r (Nahor Leo)
Spirit movements of revival influenced many thousands of people in Indonesia during the troubled and politically uncertain times there in the sixties. Much of it happened outside the established church, with a later acceptance of it in some churches. Thousands of animistic Muslims were converted, the biggest Christian impact on Islam in history.
The Indonesian government and army’s victory over the attempted Communist coup opened the way for the savage killing of 400,000 suspected Communists or sympathizers, so the numbers of nominal Muslims and Christians multiplied. This external motivation explains only part of the rapid multiplication of the church during this period, however. Many nominal animistic Muslims turned to the church not out of fear but out of revulsion toward their fellow Muslim’s slaughter of suspected Communists.
The Indonesian Bible Institute, established by Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade missionaries in 1959 at Batu in East Java experienced revival in the sixties with deep repentance, confession, renunciation of occult practices, burning fetishes and amulets, and a new humility and unity among staff and students. Individual students and teams engaged in effective evangelism in many islands.
A team of Indonesian students accompanied by a German Lutheran missionary teacher visited Timor during 1965 and saw evidences of revival beginning which burst into unprecedented power in September 1965. Christians and new converts burned amulets, pastors and leaders broke with animistic practices, prayer meetings multiplied, giving increased, heavy drinking of palm wine and chewing the narcotic betel nut was curtailed, and youth, traditionally the hardest to reach became the most responsive. They formed evangelistic teams of their own to take this new- found gospel of deliverance to outlying villages.
This revival spread in the uncertain days following the attempted communist coup on the night of 30 September and 1 October, 1965 in Indonesia when six of the eight Indonesian army generals were killed and mutilated, with only Suharto and Nasution narrowly escaping execution. General Suharto became acting president, keeping the popular President Sukarno without power till his death in 1971.
At the time of the coup a powerful revival movement had begun in Timor at Soé, a mile-high mountain town of about 5,000 people where Rev. Daniel pastored the Reformed Church. A young man, Nahor Leo, was convicted by a vision of Jesus, destroyed a hidden amulet, and confessed publicly in the Reformed Church on the evening of Sunday, 26 September. The church experienced a Pentecost style Spirit movement.
The editors of Tyndale House Publishers, hearing of unusual revival reports from Timor, sent Don Crawford, a trained reporter, to investigate the revival in Indonesia, especially in Timor. He reported this way:
Calls to enter an evangelistic ministry came to young people in unusual fashion. Nahor Leo, a high school athlete with a reputation as a rebel, was stirred by a dynamic challenge to Christian service given by the headmistress of a Soé school. Later, studying in his room in Pastor Daniel’s home with two fellow students, he suddenly called out, “Who turned out the light?” Assured it was still burning, Leo stumbled to his bed. “I’m going to rest.”
He slept a few minutes. Then, as if wrenched from the bed, he fell to the floor and appeared to be struggling with an invisible force. Leo groped his way to his clothes box and thrust his hand to its bottom, then pulled up the root of a plant which was wound with red string. “Yes,” Leo muttered, as if answering the unseen visitor, “this is my djimat.”
Leo’s companions recognized the strange object as an instrument of witchcraft. “It’s true,” Leo spoke again. “I have used it to ask the spirits to help me win races and to attract girls.” The unusual conversation continued for a moment. Then Leo collapsed on the floor.
“What’s the matter? Who were you talking to?” one of the boys shouted. Leo slowly turned his sightless eyes toward his companions. At length the white-faced 