20 YEARS OF MINISTRY
0n Sunday 28th of May 1989, the 1st church service was conducted at Badougbe in the VO prefecture of the Maritime Region of Togo to mark the birth of the Badougbe church. The church was originally called ‘Eglise Baptiste de la Delivrance.’ Today, she is called the New Jerusalem church and is part of Mission Baptiste de la Delivrance.
The Mission Baptiste de la Delivrance has three other churches in Togo namely: ‘La Revelation’, ‘Hopelight’ and ‘Kalvaria’. Recently, a new church was started in Accra, Ghana by the name, God’s Mission Solution centre which will work as an affiliate of the Togo church.
The mission started a school in the hamlet settlements of Badougbe to help fight the high incident of illiteracy and child labour in the area. The school, which is in the 1st cycle stage, hopes to grow into 3rd cycle educational set up. It is being built in collaboration with 4HIM of Oklahoma City, USA.
The 20th anniversary was marked with prayer sessions throughout the churches of the mission. As this year’s anniversary also falls in the week of Pentecost, the occasion was used to hold seminars on the Holly Spirit. On Pentecost day which fell on 31st May, Pastor Ransome, founder of the mission gave a sermon on ‘THE PENTECOST AS A FEAST OF NEW GRAIN’
In the sermon, he traced the origin of the Pentecost feast to the Jewish new grain feast which is the second of the three major agricultural feasts of the people of God. He said this feast follows an earlier one called the First Fruits Feast which is basically an occasion that the Jews bring their first fruits to the priest to be waved before God in thanksgiving for an anticipated harvest. (Leviticus 23: 10-11, 15-16) He said first fruits are normally devoured by farmers especially if it followed a long period of drought. He said though first fruits satiate our extreme starvation caused by prolonged droughts, the actual food security comes when the first fruits spur us on to bring in the harvest of new grains. The advent of the new grain is expected to give us adequate strength to continue bringing in the totality of the harvest, drying or treating them and finally putting them in the silos, which corresponds with the 3rd Jewish feast called the Feast of Tabernacles.(Leviticus 23:39-40)
The pastor went back into the bible to draw the relationship between the feast of the Jewish people and Christianity. He quoted 1st Corinthians 15:20 and Romans 8:29 and said Jesus is the first fruit of those that will abandon death to inherit eternal life. He said Jesus’ advent into the world in flesh was at a time the whole world was experiencing apostasy and there was a great drought of truth, justice and all that goes with it. Jesus’ three-year ministry on earth satiated the many years of the people’s starvation of truth, justice and health, both spiritual and physical. But as satiating as first fruits are, the time comes when we need to progress from that period to that of the new grains that would give us strength to bring in its totality and stock it to ensure long term food security. He illustrated this point with the story in the bible in which Jesus, seeing the crowd lamented that there were not enough labourers. He said the next thing He did after making that observation was to chose some disciples and empower them for the job (Mathew 9:35-10:1). In the same way, His three-year ministry was going to bring in plenty harvest, the harnessing of which would require energy (power) so when His time on earth was coming to an end, He promised to send down the Holy Spirit who would empower us to bring in the full harvest to be put into the silos of God. (John 14:16-18, 16: 7-11, Acts 1:8) He said the coming down of the Holy Spirit at the time the Jews were celebrating the feast of new grains (which has come to be known as Pentecost because it is celebrated fifty days after the first fruits) is not a coincidence. God in His wisdom was drawing us to the harvest that Jesus saw when He was here in the flesh and wants us to be empowered so we can not only bring in the new grains, but also dry an treat them so they can be put into His barns.
Pastor Ransome finally talked about the dangers of working without power. He likened the former times when we were in the world and under Satan’s control, as our periods of drought. He said, then, our lives were a pity, characterised by unfulfilled dreams, uncompleted projects, inability to defend our rights and the selling off of our precious assets cheap to shylocks to whom we had sold ourselves and who insisted on claiming their pound of flesh. (See Romans 6:15-20, 7:5) When we come to Christ, we have become the harvest and at the same time the potential labourers in the cornfields.
The Holy Spirit, who made us the harvest of God when He gave us birth into the family of God, is now in town to empower us to become labourers in His vineyard. In other words, the new grain has come to give us energy to bring in the rest of the grains, and make it ready for the silos. We are invited to ask for the Spirit and are assured He will be given to us. Our inability to benefit from the power of the Holy Spirit is foolhardiness because we risk remaining in our weakened state in this world where Satan is branding his powers about!