sells gorgeous asters, chrysanthemums and estaditas.
4. See 1 Thessalonians 2:8, KJV.
5. Crowd estimates were provided by Mariano Riscajché based on 10,000 plus seats, rotating local believers and the capacity of adjacent buildings. The event was also carried on local cable television.
6. Mario Roberto Morales, “La Quiebra de Maximon,” Cronica Semanal, June 24-30, 1994, pp. 17,19,20. (In English the headline reads ‘The Defeat of Maximon.’)
7. In African social hierarchy, kindreds are situated between nuclear families and tribes. They can often be spread out in several towns or villages.
8. This is a local expression that means ‘I have pulled myself our of your clutches.’ 9. George Otis Jr., The Twilight Labyrinth (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1997), p. 284.
10. Television personality Art Linkletter made the area famous by proposing it as a mobile home centre.
11. This action was taken around 1976.
12. Bob believes that community pastors need to be willing to make an open-ended commitment that only God can close.
13. This is based on estimates developed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Colombia is also a major producer of marijuana and heroin. See ‘Colombia Police Raid Farm, Seize 8 Tons of Pure Cocaine,’ Seattle Times, October 16, 1994, n.p.
14. This statement is attributable to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. See also Pollard, Peter. ‘Colombia,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica Online [database online]. Book of the Year: World Affairs, 1995 [cited March 11, 19971. Available from www.eb.com/.
15. To keep tabs on their operations, cartel founders Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela installed no fewer than 37 phone lines in their palatial home.
16. Documenting the dimensions of Colombia’s national savagery, Bogota’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, cited 15,000 murders during the first six months of 1993. This gave Colombia, with a population of 32 million people, the dubious distinction of having the highest homicide rate in the World. See Tom Boswell, ‘Between Many Fires,’ Christian Century, Vol. III, No. 18, June 1-8, 1994, p. 560.
17. Two years earlier, as a Christmas ‘gift,’ the Rodriguez brothers had provided the Cali police with 120 motorcycles and vans.
18. Otis, Jr., The Twilight Labyrinth, p. 300.
19. Ibid. This unique group was comprised of Colombian police, army personnel and contra guerrillas. Note: The June 1995 campaign also included systematic neighbourhood searches. To insure maximum surprise, the unannounced raids would typically occur at four A.M. “Altogether,” MacMillan reported, “The cartel owned about 12,000 properties in the city. These included apartment buildings they had constructed with drug profits. The first two floors would often have occupied flats and security guards to make them look normal, while higher-level rooms were filled with rare art, gold and other valuables. Some of the apartment rooms were filled with stacks of 100-dollar bills that had been wrapped in plastic bags and covered with mothballs. Hot off American streets, this money was waiting to be counted, deposited or shipped out of the country.”
The authorities also found underground vaults in the fields behind some of the big haciendas. Lifting up concrete blocks, they discovered stairwells descending into secret rooms that contained up to 9 million dollars in cash. This was so-called ‘throwaway’ money. Serious funds were laundered through banks or pumped into ‘legitimate’ businesses. To facilitate wire transfers, the cartel had purchased a chain of financial institutions in Colombia called the Workers Bank.
20. Dean Latimer, ‘Cali Cartel Crackdown?’ High Times [database online, cited 8 August 1995]. Available at www.hightimes.com.
21. The vigils have been held in the Pascual Guerrero stadium since August 1995. 22. After serving six months of his sentence, Santacruz embarrassed officials by riding out of the main gate of the maximum-security prison in a car that resembled one driven by prosecutors.
23. As the authorities probed the mountain of paperwork confiscated during government raids, they discovered at least two additional “capos” of the Cali cartel. The most notorious of these, Helmer ‘Pacho’ Herrera, turned himself in to police at the end of August 1996. The other, Justo Perafan, was not linked to the Cali operations until November 1996 because of a previous connection with the Valle cartel.
24. To appreciate the extent of these changes on the city, one has only to walk past the vacant haciendas of the drug barons. In addition to serving as monuments of human folly, these ghost towns stand as eloquent testimonies of the power of prayer.
25. “Gracias a Dios No Explotó,” El Pais, Cali, November 6, 1996; “En Cali Desactivan Un ‘Carrobomba,’ El.Pais, Cali, November 6, 1996, n.p.
26. For a more complete version of the Kiambu story, see The Twilight Labyrinth pp. 295-298.
27. The pastors came out of this season with a five-part strategy for turning their community around: (1) set aside a day for fasting and confession of sin; (2) require Christian men to improve the way they treat their wives and families; (3) promote reconciliation between churches; (4) raise up trained intercessors for the city, and (5) conduct spiritual mapping.
This article is from Chapter 1, “Snapshots of Glory” (pp. 15-53) of Informed Intercession (Renew 1999) by George Otis Jr., reproduced with permission of Gospel Light publications, Ventura, California, USA ( www.gospellight.com ). See Peter Wagner’s review comments in the Reviews section of this Renewal Journal.
His answer is not always what we expect or even want, but bigger and better than our asking.
Call to me and I will answer you; and show you great and mighty things, you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3).
If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).
It shall come to pass
That before they call, I will answer;
And while they are still speaking, I will hear.
(Isaiah 65:24)
As I lay in bed last night, thinking/meditating/praying with soft instrumental worship playing on my CD, ‘it came to me’ that I would love to read a book of the best revival stories from the many issues of the Renewal Journal. So here it is. Being editor, I get to choose the ones I especially like. Many more great stories are in my other books such as Transforming Revivals. This editorial has another great story about living faith, miracles and answered prayer.
Helen Roseveare
Living Faith
Helen Roseveare, a missionary doctor to the Congo, recorded this story in her book, Living Faith. She also wrote books about the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) revival of the 1950s.
One night I had worked hard to help a mother in the labour ward; but in spite of all we could do she died leaving us with a tiny premature baby and a crying two-year-old daughter. We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive, as we had no incubator (we had no electricity to run an incubator) and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.
One student midwife went for the box we had for such babies and the cotton wool the baby would be wrapped in. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill a hot water bottle. She came back shortly in distress to tell me that in filling the bottle, it had burst. Rubber perishes easily in tropical climates. “And it is our last hot water bottle!” she exclaimed.
As in the West it is no good crying over spilled milk, so in Central Africa it might be considered no good crying over burst water bottles. They do not grow on trees, and there are no drugstores down forest pathways.”All right,” I said, “Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can; sleep between the baby and the door to keep it free from drafts. Your job is to keep the baby warm.
The following noon, as I did most days, I went to have prayers with any of the orphanage children who chose to gather with me. I gave the youngsters various suggestions of things to pray about and told them about the tiny baby. I explained our problem about keeping the baby warm enough, mentioning the hot water bottle. The baby could so easily die if it got chills. I also told them of the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died. During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with the usual blunt conciseness of our African children. “Please, God,” she prayed, “send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby will be dead, so please send it this afternoon.”
While I gasped inwardly at the audacity of the prayer, she added by way of corollary, “And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?” As often with children’s prayers, I was put on the spot. Could I honestly say, “Amen”? I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything. The Bible says so. But there are limits, aren’t’ t there? The only way God could answer this particular prayer would be by sending me a parcel from the homeland. I had been in Africa for almost four years at that time, and I had never, ever received a parcel from home; anyway, if anyone did send me a parcel, who would put in a hot water bottle? I lived on the equator!
Halfway through the afternoon, while I was teaching in the nurses’ training school, a message was sent that there was a car at my front door. By the time I reached home, the car had gone, but there, on the verandah, was a large twenty-two pound parcel. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I could not open the parcel alone, so I sent for the orphanage children. Together we pulled off the string, carefully undoing each knot. We folded the paper, taking care not to tear it unduly. Excitement was mounting. Some thirty or forty pairs of eyes were focused on the large cardboard box. From the top, I lifted out brightly coloured, knitted jerseys. Eyes sparkled as I gave them out. Then there were the knitted bandages for the leprosy patients, and the children looked a little bored. Then came a box of mixed raisins and sultanas—that would make a nice batch of buns for the weekend. Then, as I put my hand in again, I felt the . . . could it really be? I grasped it and pulled it out – yes, a brand-new, rubber hot water bottle! I cried. I had not asked God to send it. I had not truly believed that He could.
Ruth was in the front row of the children. She rushed forward, crying out, “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!” Rummaging down to the bottom of the box, she pulled out the small, beautifully dressed dolly. Her eyes shone! She had never doubted. Looking up at me, she asked: “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?
That parcel had been on the way for five whole months. Packed up by my former Sunday school class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle, even to the equator. And one of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child – five months before – in answer to the believing prayer of a ten-year-old to bring it “that afternoon.”
“Before they call, I will answer!” (Isaiah 65:24)
Dr Helen Roseveare (1925-), an English missionary to the Congo from 1953 to 1973, suffered terribly through the political instability in the early 1960s and as a prisoner of rebel forces for five months in 1964. After her release she headed back to England but returned to the Congo in 1966 to assist in the rebuilding of the nation. Now retired she lives in Northern Ireland. The film Mama Luka Comes Home documents her return visit to Zaire in 1989.
Revivals abound with such stories of answered prayer and miracles. This book contains a few of those stories.
John Greenfield’s book, Power from on High, sparkles with the vibrant evangelism and mission of the Moravian revival which flamed into the Great Awakening and Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.
Carl Lawrence graphically describes an example of revival in China ignited by two teenage girls. Djiniyini Gondarra traces the humble beginnings of the Aboriginal revival in Australia. David Yonggi Cho recounts his experience of explosive revival in communist Russia.
Richard Riss gathered extensive reports of revival awakenings in North America and England, and David Hogan testifies to amazing revivals in Mexico
We too can participate in prayer and revival in vital ways:
We can Ask God for a great harvest as we pray.
We can Believe God. He is able to do far more than anything we ask or even think about.
We can Commit our way to God who is the Lord of the harvest.
I pray that this book will both inform and inspire you. We can all join the millions praying “… Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. … For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.”
An entire village in Thailand became Christians after a prayer for rain was answered, according to Sowers Ministry. Lun Poobuanak, a Thai missionary among the Buddhists and animists in Kalasin Province, said a village leader interrupted a Christian service, promising that if the Christian God would bring rain to save their crops, all 134 village families would become Christians. Lun and the other Christians prayed and fasted for three days, and on the fourth day, an intense cloudburst flooded the canals and rice fields.
Source: IRN News, January, 1998
Revival in an Indian Village, 1998
Report from Dr Paul Pilai, Founder of Indian Inland Mission.
One of our mission stations in a village in central India, named Tarti, was under the grip of fear of an evil spirit that destroyed the crop every year. Three families came to know Christ and a small church was established in a hut. The church prayed for the safety of the crop and no damage took place last year.
The whole village is turning to Christ and a great revival is taking place there. Most of the villagers wanted to receive Christ as their Lord and God. They stopped all the animal sacrifices to the evil spirits and the demons. None of the evil spirits attacked the crop or the villagers. They are learning Christian songs and pray loud to Jesus to make the demons know that the true God is in the midst of them. The Lord’s presence in the midst of them is known everywhere.
How meaningful it was when Elijah prayed before the Baal worshippers “let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant, and that 1 have done all these things at thy word” (1 Kings 18:36).
We praise the Lord that our ministry started in that unknown village at God’s word and command. He proved to His servants that He is the Lord God Almighty, the only true and living God, yesterday, today and forever the same.
Indian Inland Mission Newsletter, July 1998, pages 3-4.
30,000 decisions for Jesus in New Delhi
Christ for all Nations were in New Delhi from 25 February to 1 March, 1998.
New Delhi is a city of ten million people and is the capital city of the nation of India, as well as the political nerve centre for the whole country. In addition to this, it is known as a Hindu stronghold, a fact that is made even more significant by recent advances in the national political arena for the Hindu political party. The CfaN team headed to this city only two weeks after the end of national general elections, to hold a Gospel outreach in the huge Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. The event was billed as “The Good News Festival.”
The Festival was launched with a VIP banquet that was held the night before the stadium meetings began. Two hundred and fifty local and international dignitaries attended, among them a number of ambassadors from other countries. Reinhard Bonnke preached a direct and clear Gospel message and many leading citizens were seen to respond publicly to the salvation call.
250 churches participated
Pastors and churches from across the city joined together to host the event and Pastor Robert Jeyaraj was appointed as chairman of the event, overseeing the activities of the two hundred and fifty participating churches. It was also planned that running simultaneously with the evening meetings in the stadium, pastors and church workers from the region would be invited to attend a Fire Conference, which would be held each day during the week. An idea of the excitement generated by the whole event can be gauged by the fact that over four thousand delegates registered for the Fire Conference, many travelling considerable distances to be present. Reinhard Bonnke, Peter van den Berg and Brent Regis handled the Fire Conference sessions. On the final day, this particular event culminated with Reinhard Bonnke personally laying hands on the four thousand delegates before they each received a complimentary copy of the book Evangelism by Fire. There is power in the prayers of the righteous!
Despite restrictive security measures at the stadium entrances and unseasonable cold weather, tens of thousands of people flocked to the meetings nightly to hear the Good News of the Gospel as Reinhard Bonnke preached. The meetings were characterised by an amazing attentiveness among the large crowd, transfixed by the Word of God as the Gospel message rang out across the vast arena. Each night the power of the Word was seen as thousands upon thousands responded positively to the invitation to receive Jesus Christ as their Saviour, to the exclusion of all other gods. The two thousand counsellors were kept very busy, sometimes late into the night, handling the many respondents. By the final meeting, over thirty thousand decision cards had been handed in, and these were immediately funnelled into the follow-up system to be incorporated into the local churches. The follow-up material was available in both English and Hindi, the predominant local language.
Healings
After the presentation of the Gospel message each night, a public prayer was offered for all those who were sick. The crowd was amazed at the testimonies that followed as people pressed forward to report what God had done for them. Of the many hundreds healed, only a small number could be interviewed publicly due to time restraints, but the crowd shouted with joy as each person, together with witnesses, gave glory to God for their healing. A young man by the name of Mr. Patel came with his father to report that his right eye, which had been totally blind for five years, could now see perfectly. Everyone rejoiced as he correctly imitated the preacher by lifting his fingers to the sky. A woman with tears in her eyes reported that a cancerous lump in her right breast was now completely gone. The crowd erupted in a shout of praise. Miss Naidoo, a young Hindu woman, was brought by her relatives to show that despite the fact that she had been deaf from birth, she could now hear very clearly. Reinhard Bonnke demonstrated this by whispering into her ear and she was able to shout out the reply.
Fanatics opposed to the Christian message were so incensed by the miracle testimonies, that they printed out special handbills denying the validity of what was happening inside the arena each night. These they proceeded to hand out to the thousands who were standing in line at the stadium entrances. What the people thought about it all was graphically illustrated at the close of each meeting by the fact that while thousands of the handbills lay discarded on the ground, not a single follow-up booklet was picked up by the cleaners!
When the time finally came for the CfaN team to leave New Delhi, the general feeling of all involved could be summed up in the words of the Festival Chairman Rev. Robert Jeyaraj. AWe have seen the power of the Gospel in action during these days in Jawarhal Nehru Stadium, and we will reap the benefits for many months to come.” Only the Lord of the harvest knows the full extent of the harvest. You, our Missions Partners, are a vital part of this harvesting team and we praise God for each and every one who is faithful in prayer and financial support. He is the One who sees and He is the One who rewards. To God be the glory!
Source: Asuza, Global Revival News
Tibet
Responses to Words of Hope’s radio outreach efforts to Tibetan Buddhists nearly tripled in 1997. Vice President for Broadcasting Lee DeYoung told Mission Network News on 23 February, 1998 that his group received over 700 letters from Tibetans in both 1995 and 1996. Last year that number jumped to over 2,000.
Source: Global Revival News, March 1998.
Syria
A Christian ministry in Syria, known in the USA as Syrian Evangelistic Educational Development, reports that a great revival has broken out due to prayer and fasting by the believers of that ministry. As a result, many Muslims have accepted Jesus as their Saviour. Additionally, for the first time in recent history, the government has allowed this ministry to print and distribute thousands of New Testaments. To help, contact <info@christianaid.org>.
Source: FIA News, 5 March, 1998
Cairo, Egypt
Last night they wouldn’t let me into church! The service was supposed to begin at 7 pm, and in Egypt this meant that most people would arrive around 7:30. So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived on time only to find dozens of people walking away from the church!
Hundreds of people were in the street trying to make their way through the gate into the church and were being told that there was no more room. It was very difficult to fight my way through the crowds into the church courtyard which was packed full of people watching the service on a very large screen. I finally went into the church and found one seat saved for me by a friend.
The place was absolutely packed and the worship time was in full swing even though it was only a few minutes past 7:00 pm. I knew that every Sunday school room and meeting room in the church as well as the parking lot at the back had closed circuit television screens transmitting the service to them. It was the first night of the Luis Palau revival meetings in this church, which is the largest Protestant church in the Middle East. Probably more than 3000 people were packed into the compound!
In Egypt, Christian meetings have to be held in Christian facilities so it was impossible to consider renting an auditorium or stadium for this event. But as the pastor was introducing the American Argentinean-born Evangelist, he reminded the audience that Luis would have a nightly hearing of more people than would fit in the large Cairo soccer stadium! How was this?
Through an ingenious program developed by this particular church, the complete service is video taped and after the service dozens of people work all night to make hundreds of duplicate videos. Early the next morning, couriers travel to all parts of Egypt to deliver one or more tapes to the 570 churches that have agreed to take part in this outreach! It is expected that around 150,000 participated each day.
Pray for the tens of thousands of people in hundreds of churches across this country. Also pray for God’s protection.
Source: FIA News
Sudan
Despite the harsh Arabization and Islamization policy by the government, the Christian Church in Sudan is growing fast. In the slums of Khartoum a revival has started. Small churches, often built of clay, mushroom everywhere. The Jesus Film is shown every night in another church. Twenty years ago only 5 percent of the Sudanese population was Christian. Ten years ago this number had grown to 10 percent. Now about 20 percent of the people in Sudan is Christian! The Anglican Church has grown from 4 congregations in 1984 to 280 now. Because of the arabization policy a strong Arab speaking Christian Church is arising which has the fire to spread the gospel even to other countries in the Middle East. These Christians risk severe persecution and even death.
Sudanese Muslims receive dreams
Many Muslims come to faith in Jesus through God-given dreams. Like an influential Nuba Muslim in Sudan. One night he received a clear dream. He saw himself getting baptized in a Christian church, while the believers sung a beautiful hymn in Arabic. He remembered the last part of this song very well: “Receive Jesus and you will be happy.” Then the door of the church opened and he woke up. “I noticed that the door of my dormitory was open, but I know for sure that I had closed it the night before.” He shared his dream with his wife and she couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning his son of 13 told him that he had had a similar dream. “I was in a dark room when suddenly there appeared a light. Then I saw daddy with a cross in his hand, where this light came from.” When the Nuba man heard this, he decided the get baptized. His whole family is now receiving Bible lessons. These kinds of stories come in from all over Sudan.
More freedom of religion in Sudan
While in South Sudan a civil war is going on and the rights of Christians are trampled, Christians in the North speak of more freedom of religion. According to an evangelist in Khartoum, the constitution was changed recently and now guarantees freedom of religion, freedom to evangelize and freedom to plant churches anywhere in the country. He tried this out immediately: in March he held a street evangelism campaign of a few days in the north of Khartoum. The population is mainly Muslim there. About 3,000 to 5,000 people showed up at the campaign that included a showing of the Jesus Film. “People were even standing on the roofs to be able to see the film,” according to the evangelist. “The gospel was not hindered at all. This is a miracle of God and a fruit of your prayers for us. Just because of the war many Muslims come to faith in Jesus.”
Source: Joel News, 25 April, 1998
Zambia
“Please ensure that Bibles are distributed in all corners of this country to give every Zambian the opportunity to have the Scriptures in their respective local language,” was the challenge issued by State President FTJ Chiluba on the occasion of the Bible Society of Zambia’s (BSZ) Annual General Meeting held on Saturday March 7, 1998.
The President continued: “The Word of God has life and power that can shape families and society. As people search for truth they need to experience the liberating power of the Gospel.” He pointed out that the Society’s work of translating, printing and distributing the Scriptures was of vital importance and that there was a pressing need for an increase in local fundraising.
The President said it was “embarrassing” for the church in Zambia to always rely on external assistance, and he pledged 100 million kwatcha (US$60,000) to the Bible Society to be made available during the current budget year. He challenged all Christians in Zambia to contribute generously to God’s work. Lack of giving to the work of God was the reason that many people failed to balance their budgets, the President said. “You can only expect to receive God’s blessing if you give back to him from what you have earned,” he added.
The Rev Peter Ndhlovu, National Chairman of the Bible Society in Zambia, commended the Government for its commitment to the Bible cause as he thanked President Chiluba for such a challenging message.
Source: ChristianNet ChristianNet@christiannet.demon.co.uk 18 March 1998.
Uganda
Charles Carroll reports:
One of my favorite verses is Habakkuk 1:5, where God says, “Look at the nations and watch-and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” I want to give you a beautiful illustration of this. In January someone sent me a copy of a speech given recently by Y. K. Museveni, president of Uganda. Reuters news agency says Museveni has emerged as one of the most articulate champions of change in Africa (21/1/98). I think you will find this speech both amazing and encouraging.
Remarks by President Museveni
Thank you, Your Excellencies, for the opportunity to share some thoughts about the spiritual condition of the peoples of Africa. As I observe the tribal differences, religious divisions, poverty and disease, lack of sufficient educational opportunities for our children, political upheaval and racial strife, it becomes obvious that the principles of Jesus Christ have not penetrated Africa enough!
It may seem strange for some of you to think that I would say this about Christ, because I know many of you may think this is too religious and not a very practical solution to the problems I have just mentioned. Furthermore, I know that most of you do not think of me as a very religious man – in fact, I do not think that about myself. My wife is a much better believer and prayer than I am, and those who have known me through the years know that I have had problems with religious people. As I have grown older, I realize that all of the problems have not been theirs, but I do think that those of us who claim to love God ought to love one another – this is one of the most basic attributes of a follower of Christ.
As the years have gone by, however, even though I have not become a member of any special religious group, I have decided to follow Jesus Christ with my whole heart. I find in him the inner strength, the precepts and the lifestyle that can help me and all the people of Uganda to solve the problems we face individually and as a nation. It is one of the interesting facts about Jesus Christ that people in every nation of the world regardless of religion, whether one is a believer or a non-believer, consider Jesus the greatest authority on human relations in history. His views on that subject have transcended all religions and cultures. It is remarkable that the person of Jesus Christ is accepted by everyone – even when they are not attracted by institutional religion.
With that in mind, I want to stress at least three significant precepts that Christ taught and modelled, which if practised, will help Africa: forgiveness, humility and love.
Forgiveness – Jesus Christ is the only person ever to come up with the idea of unconditional forgiveness, even of one’s enemies. He went so far as to say, if you don’t forgive, God won’t forgive you. In countries where animosity and division go back for generations and even thousands of years, how can peace come to a person, a group of persons or a nation if at some point we do not forgive and let God take the vengeance on our enemies – if that is what he decides to do? It has also been discovered that if we do not forgive, in the final analysis, it hurts us more to hate than it does those we hate. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the message of Christ on forgiveness is the only practical solution to healing a nation’s wounds and bringing unity.
Humility – This is one of the most important attributes necessary to become a good leader. When you observe leaders at all levels of society, throughout Africa and I suppose throughout the world, you find them being overcome by power, greed and self-interest. Somehow, after they have attained the prominence and positions of trust, they forget the people, their poverty and need. They forget that they could become a great instrument to help their country, and instead they begin to live like little kings and dictators. Only with a humble spirit, one which recognizes that we who have been given opportunities greater than most are in fact servants of God and the people rather than masters, will we be able to help our countries move from Third World status and lead the people to a new day. As the Scripture says, God resists the proud and gives help to the humble. If you have time to pray for me, please pray that God will give me the strength, wisdom and sense to be a humble servant.
Love – It has been fascinating to me to discover that for centuries people who have been the most thoughtful, the most respected, and who have made the most lasting contributions to the human race have all agreed that the highest and greatest purpose for their lives has been to seek to love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength. These are people like Moses – the great lawgiver; Abraham – the man of faith and father of nations; William Wilberforce – the leader against the slave trade; Mother Teresa – and on and on. Jesus Christ said the sum of all the law and prophets is to love God and love one another. If love for God and one another were the rule and the prevailing attitude in our nations and communities, all problems would move gradually to resolution. Even when love is not the rule for most of the population and only exists among the few, great things happen that give hope and life in a world starved for love and caring.
Today, as we meet together, let’s resolve to take Jesus Christ out of the religious setting in which we have imprisoned him and walk with him along the dusty roads of Africa where he feels much more at home.
Source: Awakening, 18 March 1998 <ccarroll@singnet.com.sg>.
Healings in Uganda
Bishop Grivas K. Musisi, a Ugandan Christian leader claimed in an interview in the USA in April 1998 that “God has healed 223 people from AIDS” in his country. Each one of these healings,” he says, “has been confirmed medically.” Bishop Musisi, senior pastor of the Prayer Palace Church in Kampala, Uganda, and who oversees of 75 other charismatic non-denominational churches throughout the country, stated that he believes that God can do the same for people who are HIV positive or have full-blown AIDS in the United States. Musisi stated: “I believe that the solution is to come back to God. If a person can turn to God, God is willing to heal that person. He did it to the people with leprosy and he can do it with those with AIDS. God has been kind enough to confirm it through his Word. It has become a calling to everyone at the church to preach and pray for the sick and see people get healed, not just from AIDS, but from many other diseases as well. Daily, over 500 intercessors cry to God for healings at the Prayer Palace Church.”
Source: Dan Wooding via IRN News
South Africa
Pastor Aré J. Van Eck reports: Our Congregation is called Nuwe Lewe Christensentrem, that is the Afrikaans for New Life Christian Centre. We are in no way a large congregation, with attendance seldom more than 80 and normally around 35 – 45. Part of this is due to the fact that we are in a rural area, which is church-riddled, but mostly because we are multi-racial. Most of our attempts to try and work with other congregations fail, because we love souls more than skin colours! What I want to share about is the way in which God is visiting us.
As for most preachers, I also went to local conferences (not being able to travel abroad) and had people like Benny Hinn, John Arnott, Rodney Howard-Browne and Randy Clark, pray over me and my wife, but always without any real manifestations. There was the occasional “going under” but not laughing, crying or being drunk for days – just to get back home and to find that God comes and touches his people anyway.
Imagine an Afrikaans scene with Afrikaans speaking to coloured farm workers, normally the poorest people you can get, sitting cramped in a 3 roomed house (no, not 3 bedrooms, but only 3 rooms) some totally illiterate, about 16 in the one room singing Vineyard and Hillsongs which they have been taught and of which the words have been properly explained to them. Minutes later, they
themselves start to pray, reading spontaneously out of the Word and laying prostrate under the power of the Holy Spirit, small children laughing in the Spirit, mom & dad repenting freely of hurts and sin. Praise be to God alone.
I am no person of wealth, charisma or above average education. I was a policeman for almost 18 years; it is all of God. We are near a black residential are as well. Now there are small black kids that run away from home to attend church. Some of them got spankings because of it, but they keep coming. I am talking children from 6 years up to about 14 years of age.
When I first ministered to a very small one who reacted on an altar call, I was annoyed to found that he did not even understand Afrikaans or English. All he said was “Jesu, Jesu.” The moment I started to pray for him, that little heart broke. He wept, fell under the power, and while lying on the ground, started to pray in his mother tongue, Xhosa. I asked one of his older friends to interpret. He was praying for a drunken mother and a father that left them on their own.
An elderly black man got saved, and asked prayer for his child that has vanished more than three years ago. The police had closed the case as they had no leads to follow. We prayed and within two weeks she surfaced in a town 300 kilometres from us, after being taken away by somebody who promised her a job. They had her delivered to her parent’s house, and we had the privilege of leading her to the Lord as well! Is God good or is he good?
Source: IRN News, 5 February, 1998
China
Neil Anderson reported in March 1998.
We have just returned from a very fruitful trip to the northern provinces of China. People are on the move, and political and spiritual changes are occurring in the country. The meetings with the believers had to be secretly held at night, because as you know in China it is against the law to meet in homes for church services. In these houses, the rooms are very small. In every place we went they were packed to the limit, so much so that the people were practically sitting on each other. But it didn’t matter as the people sang and worshipped the Lord. There were some new people there who were coming to a meeting like this for the first time. At the end of the meetings all of them gave their hearts to the Lord. People heard the Word with much interest and excitement. Every night we prayed for people to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and to be healed. All who were prayed for received the Holy Spirit, and spoke in tongues.
We were able to minister to many of the church leaders in China and listened to what God is doing in their lives and ministry. Brother Bi, one of the key leaders of many of the house churches based in the northeastern part of China has a total of 20 full time workers working with him in 50-60 different churches in the area. He told us this story:
In January a sister name Lan was going to see her brother, along with her little nephew. On the way to this place, it got dark and there was no light on their path. It was cold, foggy and nothing could be seen more than a foot in front of them. Suddenly a bright light shown before them. It was about 5 meters wide and this light led them all the way to her brother’s house. As soon as they stepped in to her brother’s house, the light disappeared. After they told this news to their family, five of them gave their lives to Jesus.
Source: Hong Kong & China Report.
Inner Mongolia
Churches in Inner Mongolia are experiencing phenomenal growth. The region, located along China’s northern border, had 2,000 Christians in 1984, Lee DeYoung of Words of Hope radio told Mission Network News. Today there are 150,000 believers and at least 40 large churches, he said. DeYoung, who visited the capital city of Hohhot recently, said there is no explanation for the growth other than the work of the Holy Spirit.
Source: Global Revival News, March 1998.
Japan
The light of Christ is beginning to dawn in Japan. Christians say they sense “a new beginning” as churches cooperate in prayer and evangelism, Paul Ariga of the All Japan Revival Mission told Religion Today. About 1,000 churches participated in the All Tokyo Revival Mission 18-27 September, 1998. Charismatic, evangelical, and Pentecostal congregations worked together to plan the event. Almost 20,000 “prayer warriors” — some from other countries — logged hours of prayers in preparation. About 1,000 people conducted evangelism outreaches in the months before the crusade.
It was the first time that Japanese Protestants of all denominations worked together. Workers delivered Christian literature to 3 million homes in Tokyo in preparation for the crusade. Well-known Japanese Christian writer Ayako Miura wrote the tract, called “From Discouragement to Hope”. Another one million tracts were distributed at street meetings in the city.
The crusade drew more than 120,000 people to 24 meetings. About 56,000 non-Christians attended 10 evangelistic services at the Nihon Budokan, and almost 6,000 made first-time professions of faith in Jesus Christ, Ariga said. Two outreaches were held for women and children. About 60,000 Christians attended revival services intended to deepen their commitments to Christ and inspire them to spread their faith.
The number of responses is high for Japan. About 2.5% of the population is Christian and most churches average 30 members, Operation World says. There are 3,000 Protestant churches in Tokyo, a city of 30 million, and 7,700 Protestant churches in Japan. Some cities and towns do not have a Christian church.
Most Japanese claim no personal religion, but follow the customs of traditional religions including Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. About 100 New Age style offshoots of those religions spring up every year. Those influences, and Japan’s history of offenses during World War II and other eras, have created a “spiritual bondage” that hinders people from receiving God’s grace, Ariga said.
It takes the “spiritual warfare” of prayer, fasting, and confession of sins to break that bondage, he said. About 19,000 people have been praying for Tokyo since 1992. More than 1 million hours of prayer have been offered on behalf of the city in five years. To prepare for this year’s crusade, leaders asked the people to add 377,750 hours — one for every square mile of the city. About 3,000 people took part in a 40-day fasting chain prior to the event.
Ariga and other leaders have visited other nations to confess Japan’s sins against them. He has visited Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan in the past two years to ask forgiveness for the country’s brutal behavior in occupied territories. Christian leaders in each of those nations accepted his apology and pledged to mobilize people to pray 1 million hours for Japan.
Reconciliation among Christians “breaks the bondage and the power of darkness and makes it easier for people to receive the message of Christ,” Ariga said. “We drew so many people—more than expected—from all over the island.” Before the revival, seven of Ariga’s eight relatives in Tokyo were not Christians. “Now I have eight relatives in Tokyo who are believers — that is the result of prayer.”
Source: Baptist Press, Religion Today; Joel News, 16 October, 1998.
Russia
In the Soviet Union, in 1989, there were 550,000 evangelicals, then by 1998 there are 2.3 million in Russia alone!
Source: Hands for Christ; IRN News.
Arctic Areas
Slavic Ministries and YWAM Norway are launching an initiative to reach the unreached living at the world’s extremes. The Arctic, Siberia and the Caucasus are rugged regions where numerous still-unreached indigenous peoples live. The Arctic is home to more than 20 indigenous nomadic & mostly unreached people groups. A School of Foreign Missions (SOFM) at Borgen, YWAM’s northernmost base, in Norway’s far north, was be led by the mission’s pioneers among the nomadic Nenets in April, 1998. Siberia, the ultimate godforsaken territory where thousands of political prisoners were sent to the gulags, and the Caucasus region, with the greatest concentration of unreached peoples in Europe, are the two other target areas of this thrust.
Source: Europe NOW, Mon, 16 February, 1998.
Bible in 2197 languages
The Bible or portions thereof has now been printed in 2197 languages, 30 more than in 1996 reports the German Bible Society in Stuttgart. The Bible is not only the most sold book in the world, but also the most translated. The complete Old and New Testament is available in 363 languages. 135 groups are working on a further 681 translations.
Source: Hope for Europe, February, 1998.
France
Pastor Marc Lebrun from France reports:
Our visit to Toronto in 1995 has changed our lives and put our ministry in such a dynamic that we couldn’t expect before.
When we came back the power of the spirit fell in the place and hit our little church in such a power that it is a wonder it remained. We organized soon renewal services and many people from around the Paris area and even further visited the church. Many were healed up, refreshed, with a new love for Jesus. The church grew and we needed twice to move our facilities. Our revival meetings draw around 200 people and the power of the Holy Spirit is increasing toward the revival outbreak we expect to come soon. Intercessory prayer, fasting, gifts of the spirit, have grown up and have become a normal way of life now.
The prophetic anointing is tremendous. Lately during a four days revival with David Herzog (David is an American evangelist missionary to France) a word of knowledge revealed that some people in the crowd had a spirit of suicide. We had a call for those people to come forward, the spirit resisted, nobody came, but when we rebuked the spirit of death, several people were hit and fell onto the ground, screaming. Some of our people went into intercession. Then seven people came forward and the power of death was broken. At the altar call 13 people gave their lives to Jesus. Some were children, youth and some adults. A young boy was delivered from a spirit of violence and death, he saw a vision of angels, his mother says he is completely changed. When Naomi, a 13 month old baby girl with second degree burns was healed through prayer, it resulted in the healing of all other children that were next to her in hospital. Please pray for us. We expect revival to explode and touch many people and churches around. If you have France on your heart, please pray with us and let us know.
Sourcehttp://members.aol.com/christlum/homecln.html via Awakening
Holland
Tessa de Ruiter from Elim Pentecostal Church in Hilversum, Holland, reports to have seen and heard angels: On 8 March 1998 during the worship-singing I heard voices singing that I had never heard before in church. These voices were the most beautiful ones I had ever heard, clear and pure. I knew that the voices did not come from the congregation for I know those, who are close to the platform, very well. After the preaching, when the invitation was given, my eyes were continually attracted to the platform, then I saw an angel on either side of the platform. I closed my eyes quickly and was thinking: “Lord, this cannot be real…” A voice within me said: “Look once more.” I looked and they were still there, beautiful, with gold-blond hair, clothed in white. In their hands they had a large golden horn, full of pure oil. I asked the Lord what they were doing and the answer was: “I have send them to serve and to anoint with my oil.” I asked him what they were waiting for and the answer was: The sign to start. “But, Lord, who will give that sign?” The reply: “You. When you will go to the front and tell the people what you see, then they will begin to move.” As a result many came forward, there were tears and Jesus touched everybody deeply – the anointing was powerful.
Source: Joel News
Ireland
Youth unity initiative in Ireland
Protestant and Catholic young people joined forces in a marathon prayer walk round the borders of Northern Ireland, seeking peace for the long-divided communities. While sectarian marches have frequently sparked violent clashes during the years of “The Troubles”, organizers of The Reconciliation Walk-Northern Ireland hoped that linking young Christians from different traditions in the trek would serve as a symbol for a united future. The Rec Walk was for Christian young people, between the ages of 16 and 25, who wanted to walk together with other young people and pray for reconciliation, unity & peace in Northern Ireland. The 600-mile journey started in Belfast and basically followed the border of Northern Ireland, taking participants through former trouble spots like Londonderry and Eniskillen – sites of some of the worst violence during the years of conflict. Local youth events focusing on peace, reconciliation and unity were staged along the way. The event was promoted by Youth With A Mission, whose Northern Ireland leader Mike Oman hopes to see up to 1,500 young people taking part – some for one week and others for the entire route. He said that the walk was intended to build on the fragile sense of hope for the future that had been building in Northern Ireland over the past couple of years – which had largely seen an absence of violence. Mike Oman <100071.1477@compuserve.com>
Peace Agreement
Report by Diarmuid O’Neill.
What happened in Ireland with the peace agreement on Friday the 10th of April, 1998, was something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, it was and is something amazing. It is a wonderful opportunity that God has given the people of Northern Ireland and the people on the island of Ireland as a whole, for peace, healing and restoration. This healing and restoration is also needed for the church of Jesus Christ in Ireland, to be a whole body the way Jesus intended it to be.
God has done an amazing thing and I hope that he will richly bless each one of you who has been praying for however long for peace in Ireland – as an Irish man I am so grateful to you and praise God for all he has done through your faithfulness.
But it’s only the beginning. Its the dawn of a new day, the ushering in of a new era, that is if we continue to cry out to God for grace and mercy to be given out in abundance to all those involved.
God has blessed us with leaders in the political realm who were prepared to take risks and lay down some of their own ideals, aspirations, agenda’s and pride. The church needs to learn from these men and women so that the church will do the same and will be prepared to stick its neck out and take risks and stop trying to be always politically correct. Let us pray that from within the church will come the role models for every stratosphere of community life, especially for the up and coming generation who have known nothing but trouble and violence. 65% of the population in the South of Ireland are young people looking for answers. New Age and alternatives to Christ flood the market place. These young people need your prayers that the Christians in the North will share with them their new life.
God can powerfully use leaders and Christians who are prepared to say “your will – not mine be done”, and they are the type of people the island of Ireland needs right now. Pray that God will give leaders favour with their people, so that they will be able to persuade them to vote in favour of the peace deal.
God is without a doubt blessing Ireland (North & South) in many ways during this time and he has said much about how he will bless Ireland in the future and how he will use the people of Ireland to bless again nations all over the world. Pray that once again revival will sweep the land, remembering that it was the people of this island who kept the gospel alive while the rest of Europe was being over-run by Vandals, Barbarians and such like. God used Irish people powerfully to bring the gospel all over Europe, may He do it again as continental Europe now, like then, sits largely in darkness and is in desperate need of Gods love and grace.
We need to keep praying that all of these things will come to pass. That the people of Northern Ireland will be healed of all the pain and be restored. We also need to be prepared to go and just listen and be alongside them, we need to take risks and be brave and go and face the powerful emotions of hatred, anger, loss, mourning, fear, bitterness and many more besides. This process of restoration is not just for the people of Northern Ireland, but for the people of the South of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England and beyond. The eyes of the world are watching and God will use all that this troubled land and people have learnt through this torrid, terrible time to bring restoration and healing between peoples, churches, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile.
We need to keep praying too that nothing else will fill the void left by terrorism and intimidation by all paramilitaries. Since the first ceasefire in 1992 the drug scene in Ireland has become drastically worse. Believe it or not: because of the vigilante tactics adopted in the North by paramilitary organisations, the crime rate in Northern Ireland has been one of the lowest in Europe.
So please, please keep praying for Ireland North and South and all the people in it, that people’s fears of this being yet another failed attempt will not be realised. Rather that this will be what we have been hoping and waiting for for nearly 30 years and then maybe we will be able to heal all the other wounds which stretch back over centuries! We want to challenge the church to keep praying and fasting for this crucial time in the history of the island of Ireland – don’t stop praying, in fact pray even more.
‘Sowing the Seeds of Revival’ has continued over the last five months, four nights a week at the Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, Westminster on Wednesday to Saturday nights since the 1st of June, 1997. Well over 55,000 people have been through the building and over 6,000 have come forward to ‘Get right with God’. Twelve dustbins full of pornography, illegal drugs, weapons, Masonic jewellery, clothing and personal effects have been collected. Scores have been converted to Christ and dozens baptised. Some have been so overcome by the Holy Spirit they have been unable to get out of the pool. Members of the House of Lords, House of Commons and staff at Buckingham Palace have been present as well as the homeless and hungry off the streets of London. Over 500 bags of food have been distributed to the hungry and homeless over that period of time. —
David Culley reports from Glad Tidings Assembly in Vancouver, Canada.
“And it shall come to pass in the last days that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh …” We are seeing it! For the past months Glad Tidings in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has been experiencing the same renewal that is happening all over the world. Yesterday, we crossed over into full blown revival. The morning service started much like any other. The worship was annointed as usual, and we had a visiting revival minister as we often had before. The thing that was different was the sea of turbans and saris in the building. Vancouver is a multi-national city with a large Sikh population, and over 200 had come to our morning meeting.
Our guest minister, Charles Ndifon from Nigeria and New York, had been in Victoria, British Columbia, for some meetings a few weeks ago, and a young Sikh woman, who had been invited by her Christian husband was healed of blindness and deafness. She went back and brought her favorite uncle, Charnjit, who was dying of cancer, and he left the meeting healed and saved.
Since then Charnjit has been witnessing to all his relatives, and when Charles Ndifon came to our church in Vancouver, this man invited his whole extended family. Yesterday, after watching many people be healed of athsma (as an example of how simple it is for God to heal anything), and a 90 year old woman receive a new ear-drum, about 200 Sikhs came forward to give their hearts to God. And it’s real. They had already heard the Gospel from Charnjit, and to make sure, the altar call was translated into Punjabi. After the service, the people were so excited to have found Jesus, and to be so accepted by these white people. At the evening service another 104 Punjab Sikh people responded to the altar call.
We saw many miracles. A 14 year old boy born blind saw his mother for the first time, deaf ears were opened, cancers were healed. But the greatest miracle of all was that God now seems to be bringing in the Sikh population that we have been so unable to reach for all this time.
26 October 1998. Source: Awakening.
British Columbia
Bob Brasset from Victoria, Canada, writes about the move of the Holy Spirit in British Columbia:
The outpourings continue. In fact, it seems to be getting stronger. We now meet four nights a week. The response of the pastors in the area is simply an overwhelming gratitude for the goodness of God for deigning to visit us in such an awesome way. There is an amazing, astounding hunger in North America right now. People know that we are on the edge of not only Revival but a genuine Awakening: perhaps the greatest since the day of Pentecost. This Awakening, I feel, will be characterized by the very kabod (Hebrew for weighty, laden down with treasure, riches, glory, and wealth), glorious presence of God coming and abiding in a room, a church and even a city, or a whole region (as in Charles Finney’s revivals). The worship in our services now continues and flows for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, unabated with spontaneous songs of the Lord from worship team and congregation. Bodies lie on the floor, prostrate in worship. People report seeing angels. Visions, mighty, inspiring ones, are plenteous. Healings happen during the preaching of the word or worship without anyone praying or laying on hands. We are not advertising this. People are just coming. Salvations are happening in each service – even when we don’t give specific calls. We now have reported healings of fibromylagia, diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, ears opening, many necks and backs healed and severe allergies.
Source: Global Revival News, Bob Brasset <rbrasset@tcs.bc.ca>
Arkansas, USA
Revival is breaking out in the Lee County jail in Arkansas. In just one year, chaplains and volunteer staff oversaw 161 services in the chapel and 118 services in the jail itself. As a result 1,459 people made decisions for Christ. Currently, 218 inmates are enrolled in Bible studies and some 6,900 individual Bible studies have been distributed. “There is a hunger for God inside me that is more powerful than any hunger I have ever known,” said AOG Chaplain Patrick McCowan. “The Lord is teaching me so many things in these days about servanthood,” McCowan said.
Source: The Assemblies of God News Service
Hampton, Virginia
Ken Lawson reported:
Bethel Temple Assembly of God has been experiencing a move of the Holy Spirit since April 1996. Church membership is 2,200. Revival meetings are held Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. In April of 1996 the Sunday 7:30 am service started and did not end till 3:24 pm which bypassed the 10:30 am service. Church members were repenting, numerous people converted to Christ, and many were delivered of evil spirits.
Hampton, Virginia is the oldest English speaking settlement in America. Bethel Temple Church is racially diverese: 40% African-American, 50% white, 10% Hispanic and Asian.
In 1996 the Senior Associate Pastor, Don Rogers, had an open vision of the Holy Spirit coming to Hampton. He saw the Spirit of the Lord coming like a storm and it blew into their church. In his vision when this happened it blew out a glass window in the church.
Fourteen months later, in June of 1997 the Sunday service at Bethel Temple was starting. Senior Pastor Ron Johnson was praying and asking God to come “like a pent-up flood”. Suddenly Pastor Johnson looked at his hands and oil was dripping from his hands. The pastor began to tell the congregation of what was happening to his hands. The head usher told the pastor the front window of the church just blew out.
The pastor began telling the congregation of what happened. People ran to the altar. Many publicly repented of sins. God’s manifest presence filled the building. Marriages are being restored, sexually broken people healed, myriad conversions to Christ, and many being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The vision was beginning to be fulfilled. Part of the interpretation of the glass breaking signified the Spirit of the Lord blowing into Bethel church and blowing out. The mission of Bethel church is to proclaim God’s glory to the nation. The breaking of the glass window is a prophetic symbol of God’s power to release the church to carry the gospel to the nations. Also that week, several “signs and wonders” happened. An unexplained earthquake tremor and circular rainbow 360 degrees appeared over the city.
Unity of churches in the Hampton area is growing. Twenty churches gathered for Easter Services this year in the town’s coliseum. According to Pastor Don Rodgers it’s unprecedented to get twenty churches to lay down the most important service of the year. Eleven thousand people attended.
Source: Awakening, 13 April, 1998
Greenville, Alabama
By Ken Owen, Senior Pastor of First Assembly of God Greenville, South Carolina.
In April 1995 a first wave of revival began to crest over the congregation at First Assembly of God, Greenville, South Carolina. Nightly meetings were held for a month with Ed Nelson. Since then a number of waves have rolled in, building into what is now a sunami of revival.
In August, 1997, the tide began to significantly deepen. I called Ed – a director of a mission work to unreached peoples – to return immediately. On October 11, 1997, Ed returned to us from Asia. The Sunday morning service flowed like a mighty river — hundreds came forward to repent of sins. The meeting carried on through the day till 4:00 pm. With an hour break, it began again at 5:00 pm with a large prayer meeting and evening service. Since then there has been no let up, only an increase.
More than two thousand people have repented of sins, converts being baptized weekly. Many miracles and healings are accompanying the revival.
People from a variety of church backgrounds and denominations are driving to the meetings from several cities and states as momentum continues to strengthen. There has been almost no promotion of the revival, but word-of-mouth has brought thousands of people to the meetings.
IRN News, 5 February 1998. Source: IRN – http://www.revivalnet.com
(c) Renewal Journal 12: Harvest, 1998, 2011.
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.
Pentecostalism’s Global Language, by Walter Hollenweger 
