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Topic: It’s Beyond Revival - Reinhard Bonnke, by George Canty
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Posted: 10/16/2009 at 1:15pm
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It's Beyond Revival - Reinhard Bonnke, by George Canty
CfaN Gospel Crusade in Calabar, Nigeria 25 30 January 2000
"Africa is being saved" says the newspaper.
Repetition is not God"s Style. Recent CfaN campaigns have risen possibly beyond all "revival" expectations.
Virtually entire large cities have turned to Christ, Benin City, Port Harcourt and now Calabar, a coastal, West African city. In the January campaign 1,158,798 people signified surrender to Christ, and 819,154 completed decision cards. It was a daily scene of public repentance and mass exodus into the Kingdom of God.
Prayer for revival has often been "Lord do it again!" I confess I"ve always wondered if God might not have other ideas. Repetition is not really God"s style, and never His limit, though our faith-limit may be what He has done before.
In which revival did 100,000 turn to Christ in six days, create many new churches and flood hundreds with converts? For several years CfaN regularly has seen such results. Reporting a dozen campaigns a year I needed a word for something bigger than what we meant by revival. Now, however, figures have leaped to ten times more, not 100,000, but 1,000,000. It was revival in Wales in 1904 when 100,000 professed salvation in six months, so what is it when 1,000,000 are converted in six days?
Storming Calabar
In ten African newspapers headlines met me like Reinhard Bonnke storms Calabar. Reports were not merely favourable, but warm and glowing. The Monitor devoted all but one or two pages entirely to Reinhard Bonnke, with full front-page coverage. An editorial in another impacted by the campaign reads like something from a religious magazine, another describes a Harvest of miracles. The Guardian reports Patients desert Calabar hospitals for Bonnke crusade.
In my hands is a moving document, a heart cry, in the handwriting of the Attorney General for the Nigerian Cross River State. This official, a dear Christian, calls again and again "on the name of Jesus". Her first words are "I pray to the Lord Almighty, Jehovah to touch our souls, so that we may have and feel love for one another ... that jealousy and strife, the bane of the state will be cast down and broken."
CfaN"s strategy of mega-revivals is mainly possible by the drive and contagious enthusiasm of CfaN"s West African Director, Rev. John Darku, a human dynamo from Ghana. Gifted with heavenly wisdom he is Reinhard"s God-sent stop-at-nothing partner. In Calabar the only site large enough was five miles out of the city, but he found fields on Harbour Road at the edge of the city. The ground was sown for a later harvest but John paid the owners what they would eventually get when the produce was sold (to their delight), brought in bulldozers, levelled the fields, and literally constructed the campaign site. Some 2,000 ushers were appointed to look after the congregations flooding on to this ground.
John Darku works wonders in enthusing the local churches-150 of them at Calabar. On their shoulders he places the responsibility for the practicalities of a successful campaign, setting up essential committees. For this occasion they formed a 600 voice united choir to lead the hundreds of thousands in the mass praises to God, "like the sound of many waters" in African style dancing and swaying. To see it all from the camera crew"s crow"s nest jib is as fascinating as ripples on a sunny sea. A CfaN week is the greatest event in a decade in cities like Calabar.
Reinhard Bonnke preached, every day, perhaps for two hours, in exhausting 32 degrees centigrade of heat and 100 per cent humidity, his clothes drenched with perspiration. To hear the message of a man of God is what the people come for, not only for the spectacular healing sessions. The Gospel call brings all the 15,000 trained counsellors into action, contacting every one who has shown their intention to follow Jesus, and providing them with the Now that you are saved instruction mini-book.
God's light shines in the darkness.
This huge operation is strictly and essentially a team effort, and all are responsible to Peter van den Berg, Vice President of CfaN, and the man that has come to be trusted always to have the wise word needed. The core team of eight travelling to each campaign includes men who are qualified pastors in their own right, but in obedience to the Great Commission for many years have dedicated their technical expertise to CfaN for God"s glory. The result is a compact self-contained evangelistic machine. When out of spite some city officials had all electric power switched off, plunging the area into darkness, the CfaN team"s generators kept everything going, the campaign shining even more brightly in the surrounding darkness.
Rousing Welcome
The Nigerian Chronicle reported that over 3,000 people, many in tears of joy, awaited the evangelist"s arrival at the airport from 8:30 till noon, singing heart-breaking choruses, dancing and cheering. Led by police escorts and with 20 or 30 special cars and vehicles, he was taken to the hotel in procession. Politicians know the great social benefits of a Reinhard Bonnke visit, and some the spiritual need. The Governor of the Cross River State, Donald Duke, supported the campaign.
There is opposition
in Calabar it was the Olumba Olumba Obu, with its occultist spirit practices and inner workings. Calabar is a West African centre for this feared and widespread organisation. As CfaN began operations in Calabar a prominent traditional ruler was suspended, accused of resorting to illegal voodoo and fetish practices.
The work has many sides. For four days thousands of active church workers gathered at the Main Bowl of the Cultural Centre complex for a Fire Conference. Here they were motivated and inspired to continue the work of the campaign in their own churches or to plant new churches, as Reinhard Bonnke and Peter van den Berg ministered daily in the packed auditorium.
Mighty Manifestations
As always the Word was confirmed by signs following, more than could possibly be mentioned here. By a Word of Knowledge Reinhard called a woman out with a tumour of the womb, and that tumour instantly disappeared. Mr. Imoh Isong (see picture strip), blind for five years, instantly saw again and so did many afflicted men and women. Deafness and crippling conditions gave way before the power of Jesus.
Jesus opened the blind eyes and healed the cripple legs!
Every CfaN campaign is a classic Pentecostal enterprise, and Saturday was again the day when converts were given Bible teaching and taught to be filled with the Spirit. There and then prayer was made, and the Holy Spirit fell.
The ancient sign of speaking with tongues, which Jesus promised, and which sparked off the Christian church, rose like the roar of a forest fire, as in fact it was.
Mr. Imoh Isong, blind for 5 years, rejoices in his healing.
The chairman of the central planning committee, Rev. Aniefiok Akpabio, at a pastors" dinner of welcome on behalf of the Cross River, Akwa and Ibom State churches, reminded everyone that it was at Calabar, on April 10th 1846, that the first Christian emissaries landed and built a church, Presbyterian, at Eyamba, Duke Town, Calabar, making Calabar the Canaan City, gateway for the Gospel in West Africa. Pastor Akpabio said when the news had originally been brought by John Darku that Reinhard Bonnke and the CfaN team were to come to Calabar, it "sounded like a dream".
Political disappointment under the previous military government had left the Cross River State with only a 3.5 per cent share of Nigerian oil income. Under the new anti-corruption government of President Olisegun Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, the poorest area of Nigeria looked for better times. The extraordinary scale and power of the CfaN event, a realistic evidence of the blessing of God, encouraged hope and faith even materially for a deprived area.
In three campaigns in three months, well over three million Nigerians have confessed Christ. In Port Harcourt the pastor of a church with a building seating 5,000-never full-said that after the crusade new converts meant two services had to be held, both packed houses.
Please help CfaN to continue...
Many more campaigns are planned. But expense created by such extraordinary successes is so colossal that Christ for all Nations has to adjust its entire thinking to far greater financial need. It calls for a great leap of faith in God-and in the Holy Spirit moving Christians everywhere to be part of this super-revival now breaking out in Africa.
"This is the greatest harvest opportunity I have had in my entire life," says Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, "and I call on all of God"s people to help us with prayer and finances to bring in the sheaves. This very year stands to be the most fruitful of all if we hold ranks." May the Lord grant it.
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Edited by Moderator on 10/16/2009 at 1:15pm
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