Monthly News Updates
Thank you to all my supporting friends. Praise the Lord, we have wonderful news to celebrate! We have just returned from Kazakhstan – hundreds, young and old, found Christ and there were many, many significant healings. We held 5 meetings in the capital Astana, and 5 in the commercial capital Almaty. All 10 meetings were full, with up to 1000 in the larger venues.
As I write this I have recently returned from my week of prayer on the mountains in Switzerland. I felt a burden as I left and asked some of you to pray especially for our staff, not just in Dewsbury, but in all the countries where we are working. Our staff who live in Kyiv are under constant air-raid sirens, yet continue to produce all our TV programmes from our office. Vadim, as many will know, is a chaplain in the military and regularly travels to the front line with Bibles, general aid, life-saving equipment and generators. Some of our other staff are also in difficulty. Misha and his whole family are refugees from their home in Moscow and now live in Central Asia
Poland at the beginning of this month was a powerful blessing, working with Ukrainian refugees, with congregations of 1000 in each meeting. You will have seen our online reports. In the Saturday evangelistic meeting, we had 100 orphan children aged 14-18, bussed in by their Christian carers; over 150 refugees repented, we saw miracles of healing – testimonies were given on the platform, and others were shared on the buses as they went home. The pastors and missionaries who took part in this event shared their powerful memories of my ministry in Ukraine, Crimea, Belarus and Russia.
Our prayers are with you for the Lord’s blessing on your life during the coming year. Times are difficult. The danger of the two wars in Ukraine and Israel escalating, and political uncertainty in Europe, Britain and especially America, make for an uncertain future. Thank God, Jesus is coming back to take over the government of the world! Isaiah 9 is clear, ‘The Government shall be on HIS shoulders’!
My best greetings to you all and to your families this Christmas. May it be a time of renewal and blessing. In a world of uncertainty, we enter the New Year with Christ. I have just returned from our day of prayer in Essen, Germany. The response was tremendously encouraging, especially as the vision they have is to work with all three generations. Since my last newsletter I can report that we had a powerful day of prayer in Armenia in October. 3000 Pastors and Leaders attended.
There has never been a greater need than now to both act and pray! As we look at the desperate situation in Ukraine and now Israel, both are involving a much wider impact on the West. Either or both of these scenarios can lead to a third world war, or a total impasse, as neither Israel nor Ukraine can afford to lose. Israel is getting closer to its prophetic conclusion by the hour!
All the signs are of the possibility of the Rapture drawing nearer. The Bible predicts the signs – the frequency and impact of earthquakes, the rapid changes in weather patterns, with floods on one side and drought on another, and massive raging fires in several countries, bigger than normal. The Bible speaks of these, and signs in the heavens.
Thank you for your support in prayer and finance, especially during my latest evangelism in Central Asia: 12 days’ ministry in Kazakhstan and one week in Kyrgyzstan. What I am seeing, and what God is about to do in these Moslem nations, HAS to be Joel’s 2nd outpouring without limit – the latter rain greater than the moderate rain on the first Day of Pentecost! So I am calling for another Day of Prayer here, in the UK, Saturday November 11th to bring the power down here.
Thank you for your support in prayer and finance, especially during my latest evangelism in Central Asia. In the capital city Astana, they only managed to get a permit for me one week before our meetings started. But, for the first time in 20 years they were allowed to put a banner in the street to advertise the meetings; and after 20 years of ‘provocations’, (disturbances, created to bring in the police), we enjoyed absolute peace! They doubled the seating capacity in the church, and every meeting was virtually full. There were wonderful miracle healings.
Jesus said, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you to bring forth fruit and it shall remain” – the evidence is so positive in every area to which the Lord has called us! But we need much prayer because these new areas of evangelism are difficult and dangerous – and strenuous to get to!
This year is proving one of the busiest for me, it seems that the older I get the heavier the demand for my involvement! However, this year is recording some remarkable events.
As I write this, we have returned from Armenia where the Day of Prayer was a phenomenal miracle. Though we have been working towards a United Day of Prayer for Armenia for some years now, the developing critical situation with Azerbaijan precipitated action; with only one month to pull all our plans together and make it happen, on Saturday 27th May, 5000 people from all over the nation – some travelling up to 5 hours to get there – gathered in the Meridian Expo Centre, Yerevan, to pray for God’s protection over their land.
As I write this, I am about to go to Ukraine. In addition to meeting many church leaders, I shall be preaching in Kyiv. Despite the war the church is full of people praying for their nation! Shortly after my return, I will go to Germany to renew my relationship with our German friends and partners where Eurovision began as a charity in 1988. This time my visit is to hold a powerful Day of Prayer for Ukraine on April 29th in Altensteig. Germany is part of my ‘vision for Europe’ and I want to join with some of the churches to hold further Days of Prayer, not only for Ukraine but also for Germany.
I have just spent a further time in prayer and fellowship in preparation for the next move of God. From March 20th to 27th I will be in Uzbekistan to begin the next part of our move into evangelism in Central Asia. This is a critical region almost untouched by powerful evangelism with miracles and signs following. While Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were exposed to traditional Orthodoxy under the Russian Empire, both were Islamic countries until Soviet Russia suppressed even that. There has never been real freedom to evangelise and even now we have to use whatever opportunities we can, as fast as we can. Armenia and Georgia were the first Christian countries in the world from the 4th Century, with a form of Orthodox faith and they resisted Islam, then communism took over.
Be encouraged, God is at work! I am experiencing it in my life even more as I get older! There is always opposition, but significantly, I have always found that, if Satan attacks, it means that something big is about to happen! We need your support both in prayer and with finance more this year than ever. We are all living in a difficult time economically, but the seed which you sow will reap an even larger harvest in eternity because God Himself will reward you!
We have started this year at full speed. I left for Ukraine on Tuesday January 3rd. The only way is to fly to Poland, then go by car across the Polish and Ukrainian borders, then into Lviv. The first day was spent being shown how, for hundreds of years, Ukraine has had an independent identity from Russia, and has every reason to fight to be free from Russian intervention and control. In this New Year we are expecting to do more than in previous years – which means we need your support more than ever! To fulfil all that God has put in my heart this year, we will need your prayer support – and almost double our financial income.
As I was preparing my Christmas TV broadcast, I saw something different! We are all so familiar with the Christmas prophecy, Isaiah 9:6, ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given...’ But Solomon in 2 Chron. 6:18, at the dedication of the new temple asks, ‘But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You…!’ Yet Jesus did come, Emmanuel, ‘God with us’ and now today even more so because Christ dwells not just with us but in us after we are ‘born again’. Our bodies should be the Temple of the Holy Spirit today!
The whole world is in crisis. Only prayer-based evangelism can save Britain and the world. Time is short – we need real urgent prayer. As I write I’m about to leave for ministry in Georgia where I will be from November 14th to 21st for three days’ evangelism in the National Indoor Basketball Stadium, TV interviews and ministry in a supporting church.
We have only just received news that our beloved Queen has died. God has blessed us as a nation more than any other nation in the world by giving us a godly Christian Queen who both lived and testified to her faith for 70 years and was a rock in a troubled land despite many personal troubles. What an incredible miracle!
Thank you for your support both in prayer and giving during this challenging time. I praise God for you, without whom our evangelism would not be possible! We are living through a very difficult period, and I am deeply conscious of the many problems facing us all. My heart and my prayers are with you. Let us keep on praying in Faith that God will answer – prayer changes things – and changes us. Paul reminds us to pray without ceasing. To me prayer is part of my daily conversation with the Lord.
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