Tuesday 8 December, 2009

Special Report

A Christ for all Nations crusade led by Reinhard Bonnke in Africa

By Charles Gardner

I don’t usually go to church on a Sunday evening but regularly watch Songs of Praise, one of the BBC’s best television programmes which still portrays a vibrant form of Christianity at least most of the time.

So when I heard they were marking Charles Darwin’s bi-centenary with a programme filmed in Shrewsbury, his birthplace, I feared the worst. But I was pleasantly surprised. Indeed, the show featured the ancient school which claims Darwin as perhaps its most famous old boy.

However, it was also mentioned that the school produced two famous hymn-writers including William Walsham How, the first Bishop of Wakefield and composer of one of my favourite hymns, For All the Saints, based on the faith heroes of the past as listed in the Book of Hebrews.

It is people like How who have upstaged Darwin – in terms of eternity and the positive impact they have made on the affairs of men. For they were involved in the most important work ever given to men – that of preaching the gospel all over the world – whereas Darwin, perhaps inadvertently, as contributors to the TV programme implied, served only to seriously undermine the message of God the Creator.

Another great saint involved in preaching the gospel is Germany’s Reinhard Bonnke, now celebrating 50 golden years of his amazing evangelistic ministry.

_{Edward and Rachel Issitt Photo: www.yourmission.org.uk}

This passionate preacher has for most of this period been fulfilling a lifelong ‘call to Africa’ where over 60 million people (the equivalent of Britain’s entire population) have responded to his message, five million of them last year alone – each one giving name and address, being counselled, provided with a booklet and directed to a suitable church.

His Christ for all Nations campaigns have drawn over a million people at a time to huge stadiums across the continent. He calls it a “spiritual tsunami” of salvation and healing like that recorded in the Books of Acts (the account of the early church led by the Apostles). Bonnke’s meetings are littered with many miraculous healings – all through prayer in the name of Jesus.

“The revival flame is igniting across the southern hemisphere – once called the Third World, and now into India, China and the ocean islands,” he writes in a recent newsletter.

He is aware that Africa did not yield for centuries and that, with obvious reference to missionary heroes like David Livingstone, “the noblest of God’s servants sowed seed but saw little harvest”.

“Africa was often the graveyard of Christian workers, a harder field than any country today,” he said as encouragement to keep believing for spiritual revival in Europe. But the tide turned, and the same can happen in the West, and in Asia.

“The name of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas,” enthused the man who, when he came to study at the Bible College of Wales in 1959, couldn’t speak a word of English.

But following a vision of Africa “washed clean in the blood of Jesus”, he became consumed by the goal of taking the gospel to the whole continent – from Cape Town to Cairo.

Meanwhile a young Englishman, Edward Issitt, had little interest in overseas work as he led a church near Barnsley, Yorkshire, when a visiting missionary suddenly picked him out and prophesied that he would soon be travelling to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Rachel, now his wife, was sitting in the congregation; they were not married at the time – and the speaker prophesied the same things to her.

As Edward says, “The test of whether a prophecy is true or not is whether it comes to pass. And in our first year of marriage we travelled to eleven countries on mission trips, though I suppose that includes where we spent our honeymoon.

“Now our heart is just to see the world won for Christ. The fact is this gospel will be preached all over the world and then the end will come, and there are many peoples of the world who have still not heard the gospel.”

_{Orphaned children in South Africa. Photo: Luke Wilson}

Their aim is to see a generation of young people raised up to be missionaries in every nation of the world – and that people would realise “the Great Commission is their commission”.

The couple now lecture at a Bible College and co-ordinate short-term mission trips from various churches. And Lifebite web manager Luke Wilson has been ‘living the dream’ of the prospect of being a full-time missionary after one such trip to South Africa where he was moved by the plight of poor people suffering from AIDS and general deprivation.

A highly creative individual, it only took him days after getting back to put together a video of his trip, Living the Dream, which records something of his experience: “A lot of children were being looked after by elder siblings or grandparents while others got left on the streets. The team with whom I was working were there to assess the situation of those we were trying to help, and to feed, clothe and teach them in a Christian way, and have fun with them.

“We also went out to the sick with medicine, prayed with them and encouraged them. In one case we found a dozen children all looking after themselves in a small house as their mother was sick.

“It gave me a chance to see another part of the world, and to understand what people are living through. They felt blessed because we had come from so far away to pray for them and help them. I felt amazed by that and I want to go out there on a more permanent basis now.”

Main Photo: Christ For All Nations