Day 500 of the invasion on Ukraine
Day 500 of the invasion on Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:
- ISW: Exhausted squads and ineptitude fail the Russians at Bakhmut
- Ukrainian forces announced that they destroyed a Russian military unit near Bakhmut
- Zelensky vowed to regain the entire territory of Ukraine
- “We need more time”: Zelensky postpones the counteroffensive
- The Kremlin has acknowledged difficulties in the war in Ukraine
- NATO does not view China as a military threat, but does Russia and terrorists
- The New York Times: Putin has no plan B for the war in Ukraine and has set himself up for a trap
- Assets of the oligarch Malofeev are directed to rebuild Ukraine
ISW: Exhausted squads and ineptitude fail the Russians at Bakhmut
“Russia is sending depleted troop groups to the Bakhmut front, which, combined with apparent gaps in command and control, are likely to prevent Russian forces in the area from conducting credible defensive operations.” This is the assessment of a new analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Russian 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which was destroyed near Bakhmut in September last year, had previously suffered losses in the Kharkiv region during the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian armed forces, and in October 2022 its surviving elements were defeated in the Mykolaiv region, the military said experts.
On August 7 last year, the ISW announced that the formation of the 72nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade in Russia‘s Orenburg Region had begun.
The Russians have been trying to capture Bakhmut for months now, but they are getting a decent rebuff from the defenders of Ukraine and suffering huge losses.
On May 9, Ukrainian soldiers routed the enemy’s 72nd Brigade.
The commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel-General Oleksandr Sirsky, said that in some parts of the front near Bakhmut, the Russians retreated under the pressure of the Ukrainian army by up to two kilometers.
The commander of “Azov” Andriy Biletsky stated that as a result of the offensive, the Ukrainian soldiers almost completely destroyed several regiments of the 72nd ODVMV.
Ukrainian forces announced that they destroyed a Russian military unit near Bakhmut
Ukrainian forces said they destroyed a Russian military unit near the eastern city of Bakhmut. The latest developments confirm Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s statement that Moscow is facing a “very difficult” military operation.
In an interview with Bosnian television, the Kremlin spokesman said that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is very difficult, but will continue. He added that Russian forces have managed to inflict serious damage on the Ukrainian army, that they will not stop and that with the help of high-precision missiles, the Russian side has managed to destroy military production and stockpiles of Ukrainian weapons.
Yesterday, however, the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, said that the Ukrainians were carrying out successful counterattacks in the Bakhmut region and had managed to push the Russians out of some sections of the front, which was confirmed earlier by the head of the Russian private military company “Wagner” Yevgeny Prigozhin . According to him, in the battle in question, the Russians ceded territory with an area of three square kilometers, for which 500 victims were given.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a fundamentally new concept of Ukrainian security is being developed and that Kyiv is actively working with its international partners on new defense packages for the country.
In his evening video address, Zelensky vowed to regain every bit of the territory occupied by Russia.
“Let us not forget for a minute that every day of the presence of the occupier on our land is a temptation for him to think that he will succeed. He will not succeed! We must bring freedom, security and Europe back to all Ukrainian land – to all European land. We will do it! We will not leave one bit of our land to the enemy – tyranny will not rule anywhere.”
Zelensky vowed to regain the entire territory of Ukraine
Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed last night to regain every bit of territory occupied by Russia, at a time when his fighters on the front are said to have made territorial progress near the contested city of Bakhmut, DPA reported, BTA broadcasts.
“We will not leave a single piece of our land to the enemy – tyranny will not rule anywhere,” Zelensky said in his evening video address. “We must bring freedom, security and Europe back to all Ukrainian land,” he added.
His address came hours after Ukrainian forces, who are waging heavy fighting for control of eastern Donetsk region, said they had pushed Russian forces to within 2 km in some places near Bakhmut.
“We are conducting effective counterattacks there,” Ukrainian ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrsky said on Telegram on Wednesday night.
Sirsky said units of the Russian Wagner mercenary force stationed at Bakhmut had been replaced in some sectors by regular Russian units. These less well-prepared combat units have now been routed, the commander said, adding that “the battle for Bakhmut continues“.
Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, reported on Telegram that the territory was completely cleared of Russian soldiers and at least two Russian brigades were destroyed and prisoners of war were taken.
As the fighting continued, Wagner’s commander, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said he feared his unit could be surrounded in the Battle of Bakhmut. “In view of the lack of ammunition, the ‘meat grinder’ is now threatening to turn in the opposite direction,” Prigozhin wrote on Telegram yesterday.
Due to the large losses in manpower, “Wagner” was forced to leave the protection of the flank to regular units of the Russian army, which were pushed back to a depth of up to 2 km.
“There is now a serious danger of Wagner being encircled because of the collapse of the flanks. And the flanks are already showing cracks and disintegration,” wrote Prigozhin.
Meanwhile, Russia has called up its reservists for annual exercises. A document to this effect, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, was published yesterday in the State Gazette.
According to the decree, the Ministry of Defense can issue the relevant instructions to the military districts, which will then call up the reservists for the exercise, TASS reported. In view of the war in Ukraine, however, many reservists may question whether they have been called up for training or could be sent to the front.
According to foreign estimates, Russia has about 2 million reservists, of which up to 150,000 are said to have been sent to Ukraine. In the recent mobilization, many young men chose to flee abroad.
For weeks, there have been expectations of a large-scale counteroffensive by the Ukrainian army. However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned against expecting too much from a possible spring offensive by Ukrainian forces. “Don’t see this counteroffensive as the last one, because we don’t know what will come of it,” Kuleba told Germany’s Bild newspaper, adding: “To win the war, you need weapons, weapons and more weapons.”
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic provided Ukraine with two Soviet 2K12 “Kub” anti-aircraft systems. The delivery also included a “relatively large number of missiles,” Czech President Petr Pavel said in a radio interview yesterday.
“We need more time”: Zelensky postpones the counteroffensive
Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country needs more time to launch a long-awaited counter-offensive against Russia as the military still needs promised help from the West, the BBC reported on Thursday.
The expected attack could be decisive in the war, redrawing front lines that have remained unchanged for months.
“With (what we have) we can go forward and be successful. But we will lose a lot of people. I think this is unacceptable,” he said in an interview with public broadcasters which are Eurovision members, including the BBC.
“So we have to wait. We need some more time though.”
The president described the combat brigades, some of which are trained by NATO countries, as “ready“, but said the army still needed “some things“, including armored vehicles which were “coming in batches“.
When and where the Ukrainian counteroffensive will begin is a secret. Russian forces have strengthened their defenses along a 1,450 km long front line that runs from the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian authorities have tried to play down expectations of a breakthrough, both publicly and in private talks, the BBC reports.
A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the country’s leaders “understand that (they) have to succeed” but that the attack should not be seen as a panacea in a war that is now in its 15th month.
However, the president expressed confidence that the Ukrainian army could mount an offensive, warning of the risks of a “frozen conflict” that he said Russia was “relying on“.
The negotiations
For Kyiv, any outcome seen as disappointing to the West could mean a reduction in military support and pressure for negotiations with Russia, writes the BBC.
Since almost a fifth of Ukraine‘s territory is under Russian control and President Vladimir Putin has announced the annexation of four regions that his forces partially occupy (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson), this will likely mean that the talks will also include the issue of settlement of the territorial dispute over them.
“Everyone has ideas, but they cannot pressure Ukraine to hand over territories. Why should any country in the world give Putin its territory?“, the president asked rhetorically.
The allies
However, Zelensky dismissed fears of losing US support if President Joe Biden, who has pledged to support Ukraine as long as necessary, is not re-elected in 2024.
Ukraine, he said, still enjoys bipartisan support in the US Congress. “Who knows where we will be (when the election comes). I believe we will win by then.”
For now, peace talks are not seen as a realistic prospect, as both sides say they will fight for victory.
President Zelensky proposed a 10-point peace proposal calling for the return of all invaded territories, the payment of reparations for war-related damages and the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes, a plan that Moscow has strongly rejected.
The sanctions
Western sanctions, the president said, were affecting Russia‘s defense industry, citing depleted missile stocks and artillery shortages.
“They still have a lot in their stockpiles, but … we are already seeing that they have reduced the shelling per day in some areas,” he told media.
However, Moscow has found ways to circumvent some of the measures, he said, and urged countries to target those helping Russia circumvent the bans.
The EU is already discussing new sanctions, which include trade bans on third countries that resell to Russia goods bought by them from the EU and which are on the Union’s sanctions lists.
Drones over the Kremlin
Zelensky again rejected Russia‘s accusation that Ukraine was behind last week’s alleged drone attack on the Kremlin, which Moscow described as an attempt to assassinate President Putin.
According to him, it was organized by Russia itself to use it as an “excuse” for attacks against Ukraine.
“They are constantly looking for something that sounds like a justification, saying: ‘You do this to us, so we do that to you,’” said President Zelensky.
However, according to him, the tactic failed even among Kremlin propagandists, “because it looked very, very artificial.”
Eurovision
The president spoke against the backdrop of the Eurovision Song Contest being held in the English city of Liverpool, which was chosen to host on behalf of Ukraine, the winner of last year’s contest.
He said he would prefer to see the competition in a neighboring country “where our people can travel and be very close” but that he has “a lot of respect” for Britain, an “amazing country“.
“The main thing is that the competition is taking place,” he said. “Let people show their talent.”
The Kremlin has acknowledged difficulties in the war in Ukraine
Russia‘s military operation against Ukraine is “very difficult” but will continue, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bosnia’s ATV TV on Wednesday, as quoted by state news agency TASS.
Russia has managed to inflict serious damage on the Ukrainian military machine and that work will continue, he added in a lengthy interview during which he repeated many of Moscow’s talking points about the conflict, Reuters reported.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what Moscow called a “special military operation” and initially seized significant territory, some of which Ukraine retook in the fall. Kyiv is now planning a new counteroffensive.
According to Western calculations, Russia has lost more than 200,000 soldiers – killed or wounded.
“The special military operation continues. This is a very difficult operation and, of course, certain goals were achieved in one year,” said Peskov, quoted by TASS.
According to him, Russia has so far managed to partially achieve the goals of its military operation.
“You see that the shelling with rocket salvo systems continues, the bombing of Donetsk and other populated areas. Therefore, of course, the enemy must be moved to a considerable distance, and therefore the operation will continue,” the spokesman added.
He stated that Moscow was continuing its efforts to seize Bakhmut and then hold it.
“We managed to cripple the Ukrainian military machine,” Peskov said, noting that Russia has launched countless missile strikes against what he says are military targets across Ukraine.
“This work will continue,” he assures.
Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting mainly civilian targets to break Ukrainians’ loyalty to the government in Kyiv. Moscow denies it, insisting it is only shelling military targets.
Peskov explains the slow progress of the Russian units with concern for the local infrastructure.
“We are not waging a war, if it were a war, it would be something else – complete destruction of infrastructure and cities. We are not doing this. We are trying to preserve the infrastructure. And secondly, to preserve people’s lives,” the spokesman said.
NATO does not view China as a military threat, but does Russia and terrorists
NATO’s military command does not consider China a military threat and does not develop plans in the event of a conflict. This was stated by Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, after a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
“We do not qualify China as a threat, but as a challenge (…). And we do not develop military plans related to China,” he said.
Bauer explained that the alliance considers Russia and international terrorism a threat. Therefore, the military command is developing plans specifically for a possible confrontation with Moscow and with terrorist groups, including international terrorist groups.
Bauer added that this position of the alliance does not mean that the command of the armed forces of individual member countries does not engage in strategic planning in the event of an armed conflict with China.
The war in Ukraine
Bauer commented that Russian forces in Ukraine are in an increasingly difficult position:
“Russia is in the 15th month of a war that it thought it would win in three days,” said Bauer, quoted by DPA.
“Goliath languished as David showed great toughness and tactical genius, which was supported by 50 countries around the world,” said the head of NATO’s military committee.
According to him, in the coming months, Moscow can be expected to resort to increasingly old equipment and to more untrained soldiers.
The New York Times: Putin has no plan B for the war in Ukraine and has set himself up for a trap
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin dreamed of a blitzkrieg in Ukraine and really believed in capturing Kyiv in a few days. He didn’t have a plan B, and that got him into a trap.
This is what analyst Thomas Friedman wrote in a commentary for The New York Times, stressing that the dictator can neither lose this war nor stop it. At the same time, his army is unable to conquer new territories. Cessation of hostilities will mean acceptance of defeat.
Putin’s lack of a Plan B confirms that the Russian occupiers have resorted to indiscriminate shelling of the civilian infrastructure of peaceful Ukrainian cities. Perhaps now the Kremlin hopes to start a war of attrition that will break the Ukrainian resistance and weaken the West’s aid to Ukraine, commented Friedman, quoted by UNIAN.
Today, Putin’s Plan B is to mask the collapse of Plan A to take over all of Ukraine at lightning speed. The journalist quipped that the Russians should have called the war not a “special military operation” but operation “Save My Face”.
“What makes this war one of the most painful and senseless wars of modern times is that the leader destroys the civilian infrastructure of another country to cover up the fact that he was a big fool,” Friedman argued.
According to the analyst, Putin is still trying to find at least some justification for the failures of the “second army of the world” in Ukraine.
Friedman is convinced that now Putin is struggling to find a plan B, but there are many problems – they need to explain the failures, losses and isolation in which Russia has found itself.
“It is impossible to get inside Putin’s head and predict his next move… His actions show that he is aware of the failure of Plan A. And now he will do anything to create a Plan B to justify the terrible losses for the country where defeated leaders do not resign peacefully,” Friedman wrote.
Assets of the oligarch Malofeev are directed to rebuild Ukraine
Confiscated assets of sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev have been directed to a fund to rebuild Ukraine by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Reuters reported.
This is the first US-approved transfer of seized Russian assets for use in Ukraine.
The US Justice Department last year accused Malofeev of violating sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The oligarch was sanctioned for funding Russians promoting separatism in Crimea.
Garland reported that “the confiscation of millions of dollars from an account at a US financial institution traceable to Malofeev’s sanctions violations” was then ordered.
In February, the US attorney general said he had approved the transfer of those funds for use in Ukraine.
“This represents the first US transfer of seized Russian assets for the recovery of Ukraine,” Garland said, adding that “it won’t be the last.”
The European Union has been discussing such a step for months, but the work to find a legal way to transfer Russian state and private assets seized under the sanctions, which cannot be attacked by Moscow, is not yet finished.
According to the current rules, frozen and confiscated funds and property must be returned to their owners after the sanctions are lifted.
According to World Bank data from March, almost half a trillion dollars will be needed to rebuild Ukraine after the war.
In Memoriam: Martha Zaplishny Jackson (1926 – 2023)
South Attleboro, Massachusetts – Martha C. (Zaplishny) Jackson, 96, went to her heavenly reward on Saturday, May 6, 2023. She was the beloved wife of Rev. David V. Jackson. The couple would have celebrated their sixty-ninth wedding anniversary on May 8, 2023.
Born in Stamford, Connecticut, she was the daughter of Missionaries to Bulgaria, the late Dionisey and Olga (Popova) Zaplishny. Martha’s father died when she was eight years old. She had resided in Newport, Rhode Island before moving to South Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1966.
Martha was a longtime member of Crossroads International Church, the former South Attleboro Assembly of God, where her husband had been Pastor for thirty-three years. She was a kindergarten teacher at Dayspring Christian Academy, South Attleboro, for forty-two years until retiring in 2009.
Besides her loving husband, she leaves two daughters, Joy Jackson Marchione and her husband, Nicola, of Walpole, Massachusetts and Susan Faith Mayer and her husband, James, of North Attleboro; seven grandchildren, Jeffrey Jackson, Christina Bensley, Carley Jackson, Riley Marchione, Sara Marchione, Rachel Mayer and Christian Mayer; four great-grandchildren, Tristan Bensley, Kai Bensley, David Jackson and Christiana Jackson, and many nieces and nephews. She was the mother of the late Jonathan Roy Jackson.
VISITATION will be held on Friday, May 12, 2023 from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. at Crossroads International Church, 1052 Newport Ave., South Attleboro. Services will be held on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 10:30 a.m. at Crossroads International Church, 1052 Newport Ave., South Attleboro. Interment will follow at Swan Point Cemetery, 585 Blackstone Boulevard, Providence, Rhode Island. In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts to the Missions, C/O Crossroads International Church, 1052 Newport Ave., South Attleboro, MA 02703 would be appreciated.
The 300 CHURCH
Global Network of Bulgarian Evangelical Churches outside of Bulgaria (2023 Report)
Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in the European Union (2019)
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Germany
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Spain
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in England
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in France
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Belgium
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Italy
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Cyprus
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Crete
Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in America (2019 Report)
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Chicago (2019 Report)
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Texas (2019 Report)
- Bulgarian Evangelical Churches – West Coast (2019 Report)
- Atlanta (active since 1996)
- Los Angeles (occasional/outreach of the Foursquare Church – Mission Hills, CA)
- Las Vegas (outreach of the Foursquare Church – http://lasvegaschurch.tv)
- San Francisco (occasional/inactive since 2012, Berkeley University/Concord, CA)
Bulgarian Evangelical Churches in Canada (2019 Report)
- Toronto (inactive since 2007)
- Toronto/Slavic (active since 2009)
- Montreal (occasional/inactive since 2012)
CURRENTLY INACTIVE CHURCHES/CONGREGATIONS:
- New York, NY (currently inactive)
- Buffalo, NY (occasional/inactive)
- Jacksonville, FL (occasional/inactive since 2014)
- Ft. Lauderdale / Miami (currently inactive)
- Washington State, Seattle area (currently inactive)
- Minneapolis, MN (occasional/inactive since 2015)
READ MORE:
- First Bulgarian Church in Chicago Opened in 1907
- Gateway Cities for Bulgarian Evangelical Churches
- How to Start a Bulgarian Church in America from A-to-Z
- Unrealized Spiritual Harvest as a Paradigm for Cross-Cultural Ministries among Migrant and Disfranchised Ethnic Groups in America Today
160,000 Pentecostals in Bulgaria Reported by the NEW Encyclopedia of Global Pentecostalism
25 Years ago, I left D.C. and Never Looked Back…
Toward a Pentecostal Strategy for the City
Toward a Pentecostal Strategy for the City
One of the questions that seems to come up in this course discussion is how to change the world around us with a more positive and effective approach toward using the Gospel of Salvation. In this particular module, the difficulty addressed is ethnocentricity. The particularity of our search then arrives at the more detailed question, how can we change the culture (respectively subcultures) of our church congregations? This is a drastic move from a closed circle toward an outreach community that many congregations are unable to accomplish. How do we then empower such congregations to be transformed into cultural reach-outs to a single ethnos or multiple ethnic groups?
Problem
The problem in the first quarter of the 21st century has been incongruity of our church strategy with the times we live in and the mindset they occupy. We’ve been preparing the church for the multicultural battle, all and while we should have been equipping the saints how to rebuild the walls since the battle has been lost.
We’ve been equipping leaders for the ministry while the church ship has been sinking only to end up with well trained captains of a sunken fleet. And in a doomed attempt to reconcile the reality of the ministry with their training, they have turned to wave walkers who briefly surface for breaths of fresh air during Sunday worship only to return to the deep blue walk of their daily ministry never finding their lost piece of eight.
For the battle was lost long ago before the present generation of ministers ever came to existence. They know not the battle. They’ve only seen the ruins that were left within the broken walls of the church. And they have been struggling to reconcile the incomputable of what church eldership has been teaching them to battle against with the Nehemiah calling for restoration, which God has placed upon them. For the answer has never been in building a New Jerusalem for a fresh start, but restoring the old Jerusalem and its former glory to a new state that reclaims our history and heritage.
Context
Recent analysis of migrant churches in the United States reveals that the predominant majority of them are located in cities which have a high influxation and concentration of immigrants. Such localities are called “gateway cities”. Immigrants typically enter the United States through one of these cities and settle there. These areas contain over half of the foreign-born population in the United States as follows:
- New York, NY – Foreign born population 18.7%
- Los Angeles, CA – Foreign born population 27.1%
- Houston, TX – Foreign born population 12.3%
- Washington, DC – Foreign born population 8.6%
- Miami, FL – Foreign born population 33.6%
- Chicago, IL – Foreign born population 11.1%
- San Francisco, CA – Foreign born population 20.0%
Strategy
Asking the right questions is important, but the answers cannot be generic for all ethnic groups or cultural settings. There is a strong need to be flexible and observe changes in culture, but not to change the message of the Gospel or compromise our witness. Several common things are noted in any cultural setting where our ministry is involved:
First and foremost, people of all cultures prefer to be personal with a purpose, rather than being project driven. No one longs to be part of someone else’s project. Yet, our very existence demands personal purpose, which could serve as a great cultural catalyst in a church ministry.
Secondly, cross cultural ministry is not done merely on relationships, but on being real in the relationships. The greatest halt of ministry work is when people realize the relationship with the church has not been a real one, but merely a part of a program or a paradigm.
Finally, our cross cultural model for ministry should not be just salvation oriented, but soul oriented. There is a great difference between writing down the number of saved every Sunday and actually caring for the eternal well-being of the saved souls. In fact, this is so fundamentally determinative that it should be the goal in mind of every new church plant.
Greek-Bulgarian Interlinear of the New Testament in Wal-Mart
Greek-Bulgarian Interlinear of the New Testament (Critical Edition with Apparatus) (Paperback)
This new translation took several years to refine through multiple revisions, re-readings, and new re-translate where needed in order to produce an interlinear with priority advantages and distinctive features as follows:
- The text is arranged in three lines – Greek original, literal translation and for the first time in a Bulgarian publication, an analytical apparatus with detailed morphology of the words.
- A brand-new word for word translation, not phrase for phrase or simple imposed text on an already existing translation, challenges the reader into a deeper understanding of the Word.
- Unnecessary text markers and explanations have been avoided because the parallel stylistics between Greek and Bulgarian are much more similar than other languages even when accompanied with Strong’s numbering.
- The literal meaning of the text is shown without the dynamic equivalent characteristic of other interlinear editions.
- All participles/predicates are literally translated avoiding the superimposition of like, as, which, etc., when they are not in the original text.
- All definite articles are given as in the Greek before the word (not at the end part of the word as it is done in Bulgarian) even in the tradition of Nomina Sacra.
- Enforced literalism on understandable New Testament terminology such as Lord/Master, church/ecclesia/congregation/gathering/assembly, baptism, etc. is avoided.
- The literal word for word translation preserves case and gender as possible in over 90% of the New Testament text.
- The applied critical apparatus in addition to the analytical morphology, includes designation of all verses and passages of critical difference with the Nestle-Aland GNT.
- Hitherto missing morphology now provided, not only shows why a given word is translated in the chosen way, but enables the reader to navigate through more complex grammatical structures of the Greek language and understand them.
Bulgaria in Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter
REVIVAL MUST GO ON…
March 1, 2023
There is a good reason we signed off our final 2022 newsletter with our slogan of 30+ years: “Revival must go on,” after our Revival Harvest Campaign was extended five times over a four-month period last year.
Revival runs deep in our family roots. During the Great Bulgarian Pentecostal Revival in the 1920s, my grandmother was miraculously healed on her death bed from tuberculosis, saved and filled with the Spirit along with our whole family five generations back.
Exactly 70 years later, I was saved in the post-Communist Revival in Bulgaria prophesied by Danish journalist Johny Noer, who openly challenged the communist authorities with the words: “Let my people go!” I was filled with the Spirit and called to the Ministry within two weeks time. Having never seen anything like this before, without any prior theological training or spiritual experience, I witnessed over 300 students getting saved in the little mountain church where I began preaching.
In 1995, I saw another revival among the Bulgarian immigrants in Chicago, where within one short summer of organizing the Bulgarian Church there, some 100+ were saved and 64 of them became members of the Narragansett Church of God where we held meetings.
I was blessed to preach multiple back-to-back revival meetings again through the summer of 1999 in South Carolina and then again in the early 2017 in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas and across Europe in the fall of that same year. But all this did not happen until after the 2011 Tennessee tornadoes, when we saw the cloud of His glory over a youth camp we held in the mountains of Bulgaria in a grass-roots student revival that just could not be stopped by the establishment. It was then that we distinctly heard from the Spirit to move to our current location and wait for The Revival. And even after we gave a word at the Regional Church of God exactly nine months before the massive school revival of Delbarton, West Virginia broke out there in 2016, it just didn’t feel this was it.
A little bit over ten long years have now passed in this location of daily prayers for revival and if all the fasting through years was to be added, it will probably amount to a good fifth of that whole time. If we have learned one thing through this long period of fervent waiting, it is that revival cannot be faked. Oh, you can try of course, but you ain’t fooling God with it. Neither can you fake healing – and this word in particular should not be taken lightly in the new reality of our post-covid world.
And if the Spirit is indeed doing a new thing in our day today, it will not be tongues, gifts or offices, but a return to Biblical holiness. For holiness cannot be faked either. It is transparent before both men and God. And just because people do not like the political church run by a corporate business-model any longer, it does not make them a mission field. But it does call for a harvest that no one has gathered yet! And for this reason, REVIVAL MUST GO ON… until the Holiness of God prevail!
2022: Revival Harvest Campaign
2021: Revelation Revival at Cookson Creek
2018 Revival Harvest Campaign: REBUILDING the WALLS
2017 Prophetic Revival in Bulgaria: The Search for Holiness Continues
2016 School Youth Revival Takes Over Delbarton, West Virginia
2016 110 Years ago, the Azusa Street Revival Began with a Fast
2016 The FORGOTTEN ROOTS OF THE AZUSA STREET REVIVAL
2015 Why Revival Came? by Dr. Charles Conn
2015 La France District Revival
2014 25 Year Revival Cycles in Bulgaria’s Protestant History
2014 Revival Harvest Campaign 2014 in Varna and Signing of the Scrolls
2013 End of Days Revival Series
2012 12.12.12. Revival at the End of the World
2012 Revival Harvest Campaign 2012: Revival Must Go On…
2011 WAR ON THE SAINTS: Revival Dawn and the Baptism of the Spirit
2011 Historic Pentecostal Revival Tour in Bulgaria Continues
2009 Revival Begins in Chicago
2008 Revival Bulgaria 2 Film Released
2007 Revelation Revival Continues
2007 Revival in Bulgaria Again
2006 Mission Maranatha in Revival
2006 Healing in the Midst of Revival
2005 Revival in Bulgaria Again
2004 Revival Harvest Campaign Results
2004 Is There Revival in Bulgaria?
2003 Postcommunist Protestant Revival in Bulgaria
