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.
the dying gambler
"He died for sinners, and that's me exactly." While holding gospel meetings in the town of Albuquerque, N. M., we were told one morning of a man who was reported to us as being under deep conviction of sin, the Lord having awakened him through the preaching on the street. Our informant told us that he was one who never went to a church or mission hall, as he would not have anything to do with religion or its advocates. But, happening to be out upon the streets in the evenings, he had twice listened to the Word as there proclaimed, and was now in deep distress about his soul. No more cheering intelligence can be conveyed, to one whose heart is in the work of evangelization, than that God has been using the message to the awakening or the conversion of sinners; so, giving thanks for what we had heard, Mr. M— and I went over to the house in which the convicted man was living. We found him in deep distress. He was a consumptive who had come to Albuquerque from the Indian Territory in search of a climate where his disease would be more readily checked. But it was easy to see that his days on earth were fast drawing to a close. In broken accents he told us his story. He had been a most ungodly person. Gambling was his occupation, and all its attendant evils had held him in their snare. His had been "the pace that kills," and now he was reaping the bitter fruits in his own body of a life spent in reckless dissipation in the service of the devil. The reason why he had, although awake to his wretched physical condition, avoided all Christians who might have been able to help him, now came out. He realized that he was dying. He was in dread of death with the awful judgment which he knew must follow. But he had long since concluded that there was no hope for him. He was too far gone for the mercy of God to be extended to him. His sins were crying for vengeance. There was no solace to be expected in religious meetings, so he had kept away, as it only aggravated his mind to see others happy in the knowledge of the forgiveness of their sins while for him there was nought but the "blackness of darkness" forever. Through the goodness of God he had been led to listen to the preaching on the corner; and for the first time he began to realize that there might be mercy even for him. But accompanying this faint hope had come a deeper sense of his own iniquity, so that he was tossed about between hope and despair. We read the word of God and conversed with him, but he was quite gloomy, though he said,"I'm praying; and I've made up my mind that if I have to go to hell, I'll go praying." Earnestly we sought to impress upon his mind that salvation was God's free gift, offered "without money and without price" to all who confessed their sins, and who, as guilty, lost men and women, were ready to receive it for nothing. He did not seem to grasp it, but frequently remarked, "I won't give up praying." It is hard for man to realize the perfect freedom of the offer made by the God of all grace to needy sinners. It is neither by prayer nor by works of human righteousness that salvation is obtained. The believing sinner, saved by grace divine, gladly owns: "Could my zeal no languor know, Could my tears forever flow, These for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone." Jesus it was who did all the doing; there remains nothing for the repentant sinner but the taking. But the very freedom of it all seemed to stumble the poor dying gambler. He promised to be out to the meeting however; and so, after praying that he might be led to see the perfection of the finished work of Christ, we left him. In accordance with his promise he was present at night. He seemed to listen eagerly, but with a look of bewilderment that implied inward anxiety and confusion of mind. Upon the conclusion of the meeting we handed him several gospel booklets, which he promised to read. The following evening he came to the hall, and it was easy to see that some great change had taken place. After the preaching he spoke to Mr. M— and brokenly told what had that day transpired. His voice was so weakened by the inroads of disease that he could only speak in short whispers. He said, "This afternoon—I lay on the bed—I took the tracts and tried to read.—My aunt came in—I asked her to read them to me.—Every time she came to a verse from the Bible—I said, 'Look it up.—She said, 'Tain't necessary.'—I said 'It is.—I can't afford to make any mistake—I must be sure.' She got a Bible and looked them up—They were all just the same.—At last I saw it—I said, 'That's it—Christ died for sinners—that's me exactly.—He shed His blood for sinners—He saves all who trust Him—I can trust Him now—He died for sinners—That's me,'—I felt happy then—knew it was all right—I know He won't cast me out." Together we rejoiced that thus he had been led to rest upon Him whose blood cleanses from all sin. And now a remarkable change took place. When we went to see him the next day, we found that physically he had failed to an amazing degree. He could no longer go about. It seemed that strength had been given him to get out where he might hear the gospel, and then he was bereft of it all. Mr. S, a fellow-laborer, had been to see him in the morning and had apprised me of the change; but, although expecting to see a great difference, I was not prepared for what I found when together we called on him in the afternoon. He was so weak that he could barely make himself understood. Satan had been troubling him with doubts. We gave him God's own words, and the doubts were dissipated. He seemed to receive as a child every statement from the Scriptures as indeed the word of Him who cannot lie. Three days later he passed away. Just before the end came he looked up and asked, "Do you hear it? I hear them singing. Jesus died for sinners. He died for me." And so the redeemed gambler had gone into the presence of Him who delights to show mercy to the vilest. To the unsaved reader we would address a word in closing this brief account. Whether a sinner of the deepest dye, crushed beneath the weight of the iniquities of a life-time spent in high-handed rebellion against the God who created you, and who, though you have neither known nor acknowledged Him, has yet been your preserver through all your devious paths; or whether you may be generally accounted moral and religious, but are still guilty of that greatest of all sins—the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ—"unto you is the word of this salvation sent." For you God's blessed Son died upon the cross, having borne the judgment due to sin; and now, through the work He there accomplished, you, like the poor gambler, may be "justified from all things" and prepared to enjoy an eternity of bliss in His own presence. Christ received, means eternal joy; Christ rejected, means eternal misery. From The Only Two Religions and Other Gospel Papers by H. A. Ironside. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, Publishers, [n.d.].
