Speaking to thousands of “emerging revivalists” at a recent Jesus Culture conference, international evangelist Reinhard Bonnke said the Holy Spirit told him in a dream, “America will be saved!”
Bonnke, whose ministry, Christ for all Nations, has recorded more than 75 million people responding to the call for salvation in Africa and elsewhere, says the dream is similar to the one he had in 1972, when the Holy Spirit told him, “All Africa shall be saved!”
“In Africa in 1972, I heard the Holy Spirit shout in my dream, ‘Africa shall be saved,’” Bonnke, 73, told about 6,000 people, mostly youth, gathered for the three-day conference at the Gibson Amphitheater in University City, Calif.
“Everybody thought this was impossible,” he said. “But I heard it on four consecutive nights until I said to my wife, ‘I think the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me something.’ Then I heard Him last year, saying, ‘America will be saved!’
“Well, you know, after having seen what I have seen in Africa, I have become an incurable believer. I believe America will be saved, and we are to march toward it, and the Lord will do what only He can do. We will go from stadium to stadium, from city to city, from state to state and from coast to coast in the name of Jesus. Amen!”
Bonnke’s remarks come as a number of prominent evangelists and ministries—Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Greg Laurie, Banning Liebscher, Jesus Culture, Harvest Crusades and others—are turning their attention toward America in the hope of helping to ignite what Billy Graham describes as a “great spiritual awakening.”
The famed evangelist, now 94, is holding the My Hope America With Billy Graham evangelistic outreach on Nov. 7, his 95th birthday. In what has become a massive nationwide event, more than 16,000 churches and hundreds of thousands of people are planning to gather with family, friends, neighbors and co-workers that week to watch programs featuring a new and powerful message from Graham, dynamic music and testimonies.
The event is one of many planned over the next couple years. Bonnke will speak Sept. 27-28 at the Good News Orlando crusade at Amway Center in Orlando, Fla. Laurie, the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif., will preach at the annual Harvest Crusade Aug. 23-25 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., and again Sept. 28-29 at Harvest America at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
During the July 22-24 Jesus Culture conference, Bonnke told the audience that God often uses the “small people” for the big jobs of evangelism.
“I’m just a small little evangelist, but I tell you God takes the small people,” Bonnke told those at the event sponsored by Jesus Culture, an international Christian revivalist youth outreach ministry based out of Bethel Church in Redding, Calif. The ministry—which also operates a popular record label, Jesus Culture Music—is known for its lively, Spirit-filled conferences and by its moniker, “A New Breed of Emerging Revivalists.”
“He doesn’t take the big ones like Goliath or King Saul,” Bonnke said. “He takes the nobodies and turns them into somebodies. The world’s rejects are God’s elects. It’s all in the Bible.”
The conference comes as many pollsters have said the United States is becoming a “post-Christian” nation—noting one in three Millennials (those born between the early 1980s and early 2000s) have no religious affiliation. But a recent Barna Group survey of 18- to 29-year-old Americans with a Christian background found 30 percent say they are “more excited about church than at any time in my life.”
South Pasadena, Calif., resident Matagwos Gatbrekristos, 19, told Charisma he believes “100 percent with all [his] heart that America will be saved and we will be here to witness it.”
“It’s up to our generation to save our generation,” said Gatbrekristos, who plans to become an evangelist. “It’s not like another generation is going to come along and save our generation. It’s going to have to come from within us to save our generation.”
Palmdale, Calif., resident Jasmine Ealderas, 18, said she agrees with Bonnke’s enthusiastic vision of faith in America.
“The awakening is happening now,” she said. “It’s happening now, and in no time stadiums are going to be definitely filled.”
On the last day of the three-day conference, Liebscher, Jesus Culture director, opened the evening by praying that “from coast to coast and from Los Angeles all the way to New York City,” God would awaken the “hearts of a generation.”
“I believe that is what He wants to release,” Liebscher said. “I believe He wants to release faith in your heart for your city. I want you to lift up your voice believing God intends to pour out His Spirit from Los Angeles to New York City, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and He intends to awaken an entire generation.”
During his sermon, Liebscher said his goal for the conference was that people would leave the conference and “see revival in [their] city, revival on [their] campus and revival in [their] neighborhood.”
“You are called to change an entire generation,” Liebscher said. “You are called to shape the course of world history.”
