Excerpt from:
Charisma Reports:
The Brownsville Revival
Chapter 1: The Panhandle Prophecy
The scene could hardly have been more dramatic. Pastor David Yonggi Cho, known around the world as the leader of one of the most phenomenal church-growth movements in history, listened intently to the voice of the God he had served for so many decades.
The year was 1991, and a prophetic vision was unfolding before Cho’s eyes. God began to speak to the South Korean pastor about a sweeping revival that would finally come to the United States, a nation that seemed to have been bypassed as God’s Spirit flowed throughout other parts of the world.
At the Holy Spirit’s prompting, Cho pulled out a map of America and allowed the Spirit to guide his hand to the area where this revival would break out.
His finger rested on Pensacola, a Florida panhandle city hardly associated with spiritual fervor. In fact, the city was known to the homosexual community as the “gay Riviera.” A seven-mile stretch of beach on the Gulf of Mexico just east of the city attracted thousands of homosexuals and lesbians; over the Memorial Day weekend every year, the homosexual population reached as high as fifty thousand. Pensacola was definitely one place to be if you were gay.
It was also the place to be if you wanted an abortion. At one time, the city was home to three abortion clinics. Three clinic bombings on Christmas Eve of 1984 had put Pensacola on the map; within three years of Cho’s vision, the murders of three clinic workers had drawn worldwide attention to the city of fifty-eight thousand people.
But on that night in 1991, Cho believed he had heard the voice of the Lord loud and
clear: “I am going to send revival to the seaside city of Pensacola, and it will spread like a fire until all of America has been consumed by it.” From Seattle, Washington, where Cho was conducting a meeting the night he received the vision, word spread across the country about the coming revival. In no time, it reached the ears of pastors in the Pensacola area.
And when Cho speaks, people listen.
Doubters believed news of the prophecy to be a rumor. Why would God speak to Dr. Cho, pastor of a church in Seoul with more than seven hundred thousand members, about a quiet Southern town that had never made any spiritual waves? But when Cho publicly confirmed that he had received the prophecy, leaders began to take the prophetic words seriously.
Among those leaders was John Kilpatrick, pastor of
Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola. Once word of the prophecy reached Kilpatrick, he and his church’s leadership set aside Sunday nights exclusively to pray for revival. For nearly three years, they prayed. They prayed for the lost, for political leaders, church leaders, denominational leaders, and school officials.
Several earlier and less-publicized prophecies also had indicated that the hand of God was pointing toward Pensacola. In 1979 Pastor Ken Sumrall, now retired, delivered a prophecy at Liberty Church, the nondenominational church he founded in Pensacola. It said of the coming revival:
“Time will be forgotten as meetings will last for hours…There will be much weeping and sobbing as sin is seen as exceedingly sinful…Youth, even the very young, will be drunk with new wine and burn with fervor, oblivious to anything and everything but obedience to Jesus…Prayer will be the main event of the church. Hundreds will be converted. Be prepared to baptize two hundred new believers at one service.”
A second documented prophecy was given in Phoenix, Arizona, by Visionaries International leader Michial Ratliff. In November 1989 Ratliff prophesied:
“Transformation will come. Many people in peril, in dire straits, will be saved dramatically. Healings will take place. Deliverances will take place. And one church in particular will humble its heart and receive Me. The college people, the students, the high schools, various people will be reckoned with by the angels of God that are loosed.
“This is a victory against all contempt that is stirring in the city, actually disarming the time bomb that is ticking away in Pensacola, Florida. You shall see the turnaround, and nationally will the church hear about the revival that sparked in Pensacola.”
Strong spiritual words for a city that seemed to produce nothing but bad news in the early nineties. The 1993 murder of abortionist Dr. David Gunn and the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and bodyguard James Barrett the following year had made the name of Pensacola synonymous with hatred, violence, and the media’s favorite phrase of all, “right-winged, narrow-minded, fundamental Christianity.”
Brownsville folks just dug in their heels and prayed even harder. If Satan thought he had a lock on this town, he was dead wrong.
By early 1995 the people of Pensacola apparently needed some reminders about the city’s spiritual destiny. In February Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church near San Diego, California, conducted special services at Pine Forest United Methodist Church and gave the congregation a prophetic word: “You will accomplish more in the next thirty-six months than you have in the last hundred years.” For some that seemed unlikely, but those who had been faithfully praying for revival took Garlow’s prophetic statement as though it came directly from God.
On May of 1995, as Christians gathered downtown to pray at a rally held in connection with the annual March for Jesus event, the crowd heard Cho’s words again: “I am going to send revival to the seaside town of Pensacola...”
For years, countless Christians in the area had hung onto the promise contained in those words. They had no trouble believing that promise was indeed from the Lord. The difficult part was the wait. How long would they have to wait? Their friends, neighbors, and family members were dying, suffering, sinning, wasting their lives. Where was the match that would ignite this fire that would be sparked in Pensacola and spread throughout America?
Brownsville Assembly continued praying, continued seeking the Father.
No one saw it coming. No one predicted the day and the hour. No one even suspected that the Father would come on the most obvious day of all—Father’s Day.
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