There are those who do not believe in miracles. There are those who believe only because they had seen it happen. And there are those who would not believe even if they had seen it happen but would look for some other ways of explaining away what they had seen. It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t stop God from making a name for himself.
Reinhard Bonnke’s Even Greater (Orlando, USA: Full Flame LLC, 2004) is a proof that God is still at work in the midst of his people, is still going about doing good even in the present time.
Subtitled “12 Real-life Stories That Inspire You To Do Great Things For God”, the book is an eloquent testimony of God’s infinite goodness, his miraculous healing power present among his people. Here is a book that will not only inspire you to do “even greater things” for God but will also catapult your faith beyond your wildest imagination.
Reinhard Bonnke’s ministry, as presented in the book, could easily pass as a fulfilment of the promise in John 14:12: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.” But it is not about Bonnke, it is about a Great God doing great things through his chosen.
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“The truth is that while you and I may be human beings, as children of God we are much more than that,” he says in the Introduction. “We are agents of omnipotence. This means that unlimited power is at our fingertips. It also means that there are no great men working in God’s kingdom. Rather, there is a great God at work in human beings who have childlike faith.” (p. 11)
Even Greater is not an autobiography, though it delves into sketches of Reinhard Bonnke’s family background and early childhood as well as most of his missionary and evangelistic activities in Africa, propelled by his vision of a “blood-washed Africa”.
Born the fifth of six children, to a German soldier father and a church organist mother, Reinhard was called at the age of 10 to be a missionary in Africa. His father became a minister of God after he was miraculously healed of deathly tuberculosis and his family was miraculously brought to safety at the end of World War II.
After attending Bible School in England and pastoring for a while in Germany, Reinhard and his wife Anni were assigned as missionaries to South Africa in 1967. They simply obeyed the voice of the Lord and arrived in South Africa with a passion to preach to masses of spiritually-hungry Africans.
But apartheid was taking its toll, even inside the church. “[A]t first, we found ourselves serving white churches in a country that observed strict separation of the races called apartheid,” Reinhard says. “I was instructed not to call black believers ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, and I was not permitted to shake hands with them, let alone embrace them.” (p. 55)
Bonnke would eventually go into the Kingdom of Lesotho, mingling with the local people, using his piano-accordion to attract people’s attention, preaching four times a day in the markets, at bus-stops, and in schools, and winning souls for Christ little by little. It was the days of little beginnings, but the days of plenty were just at the corner. From 1975 when he became an evangelist to the time the book was published, he says, he had preached “face to face with maybe 100 million people”.
His evangelism took him beyond South Africa and Lesotho to Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria, Zaire, among others. In Nigeria alone, Bonnke held crusades in Lagos, Kaduna, Onitsha, Makurdi and some other cities.
Having received a vision from God that “our ministry would extend beyond the borders of Africa” – for which reason he named his organisation Christ for all Nations – Bonnke took his evangelism beyond Africa. Everywhere he took the gospel to, “we saw hundreds of thousands come to the Lord, and many notable miracles of healing”. And those are the real stories behind the book.
There is Teresa Warimu in Kenya who, heartbroken after she was divorced by her white missionary husband, attended a Bonnke crusade and saw blind eyes open, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and thousands come to the Lord, prayed thus, “God, oh please God, if you can give Bonnke 100,000 souls, give me one hundred, just one hundred, Lord, and I’ll be a happy woman.” And she believed, like the woman with the issue of blood, that this was only possible if she would have Bonnke lay his hand on her.
There is the story of Sulamith Mortzschke and her husband in Boblingen, Germany, who had two healthy children despite medical reports to the contrary. Sulamith had prayed God to speak to Reinhard Bonnke about her need, and when Bonnke made a declaration that someone in the crowd who was desirous of having a baby should count nine months from the day of that declaration, she had believed the words were for her, even though doubts occasionally crept in. But God does not lie.
“Ten weeks after the conference,” says Bonnke, “I received an email telling me that pregnancy had resulted from the promise spoken at the Fire Conference. The mother and baby tested normal and healthy, and the due date was February 23, 2000 – exactly nine months from the day God had declared it.” (p. 148)
There is Dolphin Monese, a Jehovah’s Witnesses champion who later accepted Christ and became “pastor of a wonderful church in Lesotho”. There is Richard, who was on the executioner’s list in a prison in Bukavu, Zaire but escaped the hangman’s noose by the whiskers several times until he was eventually freed, following God’s intervention through Bonnke, and went to become a pastor of souls.
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There is the story of how Bonnke and Howard Horn, inspired by the Spirit, preached in a disco hall in Kimberley packed full with young people dancing away their lives. The preaching stirred something in the young people. A year later, the disco hall had become a church and the disco-dancing youths chanted unto God. “After you left, the disco went bankrupt,” Horn had told Bonnke. “This disco is a church.” (p. 71)
There is the story of David Attah and Rita, who would later become his wife. Made dumb by a terrible accident he had in Makurdi, Nigeria, David could not utter a word for eight years but communicated only through writing. Rita was the angel sent by God to save his life, which he had attempted to take away when faced by frustrations. David received back his voice at a Bonnke conference in Makurdi.
There is Jean Neil, who suffered a bad back, worsened by a terrible fall that ruptured her tailbone and accelerated the deterioration of her spine until, despite several operations, she was told she would never walk again. She was healed at a Bonnke crusade and began to heal others.
There is the story of how God, through dream shown to both Reinhard and his brother Jurgen, saved Jurgen from eternal damnation. And there is the story of how God expanded the coast of CfaN and increased its manoeuvrability by adding numerous prayer partners.
In Perth, west coast of Australia, in 1983, Mrs McKlet, “the woman in the blue dress”, stood up from her wheelchair and walked, despite her apparent lack of faith. Bonnke had heard clearly from the Lord, “Today it’s not her faith, it’s your faith. You are going to see a great miracle.” (p. 139)
The story of the botched 1991 crusade in Kano may tend to dampen the spirit. It speaks to religious intolerance that is often the hallmark of Islam wherever it exists. Bonnke’s presence sparked religious violence across the city of Kano, leading to killing of many Christians and burning of several church buildings. A mullah in a local mosque had told the young men, “Bonnke must not be allowed to preach in the holy city of Kano.” (p. 104) Bonnke’s escape from Kano, and that of his team and prayer partners, could only be a miracle.
And there is David in the Transvaal Basin of South Africa who, after a crusade, requested Bonnke to pray for him so that “I would receive the Holy Spirit before I return to my village”. David was just 17 and God used him to do great exploits. As at the time the book was published, Bonnke says, regrettably, “David has left his tribal homeland in the north, and has lost himself in the impenetrable slums of Soweto. He does not fellowship with the people of God anymore, and he no longer walks with the Lord.”
And there is a lesson for all in David’s story – “No matter how the power of God has been demonstrated in our lives, we can choose to walk away from fellowship with Him. Let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”
CHUKS OLUIGBO
