Monthly Archives February 2009

This morning began with the Fire Conference in Mubi-Town. 65,000 church-workers attended – have a look at the attached awesome photograph!

Their hearts were as parched as the landscape around them, but the God who answers by fire did it again. Yes, the fire of the Holy Spirit really fell mightily.This Holy Spirit Baptism-experience is not for glory-fits on the carpet, but equipment for the task of the Gospel, to give it substance and reality.

And then the evening-meeting started with 630,000 people in attendance (A picture of a portion of the crowd is attached). The Gospel rang out as clear as a bell – and with glorious results. Daniel Kolenda was preaching. The messenger was marked by the message. The Word was “Thus says the Lord” and not “I am telling you…” Such Word penetrates and affects us, stops us in our tracks, spins us around, and gets us going for God, for ever. How much we wished you could have personally witnessed it.

Dear Mission-Partners,

The third day of the Gospel Crusade in Mubi has passed. The momentum is growing fast, because tonight 540,000 people attended the service. The message we preach? JESUS SAVES! What does it mean? A full definition is impossible. It covers all life and isn’t just insurance from hellfire and a passport to glory. ‘Jesus saves’ are perhaps the world’s most comprehensive two words needing all sixty-six Bible books to explain. It is simple but has awesome depths, like all God’s ideas, and inspires new explanations and applications every day. Multitudes responded and received! Oh, what a wonderful Savior.

A friend of mine is visiting from Israel where many people go to get a sense of what it was like in Biblical times. That may be effective if you want to see geography, but if you want to know what the ministry in Jesus day must have been like, come to Mubi!

This afternoon, a group of us decided to go to the crusade ground after lunch (around 2:00 pm). What we saw was very touching and incredible. More then 50,000 people were on the grounds. Many were standing or sitting on the ground, waiting for the evening service, unwilling to give up their good spot. Others had built shelters where they were living throughout the week. It’s hard for a western mind to imagine such hunger and tenacity. It made me think of Jesus ministering on the hillsides to the multitudes of people that stayed with him…sometimes for days.

The “Hamatan” is a northerly wind that blows dust from the Sahara desert into Nigeria at certain times during the dry season. When it blows in, it obscures visibility, the sun looks like the moon, and everything on the ground is covered with a very fine, rust colored powder, similar to a woman’s cosmetic pressed powder.

We see it often here, but never before like this. Today it looked as if a thick fog had settled over the region impairing visibility and blocking out the sun. The last crusade a couple of weeks ago was in a swamp. Now we are in the desert under a cloud of dust. But nothing can stop the people. Their hunger is a force to be reckoned with, and they will not take no for an answer. I see in them the tenacity of the woman with the issue of blood…pressing in to apprehend the miraculous by faith!

We’re finally here! It took four hours by car for us to travel from Yola (where we were last night) to Mubi (where the crusade will start tomorrow). It was a long drive down broken, dusty roads through miles of forgotten desert wilderness with the occasional small village of mud huts and thatched roofs. The vegetation and land formations seem foreign, like a distant planet out of a sci-fi film. This is certainly one of the far corners of the earth.

About 70 Kilometers outside the city the crowds had already begun to gather in the streets to welcome us. By the time we reached Mubi the throng of people was a truly spectacular sight. I thought of Acts 8:8 “…there was great joy in that city.”