At the end of 1961, a young German Bible student named Reinhard Bonnke was walking in the streets of Clapham, London, with a few hours to pass before his trip home. He was en route to Germany from the Bible College of Wales in Swansea, where he was training for the ministry. Looking at the homes around him, Bonnke suddenly recognized the name of George Jeffreys posted outside of a castle-like house.
Roberts Liardon tells us that Bonnke knocked excitedly on the door and inquired whether he might see Jeffreys, whom he knew to be the greatest English evangelist since John Wesley. The housekeeper was about to turn Bonnke away when Jeffreys came to the door himself and invited him in. Bonnke felt he had been “transported to the abode of an apostle.” They spoke for some time about the lost world and the widespread need for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then Jeffreys reached out and laid hands on the young man’s head. He prayed for his ministry and for the empowerment of God for evangelism. To this day, Bonnke believes that that was when he received his mighty anointing. “I now realise that was God’s true ordination for me as an evangelist.”
In the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Bonnke proved to be a world evangelist, indeed, especially in Africa, where his open-air gospel campaigns attracted crowds as large as 1.5 million.86 And signs and wonders of the healing evangelist have followed.
And so, George Jeffreys’ mantle remains most active through the anointing of Kensington Temple and the ministry of evangelist Reinhard Bonnke who spreads the powerful gospel message as Jeffreys did in the first half of the twentieth century.
Jeffreys’ lifelong friend and Revival Party associate Albert Edsor said of Jeffreys after his death.
To the end of his earthly pilgrimage he was engaged in seeking those who were sick in soul and praying for the sick in body. Time alone will reveal the magnitude of his mission and the extent of his powerful influence for God, and history will be kinder to him than those of his critics and contemporaries who misjudged him and what he stood for. As time rolls on, his spiritual stature will be enhanced, and the stamp of his integrity and sincerity in his God-given and God-honored ministry will be appreciated the more.”
And that is how George Jeffreys is remembered today.
