What Is The Next Move of God For This Generation, the 21st Century
Landisville Camp Meeting Ground, Lancaster, PAIn the early 1970’s I went to a Mennonite Camp Meeting Ground and attended the Mennonite’s First Conference On The Holy Spirit. It was an old place, with old buildings, and a huge covered amphitheater for mass meetings. I remember the front stage filled with Mennonite youth singing a copula who then went into free worship singing “in the spirit”, a heavenly sound that I will never forget.
I Googled “camp meetings” to see if there are any within a 50 mile range of my house. I found an article that said Pennsylvania was once the largest area featuring over 175 Camp Meetings during the summer, but today there is only 15 Camp Meeting Grounds in existence in PA, and only 5 that are operational. After the initial shock, I realized that Camp Meetings were God’s Holy Spirit movement 200 years ago, yet two centuries later, some are still holding onto its history and tradition. The “Great Awakening” happened in the 1700’s, “Camp Meetings” in the 1800’s, large “City Wide Crusades,” “Jesus Rallies”, and “Azusa St. and the Pentecostal Movement in the 1900’s. We are in the first decade of the 21st Century, and I ask, “What evangelistic movement of revival is going to be identified with this century?” How is the Holy Spirit going to move outside the establish church buildings in this century? Is he going to do this century something more shocking that Azusa St. in the last century?
The good signs of God’s mass evangelistic movements is the soul winning; the down side is usually new schisms, new groups, new denominations being birthed rather than the movement bringing unity in the Body of Christ. Also, with new technology comes new movements: Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press and his mass printing of the Bible ushered in the Age of Enlightenment. Radio ushered in the movement for World Wide Evangelism, and television took Billy Graham out of large tents and placed on a World Wide stage by televising his mass evangelistic meetings.
Now with the World Wide Web, what is next? IChat, Skype, etc. might bring video conferencing with worship to an universal level: two or more different locations worshiping at the same time, conferencing at the same time, and being led by the same Holy Spirit which is “universal”, yet “intimate”. Can a prophetic word given in Ireland, speak to the brethren in New Zealand, and confirmed by the brethren in the U.K. and U.S.A. at the same moment through the internet?
Is it possible that the five fold could come forth locally, nationally, and universally as the different gifting of each of the five ministers and receives from the others, but the result of this movement being “unity and maturity” into the Body of Christ, preparing the Church to be “without spot or wrinkle” for the return of the Lord?
In Jesus Christ, “all things are possible”, so Lord, my prayer is that what ever You have for the Holy Spirit to do for this century, for me as a believer, for this generation, and for the Church as a whole: Bring It On! Church, be prepared for another movement of God, orchestrated by the Holy Spirit, lifting up the name of Jesus, glorifying the Father in heaven.