Blood Washed Europe by Reinhard Bonnke

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We believe in a blood-washed Africa. What about a blood-washed Europe?

Isn’t what happens in Africa possible in Europe? The time has come to see it

that it is!

Europe can become different under the power of the gospel, the major force for

change on this earth. Social historians talk arrogantly of the “post-Christian

era”, but there is no such thing. The gospel is not dead; it is still here, unchanged

and every bit as applicable today as in the past. It is life’s true alternative.

For three centuries reason has denied revelation. Now reason is being rubbished

by postmodernist teaching about irrationality. But let’s not be negative – this

presents the gospel with a chance we must not miss. We have always said that

human reason is not rational to God. His thoughts transcend human cleverness,making our wisdom look so foolish. So, in a sense, God is postmodern.

Can Europe be washed in the blood of Jesus? A fairly common view is that

Africans are a soft touch and Europeans tough nuts. That is nonsense. African

culture is hostile to foreign imports, especially the new way of life presented by

a revolutionary gospel. For over a hundred years missionaries lived and died

in Africa, battling with complex, unyielding problems, and hardly a convert

was won. Nor does African history make the continent naturally welcomingto European imports, or what might look like one. The dark continent has

produced many Christian martyrs and still does.



Decades ago God planted the vision of a blood-washed Africa in my heart.

At the time I was on the staff of a small mission station, sometimes speaking to

a gathering of only five or six people. A blood-washed Africa was a wild fantasy

not to be entertained by sensible people. But the vision lodged with me night

and day and refused to go away. My reaction was hesitant at first, but eventuallyI made a move. It was as if I, like Moses, had struck the rock in the wilderness;

streams began to flow and they are still flowing 30 years later. Like Ezekiel’s

river, the waters have become a flood, washing the dark stains of centuries of

conflict, war and murder from the African soil. The gospel has self-contained

resources for human needs, whatever the race or culture.

Only blood can cover blood

European soil has to be every bit as bad, if not worse; it is the most blood-

soaked on this planet. But only blood can cover blood: “Bloodshed pollutes the

land, and atonement cannot be made for the land … except by the blood of the

one who shed it” (Numbers 35:33). The Lamb of God shed his blood on behalf

of all blood-shedders. He died for them. The waters of the seven oceans of the

world could never remove those stains, yet the precious blood of God’s Son

washes them all away.

God happened to have put me in Africa, so the vision of a blood-washed Africa

was particularly relevant to me. But he has put others in Europe. He has no

African or indeed any other preferences or prejudices. Africans have neither

solicited nor won exclusive compassion or divine patronage. Conditions that are

apparently needed for revival certainly did not exist there.

The first Christians overwhelmed Greek, Roman, Jew and Barbarian with the

glorious truth of Ephesians 2:4 – that God loved us “with his great love” . His

great love is his Son and that is how he loved everybody – with his Son, by

Jesus, through Jesus, with Jesus. It is still how he loves people today. There is no

secondary or subsidiary love. God loves us all, always, with all of himself, for he

is love, irrespective of whether we are Europeans or Africans.

Paul wrote to Rome, the world’s largest, most intellectual city, entrenched inheathenism, and stated, “I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are

at Rome. I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for



the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile”

(Romans 1:15-16).

What sort of God do European believers believe in? A God omnipotent in

Africa and impotent in Europe? The Lord I know has more than once saved amillion souls in six days, even on African soil, and can do the same anywhere

he likes.

Catch the vision!

The vision of a blood-washed Europe can only become reality when we believe

in it and act on it. Do nothing and nothing happens. God does not need to give

us inspiring visions to do what we can do, but to show us what he can do andwe cannot. We excel at being ordinary, but he has chosen us for the honour of

the extraordinary. Catch the vision!

People say, “I am not the visionary type.” All right, but Joseph, who was a

dreamer, did not dream about the Promised Land. He appropriated for himself

the word of God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and “gave instructions about

his bones” so that his mummy should march with them when Israel entered

Canaan (Hebrews 11:22).

On one occasion, out on the sea, Peter saw a figure approaching. To test

whether it was Jesus, Peter asked him to command him to walk the waves.

Asking for the impossible was what identified Jesus.

Events in Africa have been called a “divine visitation”. Is that New Testament

language? Is divine interest just occasional and selective, perhaps evenhaphazard? Does God have a visiting list to remind him to drop in here or there

occasionally, when he has time away from his usual business? No! We are God’s

business, his priority, to save, heal, and bless, no matter which continent we

inhabit. He never leaves us.

Divine visitation does not tally with John 3:16, the text about the God who

“so loved the world” . Ours is not a God who loves some people in some places

sometimes and shows it by sending an occasional revival. Africa was not aspecial stage prepared for a virtuoso performance. God is not a prima donna

who only performs on special occasions; he is never absent from the scene.



He tells us to pray for harvesters and calls himself the “Lord of the harvest”.

Would he ever just take off, leaving the field that is so important to him?

We cannot argue people out of darkness. All we need to do is switch on the

light. Europe has been led into the wilderness, but there is no divine pillar offire to guide the people. Churches are too often like flight simulators, with

no one ever doing any real flying. People there are always learning, but never

evangelising. And those who go there looking for the guiding light are offered

bookish theories instead. An evangelist friend told me that a pastor even

abandoned him in the middle of a gospel campaign to go to a conference on

evangelism!

Jesus came to seek and save what has been lost. We Europeans definitelyqualify! If ever there was a right moment to embrace expectations of Jesus at

work in Europe, it is now. The time has come to talk of a blood-washed Europe.

The time has come to think big, not just to sit back after cutting our own little

lawns. We are the only world-changers there are. Fashions have their seasons,

but the gospel alone can re-shape history.

Our cities may seem like those in Canaan, surrounded by walls that reach up to

heaven – walled in by unbelief. But – let’s not forget it – the walls of Jericho fell.

The walls of unbelief in Europe are beginning to crumble. What is long overdue

is the shout of the people of God. Not long ago Communism, a modern Jericho,

seemed an impregnable fortress threatening Christian advance, but 75 years

later it suddenly collapsed.

The tide is coming

I grew up near the mouth of the river Elbe in northern Germany and I often

used to see huge flat-bottom river barges set fast in the mud banks. No tug

or marine engine could shift them. But the tide quietly rippled in, hardly

perceptible, creeping higher and higher up the sides of those immovable hulks.

Soon those hundreds of tons were floating. From the quayside I could move

them with the slightest kick.

When we obey the Holy Spirit the water begins to rise. That is fact, not wishfulthinking. We are seeing promises fulfilled which once sounded like fantasy. The

words of Joel 2:28 are coming true: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”



In 1904 a couple of dozen black people and some white sat around on nail

kegs in a half burnt-out carpenter’s shop in a Los Angeles backwater, believing

Joel 2:28 and speaking in tongues. People thought they were a joke! Some joke!

Statistics for 2000 reveal that there are 524 million Pentecostal-charismatic

Christians, more than one in ten of the adult population of the entire globe.

If two dozen could become 524 million in less than a century, what could the

524 million become? Now is the time to work and not abandon hope.

Let’s take a closer look at Scripture. God made a dramatic statement in

Jerusalem as Christ died. By his mighty hand he ripped the thirty-foot-long,

heavy, embroidered curtain of the Holy of Holies into two pieces, from top

to bottom, declaring open access to God. What is more, it signified that theGod of the Temple was out and about as the God of the whole earth, not to be

associated with one earthly spot, not even Jerusalem. “You will worship the

Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” Jesus said (John 4:21); he

would be wherever we are in indiscriminate faithfulness. “If anyone loves me

… my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with

him” (John 14:23).

At the Jewish feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem, the first disciples – all Jews– received the gift of the Holy Spirit. A few years later one of them, Peter,

preached to non-Jewish Europeans in Gentile Caesarea. Everyone was baptised

in the Holy Spirit. Back in Jerusalem he declared, “God gave them [the

Gentiles] the same gift as he gave us” – the gift of the Spirit – for “God does not

show favouritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what

is right” (Acts 11:17; 10:34-35). Europeans in a distant Gentile city, but the same

gift from the same God. God had done it again – but with a difference. And it

was different again in Samaria.

God does not just copy what he did in the past. The 1904 Welsh Revival and the

American Great Awakening that took place 250 years ago were different from

revival in Samaria. We are told that “there was great joy in that city” (Acts 8:8)

– and there is joy now in Africa. God does not work in monochrome. The past

must not hold the present hostage.



CHRIST FOR ALL NATIONS

Postfach 60 05 74 Tel: +49 (69) 4 78 78 0 [email protected] Frankfurt am Main Fax: +49 (69) 4 78 78 10 20 www.bonnke.net

July 2011

English

The earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord

Will there be world revival before Jesus comes? I am not waiting for that. I am

called to evangelise and not to speculate. The promise of God in Habakkuk 2:14

is good enough for me – “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the

glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” . The waters cover the floor of the

ocean and there is no dry spot there. No intellectual and no devil can prevent

that. Unbelief, European postmodernism and humanist philosophy are merely

a writhing serpent, twisting this way and that, constantly changing its form.

Yet one thing is sure: God will break its neck.

Confused and misled, Western nations are waiting for strong Christians to

lead them back to the living fountain of water. Unfortunately, we can miss out,distracted by mundane interests. On the Day of Pentecost 120 disciples met

together in Jerusalem. Paul said that some 500 men had seen the resurrected

Jesus; so 380 were busy and missed the greatest meeting of all history. The 120

took Christ’s words seriously and did “wait in Jerusalem” .

In our 1988 Nairobi campaign Mrs Teresia Wairimu heard me preach.

Devoured with longing for God, she waited six years for a CfaN Fire

Conference, praying to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. Finally hearing that I wasin Norway, she waited no longer; Teresia boarded a plane and arrived in our

gospel meeting. When I invited people forward, she was the first off the mark,

running forward. The power of God pushed her to the ground. Back in Nairobi

she held a meeting in her house with 17 people. It grew by tens, then hundreds,

thousands, and then ten thousands. The other week she presented me, as her

visiting evangelist, with a congregation of hundreds of thousands.

Life is about change. The tides change and can lift Europe off the mud banks just like those barges in my childhood home. “With God all things are possible”

(Matthew 19:26).

Reinhard Bonnke

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Blood Washed Europe by Reinhard Bonnke