Reinhard Bonnke - Evangelism by Fire: Keys for Effectively Reaching Others With the Gospel

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EVANGELISM BY FIRE by Reinhard Bonnke
Published by Charisma House
Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group
600 Rinehart Road
Lake Mary, Florida 32746
www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NAS are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975,
1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Cover design by Nathan Morgan
Design Director: Bill Johnson

Copyright 2011 by Reinhard Bonnke
All rights reserved

Visit the authors website at www.cfan.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Bonnke, Reinhard.
Evangelism by fire / Reinhard Bonnke.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-61638-371-8 (trade paper) ISBN 978-1-61638-566-8
(e-book) 1. Evangelistic work. 2. Witness bearing (Christianity)
I. Title.

BV3790.B59 2011
269.2dc22 2011013663

Portions of this book were originally published by Christ for all
Nations, copyright 1990, ISBN 0-8499-3254-8.

I dedicate this book to all the fellow-fishers
of men of the ministry of Christ for all Nations
who helped me to throw out the gospel
net over Africa and the world.

REVIVAL
NO COINCIDENCE

A S A YOUNG missionary with my wife in Africa, I sometimes preached to just five people. My opportunity to see the impact of the glorious Gospel presented in the proven tradition of foreign missions had come. But five people? Beyond our mission station there were 450 million souls in Africa, most of who were ignorant of salvation through Jesus Christ. Yes, they could all be evangelized by the way we were tackling it, but only if they obliged us by staying alive for about five thousand years!

However, small audiences did not dismay us. Revival could come, and that would save us a lot of trouble. God could rouse Himself to battle. This hope kept us patient and starry-eyed, for had not our spiritual great-grandfathers banked upon this with unquestioning faith?

AN UNPREACHED
GOSPEL IS NO GOSPEL

Later, I began questioning this idea. It struck me that the Gospel is not good news to people who do not hear itthat an unpreached Gospel is no gospel at all. Another small ray of understanding penetrated my heart. In the New Testament we never read about God going forth on His own, but that, They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them (Mark 16:20, emphasis added). God acted when they acted. Smith Wigglesworth once said, The Acts of the Apostles was written because the apostles acted!

Therefore, He is waiting for us to act also! That meant that I had to do something.

I started a Bible correspondence course, and within five years fifty thousand people had enrolled. So many! Like a periscope from a submarine, it revealed that I was submerged in an ocean of salvation-hungry humanity. In addition, a vision followed me. Night after night I saw a map of the entire African continent being washed in the blood of Jesus, country after country, and at the same time the Holy Spirit kept whispering in my ear, Africa shall be saved!

Wait for revival? We had waitedpersistently and patiently through a hundred long years of earnest prayer. Surely God must answer now?

Yet, one more fact faced me. There had never been revival without the preaching of the Gospel. So, on a seemingly wild impulse, which proved to be of God, I booked a ten-thousand-seat stadium for a campaign with a church of forty membersand ten thousand people came! It was the first ripe wheat.

Then He said to His disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

MATTHEW 9:3738

For the first time I witnessed thousands running forward to respond to the call of salvation. God opened my eyes, and I actually saw an invisible, mighty wave of Holy Spirit power arrive in the stadium. A mass baptism in the Holy Spirit, accompanied by many healing miracles, took place. I wept like a baby and vowed to the Lord that in obedience I would move across all of Africa to bring the vision to pass. I reasoned that if God could do that to ten thousand people, He could do it to 450 million.

What we are seeing God do today in Africa is breathtaking. Following in the footsteps of famous missionaries of old, we reap with joy where they had sown in tears. We came to Bukavu, first visited by missionary C. T. Studd, and still remote in the rain forests of Zaire. There we saw seventy thousand people respond to the call of Gods love. David Livingstone prophesied that where he hardly saw a convert, later there would be thousands, and so it was. At Blantyre, Malawi, named after the town in Scotland where Livingstone was born, several hundred thousand responded to the call of salvation.

THE GOSPEL
IS PREACHED

The Gospel is as vital today as it was when the Lord Jesus walked by the shores of Lake Galilee. The devil is still on the run as Jesus sets the captives free. Cool and casual Christianity will not do. Nations urgently need the life-giving message of the cross now, not at our leisure.

All across Africa, presidents and leaders are aware of the miraculous benefits conferred by the Gospel upon their peoples and nation, and they welcome us personally. When our northerly thrust reached to the edge of the Sahara Desert in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, a country noted for its animism, the president brought us into his home on two occasions. Gatherings totaled 800,000 people in six meetings, with almost a quarter of a million people in the culminating service. Most of them professed Jesus Christ, including many Muslims and animists. The same is true of other countries such as Kenya, Benin, The Gambia, Togo, and Chad. Similarly, in Nigeria in 1999, after I had attended the inauguration of the incoming president, I was invited to hold further meetings in the country. In Lagos 1.6 million people gathered in a single meetinga total of 6 million in just five days. The response to the power of the Gospel is absolutely awesome! Following the state elections in 2003, President Obasanjo was elected for a second term as president of Nigeria. This presents a window of opportunity for us to continue the harvesting of precious souls into the kingdom of God.

At one time our ministry simply sailed from prophecy to prophecy. Today it rides from fulfillment to fulfillment. For years I had carried a divine promise in my heart, that one day we should see one million souls converted in a single meeting! In Lagos, Nigeria, on Sunday, November 12, 2000, this came to pass, when our coworkers recorded 1,093,745 decisions for Christ. We now have a sound system that will reach crowds probably larger than have ever been addressed before on earth by one man in person. Is that arrogant presumption? If the Crucified One is to see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied, as Isaiah 53:11 states, dare we think in smaller terms? Would He be satisfied with anything less? Why should the servants of God plan like Lilliputians?