The Legacy of Swedish Intercessor Kjell Sjöberg

Musings while the Eurovision Song contest goes on in Sweden

Jew hatred has become so obscene that an Israeli girl can’t sing in Sweden without needing protection from 100+ police. The violent protests at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö look like a lynch mob. Yet at this point singer Eden Golan has reached the finals of the contest!

Internet screenshot of Israeli singer Eden Golan

If he were alive today, a great Swedish intercessor, Kjell [pronounced Shell] Sjöberg would surely have prayed Isaiah 59 v 19 into the situation:

So shall they fear The name of the LORD from the west, And His glory from the rising of the sun; When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the LORD will lift up a standard against him.

Because there is no punctuation in Hebrew, the verse could also read like this….

When the enemy comes in, like a flood the Spirit of the LORD will lift up a standard against him.

Amen!

Kjell Sjöberg was born in Stockholm in 1933, the son and grandson of Pentecostal ministers. At 18 he experienced God through faith in Jesus Christ and soon started to preach. At 23 he planted his first church in Sweden. In 1961 he went to Pakistan, where he planted churches and started the Full Gospel Bible School in Lahore. After returning to Sweden in 1972, he started a church that in ten years grew to 650 members in Järfälla, a suburb of Stockholm.

Kjell was one of the many great intercessors of our generation involved in prayer for Israel who made a profound impact on my life.

In the daily International Christian Embassy’s Global Prayer Gathering, one of the Swedish panelists, Cherstin Lindberg, shared some of the characteristics of Kjell’s ministry.

These important hallmarks are also often found in the lives of other great intercessors:

Kjell had a dedicated prayer room in his home with a rug for prostrating himself before God, and there were maps on the wall both of Sweden, Israel and the world. He often put his hands on cities and countries as he prayed for them.

Kjell was a great believer in putting his feet on ground to claim for God. This is according to the principle found in the Bible in Joshua 1: 3, Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you. . . .

He always had a scripture to proclaim into a situation. Not just his opinion, but the Word of God.

He never traveled alone, but in teams, to stay together and unified in purpose.

He admonished other prayer warriors never to think “I have all the prayer points.” In a prayer meeting there are different pieces in the puzzle, and each participant has something to add to the prayer, but everything according to the Word of God.

Read the Word, pray the Word. Derek Prince of blessed memory was another intercessor in Jerusalem who taught us to proclaim the Word of God into situations.

Kjell always prayed for Israel and sounded the shofar, a signal in the spiritual realm.

It was the practice of Kjell Sjöberg never to pray against an evil person. Instead always pray for the saving of the person’s soul, but be very precise to pray against the evil in the person because there is a spiritual realm, a demon, operating behind the evil person. We pray against evil but not against people.

He often said, pray with the Bible in one hand and newspaper in other hand—you will see your prayer answered in the news.

Kjell wrote a book exposing Freemasons. On the day of Kjell’s funeral a news headline revealed that the Swedish king had refused to become a freemason. It was a great sign of the effectiveness of Kjell’s prayers for his nation.

Kjell Sjöberg influenced me in many ways because he also prayed for the Arabs, and he was admirably one of the first believers to make a prayer journey with other Christian brothers into Saudi Arabia.

His humility was a special trademark. Decades ago I’ll never forget being a young woman preacher, and I was invited to speak at my church, Christ Church in Jerusalem. I must have been about 34 at the time. To my surprise Kjell was in the congregation. I felt intimidated but he sat there, smiling, extremely supportive. Such was the greatest of this man.

The following is a pdf file of one of his books:

https://cdn.books.shuzia.com/production/media-library/f74909ace68e51891440e4da0b65a70c/3990.pdf