In Part 1 of this short series of articles I shared some of the recollections of a Christian leader who was part of a multidenominational Christian revival that started among young people in Sudan in the early 90s and which spread to different parts of the Muslim-majority country despite civil war and persecution of Christians.
In this episode I will share a few of the testimonies of this eyewitness, Pastor Manase Alfred, the national coordinator of Scripture Union in South Sudan, which he has recorded in a book called YCF Revival.
He identifies a Young Christian Fellowship (YCF) prayer and fasting conference in the capital, Khartoum, in June 1992 as the beginning of the revival that spread over the nation. Manase was the coordinator of the five-day conference and recalls that the number of people who turned up exceeded the attendance limit they had specified. This was a problem for their first mealtime but the Lord resolved the problem by multiplying their bread supply.
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Their main prayer focus was on “revival, the move of the Holy Spirit and salvation of souls,” said Manase. Early in the morning of the last day, after a night vigil of prayer, worship and sharing the Word “there was a mighty manifestation of the power of God that many people were baptized by the Holy Spirit. The power of God was so strong that many people were falling down and speaking in tongues, worshipping and praising God.”
He recalls: “When we asked everybody to leave, no one wanted to, instead many were crying. They were full of joy. So we decided to leave as a group and took buses. There was too much joy that the youth continued to praise God and preached in the buses until the central bus station. This, of cause, was unusual in Khartoum. It was the work of the Holy Spirit. That was the beginning of the YCF revival that spread all over the nation.”
The next month, July 1992, they held a prayer conference in Renk, a town on the eastern White Nile bank of the White Nile, in the present South Sudan. Manase shares a testimony from that time: “A certain lady, who had epilepsy, came and asked for prayers. She had scars of burnings all over her body. Her right hand finger could not move because of the burns. According to her testimony, she used to fall into the fire and most of the time when she as alone.
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“We cast out the spirit and she was delivered. Her fingers began to move. God healed her. We went to their house and burned all the things that belonged to the demons. As we were burning the items, a relative, who was living with her, fell down and screaming, manifesting signs of demonic possession. She was also delivered. Praise the Lord, glory to God who is faithful to His word, delivering people from the power of darkness. Through that incident the Christians in Renk town were encouraged and many people gave their lives to Christ.”
That same year he was invited to speak on spiritual warfare at a church in Port Sudan, the country’s main port, on the Red Sea. A woman who was a member of the choir started biting her finger when he spoke and then she left and told others she would not return while he was there. But late the next day he spotted her and they shared the Gospel with her and cast a demon out of her. Many people gave their lives to Jesus because of her deliverance and years later, when he met her again, she was leading the choir.
Manase writes: ‘In every place I went I taught about commitment. God wants committed Christians to do His work in the Sudan. After encouraging people, I would call them for special prayers and lay hands on them; sometimes the anointing would be great that some of them would fell down and through that anointing they would set the town ablaze. In 1993 I was in Renk for such a meeting. This time I changed my system of preaching, instead of inviting people to give their lives to Jesus at the end of the message, I did the altar call at the beginning of the sermon. I had never done like that in my ministry before. But the Holy Spirit directed me to do that.
“Among those who responded was a doctor. I saw him leaning on one of the poles of the tent, over- powered by the glory of God. Later on he became active in the church and led many to Christ and because of that he was persecuted in his place of work. He left his job and became a pastor.”
He records a number of testimonies of God’s power at work at that time — a lady who had been sick for years healed after she was delivered of 99 demons, a man who ran for the first time in 10 years after prayer, a Muslim lady who had sought medical treatment for cancer in Japan received healing after a YCF team prayed with her, leading a woman to Jesus while waiting for a river steamer in Kosti — resulting in her being set free from demons and an illness that had tormented her for 14 years during which time she was being treated by a witchdoctor.
One of the many power encounter testimonies he shares resulted in the planting of a church. Manase recalls: “In 1993 there was a woman who came to me several times asking me that I should come and pray for sick people. After persisting for some days I decided to take a team of YCF members and went to a place called Dikenaad, south of Khartoum.
“When we arrived we found ourselves in a room with sick, crippled and demon possessed people. We were surprised to find many people there. We decided to close the door and started praying for them. The Lord glorified Himself. Anyone who was healed we would allow him or her to leave the room and as each person leaves the room we hear jubilation outside. God blessed us by healing three persons of tuberculosis, the eyes of a blind woman were restored and a lame man walked. Because of these miracles, a Presbyterian church was established there.”
To be continued
About Pastor Manase Alfred
Manase Woja Alfred is a graduate of Alexandria University, Faculty of Arts English Department. He also has a diploma in missions from CAPRO School of Missions, in Nigeria and he and his worked with Calvary Ministries for 10 years as missionaries. He has taught in different schools, institutions and churches. He is married to Efon Alesio and they have two children: Alice and Kenneth. They currently they live in Juba, South Sudan serving with Rebuilding Ministries International and work among students through Scripture Union of which Alfred is national coordinator in South Sudan.
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