As a newbie TV producer on Reinhard Bonnke’s crusade team in 1986 in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, Dr. Berin Gilfillan got to witness the incredible healing of five blind people. And yet his focus was on those who were not healed. Through this, Gilfillan learned a valuable lesson from Reinhard Bonnke: “You can either focus on what God is doing, or you can focus on what God isn’t doing.”
This ultimately proved just a steppingstone to the life lessons Gilfillan learned from his time with the crusade team. He recalls a time when they traveled to the Soviet Union, and just days before the crusade was to take place, Bonnke’s visa was denied. Thankfully, there was someone to still lead the crusade in his absence. Gilfillan was relieved, but then the second in command, Peter Vandenberg, fell ill with malaria. Only by the grace of God, Gilfillan says, did he recover and still have the strength to lead the crusade.
Gilfillan remembers most vividly from this crusade the Christians who witnessed it, saying, “We never thought we’d ever see this again, when the gospel would be openly preached and proclaimed here in the Soviet Union. How many of our brothers and sisters who perished in the Gulag, who perished in a Siberian prison or a concentration camp, how many of them wept tears and cried out to God for the day that the gospel again would be proclaimed openly?”
Gilfillan reflects, “I saw a hunger, I saw a cry, I felt something that I had not felt in such a long time. And in the middle of this campaign, as this harvest was unfolding, and as Peter’s strength was getting back, the Spirit of God came upon Peter, and he began to prophesy.”
To learn the lessons Gilfillan learned through his time with the crusade and the prophecy the Lord gave to Peter Vandenberg in that historic season, listen to the full episode of Lessons From Legends on the Charisma Podcast Network here. {eoa}
