There is never a year like 2011. It is the worst of times and the best of times. From political scandals to brutal killings and earthquakes to revolutions, the shattering headlines just keep coming this year. Yet it is also the kairos time in God’s kingdom as His divine heavenly invasion is permeating here on earth. This year’s conference was one of the most incredible, inconceivable and impeccable! God is challenging his people to go to a realm that is exceedingly mind blowing and beyond any scientific explanations. Miracles can be mundane and anyone can raise the dead! It’s for every believer!!
God’s grace and favor was evident as granted permission to hold a rally convoy on the eve of the conference, declaring His kingdom and Lordship over the city of Palembang. With much excitement the church and the conference delegates gathered along the streets of Palembang holding up flags and banners marching, dancing and prayer walking along the main street of Palembang. Countless people looked on as the senior traffic police officer escorted the convoy of motorcycles and cars through the city streets. It was such a glorious way to lift up and declare the wonderful name of Jesus!
It was an honor and privileged to have Pastor David Hogan as one of our conference main speaker. It was a divine set up for us to connect with this radical and extreme faith man of God in this hour. David Hogan has been serving the Lord as a missionary to Mexico for the last 30 years and is the founder of Freedom Ministries (1981), a ministry that has seen an explosion of God's power. The over 1000 churches of Freedom Ministries have seen miracles of every kind, with every part of the human body either healed or recreated and have seen over 500 people raised from the dead! God has since allowed David Hogan to be present on 28 different occasions to date where people of all backgrounds have been raised from the dead!!
This year we started the conference with 5.30am early prayer meeting. Steve Robert shared “have faith in God”. Truly with God all things are possible.
At the end of prayer, Dr. Richard strongly encouraged us to seek God fervently and be desperately violent for His tangible presence in the next few days. We will only have ourselves to blame if we get nothing out of this conference especially when we have one of the most cutting edge minister of all time speaking in the conference. We need to encounter God’s glory! Show us your glory or we die! The presence of God is a must for the new move of God that is coming.
We were all thrown off our seats, with our eyes and mouth wide opened as David Hogan shared in the first session. He has been working with the Indians from 28 different tribes in Mexico. This has been a long and hard process, pioneering a work in a place that has never had a Gospel witness. Fighting the powers of the devil along with witchcraft, idolatry and spirit worship takes the power of the Holy Ghost. David decided to go after God for His power to see the miraculous, to see "signs following" instead of only religious hypocrisy. He began to seek God to raise the dead. After four years of intense prayer and fasting he saw the first person receive life after having died, this miracle by the power of prayer to God. 3 of his pastors have just been murdered before he came to the conference. He was stoned, beaten many times and left in the jungle to die on three occasions, been to prison over 20 times and have been gunshot a few times. Yet he said that God surrounds him with a wall of fire (Zech 2:1-4), and discouragement is not for him!! Shouting “Holy Ghost” and “Fire of the Gospel” is uniquely Hogan and then he will chuckle to himself and screeching “woweeeeeee.” Prayer and fasting is a norm in his life. Because the two things that move Heaven are prayer and fasting. If you can submit your soul in prayer, and your body in fasting, God hears you. He gave such respect and reverence to the Holy Ghost. Many people’s faith was challenged and hearts were stirred. If you can see the invisible, you can do the impossible! The eyes of our spiritual understanding began to open. He continued to preach this unmoving Gospel that radically changes the way Christians think about the possibilities of God for their lives and the lives of those around them. During ministry time, there was such a presence and fire of God like we have never encountered before!! The conference program was altered because the divine has taken over the plans and program of men! Way to go Holy Spirit! Awesome!
In the first afternoon session, we had Pastor Rob DeLuca who is the founder of His Way Church International, Auckland New Zealand. Recently he planted a new church in Orange County California. He expounded on Matthew 6:9-16. God’s will is for earth to experience heaven. Everything of heaven can be ours! Only violent men will take it by force and hungry men will pursue it! We need to be fearless. He also shared about his most recent trip to Africa. God “showed up” in every meeting. Although the people had to walk through the night in the mud, they were desperate for the touch and move of God. Nothing could deter them from getting their breakthrough; they were “violent” men laying hold of the kingdom. Many were healed of deaf ears and set free from demonic oppression. While he was speaking, then suddenly, the long awaited manifestation happened!! Gold dust began to appear from nowhere! It appeared on the stage! It appeared on the floor. It appeared on the chairs! It appeared on the forehead and arms of some people! The presence of angels was so strong! We were flabbergasted! Right at the end, we had such a powerful time of ministry. Ps Rob scooped up a ball of fire from the river of fire that is around his feet and began to throw it at the people. All who were “hit” by the ball of fire, all went under the power of God! God totally rocked the house!
Revelational preaching is the “new” way to preach; preached not from a well humanly crafted sermon but a direct rhema from God. It is loud. It is bold and it is strong. Ps Rob pounded the first night session with only 2 thoughts which God gave him; “Souls, souls, souls” and “Holy, holy, holy”. Those who are hungry are broken and yielded individuals. To be broken is to be well trained liken that of a young horse whose will is broken and is useful to the master. Ps Rob challenged us not to be like a donkey that needs a whip due to its stubborn nature, and to quit fighting the will of God in our lives. The offering that is consumed by fire is laid at the altar as a living sacrifice. Once again, every single one went to the altar to surrender their hearts. That night there were many unusual deliverances and healing took place. Wave after wave of God’s glory!!
Second morning at 5.30am prayer meeting, Ps Anil Alexander shared on “Be Faithful”. The morning prayer was absolutely electrifying, so different from any other year. Every morning Ps Robert Lie who played the guitar, together with the keyboardist will usher in the Holy Spirit. Many were on their knees, wailing and crying out to God for revival. On the second morning session Ps Rob shared from Luke 17:21-22. Indeed the kingdom of God is within us. God is looking for radical and extreme people who refuse to conform to society but to submit to the culture of the kingdom.In the afternoon, Ps David Hogan talked about the wall of fire with the glory within (Zech 2:5). God has filled us with his spirit. We can make a difference. We cannot allow the physical senses to lead us. It does not matter what we see, it does not matter what we hear, it matters what God says!! He did not skip a beat as he narrated rotting corpses and bodies in other states of mortification routinely raised back to life. Hogan claimed that thousands of people have been healed in his ministry and that “every part of the human body healed or recreated.” Hogan went on with more outlandish stories. The stories go on and on. They include the raising of two dead sisters covered with lime and rotting for three days laid in an open grave; both of them shot right up and sat there when they were commanded to come back to life! What caused our spirit to burst with awe and wonder was what the girls said in the interview after being raised from the dead. They said they saw Jesus. All Jesus said to them was, “Te quiero” which means in Spanish “I love you”! Unbelievable! This got the crowd wild, crying with tears of joy, praising and shouting glory to God in the highest! Our God is an awesome God! Amen!
Zech 2:5, was the opening verse for the second night - again. Ps David Hogan preached on the power of the gospel. He said the gospel is simple but men complicate it with rules and regulations. We need to stretch our faith and extend our tent. He shared about the miracles that took place using handkerchiefs; how someone came out of a coma after the handkerchief was laid on his head in an intensive care unit. To God it is more than a handkerchief. We were asked to bring towels, shoes, t-shirts, scarf, or anything the next day so that he can lay hands on the items. Ps Hogan just plowed on with one story after another. In another village of the Aztecs he said he encountered a smelly, rotting leper with no nose, ears, fingers or toes. Ps Hogan said: “It was a human man with leprosy”. Then Hogan prayed for him, cleaned him and the man received Jesus as his personal savior. For some reason Hogan left the village with the job unfinished but returned a few weeks later to find “a nice looking fella - pretty.” He resumed the story, telling us he grabbed the man’s 2-week-old nose and the two brand new ears, saying that God had created new fingers and toes and new skin. The man was totally healed of his leprosy! The power of the gospel! The presence of God was manifested in so many different powerful and extra ordinary ways in the conference. There was a woman whose arm was twisted backward, was hit by the power of God and her arm was restored. She received Jesus as her personal Savior and was baptized in the Holy Spirit immediately! All in one night! There was another woman who had 8 demons cast out of her and she too received Jesus that night! Hallelujah!
The last prayer morning prayer was led by Ps David Park. He encouraged all of us to be a true and full blooded history maker; to make a difference for God in our time and generation. Ps Rob began the morning session by telling us that he smell something peculiar in the air, right at the front of the stage. It’s the smell of roses! It’s the rose of Sharon; Jesus! He came to the meeting that morning! Ps Rob spoke on hypocrisy from Matt 23:1-12. We have to please God and not men. It is alright to offend someone’s mind to get into his heart! The leaders in the church must lead by example in everything; being an example in evangelism, being an example in prayer meeting etc. It is not the title but the task that is important in the sight of God.The third afternoon started with every one of us placing our items on stage to be prayed by Ps Hogan. There were news shoes, scarf, towels, cans of olive oil, tissues paper, bottled drinks etc brought by the people. And we were told to turn to Zech 2:1-5 again! Ps Hogan said that when we let God be the fire, even our life stock will be blessed. And whatever little we may have, it can feed many when we put it into the Master’s hand. He narrated he got a piece of land miraculously, totally paid by someone whom he did not know. The land is big but barren and he spoke to the beans to be fruitful and grow. And it did! He also commanded the sickly flock of cows to be healthy and it produces the best beef in that region! Once they were in a village, a big campaign with several thousand people in Las Placetas, and they ran out of food. The (Indian) brothers came and got him, “What are we going to do, we have to feed these masses of people? We don’t have enough food. More people came than we thought.” He said, “Come here!” They gathered around those old copper pots. And all those animals that had given their lives for the gospel were in those pots. And they began to pray over those pots, and over those beans, and over that rice, and over those stacks of tortillas, and over those buckets of coffee that were there. And they began feeding the people, and when they got through feeding those 3000 to 4000 people, however many there was all the food that they fed, when they went back to the pots the food was still in the pots! This is totally wild!
It was the third and final night. David Hogan would start his day very early (between 4-5am) to pray and sometimes would only get to bed around 11pm. One night when he was about to go to sleep, as he was putting on his ear plugs, there was a knock on his door. His presence was urgently required. A dead boy was brought to him by the villager. He said, he was not in the mood, was so tired as it was a long day for him, much less in the right frame of mind to raise the dead! Besides that, he was clueless as to what to do. However when his touch light shone the boy’s head, moving slowly from his forehead to his eyes, suddenly he gasped for air and came back to life! “How far will you go for the gospel?” asked David Hogan. The minute you make a stand for God, there are consequences coming from the world (Dan 3:3-14). Yet the fire of the devil will not be able to hurt us as we walk in righteousness. God is our protection, our present help in trouble. We had an awesome ministry time! A heavenly fire is ignited in our soul; come what may, we will go through it! Although no light sticks were used to celebrate and conclude the final night of the conference, we become the blazing torch, ready to dispel the works of darkness and to bring the hope of the gospel wherever we go! No return, no regret and no retreat!
3 things we can bring home with us from the conference said Dr. Richard. One is in modern churches we have so many sacred cows! We are born original, don’t die a copy! We have the original, the real deal; we don’t have to have duplicates. Secondly if we want to go higher in God, we need to go lower. There is no room for self, no room for flesh, only room for the Holy Spirit. And lastly with men it is impossible, but with God ALL things are POSSIBLE!
Chapter 29 of Acts of the Apostles is being written. We are living in perilous times. We are living in the most significant time of human history. Let us live dangerously for God. Charles Thomas Studds said “Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” Embrace the attitude of C T Studds and David Hogan, “Don't Care a Damn" (DCD) to worldly things but as you go, preach this message: “The kingdom of heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt 10:7-8) We can have glory encounter everyday!
