I remember years ago, how we’d often sit together with Pastor Yang and talked about how we could impact the world (we still do this very often). One of the things that we kept coming back to was about doing massive evangelistic campaigns that would impact whole cities for Jesus Christ.
We looked at Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke and Ed Silvoso and dreamt about the day whereby we’d do likewise. Nonetheless, the journey from the place of dreaming to the place of reality is a long and arduous one. Last week, we took our first tentative steps towards the fulfilment of something that’s been germinating in our spirits for years, when we took over 200 volunteers from Singapore, Philippines and the USA to Santiago City in Northern Luzon.
In the four days of the citywide campaign, we saw 471 salvations, 204 healing, and treated over 900 patients in our medical and dental outreach. In our mall outreach, where we put up four evangelistic shows, we saw huge crowds gather around to watch the shows and many responded for salvation. The numbers are incredibly encouraging, but I want to also share with you what we felt God was doing and speaking to us as a church.
1. A Prophetic Destiny
When we look back at the 12 months of preparation that went into the event, there were countless number of times where we might well have canceled the project. I remember sharing the vision to several friends, and all were unanimous in telling us about how big events like these were ineffective. We were discouraged over and over again concerning doing this project. It was in January during Kingdom Invasion that Pastor Dian shared a vision he had for us that God was calling for us to be an invading force. He shared specific details in the vision that made it clear for us that this was something God had wanted us to do.
As the event neared, the warfare also intensified. Three weeks before the event, a massive typhoon hit the northern parts of Philippines. What was amazing was that the typhoon hit all the areas around Santiago city except for Santiago itself. In fact they said that the typhoon seemed to have “passed over” Santiago. At the same time, two of our key speakers, Jon Pritikin and Pastor Nicky Raiborde, were suddenly struck with severe pain in their bodies. Both were in such pain that they contemplated to call us to cancel because they felt they could not physically get on the plane to fly to the Philippines. Amazingly, when Jon landed in Manila, the pain in his body completely stopped. Likewise for Pastor Nicky. When he reached Singapore, a day before flying out to Philippines, the pain in his body left him as well.
As I pondered about the severity of the warfare, I’m led to believe that something we’re doing here is far more significant than what we realise. I believe that God has called us to bear an anointing for taking cities and the devil would love to do whatever it takes to stop this from happening. Bless Santiago, being our pilot project, will either give us the impetus to pursue this, or it may well halt us in our tracks. I believe the degree of warfare we faced gives us an idea of the degree of impact God’s calling us to have.
2. A Ceiling to be Broken
One of the most heartening things for us to hear about are the testimonies of personal victories and breakthroughs in the lives of our volunteers. We saw several of our Singaporean volunteers step visibly into a new level of grace for healing the sick.
As they prayed for the sick, they saw cysts disappear, the lame walk, the blind see and the deaf hear. A young girl who was paralysed in her upper body was healed and could move her arms again. In fact, the number of salvations and healing taking place was so staggering that God literally redefined for us how to run a medical clinic that centred on preaching Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to touch lives through healing.
At the same time, many of our local pastors broke through in their own personal lives and did things they never thought they could do. Our local pastor there who was in charge of the children’s outreach started the week being very shy and was fearful to speak in English. By the end of the event, she was testifying of the breakthroughs in her life with great boldness and in English. Because she stepped out in boldness to invite some children for the outreach, over 120 kids came and 64 of them responded for salvation on the last night! This same lady translated for one of the Singaporean volunteers that evening and broke through her own sense of inadequacy.
Prior to the event, one of the prophetic words that was given to us was that God would do new things and that we must not say “no” to Him. We saw this word fulfilled evidently in so many lives. God really did beyond our expectations and we want to give Him all the glory. Join us as go from city to city to prepare a way for the Lord!
