Baraka ya Roho Mutakatifu

It used to be the Belgian Congo, it later became Zaire, and today it’s back as the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want to tell you as best I can of what God most wonderfully did for our church in the NE corner of the country back in the 1950s.

God sent a wonderful visitation of the Holy Spirit to us. In the Congo-Swahili language that we used, we called this visitation Baraka ya Roho Mutakatifu (the blessing of the Holy Spirit).

Just as background for my own part in this movement of God: I knew within three hours of being saved that there was nothing else I wanted to do except share Jesus with other people. This meant I should become a missionary. I had arrived in Congo just seven months before these events took place. As a doctor I had a great desire to share Christ. Back then the accepted idea was that missionary doctors didn’t need Bible School. But when I arrived, very wisely, my field leader, Jack Scholes, recommended it. So I was sent to an African Bible School. I was the only pale skin (that’s what the African’s called us) among 120 Africans.

The women who prayed

I made lots of wonderful friends there, but sadly we students were not a very enthusiastic crowd. Spiritually we were lukewarm. We turned up as late as possible and looked at our watches often, impatient for lectures to be over. There was a lot of grumbling among us.

At this time, our field leader’s wife, Jessie Scholes, and some lovely African women were praying. They had become concerned about the spiritual state of things. They were taking a day a week for fasting and prayer, asking God that he would graciously visit his church in Congo and bring revival. Missionaries had been there since 1915. There had been a lively church previously under the leadership of C.T. Studd, but, like a lot of second generation Christians, we had become cold, formal and respectable. They were praying for us, specifically, that God’s blessing would start in the Bible School.

God’s hurricane

The first Friday in July 1953 we gathered in the Bible School hall at 7.00 pm for the regular fellowship meeting. There were about 100 people. Actually most of the students weren’t there. Many were out preaching. The only students were an African girl called Elizabeth and myself. We were in charge of medical service. We were tired after a hard week. The hall had a cement floor, wooden benches, and there were no windows, just gaps with shutters.

According to Elizabeth, I was dozing. There were pastors and people from the mission compound. Jack Scholes stood and had begun to read the word. I was sitting with two white folk in the front row and I heard an approaching hurricane storm. Such storms are very frightening and can devastate a village. The men moved around the hall to remove the shutters, otherwise they might have been blown in and hurt somebody.

I was just sitting, looking out of the window expecting to see scudding dark clouds, the moon and the trees bent over in the wind. But that was not what I saw. It was clear and quite still. And yet we all heard the approaching hurricane. Suddenly we were hit. The hurricane lamps hanging from the roof beams were swinging with the shaking of the building. It is hard to know in what order things happened next. Amid the noise, there was obviously something not normal. I suddenly realised that we, the 100 people, had been struck by a power. Throughout the whole congregation there were people shaking. I can’t explain this. You were not making the shaking yourself. You were being shaken by an outside power. Some were standing with their arms in the air with shining faces. Most of us were down on the ground before the power of the Holy Spirit. There was an overwhelming sense of awe, that God was present. There was a sense of fear that something was happening that we did not understand.

Discernment and conviction

Jack Scholes stood and watched. We white people there looked at each other. We wondered if it was an attack of the devil. But Jack had a most wonderful gift of discernment. He knew that this was a visitation of God. He knew this is what they had been praying for. He came to us ‘pale skins’ and said, ‘Don’t move, this is of God. Just pray’. Then he moved to the pastor, and to the evangelists, saying the same thing: ‘Just pray. This is of God’.

It began at 7.00 pm on Friday night. If I tell you that many of us were still there at 9.00 pm on Sunday you will understand God was doing a marvellous thing. People came and went, looking after children and so on, but the meeting just went on. Over us all, there was this aweful (if I can use that word in its fullest sense) conviction of sin. We were just smitten. No one asked, ‘What do I have to do?’ The Holy Spirit was dealing with us. There was confession of sin, not just big sins. Yes, there were some who confessed to adultery, stealing and the like. But God was working. People were confessing to sins of grumbling, and criticism. Some of the Africans were confessing being jealous of the things that we Westerners had: a car, a typewriter, a change of clothing. I thought I was poor, but compared to my African brothers I was rich. All sorts of things were coming out. Suddenly sin seemed horribly sinful. We did not water it down or think of it any more as ‘weakness’. It was sin.

The women in the Bible School would plait the hair of other women from their own tribe. There was one woman who had no one else from her tribe. So I used to try to plait her hair and would make a bit of a mess of it. The other women would laugh and she did not react in the best way. Now all this was seen as sin. Elizabeth who shared a house with me was the most godly woman. But she stood and confessed that she had never witnessed to the Greek man who ran the local store where we bought paraffin and rice. Everyone was convicted. There was much, much more.

When I heard these godly people confessing their sins I was scared stiff. ‘If they are confessing sin, where do I stand?’ I thought. I didn’t want the Holy Spirit convicting me. ‘I’m meant to be a missionary and I don’t stand a chance if this is what sin is all about.’

The blood of Jesus

There was crying and pleading for mercy. No one was particularly conscious of anyone else. The pastor and Jack and Jessie Scholes moved around, kneeling down with people and pointing them to the cross. The same blood that brought us salvation was there to make us whole and make us like Jesus. They rebuked any excesses. They rebuked anything that might be seen as hurting someone else. Their discernment was amazing.

As one and another came through to relief and liberty, there was an enormous sense of rejoicing. While some were still on their knees, others were standing and singing. The tribes there are very musical. God was giving them new songs but every song seemed to be praising God for the blood of the Lamb. I think that was one of the things that helped us to know this was not of the enemy. The devil would never inspire praising the blood of Jesus. This was obviously of God. And this was God working in Christians. They were full of joy, dancing with joy in forgiveness.

Some who were resisting the Spirit and didn’t want to confess their sins tried to imitate the joy. But, again, great discernment was given and they were gently rebuked. I think the fact that people accepted the rebuke again spoke of God’s work.

Lasting joy

In the succeeding weeks after this amazing weekend, the dominant theme in the church was repentance. But it was between the individual and God. The pastors steered people away from too much of a public show. It was very noisy, but it was Spirit-controlled.

Then there was a tremendous note of joy. There was a team of workmen at that time who were re-roofing two of our buildings. They had to strip the roof, put up fresh wood and then install new tiles. It was the rainy season. Before the revival they were spinning out the work. At the first drop of rain they downed tools and went home. But after the Lord blessed us the change was remarkable. They were there from early morning working. They got their wives to bring them lunch so they could work on. There was a whole different spirit. And it was finished within a week. There was joy at work.

Again, people were being thoughtful and helpful to one another. One of the women at the Bible School was crippled with arthritis. She had difficulty getting to classes, and being comfortable in lectures. But suddenly other women were helping her, getting her a cushion, etc. God had changed us. There was a joy in serving one another.

And now, unlike before, we were running to prayer meetings to get in before it started. And people were hungry for the word, sitting in the front row, not wanting the speakers to stop. There were people getting right with God continually. Some people were given visions of hell and it drove them to go and testify to unconverted relatives and friends.

Well, as the pale skin missionary in the midst of all this I still had a lot to learn and a lot of repenting to do myself. But that is another story.

This article is edited from a talk which Helen Roseveare gave at Horsell Evangelical Church, Surrey, in October 2008, and is used with permission. Helen’s fuller story can be read in Give Me This Mountain and her other books, available from Christian Focus.

There is also a record of the time of revival, This is that, probably available from WEC International — it has recently been updated and re-produced.

Helen Roseveare tells about the revival in Congo in 1953

The women who prayed

God’s hurricane

Discernment and conviction

The blood of Jesus

Lasting joy

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