Technology Can Help Bring in the End-Time Harvest
How far could technology take you toward your God-given destiny if you leveraged it properly?
Today’s technology has enabled our ministry to witness nearly 800,000 decisions for Christ in just twenty months. What is even more incredible is that I believe that other churches and individuals can repeat what we have accomplished and surpass it. When we embraced the tools available to us today, we found ourselves in places we never thought we would go.
The tools of this generation granted me access into the 10/40 Window. This window contains 97 percent of the unreached people in the world, with only 10 percent of the missionary force working there. In many of these nations Christians are persecuted and killed. Many of these governments oppress the church and oppose the Gospel. It all sounds very bleak until we realize that new video technology allows us to take the Gospel to places that were once out of our reach.
Our generation has a new reality. The unreached nations of the earth are no longer waiting on God; they are waiting on us. God has given our generation the tools we need to reach them.
Here is my point—if God can accomplish this through us, what could your life look like if you discovered God’s will for your life and embraced the generation into which you are born? How can you leverage technology to reach your highest potential?
What would you say if I told you that in one week, I preached to three continents, six nations, won 100,000 people to the Lord, and then drove to my hometown Starbucks and had my favorite cup of coffee each afternoon of those outreaches? I didn’t have to buy an airplane ticket, bring my passport, or get a visa for those crusades. I just used my computer. And it has continued:
• In just three nights of 2019, a total of 311,987 people came to Christ in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
• One night in March, 81,554 people confessed Jesus as their Lord.
• With April came another 77,184 new Christ-followers, and as a result, 21,536 cell groups and 7,000 home churches were formed.
• One glorious night in May, 153,249 people in Pakistan gave their lives to Jesus in a single meeting.
These outcomes were entirely impossible in any earlier era. Today’s technology opened doors held shut for generations. Those who came to Christ were all in the 10/40 Window. This was their first time to hear the Gospel. The tools of a new generation made this possible. We worked outside of the box and did something that had never been done before.
“What would you say if I told you that in one week, I preached to three continents, six nations, won 100,000 people to the Lord, and then drove to my hometown Starbucks and had my favorite cup of coffee each afternoon of those outreaches?”
To get some perspective on the possibilities of our times, let’s examine a little church history. When Peter stood up and preached on the Day of Pentecost, three thousand people were added to their number. The largest crowd that Jesus spoke to was, “about five thou- sand men, besides women and children” (Matt. 14:21). According to Billy Graham’s website, the largest number of salvations recorded on a single crusade night was 75,000 people. [1] In a five-year period, during the Brownsville Revival, a “reported 200,000 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ.” [2] But this year, in just three nights during our crusades, 311,987 people came to Jesus in just one of the nations where He is moving! An end-time harvest is being gathered right now and in a surprisingly new way.
God is working through modern technology in an unprecedented manner. In the March crusade just alluded to, several large LED screens were put in place for a crowd of 92,261 people. Just before the crowd arrived, it began to rain. The owner of the rented LED screens told our team that he would need to dismantle them due to the weather. But, knowing that eternity was at stake for thousands of people, the local pastors and intercessors gathered in a circle and cried out to God for the rain to stop. As their prayers rose to heaven, the clouds parted, and a clear sky appeared! The equipment owner was so moved that he left the screens in place. Not another drop of rain fell that night, and 81,554 Pakistanis came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ!
What may surprise you further is that the main speaker was not present at the event. The sermon the crowd heard, and the preacher they saw, was on a video screen. I spoke to that vast crowd in Pakistan from my home church in Pensacola, Florida. I didn’t need a visa or an expensive airline ticket because it was all done from my home- town. Our God is fulfilling His promise that His Word will never return void, even if it is being transmitted by satellite from one side of the world to the other!
I have often joked when sharing these testimonies that the apostle Paul must be rolling over in his grave. He is saying, “It’s not fair! I was shipwrecked, bitten by a snake, stoned and left for dead, beaten with rods, and went through countless hardships. Now, this generation is preaching the Gospel to thousands of people all around the world in the morning and having a cup of Joe at their favorite coffee shop in the afternoon!” It must seem so very unfair to those who have gone before us.
Missionaries of old purchased one-way tickets to faraway lands, knowing that they would never return home. Yet in our day, we can now preach to massive crowds on various contents and nations to see hundreds of thousands of people saved without ever leaving our hometowns.
The apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself, didn’t have the means of communication we currently possess. But now, our generation can finally complete the last task Jesus gave His followers to, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). We now have the modern video technology needed to finish the job! No other generation has had this opportunity. If we don’t use it to advance His Kingdom, how will we be able to answer for that? What excuse would stand before a God who was willing to give His one and only Son so all could be saved?
As I stated earlier, we were born into this generation by God’s appointment. “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth: and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). Recognizing and embracing this truth opens up new frontiers and opportunities not yet imagined. The same Holy Spirit that hovered over the earth on creation’s morning desires to ignite our creativity and imagination to things not yet seen or accomplished. What could that mean for you?
On July 13, 2018, I was on the phone with my father who is now eighty-nine years old. He has served God all of his life. We were praying for a harvest of souls when my spirit was caught up into the Lord’s presence. In a vision, He took me and suspended me over a wheat field that extended further than my eyes could see. I was about ten feet over this ripened field when suddenly the Lord called for an end-time harvest. As soon as He spoke it, I witnessed an instant response. Immediately, from my peripheral vision, I saw stalks of wheat that were red, yellow, black, and white flying together into huge bundles. These bundles were then bound together by unseen angels. While this happened, the sky over my head opened up like the sky inside the eye of a hurricane. The sheaves that had been gathered were caught up in the force of the whirlwind and spun upward into heaven.
“Lord, this is so easy!” I exclaimed, giddy with excitement over the speed and ease of the great harvest.
“That’s because it is time,” He replied. “It is time for the end-time harvest.”
Just twenty months after showing me this harvest, our church of just over 2,000 people has already seen nearly 800,000 souls come to Christ! God is doing exactly what He said He would do.
Jesus declared, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). I believe technology will be the means by which we complete the task. The devil has certainly used it for his kingdom; it’s high time we used it for our Lord’s.
What is God calling you to do? What opportunity is lurking just around the next corner?
For our ministry, God has called us to pioneer a superhighway for one hundred million souls to travel upon. We are operating under a 100 million souls mandate that God has given us. Our goal can be reached if one thousand churches win one hundred thousand souls each.
When we consider the enormity of the task left undone, one hundred million souls are only a fraction of what is needed. There are 865 million unreached Muslim or Islamic followers, 550 million unreached Hindus, and 275 million unreached Buddhists. “Two- thirds of the world’s population (more than 4.4 billion people) live in what Christian Missions Strategist Luis Bush named, “the 10/40 Window.”
This includes the area of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. The 10/40 Window is often called “The Resistant Belt” and includes the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. “Of the fifty-five least evangelized countries, 97% of their population lives there.” [4] With our present-day technology, the ability to win 100 million souls out of this window is so doable!
Low-Hanging Fruit
This goal is also within our reach because we are gathering low-hanging fruit. “It is estimated that ninety percent of these unreached people have not been evangelized, with only ten percent of the missionary force working there.” [5] But they are ripe and ready to hear the Gospel. Now, through video technology, the global church can partner with Christians located within that window and bring the Gospel to those who have never heard it! We can finally shatter the 10/40 Window!
We went outside of the box to see these results. The same will be true for all who reach the heights of their purpose. Do what others have done if you want similar results; but if you dream of higher achievement, it will require more. Allow our story to ignite new frontiers and ideas for you to explore. Dare to push the limits in your thinking.
Greatness by its very nature is not found in the middle of the curve or graph. Greatness is an extreme, located far from the safe and the mediocre. It requires an abandonment of the predictable and the easy. The crowd of naysayers must be left behind for the lonely path that only a few will follow, and that makes all the difference.
When I traveled to Pakistan to preach to 200,000 people in a Muslim city, I didn’t go there because video crusades aren’t effective. I traveled there because the Church in the West is full of skepticism. As the Church in America declines, it becomes easy to doubt the reports of the enormous numbers of people coming to Christ over- seas. In our part of the world we have seen so little of His miraculous power that it is difficult to believe the testimonies of the notable healing miracles happening in other places. So I traveled there, put- ting my life at risk, to see it with my own eyes. I wanted to verify the numbers of people coming to Christ and to witness the healing miracles for myself. I needed to be able to say, “I have been there and I am an eyewitness.” I had to strike out on a different path.
I was surely not disappointed! While there, I preached a one-night crusade, and over 153,000 Pakistanis received Christ and astonishing miracles happened! It is truly an amazing sight to witness when an enormous crowd of that size stands on their feet to accept Christ! I am an eyewitness that this harvest is real. (You can watch a short video of the crusade at www.wifijesus.org.)
I went there to repeat Peter’s words on the Day of Pentecost, “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him” (Acts 2:22 NLT). This is still true in our day. God is still publicly endorsing His Son through powerful miracles, wonders, and signs.
The healing miracles we have witnessed in our video crusades are astounding. Even the paralyzed and the blind have been healed. Asiimwe Faith, an elderly woman, was paralyzed for three years. Neither the medical doctors nor the witch doctors she visited could help her. In search of a miracle, she attended a video crusade we were conducting in Uganda, and the living Jesus healed her. We witnessed the effects of her miracle on screen as we watched the livestream feed. Asiimwe and many others were ecstatic to share what God had done for them. This once paralyzed woman was able to walk, jump, and praise the Lord! She is just one of the hundreds whom God healed. After each message, we pray for the sick, and people line up to share the miracles they have received.
Little Ruth was a young lady suffering from epilepsy. Each day she suffered multiple intense seizures. She had given up on school or any hope of a normal life, but in one of our internet meetings, God healed her completely! Since then, many more with epilepsy have been healed by the power of God.
We have seen legs, knees, and backs work again. Those who were previously lame jump up and down, eager to show us their miracle. Many with back problems have bent all the way over to touch the ground to demonstrate how God touched them.
During one crusade in Uganda, a middle-aged blind lady was standing in the crowd on the front row. As people came forward to testify how the living Jesus had performed miracles in their bodies, she suddenly began to jump up and down shouting, “I can see! I can see!” Her eyesight was restored in front of the entire crowd of people.
God is still publicly endorsing His Son Jesus with the same kind of miracles we read about in the Gospels, and He is doing them in our video crusades. Parents brought their children forward to show us where tumors and growths have suddenly vanished. These public miracles are bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Christ.
Busigye Judith is a middle-aged lady in East Africa whose friends had to carry her to a recent video crusade. Her knee was swollen for four years, and she was unable to bend it even slightly during all of that time. At the crusade, I shared a previous healing miracle that I witnessed with my own eyes decades earlier. I explained of the time when my wife and I lived in Czechoslovakia after communism fell in Eastern Europe. We traveled there to preach the Gospel and had the opportunity to speak at a crusade in the city of Prague. One night during the crusade, a lady came forward on crutches for prayer. Her knee was swollen to twice its normal size. When she came forward, I told her, “I can’t heal you, but tonight I am representing a living Jesus. Because He is alive, He will heal your body and save your soul.”
As soon as I spoke those words to the crippled lady, she quit looking at me and started staring at her knee. She completely and utterly believed my words, and because she believed Jesus was going to do what she had requested, she wanted to watch it happen! Seeing her faith ignited my own! I too stopped looking at her face and I started staring at her swollen knee along with her. I wanted to watch it happen too!
As we prayed, her knee was immediately healed. It was like someone stuck a pin in a balloon. Her knee shrunk to its normal size right before our eyes! The next thing that happened was marvelous to behold. She threw down her crutches and started running back and forth in the tent, weeping, shouting, and praising God!
As I shared this testimony decades later in a video crusade in Africa, Busigye Judith placed her hands on her knee and was healed instantly in exactly the same manner! Her knee went to its normal size right in front of her eyes. She too jumped up and down, praising God as she told us her story!
This demonstration of God’s miraculous power has been repeated again and again over the last fifteen months. The lame walk, the blind see, and the mute can speak again. While I was in Pakistan, a lady who was unable to speak for seven months came on the stage to tell me that God had healed her. She then left the stage and came back with her adult daughter. She wanted her daughter to confirm that her mother was telling the truth! How wonderful to see both mother and daughter able to speak with one another again!
Most of the miracles I just described happened while I was in my home city here in America. It was all done outside of the lines that had previously been drawn. What creative ideas has God given you?
When we conduct a video crusade, I normally preach the message live through the internet from our campus in Pensacola, Florida. While I preach, our intercessors (who are the real reason for our success) pray. Some are in the same room as me. Others, who are a part of our online campus, pray from their location in various places all around the world. It is a full-on spiritual battle that ensues. Often, we have had the internet connection go down at the most crucial time. That is when our prayer warriors step up their game, and we have seen our connection suddenly reestablished. It may sound like science fiction to you, but they will gladly tell you of the miraculous battles they have won through prayer.
As I preach in Pensacola, a local pastor stands on the stage in his country and translates the message into the people’s language. Let me tell you, those translators can preach with fire and anointing! This is all usually done live on both ends with, hopefully, only a small satellite delay.
Remote, No-Internet-Access Areas
In our efforts to go to places where the Gospel has not been preached, we realized that we would be traveling into areas where there was no internet connection or where it was poor at best. It became apparent that we needed a Plan B to reach these remote areas, so we decided to record a “backup message.” This was another instance where we had to try something that had never been done before and test something new.
Having a backup message prepared also became necessary because our crusades quickly grew from five to eight thousand people to ten to twelve thousand people, and then to well over 100,000 people. With that many people in attendance, we had to deliver— with or without the internet. We were also spending over $100,000 dollars to fund each large crusade. I felt personally responsible for all the money and energy that was being spent. Local pastors and their church members spent weeks with “boots on the ground,” knocking on doors and canvassing villages. They spent weeks away from home with a commitment to souls that I have not seen paralleled anywhere. We couldn’t let them down, nor the people who were coming and had never before heard the Gospel.
The message had to be delivered no matter what challenges we encountered, so we brought some of the local pastors we were working with to America and recorded backup video crusade messages. We started that process with the lead pastor and his wife from Paki-stan. At our Pensacola campus, with no more than sixty adults in the room, I preached and the pastor’s wife translated. We preached as though we were in Pakistan standing before tens of thousands of people. Our media team (some of the other heroes in this story) put video images of the crowds from previous crusades on the back and side screens. Those in the room with us were asked to pray as if they were in Pakistan, in a sea of lost humanity who had never heard the Gospel before. We asked them to earnestly pray because heaven and hell hung in the balance for thousands of souls.
The night we recorded the video, I was on the twenty-third day of a forty-day fast. As I stood up to preach that night the Lord spoke to me, “This is not just a backup message; this will be used to reach hundreds of thousands of people for Christ. This is the real deal, so preach like it!”
What happened next was glorious. The translator and I both felt the power of God touch our words. We moved in perfect tandem as His Spirit flooded the room. We prayed for salvations and miracles and then asked the people to come forward to share what God had done in their lives. It was as if we were there. Those in the room testified of how the anointing that fell that night burned deeply in their hearts.
Would you believe that the next two crusades we conducted in Pakistan had no internet signal! That had never happened before, but God went ahead of us to make a way where there was none.
I believe the creativity of the Holy Spirit allowed us to think outside of the box and it worked! That recorded message, preached with just sixty people in the room, has already reached 174,175 new converts for Christ.
I remember how anxious I was when we used that backup message for the first time. It wasn’t what we had planned. We spent $121,000 to rent hundreds of buses, lights, sound equipment, the crusade grounds, and LED screens for that crusade. One hundred thousand people were expected. And then we lost all internet and cellular connection with our team in Pakistan when the scheduled time of the crusade drew near due to the remoteness of the area. Thank God the backup message was available.
Our intercessors prayed and we waited expectantly even though we had no communication and no idea what was happening on their side. It took hours before a cell signal was reestablished and we could again communicate. I felt like the flight controllers in NASA must have felt when the lunar module went to the backside of the moon! Had we spent all this money in vain? Did everything go as planned? Did the miracles still happen and souls get saved? Then, after what seemed like forever, my phone rang. The team had finally been able to receive a cellular signal, but the crusade was over. As I remained on the phone with the Pakistani pastor, his words poured out as he described what had transpired. He was so excited that he was out of breath. “Pastor,” he said, “it was unbelievable! The miracles were amazing, and the altar call was mind-blowing!”
I then asked him the question I was so anxious to have answered: “From the response you saw, did the recorded video message work as well as a live crusade?”
“It totally surprised me,” he responded. “I had my doubts about this working, but during the recorded message, when you called for the people to stand to their feet to accept Christ, the whole crowd stood with hands raised. And when you prayed for the sick, miracle after miracle began to happen. There were so many healed that we ran out of time before we could get to everyone who came forward to testify.”
Our final tally, from this one-night video crusade with a recorded message, was 81,554 decisions for Christ! I believe that God can do even greater things through those who will discover His will, embrace the hour in which they live, and attempt new things. Right now, Holy Spirit-inspired pioneers are in great demand. The volatile time in which we live will be seen by most as just more chaos, but for the savvy it will be viewed as a time of tremendous opportunity. It has created a vacuum that only new creativity can fill. Those who fill the void will understand that change is not an enemy, but rather an ally.
I recently shared with an American friend what God was accomplishing through video technology. She was ecstatic at first, but then responded sadly, “Every time we bring up technology in our church, they fight it.” Her response should unfortunately not surprise anyone. The church has historically been the very last entity to adapt to a changing world. As a Body, we have fought change. We yield only when the train has already left the station and we must concede. What a pity. The Gospel message never changes, but our methods of delivering it should always be in step with the generation we are trying to reach. While churches have resisted technology, people are dying without Christ. It is estimated that approximately 66,000 people are dying without any knowledge of Christ every day.6 They don’t have another day to wait! They need the Gospel delivered to them now, through whatever means we have available to us.
New solutions come to those brave, tenacious souls who will not settle for the status quo. One fresh idea from heaven can exponentially expand our horizons. Perhaps you will pioneer the next major breakthrough with the creativity power of the Holy Spirit inside of you!
Our greatest limitation is often found residing between our two ears. An old mindset must be broken and replaced by the truth that, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13 NKJV). Extraordinary results will require something more than ordinary approaches. Often we allow our present environment to blind us to new possibilities.
Earlier, I shared how God caught me up in the Spirit and took me to a vast wheat field to witness an end-time harvest. I want to share with you now the conclusion of what I saw in that vision. While watching the wheat come together from the four corners of the earth, I noticed that none of the wheat from the field I was suspended over was being gathered. That field stretched further than I could see. I was puzzled by this, so I asked the Lord, “What about this wheat, why is none of it being harvested?” He responded, “It’s not wheat. It looks like wheat and talks like wheat, but it is not wheat.” I was absolutely dumbfounded and shocked! From its outward appearance, it all looked the same.
From the proximity of the wheat field I knew that God was speaking about the American church, and my heart was broken. I echo the words of the prophet Jeremiah: Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people (Jeremiah 9:1).
I love my country, and I want her to be saved. I am trusting for a turnaround. But we cannot allow the backsliding of our own nation to blind us to the vast opportunity further from us. We must take Jesus to the other nations now! There are billions in the valley of decision, low-hanging fruit begging to be harvested, with not another day to wait. We have the technology to complete the task, and the time is now!
We cannot afford to fall into the common trap of being blinded by what’s right in front of us, missing the potential of what is just out of our reach. Let’s look beyond the present and see what can be. God is looking for pioneers to blaze new trails. Those trails will not only pave the way for many to follow but will also take the pioneers who forge them to the desired destination of finding purpose, meaning, and significance in their own personal lives.
