KUCHING, Sep 13: The mammoth Pentecostal Night gathering this weekend was born out of a vision to set way for transforming the rural indigenous people into a God-fearing community that adapts well to the changing times.
After more than a year of detailed planning, the event is finally realised this Sept 14-15 at the Jubilee Ground, here, to celebrate the grandeur of God’s divine majesty and the unity of Christians in the gift of the Holy Spirit, said Dato Janang Bungsu, chairman of Pentecostal Night 2019.
“When I first mooted the idea and shared it with friends in a ‘Gempuru Besai’ (big gathering) with a few local churches, I was encouraged by their support to pursue it.
“Since then, it was prayer and more prayers that kept us going on the idea to hold a Pentecostal night,” said Janang, adding that many shared similar vision and hope to bring back many of the rural longhouse folk into the Christian fold through the power of the Holy Spirit.
He said the time has arrived for the nominal Dayak Christians in the rural areas to experience a spiritual awakening and depart from the old animist ways that once revered the spirit and forces of darkness, adding that “God in His mercy has a plan for all of us who abide in Him and He has a plan for the poor rural people.”
Janang said he looked forward to the Pentecostal night as an avenue for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of what he described as the “third wave of revival”, with the first and second revival being in Bario and Ba Kelalan respectively.
“The revival this time would ignite the fire of transformation that would spread to people in the rural areas,” he continued.
Janang, an engineer by profession, recalled how the family had to endure difficulty after his father passed away when he was just one years old. Poverty took a toll on his family.
However, he excelled in his studies, achieving outstanding examination results for a boy coming from a poor longhouse family.
“It was in my late teen that I got connected with the Church and sought the blessings of God through prayer,” he said.
Janang said his prayer was answered and what followed was a blessing upon blessing heaped on him.
“The time has come for me to give back what God has blessed me with, and I want to share these abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit with the thousands of rural people in the deep interior,” he added.
The inter-denominational Pentecostal night, which was born of Janang’s vision of a spiritual awakening for the longhouse people, bears testimony to the journey of a man from poverty to blessings.
He added that he now rises in faith to share the blessings of the Holy Spirit, and is joined in hope and vision by thousands of other well-meaning believers.
The Pentecostal Night, with the theme “Roh Kudus dan Penuaian” or “The Holy Spirit and the harvest”, is the first inter-denominational gathering of such mammoth scale to be held in Sarawak.
It is expected to attract a nightly crowd of about 25,000, including thousands from as far as Sabah, Brunei, Kuala Lumpur and Indonesia.
The speaker at the two-night gathering is Pastor Philip Mantofa from Mawar Sharon Church in Surabaya, Indonesia. Widely known as being blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the pastor also has the burning passion and commitment to ignite the fire within the younger generation. — DayakDaily
