BY : Milton Quintanilla | Contributor for ChristianHeadlines.com
A pastor recently shared how a Franklin Graham outreach has impacted Vietnamese people who don’t know Jesus Christ.
“It depends on the relationship between the church and the local authorities. If they have a good relationship, the authority will open the door a little bit for them to do religious activities,” Pastor Luke with A3 (formerly Asian Access) told Mission Network News.
In March this year, Graham held an open-air event called Spring Love Festival in Ho Chi Minh City after Vietnamese government officials permitted him to do so. Previously, the event was only permitted around Easter or Christmas time.
The evangelistic event saw more than 42,000 people in attendance, and Pastor Luke translated Graham’s message on the Gospel to non-believers in his own country.
“After the two days of evangelism, there have been about 4,500 people who opened their hearts to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior,” he noted.
“We connected [the new believers] to the local churches, and we did follow up,” the pastor continued. “We got about 92% of those who accepted Jesus Christ to come to the church so that we could teach them the Bible. So that’s a good resource from the evangelism event.”
As reported by The Christian Post, Graham’s event was described as a “historic first” for the Vietnamese communist government to allow a Christian speaker from another country to hold an evangelistic outreach.
“The Spring Love Festival is historic because this is the first time the government has permitted an evangelistic outreach with a foreign speaker outside of a religious holiday,” the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (shared in a statement to The Christian Post.
“I am grateful for this and thankful to the Deputy Prime Minister and the government for allowing me to come and preach in Vietnam a second time,” Graham said. “I will share a message of God’s love for the people of Vietnam.”
Another evangelistic event is said to be in the works for 2024.
Photo Courtesy: ‘‘God Please Save the Vietnamese People’: A Pastor’s Answered Prayer’/Billy Graham Evangelical Association via YouTube/12/13/23 @12:33pm
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