"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back…" (Isaiah 54:2, NIV)
The crusade in Vilnius, Lithuania, is the largest crusade we have held in Europe – and probably the largest since the great Billy Graham rallies. It cost us everything we have – but the results are tremendous. – Thank you for praying – Thank you for giving.
Lithuania, 3.6 million, is a North European country, the southernmost of the three Baltic States. It shares borders with Latvia, Belarus, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Its capital city, Vilnius, is the current European Capital of Culture. Lithuania is celebrating 1000 years since the Gospel first came to this nation.
The three days of evangelism, were, in the words of the founding pastor of the large United Nations Church in Geneva, ‘a spectacular success’ – ‘the finest preparation and presentation combined with the greatest power of God’. We took and filled the largest indoor stadium in the Baltics – more than 10,000 attended the evening services – and according to the pastors, a maximum of 2,500 were believers, the great majority being unbelievers who responded nightly, in their thousands, to the powerful preaching of the Gospel, streaming forward with tears of repentance until the centre of the arena was packed. Nationwide advertising brought in bus-loads from across the nation – with the result that the whole nation was shaken.
After we left, over 30 separate Alpha Courses were started in Vilnius alone to take care of the new believers! A businessman staying in our hotel attended all the meetings. – He said, ‘Never have such meetings been held in Lithuania!’ A local pastor told us, ‘Never in the whole history of the nation have so many people ever gathered to hear the Gospel! We have been waiting and praying over twenty years for this.’
Our organizers began preparation one year before, involving the whole nation, and every denominational group from Pentecostal to the Catholics who asked us to give it the national title of ‘Gospel Celebration’, to celebrate 1000 years since Christianity first came to Lithuania. Local representatives went into every town, every village, throughout the nation, to tell the churches to bring unbelievers into the meetings. The secular media carried our advertising and wrote positively in anticipation even before the event.
The campaign was combined with a great humanitarian aid programme to relieve the distress caused by the catastrophic financial situation in Lithuania, which now finds itself lying behind a new ‘Iron Curtain’ of financial debt to Western Europe. A special event was also held for the orphan children from across the country. The last night closed with a grand musical finale – the finest professional singers in the nation performing a very moving and spectacular musical on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ which confirmed the spectacular glory of our redemption in Christ.
When we planned this great evangelism we had no money – and it finally cost us more than we had – In fact, all we ever have is the prayer we put in, your support and the power of God! The drop in the value of the pound plus the costs of the overflow crowds means we still owe more than £50,000.