The interracial characteristics were in the forefront of the Azusa characteristics; yet most importantly the move of God was revealed. The Lord’s desire to see many of the unreached saved and filled with the Holy Spirit was a spark at Azusa. The winds of the Holy Spirit blew on that spark and a blazing flame of world evangelism was introduced on the scene and continues to impact the Christian church today. This was the design of God’s hand.
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
— Acts 2:38-39, NKJV
Los Angeles, a city with established global cultural connections allowed the Azusa Street Revival to be quickly communicated to distant cultures worldwide. Those that participated in the revival believed they were speaking or hearing actual foreign languages (Acts 2:1-4). Our Lord worked in ordinary people such as you and me, in a dirty building in a period of American history which was an embarrassment to the world. The Lord crossed racial and gender tensions and divisions. He weaved His perfect will in an ugly environment. Regardless of the period of history, Azusa still has an impact now over one hundred years in many nations.
What happened in Azusa Street has and can happen again. It takes a person, or people to yield, ask and believe to receive God in their lives. The power and anointing of God is amazing. And because it is from the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ, nothing in your life is impossible nor can fail.
“I implore you to hear that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is to possess us so that we are, and may be continually, so full of the Holy Spirit that utterances and revelations and eyesight and everything else may be so remarkably controlled by the Spirit of God that we live and move in this glorious sphere of usefulness for the glory of God.”4
Smith Wigglesworth
1. MacGregor, Kirk R. 2006. 1 Corinthians 15:3a-6a, 7 and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 2 (June): 225-234.
2. Richard Riss, A Survey of 20th Century Revival Movements in North America, Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988, 47.
3. Grant McClung, “Waiting on the Gift: An Insiders Looks Back on One Hundred Years of Pentecostal Witness,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 30, no. 2 (Ap 2006):64 – 65.
4. Wigglesworth, Smith. 1984. Smith Wigglesworth on the Holy Spirit. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 67.
"Immanuel's Soldiers Hope for the Weary"
Excerpt from Chapter Four, "The Holy Spirit's Work"
Dr. N. L. Fox