Rev Reinhard Bonnke

For the past 3 day now I’ve been hearing kids calling Bonnke, old women also calling Bonnke in my area and i decided to fish in a lil bit

For the first time in my life i have never ever seen soo much people in my life before in a crusade, talking of millions of people, kids, men, youth, women, fathers mothers all coming out to see this Man of God

Out of curiosity i decided to do a bit digging in his life time achievement

Early life

Reinhard Bonnke was born on 19 April 1940 in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany. He was born again at the age of nine after his mother spoke with him about the punishment for a sin he committed, unless Jesus saved him. He felt a call to preach the gospel in Africa at the age of 10 and says that he had the experience of Baptism in the Holy Spirit.

He is the son of a pastor and ex-serviceman in the German Army  who initially did not take Bonnke’s call to preach the gospel seriously.

Bonnke studied at The Bible College of Walesin Swansea, where he was inspired by the director Samuel Rees Howells. In one meeting after Howells spoke of answered prayer, Bonnke prayed,

“Lord, I also want to be a man of faith. I want to see your way of providing for needs.” After graduation, he pastored in Germany for seven years. He began his ministry in Africa, with which he is principally identified, preaching in Lesotho in 1967. He has subsequently held evangelical meetings across the continent.

African mission

In 1985, Reinhard Bonnke chose Ghana to kick-start his evangelistic thrust into West Africa. In 2013, the German international evangelist has chosen Ghana to bring the curtain down on his outdoor platform preaching life..

While the first Bonnke crusade in 1985 drew 30,000 people per night, this year’s is expected to attract a record attendance of 1,000,000. It is being held under the auspices of the Christian Council, the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, the National Association of Charismatic Churches and the Independent Churches of Ghana.

As an example of how crusades contributed to crime rate reduction, the CFAN Africa Director referred to an earlier Bonnke crusade in Burkina Faso where three armed robbers returned stolen goods to the crusade grounds. “Today, the three of them are preaching,” he said

Encountering poor results from his evangelistic efforts and frustrated at the pace of his ministry, Bonnke entered a state of heavy depression.

He had a dream with a picture of the map of Africa being spread with red and heard the voice of God crying “Africa Shall Be Saved”. This dream recurred four nights in a row and led him to adopt large scale evangelism, rather than the traditional small scale missionary approach.

He rented a stadium in Gaborone, and preached with little cooperation from local churches. Beginning with only 100 people, the stadium meetings grew.

Bonnke began his ministry holding tent meetings that accommodated large crowds. According to an account published by the Christian Broadcasting Network, in 1984 he commissioned the construction of what was claimed to be the world’s largest mobile structure – a tent capable of seating 34,000; this was destroyed in a wind storm just before a major meeting and therefore the team decided to hold the event in the open air instead.

According to this account, the event was subsequently attended by over 100,000 people which is far greater than the 34,000 seating capacity the tents could contain.

Controversy

In 1991, during Bonnke’s visit to Kano in Nigeria, there were riots in the city as Muslims protested over remarks he had reportedly made about Islam in the city of Kaduna on his way to Kano. A rumor was spread that Bonnke was planning to “lead an invasion” into Kano. Muslim youths gathered at the Kofar Mata Eide-ground where they were addressed by several clerics who claimed that Bonnke was going to blaspheme Islam.

About 8,000 youths gathered at the Emir’s palace and after noon prayers the riots ensued, during which Christians were killed and several churches were burned down. After nine years he returned to Nigeria to preach.

In the early 1990s Bonnke, who had prophesied a major world revival which would start in the United Kingdom, was involved in an initiative to reverse the decline in church attendance there. This involved the distribution of millions of copies of a booklet he had written called Minus to Plus to homes throughout the country, which was hoped to win 250,000 converts.

However, only 20,000 were claimed to have been ‘won over’, and these were mostly those returning to the faith rather than coming to it for the first time. Church attendance in the United Kingdom continued to decline.

Personal

After graduating from the Bible College of Wales and returning to Germany, Bonnke led a series of crusade meetings in Rendsburg. He began receiving speaking invitations from all around Germany and the rest of the world.

Bonnke met Anni Schulze at a gospel music festival, and admired the grace with which she recovered from a wrongly pitched music performance at the expense of losing the competition. He offered to preach at the church she attended one Sunday and fell in love with her.

Autobiography

Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke is principally known for his Great Gospel Crusades throughout the Continent of Africa. The son of a pastor, Reinhard gave his life to the Lord at age nine, and heard the call to the African mission field before he was even a teenager.

After attending Bible College in Wales, and his ordination in Germany he pastored a church and then went on to start missionary work in Africa. It was there, in the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho, that God placed upon his heart the vision of ‘the continent of Africa, being washed in the precious Blood of Jesus’ — an entire continent, from Cape Town to Cairo and from Dakar to Djibouti that needed to be reached and to hear the proclamation of the signs-following Gospel.

He began holding meetings in a tent that accommodated just 800 people, but, as attendance steadily increased, larger and larger tents had to be purchased, until finally, in 1984, he commissioned the construction of the world’s largest mobile structure — a tent capable of seating 34,000 people! Soon

Attendance at his meetings even exceeded the capacity of this huge structure, and he began open-air Gospel Campaigns with an initial gathering of over 150,000 people per service! Since then, he has conducted city-wide meetings across the continent with as many as 1,600,000 people attending a single meeting using towering sound systems that can be heard for miles.

It has now been some thirty-five years since Reinhard Bonnke founded the international ministry of Christ for all Nations (CFAN), which currently has offices in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Nigeria, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong.

Since the start of the new millennium, through a host of major events in Africa and other parts of the world, the ministry has recorded 55 million documented decisions for Jesus Christ.

As part of the discipleship-training program, 185 million copies of CFAN follow-up literature have been published in 103 languages and printed in 55 countries.

Millions of books have been printed and freely ‘seeded’ in nations around the world. All this is in addition to the ‘Reinhard Bonnke School of Fire,’ an online, self-study course, aimed at inspiring others to Holy Spirit Evangelism and leading to either a certificate or university credits.

Evangelist Bonnke is married to Anni, father to Kai-Uwe, Gabrielle, and Susie, and grandfather to eight grandchildren.

Credit Wikipedia

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