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About the Book
"48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene outlines strategies for gaining and maintaining power, drawing from historical examples and psychological principles. The book offers practical advice on how to navigate power dynamics and improve one's own influence in various social and professional environments.
Reinhard Bonnke
Reinhard Bonnke (19 April 1940 - 7 December 2019) was a German-American Pentecostal evangelist, principally known for his gospel missions throughout Africa. Bonnke had been an evangelist and missionary in Africa since 1967. In Nigeria’s city, Lagos, in 2000, a single service is believed to have been attended by 1.6 million people. Christ for all Nations (CFAN), an organisation founded by Bonnke, claims he preached Christ to more than 79 million non believers.
Early life
Reinhard Bonnke was born on 19 April 1940, in the city of Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany, the fifth son of Hermann Bonnke, an army logistics officer in the Reichswehr who fought on the Eastern Front; his paternal grandfather was August Bonnke, the owner of a windmill in Trunz, East Prussia (now Milejewo, Poland), who was healed of an unknown ailment by the evangelist Luis Graf in 1922, but died during the evacuation of East Prussia in 1945. His mother was Metaa Bonnke (née Scheffler). Bonnke had six siblings: Martin, Gerhard, Jurgen, Peter and Felicitas, his only younger sibling and his only sister.
With his mother and siblings, he was taken to Denmark during the evacuation of East Prussia and spent some years in a displaced persons centre before settling in Gluckstadt, West Germany. After his own war service, his father became a pastor in the village of Krempe. He became a born-again Christian at the age of nine after his mother spoke with him about a sin that he had committed. He sensed a call from God to serve as a missionary in Africa from the age of 10 and said that he had the experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Bonnke studied at the Bible College of Wales in Swansea, Wales, UK, where he was inspired by the director, Samuel Rees Howells. In one meeting Howells spoke of answered prayer; after this meeting, Bonnke prayed, "Lord, I also want to be a man of faith. I want to see your way of providing for needs." Passing through London, he had a chance meeting with the preacher George Jeffreys. As he walked, he came across a house with a nameplate on the front that said “George Jeffreys”. He wondered if it could be the great George Jeffreys who had founded the Elim Pentecostal churches in Ireland and England. He prayed for the young student and imparted grace to him.
After graduation, he pastored in Germany for seven years, including establishing a congregation in Flensburg which met in a former rum factory.
African mission
His work in Africa began in 1967. He arrived in South Africa and almost immediately encountered the apartheid system, which he developed an antipathy towards, which in turn caused friction between him and the minister who oversaw him in South Africa. Bonnke subsequently accepted a position to oversee three churches in Lesotho, but began again from scratch after he discovered that unbiblical practices had emerged in the congregations he was to oversee.
In the first few years of his work, Bonnke encountered poor results from his evangelistic efforts and felt frustrated at the pace of his ministry. Then he had a recurring dream featuring a picture of the map of Africa being splattered with blood and heard the voice of God crying "Africa Shall Be Saved". This ultimately led him to adopt large-scale evangelism, rather than the traditional small-scale missionary approach. He rented a stadium in Gaborone, Botswana, and preached with little cooperation from local churches. The first meetings saw about 100 people attending, but this number grew swiftly.
In 1974, Bonnke founded the mission organisation Christ for all Nations (CfaN). Originally based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the headquarters were relocated to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1986. This was done primarily to distance the organisation from South Africa's apartheid policy at the time.[9] Today CfaN has 9 offices across 5 continents.
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 have contained. For various reasons, usually due to insufficient capacity, the 34,000-seat tent was only used once, in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1986.
In addition to South Africa, Bonnke would also hold many campaigns in other African countries including Nigeria and Kenya and became known as "the Billy Graham of Africa." In the 5 February 2001 edition of Graham's Christianity Today, journalist Corrie Cutrer stated that Bonnke had set "record-breaking attendances" at recent events he held in Nigeria. Bonnke announced his "farewell gospel crusade" to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, in November 2017. Lagos is also the location of a gospel crusade held in 2000 which, according to CfaN, is the organization's largest to date, drawing an attendance of six million people in a 5-night crusade, and as much as 1.6 million attendance in one day. In 2009 Bonnke appointed his successor, Daniel Kolenda who continues to lead the ministry. In 2020, following Bonnke's death, Christ for all Nations launched the CfaN Evangelism Bootcamp. In 2022 Schools of Evangelism were started in South Africa, and Europe and Fire Camps were launched in dozens of nations on six continents. Today, more than 4,000 evangelists have been trained by Christ for all Nations and more than 91-million decisions for Christ have been counted. In 2024, in the 50th year of the ministry, CfaN is conducting 50 gospel crusades throughout the African continent.
Persecution
Kano riots, subsequent expulsion from Nigeria, and return to the country
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 rumour 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 many Christians sustained various injuries and several churches were burned. Official reports state that at least eight people were killed, although other research and reports place the number as being as much as 500 as many of the Christians who were killed were thrown into wells and the attacks were spread between multiple locations.
Despite the state governor absolving Bonnke of any blame for the incident, Bonnke's subsequent attempts to return to Nigeria were denied, as the Nigerian Embassy refused his visa applications. In 2000, a new civilian government in Nigeria was elected to power, and President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian, invited Reinhard Bonnke to return to the country. Bonnke returned to Nigeria and held a crusades in Benin City in the south. He would deny reports that the Northern Region of Nigeria's Council of Ulamas banned him from entering northern Nigeria.
Bonnke held many crusades in Nigeria after 2000, and conversion rates were significantly higher than in many other African nations, with one campaign achieving a conversion of 1.1 million people. Nigeria would be where his final international crusade would be held, in Lagos in 2017.
Personal life
After graduating from the Bible College of Wales and returning to Germany, Bonnke led a series of meetings in Rendsburg. He began receiving speaking invitations from all around Germany and the rest of the world. Bonnke met Anni Suelze at a gospel music festival and admired the grace which she showed when a mistake led to her losing a music competition. He offered to preach at the church she attended and over time they fell in love. They married in 1964 and had three children: Kai-Uwe Friedrich, known as "Freddy", Gabrielle and Suzanne.
Death
Bonnke died on 7 December 2019. The month before, he had announced on his official Facebook page that he had undergone femur surgery and needed time to "learn how to walk again". Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who is Muslim, praised Bonnke for his frequent visits to Nigeria and described his death as a "great loss to Nigeria".
His appointed successor is the evangelist Daniel Kolenda.
He would be buried in Gotha, Florida's Woodlawn Memorial Park, with his memorial stone being shaped to resemble Africa.
To Heaven and Back with No Fanfare
Suppose you had an absolutely stunning supernatural experience, like being in a car accident and having an out-of-body experience so that you were sure you had died and gone to heaven for a few minutes before returning to your body and being brought back to life. How would you handle that experience? Most of us would be consumed with telling others about it. We might even write a book about it, and go on a speaking circuit. It’s just too amazing to keep to ourselves. And more than likely we would feel empowered to use that very experience to authorize our views of heaven. We might feel as if this extraordinary experience gave us extraordinary influence. Who could contradict us? We had been there! To Heaven and Back Paul did have an experience something like that. But here’s the amazing thing: He mentions it only one time in his thirteen letters, and he never once makes it the warrant for believing anything he says. In fact, the only reason he brings it up is to say that this kind of privilege is precisely not what he will boast in. Rather, he will boast in his weaknesses. Here’s the experience — he even describes it as if it were another person so as not to exalt himself: I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows — and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. (2 Corinthians 12:1–5) We know he is talking about himself, even though he says, “I know a man . . .” because two verses later he says, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). So he himself is the one who had this extraordinary experience. It is astonishing that Paul introduces this absolutely stunning experience of being “caught up into paradise” only to give it a passing “boast” and then turn all his attention to the real marks of an apostle — namely, suffering for Christ’s sake. Why Minimize the Marvelous? Paul never mentions this experience again. He does not use it to pull rank. He shifts all the focus off of the dramatic and onto the painful reality of suffering with joy. Why? Because it is merely human to boast about extraordinary experiences like visions and out-of-body encounters with God. It requires no great grace or power of God to boast in things that seem to set you apart as privileged. But to boast about weaknesses, and to be content with insults and hardships and persecutions and calamities — that is not what ordinary sinful humans are like. That requires supernatural grace. This is what Paul wants to focus on as the evidence of his apostleship. In fact, he says that the Lord Jesus gave him a thorn in the flesh (we never know what it is) precisely so that he would be hindered from boasting as a superhero of spiritual experience. When Paul pleaded that Jesus would take the thorn away, the Lord answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So Paul concluded, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10) Instead of circling back again and again to his once-in-a-lifetime out-of-body experience, Paul mentions it once, and then shifts all the focus onto the truths that people can see and think about and test in his writing and his life. Rooted in Public Reality In other words, the truth of Christianity is not rooted in mystical experiences that only a few people have. It is rooted in God-given revelation through writings that are open for all to see and study and test. It is validated in real lives that others can see and examine. So, instead of directing people to his private experience, Paul says, We behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand. (2 Corinthians 1:12–13) “The truth of Christianity is not rooted in mystical experiences that only a few people have.” If you were to ask Paul, “How can we share your insight into the mystery of Christ?” he would not answer, “I’m sorry. Those mysteries are reserved for the select few who have rare mystical experiences.” What he would say is this: “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Ephesians 3:4). His way of opening heaven was not by appealing to unsharable experiences. His way was by appealing to shareable truths written for all to see and understand and experience. Life on Display Behind these writings he put his own life as evidence of reality. Not his life in the rare moments of mystical experience, but his life as a flesh-and-blood man who had to deal with all the hardships of life and ministry. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:9) Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. (Philippians 3:17) Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1) In other words, Paul’s way of leading us into the truth and glory of Christ was not to talk about his privilege of an out-of-body experience of paradise. Instead, his way was to live an open life of total devotion to Jesus, through much suffering, and to write Spirit-given words (1 Corinthians 2:13) that are open to all — readable, public, ready for all to examine. This is a mark of humble, serious, personal reality. It is unusual, contrary to ordinary human proclivities, attractive. It has won my heart. Article by John Piper
