A person is never the same after being one among thousands of gathered people who suddenly sink to their knees in unison under the weight of the glory of His tangibly manifested presence.
When the very air in the room becomes a cloud saturated with His glory, an inexplicable weightiness—first in the stomach and then in the shoulders—makes it hard to stand without bowing while holding on to something. Before long, everyone in the room is kneeling, most with their faces pressed to the ground.
Here, in these tender moments when God is revealing His holiness in such an evident way, it becomes clear that He loves us so much that He wants to share the beauty of His holiness with us—for eternity.
The answer to the age-old question of who we are and whose we are becomes crystal-clear as the light of truth shatters the lies of darkness.
Then, when His majesty is revealed beyond human containment, the sounds of individuals sobbing unify into gut-level cry that sounds like a corporate mother giving birth.
Microcosms of the fulfillment of Philippians 2:10, when every knee on earth will bow to Jesus Christ and confess Him as Lord, sometimes occur during worship and ministry in gatherings of believers. Modern-day examples of times when He manifested His presence in one location for extended periods time are the Brownsville Revival and the Toronto Blessing in the 90s.
The Unique Role of Every Spirit-Filled Believer
Quotes from Smith Wigglesworth and Jonathan Edwards provide insight into revival being perpetual and its fulfillment being dependent upon every believer being in the fullness of His Spirit, understanding his or her unique and God-appointed role.
“The revival of God’s church continues, but it won’t be complete until every Spirit-filled believer understands his or her unique role in its fulfillment,” said Wigglesworth, a British evangelist and faith healer who was important in the early history of Pentecostalism.
“Revival is not about getting you back to year one; revival is to get you forward to where God appoints you to be in all the fullness of his Spirit,” said Edwards, an American revivalist preacher and theologian.
From the chronicles of history. Wigglesworth and Edwards are still calling forth every believer to be constantly moving forward toward the fullness of Holy Spirit as they are fulfilling their unique role in ongoing revival.
Enduring and fruitful revival perpetuates forward motion. His priorities become our priorities. We are His sheep and as His sheep, we know His voice. Repentance from sin is more than a one-time action or lifestyle shift. On the one hand, it is a relational and synchronic flow in the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, it is a battle-readiness partnership with Holy Spirit and fellow believers to conquer darkness with the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
A good analogy of living in sync with the Holy Spirit is found in a quote from Holocaust survivor and evangelist Corrie Ten Boom: “If a bird is flying for pleasure, it flies with the wind, but if it meets danger, it turns and faces the wind, in order that it may rise higher.”
Hunger for Revival
Communion with God is the life force of every believer. God is always present and those who are paying attention will recognize many of the ways He reveals Himself.
There are times, however, when people begin to unite in a desperate cry of, “We need You, God!”
Among the many indicators that we are in a time such as this are extended prayer meetings on campuses and in public spaces, the exponential multiplication of people responding to altar calls for repentance, numerous reports of thousands of Muslims believing on Jesus after He comes to them in their dreams and large cross-sections of people gathering for prayer.
Speaking about the deepening cry of people today, Lindell Cooley recently said in a video post, “There is prayer for it. There is a hunger from people…They need something from God like never before.”
Cooley was the worship leader at the Brownsville Revival, which lasted five years, and he is now the senior pastor of Grace Church Nashville.
The Coming Together of the Word and the Spirit
Many contemporary leaders in the church today are united in the belief that the greatest harvest of souls the world has ever seen is in its beginning stages. It has been given a variety of names: the Great Harvest, the End-Time Harvest, the Billion-Souls Harvest and others.
At the end of his life, Wigglesworth said the biggest move of God that the world has ever seen will occur when there is a coming together of those who emphasize His Word and those who emphasize His Spirit.
“When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidence in the churches of something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the Word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit.’
‘When the Word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that nations, and indeed, the world have ever seen,” he said.
God revealing Himself through miracles that confirm the preaching of His Word, for example, expresses His love and testifies of the truth of the gospel.
“The purpose of signs and wonders is to be a vehicle of getting love to a generation,” said Jarame Nelson, founder of Elisha Revolution.
Nelson and his team have reportedly seen over one million people saved and many miracles, including miraculous healings, in Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Malawi and the Philippines this year.
Speaking of the increase in faith when prophetic insight ignites prayer for healing, J.D. King, a pastor at Revive Church in Kansas City, Missouri, told Charisma that prophetic guidance in ministering healing is a promise waiting to be realized.
“The confidence that comes from ministering healing through prophetic guidance can be likened to holding a signed and endorsed check,” he explained. “It’s a promise waiting to be realized, just waiting for you to cash it in and access guaranteed results.”
Mentoring and Making Room
At times, missionaries and evangelists who have moved powerfully in miracles overseas find that room is not made for them to minister alongside others in the church when they return to the U.S.
“After speaking and experiencing healing and miracles in a variety of countries with over 100,000 coming into the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, I found my opportunities to serve in local churches limited to greeting visitors at the door for many years,” said Melonie Janet Mangum, the transformation director for Aglow International and CEO of Partners for Transformation.
Lee Grady, founder of Bold Venture, told Charisma that he believes the secret to effective leadership is getting under people and pushing them up.
“My effectiveness is not based on my performance or on my preaching, but on how many people I train and release to surpass me,” he explained. “Just as Elijah gave his double-portion mantle to Elisha, we must stop being insecure about how successful our disciples will be. We should cheer them on when they excel beyond our capacity.”
Stacy Campbell, founder of the Canadian Prophetic Council, said she has a passion to teach believers to know how to hear the voice of God through proper teaching and strong values.
“People cannot mature when they are in structures that do not allow the five-fold ministry to operate,” said the founder of a mentorship program called Shiloh Company.
Overwhelming Breakthrough
Ken Fish, of Orbis Ministries, said he believes that we are on the cusp of an explosive breakthrough. The evangelist who studied to be a physicist earlier in his life said that it has long been said that what is seen in the physical world reflects what is happening in the spiritual world.
Drawing from this widely-held insight he said he believes that the division (fission) we see in the world today is producing such extreme pressure and elevated temperature that the energy for fusion—and the subsequent release of unimaginable power—is being created that will quickly and explosively destroy spiritual darkness with the light of Jesus Christ.
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers recently converged for panel discussions and speaker sessions in Nashville for the Fusion Conference, which was hosted by Orbis Ministries.
“At Fusion, we set out to ‘fuse together’ gifts which many may not think of as related. In this case, these gifts were prophecy and miracles,” explains Fish. “The idea is that prophecy can catalyze miracles (Elijah prophesying a drought), and miracles often provoke prophecy (as when Mary prophesied the Magnificat).”
He said that even though they were specifically seeking to explore non-healing miracles at the conference that brought together nearly 1,200 people, they had many healings, including miraculous healings. “Based on feedback we have received, many are reporting higher and more fluent levels of prophetic ministry through their lives, and the same with miracles.”
On the Launchpad
In this time of deep travail for breakthrough, God is calling us to be reconciled to Him and to one another. The path from fission to fusion in our own lives may seem daunting, but Jesus’ redemptive power will propel us to victory that releases great healing and power if we are led by Him through what may seem like the greatest challenge of our lives. “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body,” (Rom. 8:22-23).
During the Brownsville Revival, Renee Deloriea was the managing editor of the Brownsville Revival Magazine, a columnist for the Remnant Newspaper and a freelance writer for Charisma magazine. Since then, she has edited books and written articles for numerous media outlets. She lives in Nashville.
