At Reinhard Bonnke’s Memorial Service, Thousands Celebrate His Massive Harvest in Africa

At Reinhard Bonnke’s Memorial Service, Thousands Celebrate His Massive Harvest in Africa

Bonnke was the son of a German soldier who became a minister after World War II. Mesmerized by tales of 19th century European missionaries like David Livingstone, young Reinhard would later say he heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say to him: “Africa shall be saved!”

In a Facebook post in 2018, Bonnke cited another role model.

“Billy Graham has inspired me personally,” he wrote after the American evangelist’s death in 2018. “When he preached in a tent in Hamburg, Germany. I always felt connected to him.”

Early in his evangelistic career, Bonnke acknowledged in a 2003 interview, he made a strategic decision that proved controversial. He based his ministry in an all-white area of Johannesburg, South Africa, and did not publicly oppose the apartheid regime. Bonnke said he did make known his opposition to apartheid, but indirectly through his ministry. His associate was a black minister who always traveled with him.

“I had a choice,” he said. “To become politically active and oppose apartheid from the pulpit. Or, to preach the gospel and make people find salvation in Jesus Christ.”

Bonnke’s healing claims have also drawn controversy.

“The most remarkable things are happening: blind eyes open, cripples walk, people jump out of their wheelchairs,” he said in a 2003 interview with the Orlando Sentinel.

“I am as amazed as anybody else. It is just too wonderful. But I personally am not the miracle worker—it is Jesus.”

Image: Photo courtesy of Bonnke.net

People wave their arms during a 1991 Reinhard Bonnke crusade in Zaire.

Bonnke’s followers claimed that he did in fact perform a miracle. In November 2001, they say, the evangelist raised a Nigerian minister from the dead.

Pastor Daniel Ekechukwu was twice pronounced dead after a car crash, according to the story, and embalmed—although by African custom, his organs were not removed. Three days later, after hearing a prophecy, his wife brought the body to the basement of a church where Bonnke was praying in the sanctuary above.

At the same time, others later told the evangelist, Ekechukwu sat bolt upright and began to breathe again.

“That man was dead as a stone,” Bonnke said, although he did not know the man was in the church basement at the time he was preaching above. “There is no doubt about it.”

CfaN ministry officials investigated the account, Bonnke said, and found it to be “so true, so genuine, so fantastic” that they embraced it as a miracle, and produced and distributed a video on the episode.

Rick DuBose, assistant general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, lauded Bonnke for his decades of missionary work.

Bonnke “literally pushed back the darkness,” he said.

Toward the end of his career, Bonnke held his first crusades in the United States, a country he said needed to experience God’s power.

“I have seen whole countries shaken by the power of God,” he told Jeff Kunerth of the Orlando Sentinel in 2013. “That experience in Africa has turned me into an incurable believer that God will do it in other parts of the world as well. And I pray for America.”

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