The Seventh-Day Adventist Church recently held a baptism event in Papua New Guinea, where 300,000 people were reportedly baptized. According to Adventist Today, the baptisms were part of a joint effort between the South Pacific Division, the Papua New Guinea Union Mission (PNGUM), the General Conference, and Adventist World Radio.
The event lasted two weeks and featured pastor Ted Wilson, president of the Seventh-Day Adventist world church. He and his wife Nancy spoke at daily events as the crusade traveled across New Guinea to spread the gospel.
“The latest information from the South Pacific Division and the Papua New Guinea Union Mission is that 278,369 people have been baptized so far in ‘PNG for Christ’ with only about 52 percent of the over 2000 sites reporting,” Wilson wrote in a statement on May 19. “This is a miracle of God! Many more will be reported.”
According to Faithwire, he later confirmed that the number rose above 300,000, noting that the baptisms were evidence of the “Holy Spirit power being poured out on Papua New Guinea.”
Due to the large number of baptisms, some pools accommodated up to 1,000 people.
The Adventist Record also shared reports of “drug lords burning their marijuana crops and being baptized, prisoners responding to calls, whole villages declaring themselves Adventist, healings, and people understanding the gospel presentations in their own languages.”
Pastor Miller Kuso, personal ministry director for PNGUM, coordinated PNG for Christ and oversaw 2,000 events throughout the country, including in some remote areas.
“It is a great privilege and honor for me to visit different sites right across our country,” he told the Adventist Record. “I would like to thank [the almost 300 international speakers] for standing together, as a movement, with PNGUM to deliver the message of hope, the message of salvation to the people of this great nation of Papua New Guinea.”
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/Morata 1 Seventh-Day Adventist Church
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.