Many may not know him, and even within Pentecostal circles in Kumba, some may have never heard the name Rev. Emmanuel Basam Masok.
Yet history records seasons before it records names, and there was a season in the mid-2000s when God deliberately chose a mainline altar to announce His power to an entire city.
Every Thursday, the atmosphere around the Gendarmerie, Buea Road axis shifted. Traffic would grind to a halt as multitudes poured in from across Kumba and beyond. The city felt it. Healing and deliverance services became appointment moments with heaven.
What unfolded there can only be described as the Pentecostalisation of a mainline church, not by borrowed methods, but by authentic apostolic power. The services were heavy with the tangible presence of God, carried on waves of intense praise and worship, ministered with grace and depth by Evan Ntuba Wilfred.
God was making a statement: fire is not denominational; fire responds to obedience, prayer, and hunger. Miracles were not advertised; they erupted. Deliverance was not staged; it flowed. Jesus was exalted, and the Holy Spirit had free course.
My personal walk with this great revivalist unveiled the pillars upon which that move rested:
First, he was a man of prayer, an intercessor par excellence. Long before the crowds gathered, he had prevailed in secret. The altar burned because the knees had laboured.
Second, he walked in uncommon humility. Simple to the core, unpretentious, and deeply submitted to God. He carried power without pride, authority without arrogance, a rare grace in any generation.
Third, he was a man of integrity. His life preached as loudly as his pulpit. What he proclaimed in public, he practiced in private. Heaven trusted him; the people followed him.
Though that season was later interrupted, when he was removed from the congregation, sent to the Presbyterian Seminary in Kumba for a Master’s degree program, and subsequently transferred to Yaoundé, the ashes still speak. Seeds planted in revival never die.
From that divine visitation, a generation was marked. Young men and women caught the flame, many of whom are today standing in pulpits, mission fields, and apostolic assignments, doing mighty exploits for the Kingdom of God. The movement outlived the moment. The fire outlived the vessel.
God, in His wisdom, used Rev. Emmanuel Basam Masok to prove that when hunger meets heaven, denominations bow to divine fire.
To read more about the Pentecostalisation of mainline churches in Cameroon, and to encounter the fuller account of this remarkable apostolic chapter, I invite you to get a copy of my book The Fathers of Cameroon Pentecostalism.
Rev. Bobbs Lyonga Elive
0 Comments