The Africa Review in Five highlights African current affairs from a Christian perspective. Listen and subscribe through Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Today is Friday, September 15th, A.D. 2023. This is The Africa Review in Five, written by Paul Schlehlein and presented by Yamikani Katunga.
The Holy Ghost Bartender’s Africa Tour
Rodney Howard-Browne through Revival Ministries International has returned to his homeland for a 2023 Africa Tour. The popular charismatic preacher and evangelist has pastored in the United States since the 1990s, though he and his wife were born in the 1960s in South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively.
Revival Ministries is publicizing heavily his preaching tour and has cast the net wide on the continent. In just the months of September and October 2023, Howard-Browne will visit most of the major cities in southern Africa, including Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Ekiti, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; Lilongwe, Malawi; Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, South Africa; Manzini, Eswatini; Swakopmund, Namibia; Lusaka, Zambia; Kampala, Uganda; and Gaborone, Botswana.
This is not the first time Howard-Browne has promoted revival in Africa. For decades he’s been preaching prosperity on the continent, boasting of converts that have come in the tens of thousands and sometimes in hundreds of thousands. For example, in May of 2005 near Durban, South Africa, his ministry claimed that more than 286,000 people gave their lives to Jesus. They even keep a soul-counter on their website. One would think that with such a large portion of the city coming to Christ the society would have been transformed. Surely, hundreds if not thousands of new gospel-preaching churches would have been established. Sadly, in contrast to real revivals like the Great Awakening, Durban has remained much the same.
This begs the question. What does genuine revival look like and how can we distinguish between true and false converts?
According to Scripture, genuine revival is marked in at least three ways. First, genuine revival brings sorrow over sin. When the publican was confronted with the truth, he struck his breast and was unable to lift his head, saying in Luke 18:13, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Contrast this with Howard-Browne, whose audiences are known for breaking out in “holy laughter” and other bizarre phenomena like spiritual drunkenness, dancing in the aisles, uncontrolled giggling, and falling to the ground. Howard-Browne has even called himself “the Holy Ghost bartender”.
He once described his preaching at Oral Roberts University in this way: “One night I was preaching on hell and laughter just hit the whole place…. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed.”
Hell is no laughing matter with Jesus. In his majestic Sermon on the Mount, the Son of God urged sobriety, saying “blessed are the poor in spirit” and “blessed are those that mourn”. As Thomas Watson said: “Never do the flowers of grace grow more than after a shower of repentant tears.”
Second, the preaching of Christ always accompanies genuine revival. We must not only preach Christ but the whole Christ of the Bible. Many false religions and cults like Islam, Mormonism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to believe in and honor Christ. Often, Howard-Browne will speak of Christ and the cross. But do not be deceived. Faith in a false Christ (2Cor. 11:4) is no faith at all.
The Prosperity Gospel Howard-Browne promotes is a false gospel. It is the view that Jesus came to earth to make people healthy and wealthy. If you want a fancy car, a high-paying job, or a body free of disease, Jesus will give it to you. Just sow the seed and believe. But Jesus said that one must count the cost before following him. And Paul said that we must suffer many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God (Ac. 14:22).
Finally, spiritual discernment runs side-by-side with genuine revival. Christians should “test the spirits” (1Jn. 4:1) and mustn’t be pulled away by claims that the dead were raised or the sick were healed. Peter rebuked Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8 for trying to buy the Holy Spirit’s power to perform miracles. And Jesus rebuked a “wicked and adulterous generation” for demanding miraculous signs (Mt. 12:39).
The truth is that the mark of the Holy Spirit in one’s life is the fruit of the Spirit. This includes self-control (Gal. 5:22-23), not speaking in tongues or performing miracles. In fact, a chief purpose of the Holy Spirit according to John 16:14 is to “glorify Christ”.
Christians should long for revival and should yearn to see souls saved. But this must come in God’s way, in God’s timing, through God’s Word. In the meantime, let us be discerning of the wolves that seek to strangle the sheep, especially if the wolf is laughing.
And that’s it for The Africa Review in Five on this Friday, September 15th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe to the Missionary Minds podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts. I’m Yamikani Katunga. Be not weary in well-doing.