The Tribune

BY DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

World for Jesus is an international ministry on a mission to win nations for Christ. According to the ministry, it has already led two million people in the Philippines to Jesus and brought Catholics and Protestants in Ireland together.

The next stop is The Bahamas, and World 4 Jesus founder Dr James Horvath and other pastors are now finalising plans for a national evangelism initiative called Bahamas 4 Jesus.

"This initiative is to reach as many people in a nation for the Lord," said Dr Horvath said. We have already done this in the Philippines, Ireland, and The Bahamas is the third island-wide initiative."

Accompanying him was Rev Charles Brewster, a former US Secret Service officer assigned to five US presidents now turned pastor, and founder of the Brewster Group of Pensacola, Florida.

They met with local pastors on Grand Bahama on Wednesday to discuss plans about the event, which is slated for November, and to get as many churches onboard with this major Christian initiative.

Pastor Eddie Victor, of Living Waters Assembly of God in Freeport, said representatives from about 150 to 200 churches from the US and other countries around the world will be coming here for Bahamas 4 Jesus.

"It will take place throughout The Bahamas, including New Providence and Grand Bahama, and teams will be in Andros, Eleuthera, Bimini, Abaco, Long Island, and Exuma simultaneously," he said.

Pastor Victor said they are going to do door-to-door witnessing, community outreach activities, and crusade-type events to reach people for the Lord.

Dr Horvath has been a pastor at the Calvary Lighthouse Church in Chicago, Illinois, for the past 32 years. World 4 Jesus is an international ministry that began in 2014 under his James Horvath Ministries.

"God started this," he said. "It began with a ministry we started in the Philippines that has led to date over two million Philippines to Jesus Christ. We have done crusades in 275 cities of the world."

"And the Lord spoke to me to not simply take cities, but to begin going after entire nations, and He said to me, I want you to bring your friends together. And the first nation he told us to begin in was the Philippines; that was in 2014, but we had started work there in 2013," he explained.

Dr Horvath has an office in the Philippines, in Dublin, Ireland, and one now in The Bahamas.

"We have made over ten trips to The Bahamas and have been working for a year and a half, almost two years now doing background work for Bahamas 4 Jesus," he said.

He explained that World 4 Jesus was a huge success in the Philippines, where some 30,000 churches of all different denominations came and worked together in an unprecedented way.

"We went to 29 cities in a ten-day window, and in the first week we did Manila where there are 29 million people, and the infrastructure there is extremely difficult," Dr Horvath recalled.

They rented seven of the largest buildings in the city, including the 30,000-seat Aeronetta Arena where Mohammed Ali and Joe Fraser had fought; the 14,000-seat East Side Arena; the 13,000-seat Cuneta Astrodome; the 10,000-seat Cathedral of Praise facility; the 8,000-seat World of Hope facility, and two other facilities with seating for 7,000 and 5,000 respectively.

That same week, leaders for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) were coming in and had to settle for much smaller facilities because Dr Horvath had rented all the big venues in Manila.

"As a result of the two events, the president of the nation (Benigno Aquino III) shut down the entire city of Manila so people could come to the crusade for a full week and declared a holiday. The entire city of Manila was a no-fly zone, you could not fly any planes in or out, so literally we had a captive audience," said Dr Horvath.

During the 10-day period, he said, about 310,000 people were saved in the Philippines. "That is about the population of The Bahamas. That's how World 4 Jesus began," he said.

The second country they went into was Ireland, where they visited 17 cities, including Dublin and the Province of Leinster among others.

"We rented the largest buildings in those cities, and we brought in 300 ministries from around the world with us, not just in the US, we had a team from The Bahamas, New Zealand, Philippines, England, and on Pentecostal Sunday an incredible miracle happened," said Dr Horvath.

"If you know the history of Ireland, the Catholics and Protestants have been warring there, and what happened was phenomenal. All the churches cancelled their Sunday morning services and went to the national stadium for one combined service - that is a miracle. The number of Christians in the Republic of Ireland in the ten-day window doubled. It is pretty phenomenal. We had the head of the Evangelical Alliance work with us in Ireland," he said.

Dr Horvath said now they are coming to The Bahamas.

Rev Charles Brewster, who served for 23 years as a Secret Service agent for US Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and Bill Clinton, said that God had a bigger plan for his life.

"I ended as the agent in charge of the northwest region of the US in Seattle when I got called to ministry in 1998," he recalled.

Rev Brewster said the purpose for coming to the Bahamas is to win souls for the Christ and help motivate churches to reach their community.

"We just got finished doing Ireland for Jesus, and we did Philippines 4 Jesus. It's taken several years, but after this, it is Caribbean 4 Jesus," he said.

"It is the beginning of us saying, 'Hey, we are one church, and we want people to recognise God is with us; we want people to recognise that we are not just different nations - we are one nation under God."

Rev Brewster noted that we live in a dangerous place where churches are not a safe zone but are soft targets. "I will use my experience to help churches protect themselves and be proactive so they can prevent violence in their church and recognise symptoms," he said.