MEXICAN WAVE OF REVIVAL
A remarkable move of the Holy Spirit has been spreading through remote areas Mexico. David Hogan gives a personal account of some of the awesome visitations by God
It all started when I visited one of our pastors in a remote village. He walked up to me and trembling, said, "David, I'm really afraid I've made a mistake." When I asked him what had happened, he replied, with tears running down his eyes: "I got up in our little church and started preaching and the people started falling down. They started crying and laughing. It scared me so Ian out of the church!"
That's what I had been looking for. God coming into our work not because somebody came and preached it, but because the Holy Spirit ushered it in.
I got together with my pastors and we made a covenant to do a month's fast. It was September 1995. This was as well as the three days on, three days off fast we had been doing that year anyway.
On the seventh day He hit me greater than I've ever been hit in my life before. The Shekinah presence of God came into our work from that time.
At a meeting with about 75 of my pastors, I got up and opened my Bible, I shared on one or two verses. Suddenly, I felt - that's enough! I sald, "Stand up! Receive the River of Life!"
You should have seen it! It looked as if someone was hitting them with bats in the stomach and the head. People were lying over the benches, forward, backward, all over the place. And these were ministers!
After this I called all the pastors together from the whole work. A couple of hundred caine. The first day was awesome and there were healings.
The second day was even better and stronger. I got there at 8am and left at 10pm and there was ministry all day.
But I was not ready for the third day. We were coming in from different areas. I didn't know the Indians had been in an all-night prayer meeting and the Holy Spirit had fallen on them and they couldn't get up all night long. Some of them had fallen on ant beds, but not one ant had bit them!
I was about 300 yards from the church and the closer I got, the more intense was the heat. Sweat poured off me. I could hardly walk - the presence of God was so thick.
People were all over the place: some were knocked out, some were moaning and wailing. I was holding on to things and could hardly breathe.
The people had been singing for two hours before I got there. I laid my Bible down on a little wobbly Indian table. Hundreds were looking at me. I called nine elders to the front and told them the Holy Spirit was there and we needed to make a covenant together, even to martyrdom. When we lifted our hands in agreement, all nine fell at once! I was hurled backward and fell under the table.
We were ringed with unbelievers, coming in to see what was going on. The anointing presence of God came and knocked every one of them to the ground dozens of them. From the church we could see people in the village below running out screaming from their huts and falling under the power of the Holy Spirit.
There were 25-30 sick people brought there. Every sick person at the meeting was healed: the blind, the cancerous, epileptics and the demon possessed. Nobody touched them but Jesus.
There was also instant reconciliation between people who had been against each other. They were lying on top of each other, sobbing and repenting.
I was afraid when I saw all of that going on. I looked up to heaven and said, "God what are You...?" And that was the end of it. He didn't want to hear any questions. Bang! I was about three or four metres from the table. When I woke up some hours later, I was under the table and my legs wouldn't work!
God has been doing the same things in every service since then. It's been over a year. God came because we waited and listened. We've had over 200 people raised from the dead and between 150 and 500 people saved each month.
The river of God is here and its full - and there's plenty for all!
Pastor David Hogan is the founding leader of Freedom Ministries, a pioneering mission among remote Mexican mountain tribes. This article is edited from a message he gave in November 1996 at Christian Outreach Centre in Brisbane. Source: Renewal Journal #9: Mission (1997:1).
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