Empowered 21 Asia Congress 2017
This year’s Empowered 21 Asia Congress was held at the Singapore Expo Hall 31st May – 2nd June, and over 7,400 delegates from virtually every Asian nation attended. There was powerfully anointed worship, preaching and teaching, and hundreds were baptized in the Holy Spirit. One of the focus was the ‘passing on of the baton’ from father to daughter, father to son, etc.
While ministering during the conference, Pastor Balcombe held up portions of the Bible in Chinese that had been copied by hand.
Thus there were several such ‘family ministry’ teams such as Pastor Niko Njotorahardjo of Indonesia who is passing the ministry to his son Bill (their congregation has grown to more than 250,000); the main sponsoring church Faith Community Baptist Church of Singapore (over 10,000 members) in which Pastor Lawrence Khong is passing the baton to his son Daniel Khong; Dr. Colton Wickramaratne of the mega-church, People’s Church in Colombo, Sri Lanka, who gave the church to his son Dishan; myself who gave my church, Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong to my daughter Sharon and her husband Samuel Lau over 10 years ago; Lee Seung Bang of the 1,000 member All Nations Church in Jeju, Korea, who has handed the ministry to his daughter Esther; and Pastor César Castellanos of the International Charismatic Mission in Bogota, Columbia (over 150,000 members) who is passing the ministry to his daughter Sara and her husband. Also, one of the speakers was David Yonggi Cho, the founder of the 800,000-strong Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, who years ago handed the church over to the younger successor, Rev. Young Hoon Lee.
Also during the conference, five older Asian church leaders were honored for their life-time service and leadership in Asia: Dr. David Yonggi Cho (Korea); Rev. Dr. Colton Wickramaratne (Sri Lanka); Rev. David Mohan (India); Pastor Dennis Balcombe (Hong Kong); Tan Sri (Dr) Prince Guneratnam (Malaysia); and Rev. Canon Dr. James Wong (Singapore).
Also, one of the main speakers who conducted several large evangelical rallies after the conference was Evangelist Daniel Kolenda, who received the mantle of evangelism through the power of the Holy Spirit from German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke. He is now carrying on the work of this most famous evangelist in Africa and many other nations.
The Theme of the conference was “Wind and Fire”, and it is the vision of this ministry that the wind and fire of the Biblical day of Pentecost and Azusa Street will be passed down to all succeeding generations. While this movement may be in decline in the West, it is growing and powerful throughout much of Asia, India and the Indian sub-continent, South East Asia, Africa and South America.
At the same time, renewed persecution not seen in decades is now coming to the churches in our part of the world, especially in China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Russia. This is the work of the forces of darkness working in religions and government establishments, as the Spirit-filled churches in these nations are literally ‘possessing the gates of hell’ and rescuing millions from the snare of the enemy.
While we are generally experiencing unprecedented revival in most of Asia, we also are facing great challenges and must preach the Gospel with power and demonstration of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the 4.47 billion people living in Asia. Thus Empowered 21 Asia was one of the most significant events I have seen in many years.
Dennis Balcombe, Hong Kong
Category: Church History, Summer 2017
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