DAWN Fridayfax 2003 #41

Germany

Healing Summer

"It was a real 'healing summer'," reports Gerhard Bially of the German magazine Charisma. Many people were healed of physical illnesses in meetings with the Nigerian evangelist Charles Ndifon in Ludenscheid at the end of July 2003. Doris Geitz, who witnessed the events, tells of people standing up out of their wheelchairs, deaf who could hear, and a young man with a severe lung disease, who had come with an oxygen mask and tank, left breathing normally. In Dusseldorf, dozens of people were healed during meetings with 27-year-old Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley in August. Anni Ossowski, from Cologne, for example, was healed of a broken foot and possibly of intestinal cancer (pending medical confirmation). Gabriele Reichert from Wuppertal was healed of a 10cm x 12cm abdominal tumour, which her doctor has confirmed. Many people attending meetings with Benny Hinn in August in Berlin were also healed, as witnessed by Rita Bially.
Source: Charisma, fax (+49)-0211-665491; e-mail: redaktion@charisma-verlag.de

India

Fighter pilot turns church planter

Mohan Philip was a fighter pilot until the age of 30. He then build a weapons factory for rockets, which made him rich. At 40, he suffered a severe heart attack; his coronary arteries were 90% blocked. He planned a five-fold bypass operation in a special clinic in the USA. In the meantime, his wife and daughter came to faith in Christ. "You won't need an operation," his daughter told him, and prayed for him on the telephone. A subsequent x-ray revealed that the blockage of his coronary arteries had receded so much that an operation was no longer necessary. Mohan decided to follow Jesus too. Today, four years later, he is one of the main leaders of the 'UP Project', an almost unique church planting project in the Indian state Uttar Pradesh.

24,000 prayer houses started in Uttar Pradesh

Around two years ago, Uttar Pradesh - previously a Hindu stronghold - with its 175 million inhabitants, began to open for the Gospel. This had been preceded by many Northern Indian Christians' intense prayer. Since then, tens of thousands have come to faith; some 2,700 new house churches have been planted in Northern and Central India alone since January 2003. Around 1,800 church planters and house church leaders are involved in the UP Project - a long-term missionary initiative aiming to plant 1 million new churches by 2010. Pairs of church planters go to pray in villages, typically visiting ten villages each day. They introduce themselves to the mayor, and ask whether there is anything for which they can pray. They then pray, fast and preach the Gospel until they find a 'house of peace' - one of the villagers opens his house as a house of prayer. This often happens following a healing or deliverance from demonic possession. When the first people come to believe in Jesus, they are immediately instructed how to follow Jesus. There are already around 24,000 'houses of peace' in 4,000 of Uttar Pradesh's villages. These houses of peace are only then called 'house churches' when the new believers seriously follow Jesus and have been baptised.
Source: Kingdom Ministries; Fax (+41)-33-4393091; Tel. 4393099; e-mail: info@kministries.ch

Southern Asia

The rediscovered concept of 'houses of peace'

"A growing number of missionaries have dug out a Biblical concept for evangelisation which has long been ignored: find people of peace," writes Erich Bridges in the Baptist Press magazine. When Jesus sent his 70 disciples out to preach the Gospel, he told them "When you enter a house, say 'Peace be to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will remain on him. Remain in that house, eat and drink what is put before you. Do not go from house to house. Heal the sick, telling them 'the Kingdom of God is near'." (Luke 10:5-9)

Li, the man at the well

A Southern Baptist missionary in Southern Asia discovered that this instruction is still true today. He and a colleague visited a village previously closed or even hostile to the Gospel. They both prayed: "Lord, show us a man of peace who will give us shelter until we know whether we should remain in this village." They went to the well in the centre of the village. A man came from nowhere, asking "Have you eaten?" "Not yet," they replied. "So come to my house," said the man, Li. He was the man of peace they had been seeking. After giving them something to eat, he introduced them to the village chief, a man with a stony face who could quite easily have given the order to kill the strangers. Li told the chief, who was seriously ill, "The newcomers' God is strong, and they will pray for you." They did that, and the chief's condition improved, and he soon became a man of peace himself. He opened his heart for Christ, which opened the whole village for the Gospel.

Receptive bridge-builders with a good reputation

According to Thom Wolf, Professor at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, men of peace can be recognised by three characteristics: receptivity, reputation and referrers. They are receptive for the Gospel, with a good reputation, whose recommendation causes others to listen to the message, and bridge-builders, who can establish contact between the missionaries and another group, such as the inhabitants of a village.
Source: Baptist Press

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