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The very original Fridayfax
It was in 1993 when I heard the following story:
Bulgaria: Chief of Police in Sofia raised from the Dead
Just recently, my DAWN-colleague and friend Wolfgang Fernández had come back from a trip to Bulgaria and
Turkey. He reported, that the seven existing denominations in Bulgaria were ready to engage in a DAWN type strategy for their nation ( DAWN: Discipling A Whole Nation; a national saturation
churchplanting strategy). An initial reasearch project was already under way. Before the demise of Communism, christian churches were forbidden. There were only around 50 underground churches, and most
christian believers came together in secret. But today, (1993) Bulgaria had between 1.200 and 1.500 evangelical churches. However, a big problem for the churches was to find places to meet. An
astonishing event brought some change – at least in the capital of the country, Sofia:
Last year (1992) the chief of police in Sofia had died with food poisoning. It happened on a Friday. After
the death certificate was issued by the doctors, he was brought into the local morgue, so he could be burried the following Monday. That Sunday the church of Bulgarian Pastor Pavel Ignatov (today Pavel
is the President of the Bulgarian Church of God) felt they needed to pray for the chief of police. The chief of poliece later reports that it was that very Sunday that he was raised from the dead.
According to his words, during his time of death he encountered Jesus, who told him that this particular church was praying for him and he should go back to life and to serve him in this church. Next
Monday held a shock for the staff of the morgue: to their absolute perplexion they found their chief of police naked, hungry, cold but alive in the morgue! Since then, the man is serving God as an
Evangelist, who is giving testimony of his experience with his very own death certificate in his hands. Since he is not exactly a nobody that could be easily dismissed, more than 280 policemen have found
Christ through his testimony. By intervention of the chief of police the church of Pavel Ignatov, which since has grown to 4.000 members, was given the conference center of the Communist Party in Sofia
for meetings – free of charge.
I found this news intriguing, and went to check it out. A former DAWN-colleague from England, Erwin Dorschler, was visiting Sofia a little later, met the chief
of police and interviewed him for 90 minutes. He came back with the full story, complete with a copy of the death certificate of the man. The thing really did happen. As a result, I felt confident to
relay the news in my own personal news update that went out to a few hundred friends and intercessors. However, the story got copied over and over again, and finally landed at the evangelical German
newsservice “idea”. They, in return, asked me for some verification on the story, and I sent them copies of the interview, local connections and a copy of the death certificate. Shortly after that, the
story got printed.
In a world full of negative news and discouraging head lines I made the decision to go about researching the positive news of God far more systematically and make the results
available to others. My aim was to have those factual stories become a personal encouragement for many, “conversation stoppers and fuel for sermons, prayer and praise”,
as UK-based prayer leader Brian Mills described it. Originally, it started with sending out these stories using a little laptop and a modem in the form of Faxes – hence the name. In a short time, hundreds of subscribers grew into many thousands, and regular translations of the original German version appeared in Finnish, Russian, Spanish, Japanese and English. In short: the Fridayfax was born –
“a good reason to buy a fax machine”, commented Geri Keller, founder of “Stiftung Schleife” in Winterthur, Switzerland.
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