DAWN Fridayfax 1998 #07

Mexico: healing rain

Fidel Rodríguez had been clinically blind for 20 years. On 21 July 1997, he was standing in a stadium in Piedras Negras, Mexico, with 10,000 other people. It started to rain. Wiping the rain out of his eyes, Rodríguez suddenly paused - because he suddenly saw a sea of Christians with their hands raised to heaven. He could see again! The events organisers later discovered that people had been healed of blindness, deafness, tumors, diabetes and even flat feet during the shower.
A clear message?
The event was one of the now very well known worship concerts led by the singer and preacher Marcos Witt, who believes that miraculous healings are growing in number in Mexico as the intensity of the spiritual breakthrough in the country increases. "It is quite significant," he says, "that most of the healings are to do with ears, eyes, tumors and feet. Isn't the message clear? God is preparing his church to see and hear things which they never experienced. He is freeing us from the tumors of division and racism, and heals our feet so that we can take the gospel to the world."
In 1997, over 250,000 people attended one of these worship concerts in Mexico, with a total of over 1 million so far in Latin America. 35-year-old Witt, according to the US magazine Charisma, has been organising these concerts for the last 12 years. "These are not healing events led by particularly gifted Christians. In general, we don't lay hands on the people, but simply pray that God will move during the concert."
Strategic eye healings
"God spoke to me in Campeche on the Mexican half island Yucatan," says Witt, "telling me that he wants to heal people's eyes." He told that to a local pastor, who was very surprised and asked "Did you know that there is an epidemic of eye inflammations in our city?". At the end of the meeting, so many people had been healed of eye problems that the organisers asked themselves whether the epidemic was over. According to Witt, many of the healings have been documented by doctors.
When an angel taps you on the shoulder
Many Mexican churches are experiencing such manifestations. Vino Nuevo, a charismatic church in Cuidad Juarez near the Texan border led by pastor Victor Ricardo, was the initiator of a growing Christian men's movement similar to the Promise Keepers in the USA. Ricardo reports that the church has recently experienced astonishing healings. Benjamín Rivera, pastor of the Mexico City church 'Renovacion Integral de la Familia', gives the same report. "This power of Christ is still visible today. The lame walk, the blind see, and the testimonies lead others to Christ," he says. "We live in exciting times, for which many have prayed and of which many have dreamed. Children, teenagers, adults and the aged are all being touched by God." Andrea Ganem, 23, had been deaf since age 2, able only to hear a few sounds with a hearing aid. A Christian from a Mexico City church told her mother that Andrea would soon be able to hear again, after a supernatural healing. "A few days later," Andrea says, "I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder to wake me up, then heard a voice saying 'Stand up and hear!'. Then I slowly started to hear the birds singing outside my window, and many other sounds which I had never heard before. I could not keep it to myself, so woke up my whole family to tell them that God had touched me!"
Originality, not manipulated copies
"Even though the number of healings is increasing," says Witt, "we are all astonished by God's originality in how these healings take place. No two are the same: some say they feel heat moving through their body; others tell of hearing God speaking to them. Whatever God does, it always seems to be creative." "One of the greatest difficulties for God is the ignorance and lack of belief in his own church," says the Mexican pastor Sosa. "We in Mexico are religious people, but this religiosity limits us. We put God in a box and think that he can only work in the ways we believe correct."
A prophetic word for Latin America
Pastor Gerardo Cardenas received the following 'prophetic message from God' to the Latin American world during an concert with Marcos Witt in Mexico City: "I have chosen you, Latin America, for a great revival. Chosen, to hold my name up high, because I choose the low things on which others look down to humble the wise. The eyes of the world will now be on you, and they will see the wonderful things I am doing in your midst. They will recognise that I do not work through the sword or through armies, but through the power of my Holy Spirit."
Mexico needs a miracle
'Without a miracle, we will not reach our country with the gospel,' many Mexican pastors think to themselves. Most of the 98 million Mexicans are culturally Roman Catholic, but only 10% go to church. In rural areas, some Catholics have burned Protestant churches to the ground, and mobbed and persecuted Evangelical Christians, partly as a result of Mexico's resumption of diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1992. Mexico City's population will grow to around 32 million in the year 2000, and 7 million already live in slums. In the past, Evangelicals tended to have little influence, but churches have grown rapidly in recent years. Some statistics already speak of 10% of the population being Evangelical.
Source: Francisco Palofox, Mexico; Tessie DeVore, editor of Vida Cristiana, the Spanish edition of Charisma. Internet: www.charismamag.com,