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Tag Archives: Revival
The author
Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.
Revival Report from Maramba Healing Campaign, Zambia
Cristopher Alam is a Pakistani-Swedish-American evangelist who is travelling around in Africa and Asia to preach the Gospel, heal the sick and cast out demons. He prioritizes to minister to the poor, and just the other day he wrote on his Facebook page about simple lifestyle:
“Wise Words from the Apostle Paul:
Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 1 Tim 6:5-12″
Just recently, Alam has been on a healing and Gospel campaign in Maramba, Zambia, and experienced countless miracles and salvations. Here is an excerpt of all the images and texts he published on Facebook:
Maramba, Livingstone, ZAMBIA. Our Gospel Crusade here began tonight. A large crowd came out to hear the Gospel preached. Thousands responded to the altar call to receive Jesus and then many were healed….. A girl who was deaf since she was a baby received perfect hearing. Another girl who had badly blurred vision was received perfect sight. Others were healed in their legs ad different parts of their bodies. Demon possessed people were set free.
All Glory to our Lord Jesus! This was our first night. Let us join together in faith for great things from God during the rest of this week! (more…)
The Blind See and the Deaf Hear in Mbeya, Tanzania
Photo: Mission SOS
Two friends of mine here in Sweden have studied a year at SOS Mission Bible School, and a few days ago my Facebook feed was filled with testimonies about miracles thay had seen in Mbeya, southwest Tanzania, where they had done a missions trip. Mission SOS have put several videos from this event on their Vimeo, and I would like to share these amazing testimonies with you:
Update 1 Mbeya 2014 from Mission SOS on Vimeo.
First we have an intro video, where the campaign coordinator shares that miracles are taking place even before the campaign has started.
Update 2 Mbeya 2014 from Mission SOS on Vimeo.
Then comes the report from the first night of the campaign, where many were healed and saved. A young girl shares how she prayed for another girl who was totally deaf, and she starts to weep of joy when she explains how she was healed! (more…)
Why Do I Call Myself a Jesus “Hippie”?
I took this photo just a week ago when me and some friends were preparing some evangelism at a music festival. See what we look like?
Hippies aren’t always popular among evangelical Christians. Mark Driscoll has famously said: “Some emergent types want to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. […] I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” I do agree that Jesus wouldn’t shop shoes or be a Buddhist, but He surely would be able to beat up. In fact, that’s what they actually did with Him on Easter.
The hippie movement emerged in the 60’s and 70’s in the United States and spread quickly to Europe and other parts of the world. It was a youth movement with international influences that emphasized love, peace and understanding, freedom and environmentalism, music, sex and drugs. It was influenced by eastern religions and sparked both new age occultism and the sexual revolution. These latter bits make it understandable why Dricoll doesn’t like hippies very much.
However, in the early 70’s thousands of hippies were saved in what is simply called the Jesus Movement, or the Jesus People Revival. They protested against both drugs and occultism, saying that we should “get high on Jesus” and be baptized in the Holy Spirit instead, but they preserved the hippie passion for peace, justice and a simple lifestyle. Over 100 000 Jesus hippies lived together in communal houses, they were preaching the Gospel in the streets and on the beaches, and many miracles happened as they prayed for the sick and prophesied.
Healings and Salvations in Kitwe, Zambia
I love to read reports about evangelistic campaigns in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and just two weeks ago my Facebook feed was filled with testimonies from my Facebook friend Tommy Lilja who organized a campaign in Kitwe, Zambia. Many were saved, healed and baptized with the Holy Spirit. Here is what he reported (translated from Swedish):
Resting after having eaten some french fries. A good first night. A little bit chilly. Many healings. A man around 25 years old had been blind since he was 10, he was healed, another young man shared how his ear “popped” when it opened and he received his hearing again.
Thousands came to receive Jesus. So many were baptized in the Holy Ghost, a real breakthrough. It was a life-changing meeting. Many came broken, sick and without hope. But they went home with Jesus and hope for a bright future. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was there and the Pentecostal revival is spreading across the world.
“At the cross the work was finished
You were buried in the ground
But the grave could not contain You
For You wear the Victor’s crown” (more…)
The Gang of God in India and Sweden
I have a facebook friend called Niklas Frihaven who’s really on fire for Jesus. He has a facebook page called Gang of God where he regularly posts testimonies about healing and salvation from wherever God calls him to be. This is genuine, homemade excitement about the Holy Ghost, and I’d love to share some of what he has posted:
Niklas with the healed girl
Wonders and Miracles in India
Much happened during our two weeks in India, want to share some testimonies .
An old woman had such pain that her back, she looked like a fishhook , during prayer , she became straighter and straighter , not completely straight but still free from pain and about 10 cm longer , Thank you Jesus!
Another woman had a large painful outgrowth like a tumor on the left hip , after the first pray the pain was gone, after the second prayer while we were talking to her the outgrowth disappeared right before my eyes, Halleluja!!!
I am so thankful to God that I get to experience all this , totally me and Dina got to be there when some 550 people were completely free of pain , disease , disability and psychological distress .
The girl in the picture was a bit special miracle , her mother brought her to the church, she was mute and deaf since birth , we prayed for her , and immediately she began to hear and then she started to say her first words ever , was so beautiful to see her happiness when she said her first word, JESUS!
The Blind See and the Deaf Hear in Sire, Ethiopia
“The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matt. 11:5).
My Facebook-friend Per Åkvist is a passionate evangelist that has seen a lot of miracles on his Joshua campaigns in eastern Africa. Two weeks ago they had a campaign in Sire, and my Facebook feed exploded with testimonies of God’s grace and healing power. Here are som photos Per published, with his comments in the captions.
Blind see, deaf hear, tumors is gone… many people had not the time to testify…
Blind see…
Blind see…
Sweden is Preparing for Revival
Worship at the Heaven Now conference in Stockholm
It’s exciting to see what’s happening in Scandinavia right now. Sweden’s starting point for revival is perfect – we are one of the most secularised countries in the world, xenophobia and racism is spreading, the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer – in other words, we’re desperate for something that will turn everything upsidedown. And there are so many disciples that are desperate for this. So many are not only praying for revival, but acting revival, spreading the Kingdom on the streets, in the schools, on the Internet -everywhere! Let me give you some examples of what is going on:
Cessationism is dead in Sweden. I have met one Swedish cessationist in my lifetime, and he wasn’t very young. Among the youth, charismatic theology is almost universal, and more and more are praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And we’re less focused on people and more on God. This weekend hundreds of people gathered in Stockholm for a Heaven Now conference with students from Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in California. No big names, just students. And God was there, and people were so hungry, and after they prayed and worshipped they went out on the streets to share the love of God with others.
And we do see a lot on the streets. Me myself is leading street evangelist groups, several others are going out regularly to pray for the sick and preach the Gospel. My friend Durckheim Blessing is seeing a lot, as is evident in the clip above. More and more people start questioning the tradititional, unbibilical way of doing church where the service really isn’t a service but a internal concert followed by a lecture, more and more people wants to go out, take risks, connect with strangers and see daily miracles and conversions.
(more…)
Revival and Community Transformation
The Iris Revival in Mozambique
Charismatics like myself love to talk about revival. Revival is usually defined as an “awakening” of the church, when it goes back to it’s original state. If the church doesn’t look like the book of Acts – where a lot of miracles happened, thousands were saved and Christians were living a holy, passionate life – it’s basically sleeping and needs to be revived.
Half a year ago, a girl from Switzerland contacted me via this blog and said that she wanted to visit Sweden “and the revival there”. We were honored and welcomed her, but we gently said that it would be wrong to say that it’s a revival in Sweden. Even when a lot of people do get healed here and many are saved when we prophesy for them, revival is the wrong word, at least yet. Revival is something more, revival is community transformation.
During the Welsh revival in the beginning of the 20th century, the prisons, bars and stadiums were emptied a like – everyone were storming the churches to seek God. Norwegian revivalist Hans Nielsen Hauge transformed his country not just spiritually but also socially and economically, so that one of Europe’s poorest nations started to flourish. And Mozambique is right now totally transformed by the Iris revival, that brings thousands of children out of poverty and plant thousands of churches in the power of healing and miracles.
“An Angel Called me to Sweden”
Edward Thomas, coolest priest on earth. Photo: Rickard Kilström
The United States has given us a lot of crap over the years but one of the best things they’ve handed over is Ed Thomas, priest in the Church of Sweden and a friend of mine. Well, actually the United States is not responsible at all in sending him here, nor any American, but God Himself called Ed to Sweden. And I’m not talking about a vague feeling or a subjective interest that many Christians normally identify “calling” with – Ed was actually ordered to become a Swedish priest by the audible voice of God and an angelic visitation.
Ed shares this experience in the video above. He used to be a chef in the states, cooking food for celebrities like Tom Cruise and started to earn a lot of fame and money. He was a passionate believer and went through some program to know the will of God, praying every morning with some friends for almost a year in trying to figure out what God wanted them to do. Since his chef job was going very well he simply concluded that this is where God wanted him, and he was pleased with that since he was making a lot of cash out of it.
But one night, everything changed as Ed awoke hearing someone say “Edward!” There was no one there. He woke his wife up, who just told him “You’ve eaten too much strong food! It’s just a dream, go to sleep!” Ed fell asleep and a second time the voice woke him up saying “Edward!”
Suffering and Revival in the Congo – the Story of Helen Roseveare
Helen Roseveare
A month ago, I wrote about the mix of tears and joy, suffering and glory that Iris Ministries in the Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing. While people are losing their children and the women are raped by soldiers; miracles are abundant and the church has a burning passion for God. This paradoxal relationship between the cross and the glory may be hard for Western people to understand, but it is very real. Today I want to introduce you to a missionary who also experienced this in the Congo – but 50 years ago. Her name is Helen Roseveare.
After studying medicine in the UK and feeling the calling to be a missionary, Helen went to what was then Belgian Congo and started to develop the pretty much non-existant health care system. She was the only doctor for two and a half million people, saving thousands of lives. In the early 60’s, civil war broke lose as the Congolese people wanted to be liberated from Belgian colonialism. The war was extremely brutal. Helen was raped, twice.
Government soldiers came to my bungalow, ransacked it, then grabbed me. I was beaten and savagely kicked, losing my back teeth through the boot of a rebel soldier. They broke my glasses, so I could not see to protect myself from the next blow. Then, one at a time, two army officers took me to my own bedroom and raped me. They dragged me out into a clearing, tied me to a tree, and stood around laughing. And while I was there, beaten and humiliated and violated and ridiculed, someone discovered in the bungalow the only existing hand-written manuscript of a book I had been writing about God’s work in the Congo over an eleven-year period. They brought it out, put it on the ground in front of me, and burned it.
It takes less than that for others to leave both the country and the faith. But Helen knew the power and love of the living God, and she knew that He had called her to Congo to be an instrument of grace and peace. In an interview with Jesus Army, she told about the revival fires that her church saw in the midst of chaos:
The Sweetness of Revival
God has been speaking to me about the Jesus Movement the last couple of months, and I’m planning to do some deeper research of this renewal when I get the time. For you who aren’t aware of it, it sprang up mainly among saved hippies in the 60’s and 70’s and spread from the US to Europe. The Jesus People, or Jesus Freaks as they gladly called themselves, were passionate charismatics who preached the Gospel in the power of signs and wonders while many of them also were pacifist peacemakers and radical supporters of social justice – many of them practiced community of goods. In other words, it was a Holy Spirit Activism movement!
As I read and watch clips about the Jesus Movement, I get the impression of a theology that is in all ways charismatically evangelical, but expressed in a very attractive and simple way. A review of a book about the movement simply dubbed it “sweetness”. I like that! The Jesus Freaks were radical, zealous and crazy, but above all that also very sweet.
Worship with the team from Iris Global
I encountered this sweetness in another context two days ago in Stockholm, Sweden. My friend had invited me to a prayer meeting that he hosted together with a travelling team from Iris Global. Iris Global is, as those of you who follow this blog should know by now, also a movement that combines signs and wonders with social justice, and these folks were no exception.
When Heaven Invades Africa
The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news are being preached to the poor. – Mt 11:5
From a Crusade with Christopher Alam
I’ve known Andreas Cucca for over a year through the internet, but today I got to meet him in person for the first time. He is working with the Swedish organization Go Out Mission and has participated in almost 20 crusades all over the world, primarily Western Africa and Southern Asia. I kindly asked him if he could share some miracle stories, and he just went off like a cannon ball:
“Wow, where should I start? The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, cancer tumours disappear! I prayed for a mute man in Guinea that hadn’t been able to speak since he was born, now he was between 20 and 30 years old and his first words were Jesus, hallelujah, amen. Another time I proclaimed that the lame were healed and a lame beggar outside the campaign area was instantly healed, everyone went wild when they saw it! And another time we had prayed that the blind would be healed and a man came to the stage and said that he used to be blind but now he could see. However, his eyes still looked really blurry so we wondered if he really was telling the truth, but he could grab my nose when I asked him and while he was there on stage, I saw with my own eyes how all bluriness disappeared and his eye became normal. It was a creative miracle!”
And so on and so on. These things I expect from missionaries to Africa nowadays, I get surprised if they haven’t seen the blind see and deaf hear. A couple of weeks ago I met James Thompson, an Australian guy who together with his wife Sarah had served for Iris Ministries in Zimbabwe. He shared the most amazing testimonies about a sweet, blind old woman that could see her grandson for the first time after God healed her, as well as about a deaf-mute who started to hear and speak:
John Wimber: Justice Goes Hand in Hand with Revival and Renewal
“Sometimes I wish we still were Quakers”, Christy Wimber said this morning at the Nordic Vineyard Summer Camp, which I am currently enjoying. Christy belonged to the Yorba Linda Friends Church where John Wimber and his family worshipped, and joined them as they got kicked out of it when they started to heal the sick and baptize converts. She has been a Vineyarder ever since and married one of John’s sons. But she still wishes she was a Quaker.
I can see why. Quakerism, with its teaching on radical discipleship, pacifism and social justice, never left John either. I’ve already collected some quotes from him about poverty and social justice, but now I got hold of a book here at the conference, The Way In is the Way On, where chapter three is totally devoted to John’s teaching about this issue. Here’s an excerpt:
I love to teach on social justice! It really is one of my passions. Justice always go hand in hand with true revival and renewal of the Spirit. Justice – setting things right for the poor and marginalized – is one of the primary purposes for God sending His Son into the world. He came in order to set things right. Great leaders in the history of the church have always understood the relationship between faith and justice. There has never been a movement of God started on fire that did not have a ministry to the poor.
Testimonies from the Durban Awakening
With four days left before I’m going to South Africa, I get really excited when I hear about the current outpouring in KwaZulu-Natal. Famous and controversial healing evangelist Todd Bentley is leading meetings at a church in Tongaat, and people come from all over the world to take part in what God is doing. Many get healed, saved and filled with the Spirit. Christian News Wire reports:
Todd has been touring South Africa this month and many healing miracles have been documented. These include a girl who was born deaf in both ears and mute, who spoke for the first time and a man blind in his left eye who was instantly able to see. Over 10,000 people have attended the meetings in Durban and hundreds of Muslims and Hindus have committed their lives to Christ.
“Something is really happening here in Durban SA. It’s a move of God,” said Todd Bentley. “It’s an explosion of power. The hospitals are calling for prayer. They are bringing the sick from the hospitals too. One man that was crippled and blind from kidney failure was healed. This is the closest I have been to revival since Lakeland!”
The meatings are being broadcast live at God TV, and people watching the outpouring get touched as well. On their website, God TV share some testimonies:
NAME: DR H
FROM: TONGAAT, SOUTH AFRICA
I am a registered medical doctor and the revival is taking place at my church. I have a patient who has been diagnosed with a large cyst on her uterus 2 years ago. She came in yesterday for consultation saying that she wanted an ultrasound done. Upon asking her why? She replied that the day before whilst she was seated at church, Todd Bentley said “Place your hand on the body part that needs healing.” She did, she felt electricity going through her uterus. I did the ultrasound upon her request… THE CYST IS TOTALLY GONE!!!
School Revival in Port Elizabeth, South Africa
From an article by Gateway News, published a year ago:
Shannon-Leigh Barry
St Thomas High School in Gelvandale, Port Elizabeth has been transformed by a move of God over the past two months during which hundreds of learners have committed their lives to Jesus Christ and a number of miracles have been reported.
The revival began at a school assembly on Monday, March 5 when about 500 learners put up their hands when former St Thomas learner, Shannon-Leigh Barry, 25, asked for a response from anybody who wanted to know the Jesus that she had been speaking about. Shannon-Leigh was leading the assembly at the invitation of her father, Mark Barry, a teacher at the leading Northern Areas school which has more than 1 000 learners.
Since the March 5 assembly, several hundred more learners had turned to Jesus, and there were regular manifestations of spiritual gifts such as healings, prophecy and speaking in tongues at the ongoing revival meetings at the school during breaks and after school, said Shannon-Leigh in an interview yesterday.
Charismactivism 