Hope On the Horizon In Peru

New Peruvian President, Alan Garcia, opens historic doors to Christianity
By Sandy Butters


Sunday, July 30, 2006 marked a pivotal moment in Peru’s history. This was the first time in its history that its president attended an evangelistic worship service. The nondenominational service was coordinated by a group of 20 evangelical pastors as a worship service of thanksgiving for the incoming president of Peru, Alan Garcia.

Neal Joseph, Jim and Marla Huskey, and Warner and Sandy Butters were able to attend this worship service as guests of Mario Perez, Executive Director of the Christian Missionary Alliance’s administrative arm.

According to the pastor who gave the message, President Alan Garcia has not yet made a public confession of faith in Jesus Christ, but is definitely pursuing Him. The pastor had presented him the gospel and the plan of salvation at an earlier date but Alan did not commit. However, Garcia did agree to two things: to attend a thanksgiving worship service if he became president and to a “cleansing of the presidential palace.” He kept his word on both things.

The “cleansing” took place in a private service Sunday afternoon in the basement of the presidential palace. There was a room there where all the past presidents had stored the idols, ornaments, skulls, cadavers, implements, etc. used in various forms of worship. Garcia invited these pastors to come, pray, cast out the demons and take everything out. Talk about a WOW!

Sunday morning’s message was from Luke 10:25-28, where Jesus responded to the lawyer’s question, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The focus of the message was on the need for a personal experience with Jesus, rather than a general, intellectual understanding of who He is. He shared how this personal relationship today enables us to establish correct priorities of loving God first and then our neighbor as ourselves, to understand and experience how freedom flourishes in obedience to God’s principles, to fight self-centeredness and to turn to the Lord. The question presented to the congregation of over 1,500 national pastors, dignitaries and other invitees was, “How can you make it possible to have a society of these values without having them yourself?” He ended the message with Jesus’ words, “Do this, and you will live.”

There will be backlash and we MUST keep praying for Garcia’s salvation and a God-led revival in Peru as well as against the forces of darkness.