Fire Baptism Greater than Azusa: Igniting Your Heart to Receive Fresh Holy Fire

Many Christian leaders, even at Azusa, have long maintained that more is coming.

Many have prophetically described what happened at Azusa as a releasing of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Many have further described what is coming as a releasing of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire (see Luke 3:16).

First Corinthians 13 tell us, “we know in part and we prophesy in part,” so to see the whole picture we must put our parts together. This is the genius and glory of the church that will one day compel us to come together in a unity that is so great that the Lord can trust us with such unprecedented power and authority. Still, to describe what it means to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire cannot be answered in a single statement without tragically reducing its meaning. A new Pentecost is coming that is not new, but a recovery of some aspects of the baptism in the Holy Spirit yet to be recovered.

This belief has been at the foundation of possibly every move of God since Pentecost. To believe we have all there is or that the present church is all we are called to be is pride, delusion, or both. Some of these major missing factors include holiness, integrity, morality, and the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom (see Psalm 111:10)—all things the great Pentecostal leaders told us came with the baptism of fire. The baptism with fire will both purify and embolden us.

In Acts 4:31, the disciples who had lost their courage were filled again and “spoke the word of God with boldness” and without fear of consequences. This remained a hallmark of the first-century church, but where is this courage today? Today, there is a new stirring of the Spirit and a new critical mass forming that will bring a release of the baptism with the Holy Spirit like a nuclear reaction. A new Pentecost is coming, and it is right to ask for more. The Bible was not written just so we can believe what happened in it was true, but so we can believe for the same to happen in our lives today and to honor what happened in the past. Azusa was a seed, but now is the time for the harvest, and you may be the one who strikes the match that releases that fire!

The humbler you are, the better candidate you are for revival. When the Holy Spirit comes, all flesh and presumption flee. This was the hallmark of Azusa Street. Knowledge and eloquence bowed a knee to love and pure devotion, just as the apostles before the Sanhedrin in Acts created no small stir.

There’s a difference between preaching from knowledge and preaching from a well of living water that flows from God’s throne. This was a central lesson of Azusa. When God wants to move, He doesn’t look for someone wise enough, He looks for someone humble enough to follow Him. That the Lord chooses people as His habitation is one of the greatest marvels of creation. God also chooses people to do His work and often chooses individuals to ignite new moves of the Spirit. We see this throughout Scripture and history. There were also others who were prepared to keep those fires burning and lay the foundations for those gains.

Few in history have been able to find the delicate balance between being used by God and trying to use God, or as one Christian teacher put it, seeking one’s own recognition at the expense of God’s glory. Seymour’s hunger to see God move led him to keep men’s hands off the revival, and so long as he maintained this devotion, the revival fires continued to burn. From beginning to end, the revival could not be attributed to human charisma or promotion. When it did, the revival ended.

 True moves of God are not fueled by money, organization, or advertising. True revivals come when the presence of God (the pillar of fire) moves. To try and organize, promote, or sell a move of God is profane. Instead, when the Spirit wants to move in some creative way, He looks for humble people, those without all the answers, who invariably stimulate a holy desperation and dependency on God. They are the ones who are responsive to the Lord when He wants to do a new thing. In times of dynamic outpourings of the Spirit, like at Azusa Street, the Lord can only use people who are completely yielded to Him to do something new. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Those who have tried to duplicate the Azusa Street Revival have often become pitiful caricatures of the original. There is not a single example in church history of a church (wineskin) being built before a revival (new wine) was given. Those who have tried to build the wineskin first were unable to receive the new wine. One common quality in those mightily used by the Spirit throughout history has been hearing the Spirit move, then moving the way He wanted.

I have studied church history for nearly fifty years now and much of that has been devoted to revivals, but the Azusa Street Revival is, by far, among the most interesting and compelling. My goal, and I know Jeff Oliver’s goal, has been, not only to share insights from history, but also to help prepare those who will make history. Though I have tried to study every true move of God in history, my greatest interest remains in the one to come. The final move of God and greatest of all will be a combination and culmination of all revivals. You could be among the main characters in that one!