Can We Reach a City for Christ?
                                                                       -Ed Silvoso
PRINCIPLE: Cities are central to God's redemptive strategy. The Great Commission begins with a city- Jerusalem-and culminates when another city-the new Jerusalem-becomes God's eternal dwelling with His people. In order to fulfill the Great Commission, we must reach every city on earth with the gospel.

Is IT POSSIBLE TO REACH AN ENTIRE CITY FOR CHRIST? THIS WAS one of the first and most persistent questions I asked myself as a new believer. Acknowledging that God wishes that none should perish and that Christ gave Himself in ransom for all (see 1 Tim. 2:4,5; 2 Pet. 3:9), I constantly wondered what it would take for the Church in a given city to take the good news to everyone there.
1 received the Lord when I was 13 and living in my native Argentina. The best decision I made as a new Christian was to have a weekly appointment with God. Every Thursday, at 7:00 P.M. sharp, I rode my bicycle to the western shore of the Parana River in my hometown of San Nicolas. During that precious hour, I poured out my heart to God, trying to understand the loneliness I felt as a born-again Christian high schooler in a spiritually skeptical town of almost 100,000 souls. Week after week, I attempted to reconcile the overwhelming joy of my salvation with the pain caused by the lack of response to the gospel among my friends and relatives. If Jesus was indeed the only way, why was it that no one else wanted to find Him?
In preparation for my weekly time with God, I regularly read hooks on revival. My heart swelled and my spirit rose within me as I learned, in the infancy of my faith, about God's mighty work in England, Wales, Bavaria and the United States. Yetthat high tide of joy was inevitably followed by an equally powerful under tow of disappointment as the bleakness of Argentina's spiritual situation relentlessly hounded me.
"Why is it," I asked God, "that all the revivals I read about happened north of the equator? Is Argentina God's ugly duck, ling ?"
Week after week, as I watched the sun set on the Argentine pampas (vast, flat grasslands), I begged God to send us a touch of revival, and as part of that, to allow Christians to reach an entire city for Christ. Only the extraordinary fervency of my newly found faith was capable of carrying me through the wilderness of disappointment that lay between those weekly meetings. Nevertheless, I was determined to find the way to see a city reached for Christ.
At the time of my conversion my pastor was Carlos Naranjo, who, years earlier, was an elder in a very separatist Plymouth Brethren assembly in Buenos Aires. His wife was healed of a terminal illness at a Pentecostal crusade, where Carlos had taken her out of desperation. Consequently, he was rejected by his local assembly and was labeled a heretic by many of his Christian friends.
    Soon after that, Carlos came to San Nicolas to supervise the building of a small factory. As he witnessed to friends, employees and neighbors, many came to Christ, and a local church was born. My parents, my sister and I were "prayed into the ,Kingdom" by this enthusiastic cluster of new believers. True to his Brethren tradition, Carlos Naranjo began to train other laypeople for the ministry. I was picked to be a youth evangelist.I was only 14 when this happened, but it did not stop me from canvassing the streets of San Nicolas weekend after weekend. However, at the end of each year, I could count my converts on the fingers of one hand. The disappointment I felt became part of the central focus of my weekly conversations with God.
    When I was 17, I formed my first evangelistic team. It happened as a result of my daily time of prayer with Ruth, who at the time was my girlfriend and now is my wife. She lived in Cordoba, ,500 kilometers away from San Nicolas, and we only saw each other twice a year. To mitigate the pain of our separation, we agreed to have a daily time of prayer and fellowship "in the Spirit," as we called it. At 10:00 sharp every night, she knelt down in the hills of Cordoba and I knelt down in the pampas of San Nicolas. This was a very sacred time for me. I faithfully kept that appointment. Short of the Second Coming, nothing could keep me from it. Even if Saint Paul had come calling on me, I would have made him wait until I was done. It was the closest thing Ruth and I had to personal contact every day.
In the summer of 1963, our church held meetings every day of the week. Each night after church, the youth gathered at my parents' house for fellowship. Every night at 10:00 I sneaked out to have my time with Ruth and the Lord. I was able to do it undetected for a few days, but eventually my friends noticed my absence. They asked where I went every night at 10:00. When I told them I went to pray with Ruth, they insisted on joining me. Because my meeting with Ruth was "in the Spirit" and not in person, I did not mind. So they joined me, but instead of praying just 15 minutes, our meetings extended into the wee hours of the night. We prayed, we sang, we praised God, we quoted Scripture, we ministered to each other. After a few weeks of this, we were truly "charged up" spiritually, eager to do something for God.

THE DREAM OF SEEING AN ENTIRE CITY REACHED FOR CHRIST WAS VERY FRESH IN MY MIND AS WE TACKLED THOSE TINY HAMLETS. IN MY MIND I WAS BILLY GRAHAM, AND WE WERE GOING TO REACH EVERYBODY THERE WITH THE GOSPEL.

We met with our pastor, and he pointed out four nearby hamlets that had no strong Christian witness. He asked us to kneel down, and he prayed for us. "Go," he said, "and the Bard will be with you."
I remember in my youthful naїveté thinking, Maybe we will find the way to reach an entire city for Christ. This is how my first evangelistic team came into being. I, the evangelist, was 17 years old. My associate preacher was 15. The music director, my sister, was 14, and the director of follow-up was 13. Working under him was "the youth" of the group. Only one person was older than m~Jose Lobos, who was 19 years old. We called him "Grandpa."
    None of us had a vehicle, so we carried everything by hand-the bulky P.A. system, the car battery to power the equipment, the boxes of Bibles and gospel tracts, the musical instruments. Everything! As often as we could, we tried to get a ride on a bus. But what bus driver in his right mind would let us board his bus? We had to be very creative in order to lure him to stop for us. To that effect, I positioned the two nicest looking girls in our group 011 one side of the street while the rest of us stood on the opposite side, pretending to wait for the bus headed in the other direction. As soon as the unsuspecting bus driver stopped, a stampede took place and all of us crossed in front of the bus. We must have looked like a caravan of U-Haul trucks-minus the trucks! By then I had collected the bus fare from all of my team members. As they boarded, each one told the driver, "The last guy has my fare." I was the last guy, and that was my way of making sure the bus did not leave without me.
    The dream of seeing an entire city reached for Christ was very fresh in my mind as we tackled those tiny hamlets. To me they looked like New York or Los Angeles. In my mind I was Billy Graham, and we were going to reach everybody there with the gospel.
And indeed we did! We made sure that everyone heard the gospel. We even led a satanist to Christ. I remember wondering how many crowns a converted warlock would fetch at the Judgment Seat of Christ. In spite of these victories, we did not see mass conversions.
Again, my question was, "Why not, Lord? Why not here in Argentina?"
    When I turned 20, I was drafted into the army. I dreamed of leading the entire battalion, 900 strong, to the Lord. During the time of my enlistment, I saw a small stream of converts. When discharge day came, I asked permission to give the farewell speech, hoping to see a mass movement of conversions. I witnessed a trickle of responses, but the rushing river I hoped for never materialized.

Pursuing the Dream
Eventually, I took a job as a hospital administrator in a newly built facility in San Nicolas. I enjoyed the hustle and bustle of working with doctors, nurses and patients as we watched our hospital grow. During my second year in this job, Ruth and I got married and settled in a house that I had built especially for her. As much as I liked my job as a hospital administrator, the real joy came "after hours" when I would rush home, eat a quick dinner and drive with Ruth in my newly acquired 1947 Chrysler to evangelistic meetings. The main reason I chose this mammoth vehicle as my first car was because of its payload. It could hold all of my evangelistic paraphernalia: 16 collapsible chairs, a small pulpit, Ruth's guitar and accordion, two boxes of Bibles and gospel tracts, and a variable number of "ministry associates." The car was constantly "overbooked," which resulted in some of my associates riding on the laps of their fellow "ministers."
    One of those crusades took us to a small town nearl1y, where the local brethren invited us to hold an open air campaign. Amazingly, we saw 92 decisions of faith made in that campaign! Afterward, I was asked to be the preacher for this emerging congregation. In my desire to reach everybody with the gospel, we held church meetings four times a week and two evangelistic meetings on Sundays. Even though we saw some growth, and the entire village heard the gospel, we did not see a book of Acts kind of evangelistic explosion. I remember wondering if maybe the long hours spent at my hospital job were a contributing negative factor.
    A year later, Ruth and I-already enjoying the presence of our first daughter, Karina-decided that I should quit my hospital administration job to answer the call of a full, time pastorate in the beautiful city of Mar del Plata, Argentina's French Riviera. Having no secular job to take up my time, we worked hard and saw our church grow. The dream to see a city reached was always in the forefront of my thoughts and prayers. I bought a map of Mar del Plata and marked on it the location of every church. I prayed for those churches regularly. I networked as much as possible with their pastors. We saw some results but nothing spectacular. After about a year, Luis Palau, Ruth's brother, invited us to join his newly formed evangelistic team, and we moved to Mexico City.
    Luis's enthusiasm for evangelism was incendiary. He loved cities, he loved sinners and he loved preaching to the multitudes. Quite often, he and I would talk into the wee hours of the night about reaching entire cities for Christ. Ruth and I felt very privileged to be a part of Luis's emerging team. His team formed part of Overseas Crusades, a mission that had a solid reputation for discipleship and a healthy disposition to mass evangelism. Dr. Dick Hillis, Overseas Crusades' founder, had worked very closely with Billy Graham, first in Asia and later on in Latin America. Along with godly men such as Keith Benson and Dr. Ed Murphy, Dr. Hillis and Overseas Crusades provided a solid environment for Luis's aggressive, and many times innovative, evangelistic thrusts. We enjoyed setting up crusades for Luis, producing TV and radio programs, arranging presidential prayer breakfasts. In the process, we saw significant numbers come to the Lord. But still, no city was fully reached.
    In the early 1970s, Ruth and I took some time off from the Palau team to take the graduate course at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. Afterward, we went on to attend the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. .
My time at Multnomah was the closest I have ever come to "a-road-to-Emmaus" kind of experience. The intensive course work required in-depth study of the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. We went through the Bible book by book, chapter by chapter and verse by verse under the guidance of gifted Bible teachers. We even wrote our own commentary as we went along. The school was indeed true to its motto: "If you want Bible, then you want Multnomah."
    I could not believe I had every waking hour of the day to read and study the Bible! This was a real treat for someone like me, who, since conversion days, had always been forced to "create" time for Bible study at the end of a busy day of other responsibilities. Every day I looked forward to delving into the Scriptures with overwhelming joy burning inside of me. Often at night I" had trouble "checking out" as my heart insisted on chewing a lit~ tie bit longer on the biblical truths found during the day.
Later, at the School of World Mission in Pasadena, I had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of godly and brilliant missiologists such as Donald McGavran, Ralph Winter, Arthur Glasser, Alan Tippet and Peter Wagner. This became the most exhilarating spiritual-intellectual experience of my entire life. These men were representatives of the most dynamic combination of theory and practice in a missiological context to be found anywhere among world-class thinkers. I was so excited as 1 walked to and from school that I developed the habit of singing out loud. There was so much joy in me that a Korean neighbor eventually received the Lord because of the happiness I projected as I walked by her window every morning.
The biblical foundation obtained at Multnomah, combined with the missiological stimulation I was receiving at Fuller, brought home with greater force than ever my youthful dream to reach entire cities for Christ. Because of my association with Luis Palau and his team, I knew that we were on the cutting edge of God's movement in Latin America. We did see many cities open up to the gospel for the first time. Luis even led to Christ the president of one nation. This was unheard of before. Also, our team pioneered the use of secular radio and television to saturate entire cities with the gospel. I truly believed that mass evangelism, the way we practiced it in the Palau team, was the best tool to reach the world for Christ in our generation.
Enter C. Peter Wagner, associate professor of church growth, who had just received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. In the course of his teaching, Dr. Wagner led the class through a factual critique of mass evangelism. As he presented his research on major evangelistic thrusts in various regions of the world, he concluded that most of them did not translate into church growth! According to Wagner, on an average, such crusades produced at best a mere 5 percent numerical growth in church membership. This represented a poor return on the amount of money and effort invested. In a few other cases, Wagner's research revealed that mass evangelism resulted in a decrease in church membership. (Palau was not included in Wagner's research because his ministry was just in the beginning stages.)
I cannot adequately describe the tension and the perplexity that Dr. Wagner's lectures produced within me. I enjoyed each one of them because of his keen intellect and unusual ability as a communicator. Besides, he had been a missionary in Bolivia and his presentations were always peppered with stories and illustrations from Latin America. All of this was medicine to my soul because of the severe homesickness I felt for Argentina. As he systematically exposed the minimal impact of mass evangelism, I finally came to the conclusion that our crusades were not as effective as we had first believed. However, I also knew they were not as irrelevant as Dr. Wagner's conclusions seemed to suggest.
This tension constantly challenged me to find a way to reconcile these opposing conclusions. I finally found the answer while preparing an assignment for Dr. Wagner's class. I drew up a plan to evangelize an entire city by combining the effective aspects of mass evangelism with the church growth principles taught at the School of World Mission. This is how "Plan Rosario" (named after a city in Argentina) came into being. Shortly after that, Ruth and I.. found ourselves settling down in Rosario for our experiment in "city taking."
With a population of 700,000, Rosario was popularly known as the "Argentine Chicago," and, in Christian circles, as the "cemetery for evangelists." It was also the center for spiritism in central Argentina. We knew we had a massive challenge ahead of us, but we didn't really know how big it was to be.
Overall, "Plan Rosario" was a very positive experience. Many local churches participated, and the results-by church growth standards-were 10 times better than the average. Next, we went to Uruguay, where we tried the same approach on a national scale. We evangelized simultaneously in five major cities. The results were even better than in Rosario, and by using radio and television extensively, the whole country was blanketed with the gospel. The number of public decisions of faith was three times higher than in Rosario, and the percentage of incorporation into churches was 20 percent higher. The fact that all this happened in Uruguay was also very significant because the country prided itself in being a nation of atheists. In fact, the leading newspaper in Montevideo used to spell "Dios" ("God" in Spanish) with a small d. Scores received Christ and a great majority of the people heard the gospel. I knew then that we were finally on the right track in our search for a way to evangelize entire cities.

A Direct Hit by the Enemy.

Everything looked promising except for one serious problem. Since my days in Rosario, my health had begun to deteriorate. My muscles were weakening. My speech was slurred, and I suffered from double vision and shortness of breath. By 1978, I had developed a severe case of a very serious illness, myasthenia gravis. This is an incurable disease similar to multiple sclerosis and in the same family of illnesses as Lou Gehrig's disease. I knew money could not buy a cure because multimillionaire Aristotle Onassis, Jackie Kennedy's second husband, died of it. My health deteriorated to the point that it was necessary for us to move back to the United States to be near Children's Hospital in San Francisco, where an experimental treatment was in progress.

I FULLY EMPATHIZED WITH MOSES, WHO WAS ABLE TO SEE THE PROMISED LAND BUT NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER IT. I HAD COME SO CLOSE TO SEEING THE DREAM OF MY YOUTH FULFILLED; AND NOW THAT IT WAS WITHIN REACH I WAS BEING BENCHED.

I remember fully empathizing with Moses, who was able to see the Promised Land but not allowed to enter it. I had come so close to seeing the dream of my youth fulfilled, and now that it was within reach I was being benched. That was my perspective, but not necessarily God's. My illness was, as I later learned, partly the result of spiritual warfare. It was a direct hit by the enemy.

He was exploiting an area of my life where I had given him an entrance, mainly through ignorance. I later came to realize that my "Head Coach" was doing more than benching me. He was sending me to the locker room to learn basic principles related to suffering, spiritual warfare and intercession. These elements were not an important part of "Plan Rosario." Like Peter in Luke 22:31,32, I was being turned over to Satan to learn some valuable and painful lessons. In the process, God would teach me that reaching entire cities for Christ did not depend on formulas or methods, but rather on the application of biblical principles and a deeper walk with Him.
    After a thorough and lengthy examination at the hospital in San Francisco, the doctors told me, "We are not sure that we can help you, but you can certainly help us." As a former hospital administrator, I quickly recognized the true meaning of that. It was medical lingo for, "Would you agree to become a guinea pig?"
    Myasthenia gravis is a very humbling disease. Your mouth drools. You choke on your own saliva, especially at night. Your speech is impaired. Your breathing is laborious to an extreme. You can't run or do anything strenuous. Because your body attacks itself through malfunctioning antibodies, your muscles deteriorate and soon become useless. Your entire body aches and soon comes to resemble a huge "sore thumb." Anything it touches triggers a shock of pain. Your energy is so low and so limited that you learn to map out the shortest route from your bed to the bathroom. That is how much difference a few feet makes for one who has myasthenia gravis!
    I remember staring at the ceiling for hours on end until I had memorized every inch of it. My survival training in the army had taught me that the best way to endure was to take things one step at a time. However, it was extremely discouraging to realize that often, at the end of a full day, I hadn't been able to take even a single step. .
    I was very grateful for the excellent and helpful medical treatments I received. However, some of the procedures were as painful as the illness itself. At one time or another I was receiving 16 injections a day. That adds up to 480 injections a month! I also took 42 pills daily, in addition to 1,500 milligrams of cortisone and occasional chemotherapy by mouth. Once or twice a week I was hooked to a machine that performed a plasmapheresis. It slowly drained out all of my blood and disposed of everything except the red and white cells, which were in turn pumped back in along with human albumin to make up for the volume of lost fluid. Because this treatment removed all antibodies from my blood stream, for 48 hours I was totally vulnerable to infection.
    I also had to undergo a thymectomy, which is a major surgical procedure. My sternum bone was split in two, the rib cage was retracted and the tissue under the sternum was removed. The most discouraging fact to accept was that none of these procedures was capable of providing a cure for me-they were simply done to keep me alive.
Some nights I felt so weak that I honestly believe the choice was mine whether to live or die. Two things kept me going: one was my wife and our four beautiful daughters (at the time ages one through nine); the second was the memories of Uruguay and Rosario, and the realization of how close we had come to developing a workable model for reaching entire cities for God.

A Leap of Faith
Eventually the day came when my doctor told me I had, at most, two years to live. I remember that day in 1980 vividly. It happened at Stanford Medical Center, where I was being treated at the time. My doctor took a piece of chalk and drew a horizontal line on the blackboard, saying, "This line represents your health now. You are tenuously holding your own. However, anytime in the next two years this will happen," and he drew a straight line downward. As he did so, the chalk hit the interior border of the chalk holder and broke. One of the pieces dropped to the floor, rolled toward me and stopped a few inches from my feet. Then I caught myself thinking, This chalk represents my life. I still have some momentum, but sooner or later I will come to a halt.
    At that moment, Ruth and I decided to really take a leap of faith. We resigned from the Palau Team in order to concentrate whatever time I had left, on our quest to find a way to reach cities for Christ. It was an extremely difficult decision because of our love for Luis and the team we had helped develop. We then tried to join a couple of missionary organizations that had ministries in South America. In both cases we were turned down, mostly on account of my health. The president of one agency said to me, "We would love to have you, but we cannot add you on to our medical program because of your illness. At the same time, we do not feel it is right we take you on without medical insurance. We are sorry." I still remember the frustration welling within me as I heard that. I was upset that a deeply spiritual matter was being decided by the fine print on an insurance policy.
Our time was quickly running out. We had only 30 days of insurance left with the Palau Team, and my medical bills were very high. One night I prayed decisively for supernatural guidance. During the night, I had a dream in which I saw myself and a group of my friends launching a new missionary organization. I saw four men around the table, all of them longtime friends: Daniel Craig, Dr. Ed Murphy, Dick Anderson and Norm Nason. The name of the organization we were launching was "Harvest Evangelism."
The next morning, the phone rang. It was Daniel Craig calling from Los Angeles. He had heard that I was leaving the Palau team and wanted to know what he could do to help in the transition! Then and there I knew that God wanted us to start a new missionary organization. On August 30, 1980, Harvest Evangelism was officially and legally born.
Because my health was poor and our resources were depleted and time was running out" we decided to concentrate on building a retreat center in my native city of San Nicolas. Our hope was that when I was gone it would become a training center to reach cities for Christ. Part of the reason for choosing the location was that it was close to 109 small cities, towns and hamlets '~within a 100,mile radius that had no local church.
    In between medical treatments in the United States, I made trips to Argentina to organize and direct the construction of the center. I would have every hospital treatment possible done in the United States, sometimes only hours before boarding the plane. I would pack up my pills, and then stay in Argentina as long as I was physically able. Upon my return to the States, I would literally crash at the hospital, feeling very much like Humpty Dumpty and hoping that the doctors would be able to put me back together again.
The main building in our training center is a prayer chapel that my friends Bob and Joan Archibald financed in memory of a daughter lost to leukemia. It has six concentric doors on three sides that provide a 270,degree view of the countryside. Most of the 109 unchurched towns are located inside that 270,degree vector.
On March 24, 1983, we dedicated the retreat center. Carlos Naranjo, the man who first trained me for the ministry, officiated at the ceremony. We met in the newly built chapel. Part of the celebration included a retreat for pastors and leaders from surrounding areas. We challenged them to reach each one of the 109 unchurched towns with the gospel. Part of me was able to see it as done through the eyes of faith. However, when I looked into the mirror, my natural eyes saw something totally different. The combination of prayer and medical treatment had stretched the initial prognosis from two to four years, but I was barely hanging on. My body was ready to quit anytime.
    The dedication of the center in San Nicolas was thus a happy but nostalgic occasion. I knew we had reached a key objective. The vision had been implanted in the hearts of godly Christian leaders. However, I again found myself looking at the Promised Land from across a flooded Jordan River. I could not swim and no boats were in sight. I remember wondering if this was the end of the road for me. Would I ever see an entire city evangelized?

A Change in the Winds
    Then, dramatic events began to unfold. First, something changed in "the heavenlies" over Argentina. A business owner and lay preacher by the name of Carlos Annacondia held a three, month crusade in La Plata, where it was reported that 40,000 people made public professions of faith in Christ. That was something totally unheard of at the time. At first, we questioned the veracity of the report. However, Annacondia next moved on to Mar del Plata, where close to 90,000 decisions were reported. He then went to San Justo, where almost 70,000 people publicly repeated the sinner's prayer. From then on it became a flood of decisions as city after city was shaken by the ministry of this unknown lay preacher.
    Can you imagine what happened to a cozy, well, organized congregation of 50 when a deluge of new converts descended on the impeccable premises after an Annacondia crusade? The aver, age congregation in pre-Annacondia Argentina had a very quiet and tranquil life. The pastor was able to forecast with reasonable accuracy the number of baptisms, births and even funerals for the coming year. He was always able to take his day off. Church ser, vices were absolutely predictable. A person could be 100 miles from the church building, look at his watch and guess exactly what was going on at that specific moment. That is how quiet and orderly things used to be. All of that was shattered forever in post-Annacondia Argentina.
When a flood of new converts came to this kind of church, the church quickly ran out of everything, from toilet paper to paper cups, from folding chairs to Sunday School teachers. Some traditional churches went into shock. I heard of one congregation where three elders were complaining in a huddle on the patio behind the church. When asked what was going on, one of them replied, "It was much better before. Now all of those undisciplined people step on the grass. There is always a line for the bathroom. Meetings are becoming noisy and at times boisterous. Some even smoke on the church sidewalk. Sunday School ,lessons are constantly interrupted. The new people don't even know how to look up verses in the Bible." Although this kind of response was a rare exception, it clearly illustrates the severe shock some churches could experience.
    But other churches were ready to scrap tradition and make radical changes in order to cope with the avalanche of new converts. One of these was the church of Pastor Alberto Scataglini in La Plata. He went so far as to remove the pews from the church so more people would fit inside the building.
In this context, I was approached by pastor friends requesting training for their laypeople. One way to cope with this kind of growth is to "move everyone up the ladder one rung." The church janitor becomes a Sunday School teacher on account of
the residual biblical knowledge accumulated through the years. The Sunday School teacher moves up to Sunday School super-intendent. The superintendent takes a position as associate pastor of Christian education, and so on. Some of my friends did that as a stopgap measure. Having heard of our plans for a training center, they came for help.
I was flattered by the request to become a key trainer, but I was also down to my last ounce of energy. Myasthenia gravis was writ, ten all over my body. Oh, how I wanted to respond to that need!

Divine Intervention
This desire led to the second event that would dramatically change my life-an introduction to intercessory prayer. Harvey'"
Lifsey, president and founder of Christian Dynamics, an evanglistic and discipleship organization at the time based in Southern California, had come to Argentina to teach on prayer. He and my dear friend Mario Gentinetta, an intercessor himself, challenged me to entreat God regarding my illness. We decided to set aside three days for intercession for the purpose of finding out from God if my illness was an illness unto life or an illness unto death. I did not mind pressing forward if that was what God wanted. However, my greatest emotional challenge was not the illness itself, but some of the prayers offered for my healing.
Time and again, since the onset of my illness, I had been given what others considered genuine prophetic words emphatically announcing my healing, yet nothing happened. Sometimes I would get a phone call inquiring what I had felt the night before at 2:00 A.M. The caller was sure that God, or an angel, had touched my body and that I was now healed. I remember saying to myself, Do you really want to know what I felt last night at 2 :00 A.M.? I felt pain all over my body and perplexity all over my soul, and now your call is turning that perplexity into confusion. I never said it, but I kept it inside of me where it began to turn into a mild form of cynicism.
When someone who has a public ministry contracts a pro' longed illness, there is a demand for periodic medical bulletins. I grew tired of telling the plain truth because it was so discouraging, and most people did not want to hear it. I sensed it in my spirit as I watched their body language. I heard it with my own ears as I caught echoes of their remarks to others. I was grieved by the implication that maybe hidden sin was the real reason God was not answering the prayers of the saints on my behalf. I was also greatly annoyed by extreme "health-food nuts," who blamed my lack of improvement on the fact that I had refused their advice to take 20 grams of vitamin C every day, and by others who pro~ posed coffee enemas as a cure for every ailment under the sun. Sure! In reality, my most pressing problem was lack of clear direction. What was it God wanted me to believe Him for?
Harvey, Mario and I began our three-day intercession thrust on a Monday. We pleaded with God that if it pleased Him, by Wednesday at bedtime He would make His will known to me. Monday and Tuesday went by with no word from God. Finally, on Wednesday at midnight I was heading for the training center after dropping Harvey off at his hotel. As the car sped on the one-mile homestretch, I asked God if He was going to speak to me that night. At that very moment a powerful presence of God literally inundated the car. It was so real that I began to pray, praise and worship Him in a way unknown to me.
As soon as I parked the car at the training center, the Holy Spirit took over and led me through hours of prayer in a Romans chapter 8 fashion-He prayed for me and through me. "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Rom. 8:26, NIV). He led me to specific passages in the Bible and spoke to me from each one of them. I had never experienced anything like this! It was the most amazing experience of my life.
At the end of that amazing night, I knew that my illness was an illness unto life. I also knew that God had chosen to heal me through a process rather than instantaneously. All of this was confirmed by my prayer partners.
"Our prayer has been answered," Harvey said, "but because of the spiritual warfare going on in the heavenlies, God's answer is being delayed as the messenger of God battles against evil forces. "
None of this made sense to me at the time. It would take the next eight years for most of it to unfold. As far as I was concerned, however, I had received from God a clear sense of direction. My perplexity immediately disappeared, and I was healed of my incipient cynicism.
The following six months turned out to be the worst period of my entire illness. I had to be hooked up to the plasmapheresis machine to survive. One of those days, the machine broke down and I almost died. On another occasion, the oral chemotherapy caused a reaction that almost cost me my life. Although that period was extremely difficult, I did not mind it. I knew that God's promises are tested by trials. I did not mind a good fight if I knew where the enemy was. Now I knew which way God's wind was blowing. When people offered to pray for my healing-obviously moved by my miserable state-I would tell them, "Please, don't pray for my healing. Just join me in thanking God that one day I will be healed as He promised me."
Sure enough, after six months, some elements of my treatment were no longer necessary. Over a period of four years, I was able to discontinue the injections (a big PTL there!), the chemotherapy, the cortisone, the oral medication and the plasmapheresis. Also, as my health improved, our team grew accordingly. God allowed us to launch El Puente, a Christian newspaper, in Argentina. A television studio in Buenos Aires quickly followed. Finally, a church-planting team was formally established.

Growing Ministry
In 1987, Dr. David Yonggi Cho asked us to organize his visit to Argentina. Seven thousand pastors and leaders from all over.
Argentina and neighboring countries attended the four-day seminar. We worked very hard to make it a truly interdenominational event. It was a resounding success with all denominations benefiting from it. As I like to say, "from the juiciest charismatics to the crunchiest evangelicals," everybody was there and went away blessed. Dr. Cho's visit catapulted us to national prominence. Hosting his seminar put a big platform under our feet. We received immediate visibility all over the nation. Our newspaper, guided by Marcelo Laffite, and the TV ministry, under Bill Kennedy's leadership, expanded this further. All of a sudden, our dreams, modestly started at the retreat center in San Nicolas, began to materialize on a national scale. Requests for help began to come from all over the nation.
Enter Chuck Starnes. Chuck and his lovely wife, Sandy, had joined our team in 1987, just in time to direct the logistical aspects of Dr. Cho's visit. Following Dr. Cho's seminar, Chuck felt led to visit Resistencia, population 400,000, in northern Argentina, to assess the potential for a citywide outreach. Chuck also had a passion for seeing an entire city evangelized. His command of the Spanish language was limited at the time, but his passion for the lost and his love for the Church were contagious. He was determined to follow God at any cost. This more than made up for his imperfect Spanish. He was instrumental in discerning that Resistencia was the place where we should try our battery of ideas and spiritual insights on "city taking." Chuck is the one who laid down the foundation for "Plan Resistencia."

WHAT WE DID NOT KNOW AT THE TIME WAS HOW LITTLE WE KNEW ABOUT SPIRITUAL WARFARE. IN RETROSPECT, I CAN SEE THAT WE WERE FOOLISHLY OVERCONFIDENT BECAUSE WE HAD BB GUNS TUCKED UNDER OUR BELTS, NOT REALIZING THAT THE NOISE BEHIND THE BUSH AHEAD OF US WAS MADE BY A MAD, CHARGING RHINO!

We chose Resistencia for a number of reasons. First, we were invited by several pastors who had been meeting regularly. Second, the city had an unusually low percentage of believers (1.5 percent of the total population), which made it an excellent testing ground for our principles. Third, Resistencia is a key city in northern Argentina. Like Ephesus in the book of Acts, Resistencia is a "mother of cities" all over the Argentine Chaco. Fourth, the city was under the spell of a satanic principality called "San La Muerte" (Spanish for "Saint Death"). Its roots go back to the founding of the city.
Resistencia was designed to be a military outpost on the western bank of the Parana River to defend the wealthy city of Corrientes across the river. Most soldiers at the time were recruited from among the prison population of Argentina and many "agreed" to serve in the army because it was the only way out of
that miserable life. The military outpost was no match for the large Indian population, and the soldiers' greatest fear was not so much death, but death by torture at the hands of the Indians. This fear, along with local fetishism and African/Brazilian voodoo, gave birth to the cult of San La Muerte. Those who made a pact with San La Muerte were promised a painless death, which met the deepest felt need of the desperate soldiers. As a city grew around the military outpost, these beliefs and practices were passed on to its inhabitants. Even though the people of Resistencia are well educated and there is a prosperous middle class, in 1988 the entire population was touched in one way or another by this local cult.
We saw all this as a definite plus since we had been learning about spiritual warfare and were eager to try our newly acquired knowledge. What we did not know at the time was how little we knew about spiritual warfare. In retrospect, I can see that we were foolishly overconfident because we had BB guns tucked under our belts, not realizing that the noise behind the bush ahead of us was made by a mad, charging rhino!
I remember the day we met with the pastors to officially suggest the outline for "Plan Resistencia." We were as nervous as high school freshmen on a first date. We felt awkward and weren't sure how to proceed. I was asked to preach. We met in a storefront church with a tin roof. The subtropical climate of Resistencia and the low tin roof raised the temperature inside the building to over 100 degrees. At the same time, I sensed the spiritual temperature was equally high. The presence of God was there. Intense and extensive prayer had preceded our gathering.
I spoke from 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (NIV). I reached the pinnacle of my presentation when I described my dream about an entire city hearing the gospel. I spoke about 500 neighborhood prayer cells interceding for each section of the city; about celebrations of unity when different congregations in the city would come together to minister to the needs of the lost; about the day when every home in the city would be visited and every inhabitant would hear God's voice; about thousands of sinners saved by, and washed in, the blood of Jesus; of angels celebrating nonstop because sinners, lots of them, were coming to Christ day after day.
At that moment, the pastors-all of them-stood up and began to clap enthusiastically. A spontaneous explosion of joy, orchestrated by the Holy Spirit, had occurred. They were not clapping for me. They were clapping for the Chief Shepherd, .
Jesus. In typical Acts 2:17 fashion, the old pastors saw it through the lens of their dreams, and the young ones through their visions. All of a sudden, God had spoken and everybody knew that He was ready to pour out His Spirit upon Resistencia. It was a sacred time. That was the day "Plan Resistencia" was born.
Actually, "Plan Resistencia" is a misnomer. Rather than a "plan," with its implication of sequential steps and strategic components, it was an acknowledgment of God's love for the lost in the city and the Church's commitment to the biblical principles of unity, holiness and prayer. To that end, it was most appropriate that the pastors responded through such a spontaneous out-burst of joy in the Spirit, thus eliminating the possibility of us presenting an actual plan. Like young couples on their wedding day, we knew nothing about the details of the future, but we were committed to God and to each other for the sake of His Church and the lost in the city.

We challenged the pastors to establish a perimeter of godliness in the city. The original group of pastors responded. They did this by meeting regularly for prayer, intercession and accountability. This was an auspicious beginning in a city where we were told 68 of the 70 existing congregations were the result of church splits. As the pastors met, God met with them. The Holy Spirit began to work in their lives and soon a deep bond of love had enveloped them completely. At one of those meetings, one of the pastors said, "I want you to know that I love you, guys. You have become an integral part of my life. I don't think I can do it alone as I used to. I need you! I wonder if we could have the Lord's Supper today?" Never before had the Lord's Supper been celebrated outside of a local church, and it had always been for the benefit of the members of that church. Radical new ground was being broken.
Another pastor responded by saying, "If we are going to have the Lord's Supper, I need to wash your feet. I have been so aloof and so proud in the past. I must wash your feet." This act of sincere humility was quickly reciprocated by others in the group. Everyone seemed to be saying, "I want to do it first."
Lacking the elements-since it was a totally unexpected idea-they used crackers and orange juice, which one of them bought at the small market next door. It didn't matter. Never before had the cleansing blood of Jesus flowed in a more palpable way, nor was His body ever more tangible than when those sincere pastors passed around the cup with the orange juice and broke the crackers after having washed each others' feet.
The feast did not stop there. Somebody suggested that they take an offering and give it to one of them who was facing financial difficulties. An open Bible was passed around in lieu of an offering plate, and less than $50 was collected. This amount was insignificant as far as money goes. However, like the fish Jesus cooked by the seaside to feed his hungry disciples, the money collected was a genuine expression of God's provision. More than giving money, they had given themselves to each other. That was the day when the foundation for unity was truly laid down in Resistencia.
The circle quickly expanded and soon more than half the pastors in the city had agreed to reach the entire city for Christ.

The Plan Implemented

In chapters 6 through 11, I will describe in great detail the plan and its implementation. In essence, Plan Resistencia was the implementation of Paul's instructions to Timothy as recorded in 1 Timothy 2:1,8: That the Church consistently and systematically pray for everybody in the city-and especially for those in authority-with the clear intent of seeing all of them saved. This is to be done with holy hands, for which it is necessary to first rid the Church of division and dissension. This was to be done by following Paul's outline in Ephesians, where the Church is exhorted to restore unity by dealing with ethnic disunity (see chapter 2), church disunity (see chapter 3), ministerial disunity (see chapter 4), marital disunity (see chapter 5) and family and workplace disunity (see chapter 6), before engaging "the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (6:12).
For the time being, allow me to touch on the plan's highlights. It was agreed that there is only one Church in the city that meets in many different congregations. As such, the pastors must see themselves as under-shepherds serving under the only Chief Shepherd-Jesus Himself-and the various congregations in town must see themselves as part of, .and interdependent on, the other congregations.

The main reason for the Church's presence OR earth is to have it its members conformed to the image of God's Son and, as a result of that, to take the gospel to everyone in the city who still does not know Him, because God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4). To do this effectively, the Church must deal with the longstanding issues of disunity, expressed through wrath and dissension, that on one hand "give the devil an opportunity" (Eph. 4:27) against the Church, and, consequently, prevent the world from believing that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16) "who gave Himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:6).
All of this happens in the context of active spiritual warfare where the Church constantly struggles against rulers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (see Eph. 6:12). The essence of this struggle is twofold. On one hand, the Church must "put on the full armor of God, that [it] may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil" (Eph. 6:11). This has to do with God's provision, which the Church must appropriate. God has provided the armor; now the Church must wear it. This is the defensive mode.
On the other hand, the Church must also invade Satan's territory, mainly through intercessory prayer, "With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on t1le alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my' mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:18,19).
In doing this, the Church "[brings] to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places" (Eph. 3:9,10) exposing them as usurpers and liars. This, in turn, "[opens the eyes of the unsaved] so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me" (Acts 26:18). This is the offensive mode.
    To do this, pastors in Resistencia began to pray together regularly. They exchanged pulpits. They sent love offerings to needy congregations. They brought their people together to celebrate their newfound unity in Christ. They partook of the Lord's Supper together. Peter and Doris Wagner, and later, Cindy Jacobs, taught scores of leaders and pastors on intercession and spiritual warfare. Hundreds of intercessors were recruited, equipped and deployed all over the city to secure and expand God's "beachhead" in the city.
Satan's perimeter was infiltrated by 635 neighborhood prayer cells (called "lighthouses") scattered throughout the city. Little by little, every home in the city was prayed for. Answered prayers gave the Church favor in the eyes of the people. "Spiritual IOUs" began to pile up in 635 neighborhoods. This favor was enhanced, first when the Church built 16 water tanks in slums with no running water, and later on when large donations of medicine and equipment were made to the public hospital.

All Out Spiritual Warfare
Satan's perimeter began to be shaken when the pastors and their most trusted intercessors proclaimed the Lordship of Christ by serving an eviction notice on San La Muerte in the central plaza where a monument honors him. At that moment, open spiritual warfare began. Pastors and leaders suffered all kinds of attacks. San La Muerte's priests declared war on the Church. However, God was in control, and He showed it. At the height of the conflict, San La Muerte's high priestess died in strange circumstances-the mattress she was sleeping on caught fire and burned her to death. Nothing else burned except her, the bed and the idol of San La Muerte in the room next door! The fear of God fell upon the city.
Taking advantage of the extensive and intensive prayer ministry of more than 600 neighborhood prayer cells, two major outreaches were executed. First, in one day the entire city (approximately 63,000 homes) was visited with a good news package, which was made available by Dick Eastman of Every Home for Christ Crusade through Rino Bello, its director in Argentina. The week before, the city was blitzed through TV with the announcement that the following Saturday "This package of good news is coming to your home." When homes were visited 1he following Saturday, many people were waiting for it. Prayers were freely and generously offered all over the city on behalf of the sick, broken marriages, rebellious children and financial troubles. Even demons were cast out. Eventually every home in the city was blessed.
That same night, the people of Resistencia were invited to go to a covered stadium to thank God for His blessings. Many people had to be turned away because the basketball stadium was not big enough to accommodate the multitudes that responded to the invitation. The mayor was there to thank us. The media covered the event. The slogan for the outreach was, "Resistencia, it is God's time for you." That day it seemed the entire city knew that.
The second event consisted of a series of simultaneous crusades. First, 34 small neighborhood crusades. Then, three months later, 10 larger area crusades. Finally, a citywide crusade. By working out of the more than 600 lighthouses, the idea was to 'expand from the micro to the macro picture. By the time of the citywide crusade, the city was totally open, and Satan was raving mad.
On opening night, we discovered that the local witches and warlocks had occupied a comer of the field. They looked mean, and they acted mean. Satan had launched an all out counteract.. tack. A satanic altar had been built and incense was being burned. Some of the people in the audience got sick, others faint.. ed. It was an unexpected and blatant attack. Resistencia was indeed a city under the influence of San La Muerte, very much like Ephesus was under the influence of Artemis.
We positioned our top intercessors under the platform along with a ring of 70 others around the podium. The rest, approximately 100 more, mixed in with the crowd. When we stood up to preach, we were able to feel the curses and hexes coming our way from the satanists' comer. When it got too hot for comfort, we would stomp on the platform. That was the signal for our spiritual SWAT team to redouble their intercessory efforts. It was spiritual warfare indeed.
In anticipation of an Ephesus-type response, a 1OO gallon drum was set up to the left of the platform for the new converts to dispose of satanic paraphernalia. As people came forward, they dumped all kinds of occult-related items into it. Before praying for the people, gasoline was poured on the contents of the drum, a match was struck and every evil thing inside went up in flames. Many times, spontaneous deliverances occurred when a specific fetish was burned and the spell was broken.
Thousands of people came to the Lord. The challenge of fol.. lowing through with them in their new faith was made easier by the hundreds of lighthouses spread out all over the city. They did the follow-up. The mayor acknowledged Jesus Christ as his Savior. Later on, two of the candidates for governor prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts. Also, medical doctors, journalists, one senator, aldermen, politicians and lawyers responded. At one point, we found ourselves inside the Provincial Court of Appeals with seven appellate judges, five of whom confessed Christ as their personal Savior. The city had indeed heard the voice of God!

Turning the Guns on the Enemy
When this evangelistic phase was over, the pastors moved on to establish God's perimeter where Satan's used to be. In military terms, when raiding the enemy's camp you transform his strong.. hold into your stronghold by occupying it and turning the guns around. Satan's stronghold on the Church had been division, fed by deep mistrust. In the past, when evangelistic campaigns ended, there had been bitter disputes over the distribution of decision cards. Mistrust was perpetuated amid charges of "sheep stealing." This time the pastors turned the guns around. Instead of aiming at division and mistrust, they went for unity and trust, and they decided to use the baptism of the new believers as the occasion. Rather than individual baptisms in separate local churches, they chose to have a mass baptism.
On the appointed day, they invited all of the new converts to a covered arena. They positioned eight portable swimming pools in the center court arranged in the shape of a cross. The veteran believers occupied the bleachers on all four sides, while the new believers stood by the swimming pools along with the pastors. The chairman of the ministerial association led the new believers in a prayer of renunciation of Satan and allegiance to Jesus. Following that, they all got inside the swimming pools along with the pastors, who baptized them in the name of Jesus Christ. No distinction or mention was made of the individual congregation the new believer might choose to attend later. Everyone was baptized into the only Church in Resistencia, the Church of Jesus Christ.
Six months later, a church census was taken. To everybody's delight, the church had grown 102 percent. Beyond those encouraging numbers were blessings that cannot be quantified: the dismantling of the strongholds of disunity and apathy; the healing of old festering wounds among denominations; the training and deploying of intercessors; the newly found respect for the Church in the city; the favor gained in the eyes of the government and the media. However, even more significant was the development of a viable prototype to reach entire cities for Christ. The pastors of Resistencia had finally given the Church-at-large a unique gift: a model for effective evangelism. By agreeing to turn their churches into a laboratory and themselves into spiritual guinea pigs, they allowed God to prove to them, and through them to the Church-at-large, that cities can and must be entirely reached for Christ.

THE PASTORS OF RESISTENCIA HAD FINALLY GIVEN THE CHURCH-AT-LARGE A UNIQUE GIFT: A MODEL FOR EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM. THEY ALLOWED GOD TO PROVE TO THEM THAT CITIES CAN AND MUST BE ENTIRELY REACHED FOR CHRIST.

Resistencia is not a perfect example. It is simply a prototype-but a prototype that worked in spite of the mistakes we made. Like a baby, seconds after birth, it needs to be cleaned up, nurtured and cared for. The beauty of it is that Resistencia was not a stillbirth but a live birth. An article published in the March 1993 issue of the El Puente newspaper implies that in the two years since the plan ended, the Church grew another 400 percent, bringing the cumulative growth to over 500 percent, and the total number of congregations to 200, an increase of 130 new ones. Those figures are not the result of a scientific survey but rather the opinion of the reporting journalist. However, even if only one fourth of this is correct, it will still set Resistencia apart as one of the most successful models for contemporary citywide evangelism. At the time of this writing, 16 other cities in three continents are applying many of the principles pioneered in Resistencia.
This book attempts to present what we understand to be the scriptural principles required for effective citywide evangelism as practiced by the Early Church. Rediscovering and subsequently implementing those principles is what made "Plan Resistencia" possible.
In Section I of this book, I discuss the biblical rationale for prayer evangelism, the location and the dynamics of the battle.. field, the nature of spiritual strongholds and how to destroy them, and the authority delegated to the believer and how to exercise it in prayer. In so doing, I have strived to present and dis.. cuss the principles of prayer and love for the lost, unity in the Church, personal and corporate holiness, and spiritual warfare.
In Section II, I focus on the methodology used to apply those principles, first in Resistencia, and later on in many cities on different continents. By presenting first the biblical principles and then the methodology, I have strived to avoid the common mistake of confusing the principles with the methods. God has given us principles, not methods. Biblical principles are supra-cultural and timeless. The choice of the method to implement those principles depends on man's constantly varying perspective and circumstances. The degree of success of that method is also in direct proportion to the degree in which the implementers yield to the Holy Spirit.
With the passage of time, we have learned much more than what we knew when "Plan Resistencia" was first launched. We are still far from knowing it all. However, what we know we gladly share with you, the reader.
On the day I left Resistencia, the plane took off toward the east, flying over the Parana River, which 700 kilometers further south washes the beaches of my native San Nicolas. This is the river that quietly listened to my youthful conversations with God week after week. Thirty years had gone by, and, finally, I had seen an entire city reached for Christ. I knew it then, and I know it now: That was not the end but the beginning of a new phase. "Plan Resistencia" was the laboratory. Now we must perfect the prototype and make it available to the nations.
    As the plane left Resistencia behind, I thanked God for giving me life to see this day. I thanked Him for the pastors of Resistencia who dared to try. I thanked Him for friends like Peter and Doris Wagner, and Cindy Jacobs, who jumped in and joined us in our very messy trench at the most crucial time in the battle for Resistencia. I thanked God for my team that patiently and courageously followed me as I led them into battle, chasing the dream of my youth. I thanked God for Ruth, my wife, and for Karina, Marilyn, Evelyn and Jesica, our four daughters, who faithfully stood by me on good days and on bad days, of which there were plenty.
My prayer is that the principles contained in this book will bless you, and through you, your city and eventually your nation.
I pray that as you implement them, they will be further perfect' ed for the glory of God and the fulfillment of the Great Commission in our generation.