AzusaNow Brings Thousands to Los Angeles Coliseum
Los Angeles, California–Believers from around the globe converged on the city of Los Angeles over the weekend to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival.
The one-day event on Saturday, April 9, found thousands of delegates lined up at 4:00 a.m. for a 6:00 a.m. gate opening at the historic L.A. Memorial Coliseum. The event lasted from a 7:00 a.m. launch until a 10:30 p.m. closing set of praise and worship.
The collaborative effort of church leaders and organizations sharing a message of unity, prayer and the breaking down of racial barriers led to the participation of over 900 churches, along with dozens of partner ministries such as Bethel Church, Christ For All Nations, Heidi Baker’s Iris Global, and more. Pre-registration had reached more than 100,000 attendees the day before the event. Registration to attend was free but required.
According to Rachel L. Holden, CEO of the host ministry TheCall, "We feel we are in a historic moment for the body of Christ to gather in unity together. This amount of engagement is very encouraging. To our knowledge, the last time the Los Angeles Coliseum was filled to overflow for a gathering of this type was the Billy Graham Crusade on September 8, 1963 with a record attendance of 134,256."
Azusa Now was seen by millions around the world as it was televised live on the day of the event by God TV and other media, as well as live streamed via the Internet. Several pre-event activities took place, such as Flood LA, where Circuit Riders, a collaborative ministry of YWAM, one of the largest youth organizations in the world, joined with Bethel Church for a citywide evangelistic outreach. Todd White’s School of Power and Love trained people in Los Angeles and around the country in effective street evangelism ahead of the event.
In addition to the delegates, the event required an army of volunteers. Several thousand volunteers, clad in green T-shirts, were on hand to assist in every aspect of the massive gathering.
Lou Engle, a revivalist, visionary, and co-founder of TheCall Inc., spearheaded the event. For more than three decades, Engle’s passion has been to call believers into radical consecration through prayer, fasting and acts of justice. He has been involved in church planting, establishing prayer movements, strategic houses of prayer and the pro-life ministry, Bound4Life. For 15 years, Engle and TheCall have sought to proclaim the bold, uncompromising message of consecration to Jesus. Like John the Baptist, they have cried out, "Prepare the way of the Lord!"
“Believing that decades of globe-spanning prayer have saturated the heavens, we will boldly ask God for the rain of revival on April 9, 2016,” Engle stated prior to the event. “We will consecrate an entire day – 15 hours – for the purpose of unity, miracles, healing, and the proclamation of the gospel… for inspiration, we turn to the most powerful expression of revival in modern times: the historic Azusa Street Revival of 1906.”
The Azusa Street Revival is regarded as the landmark event launching the modern-day Pentecostal movement. At least two major Pentecostal movements arose from the 1906 event that began in an abandoned livery stable located at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The denominations include the Church of God in Christ (Memphis, Tenn.) and Assemblies of God (Springfield, Missouri). The Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) adopted the Pentecostal persuasion following a 1908 revival conducted in Cleveland by Azusa revivalist G.B. Cashwell. The 15-hour event was punctuated by a number of calls for unity of the races, denominations, ethnic/people groups and the breakdown of spiritual barriers. The unity calls lasted for several hours and included Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Catholics and others. A pilgrimage by cross-bearer Arthur Blessit was followed by a symbolic placement of stones at the foot of the cross by denominational and ministry leaders. Several installments of healing ministry took place as hundreds testified of the restoration of hearing loss, relief from war injuries, cancer, suicidal tendencies and multiple eye-witness accounts of wheelchair-bound delegates rising from their afflictions.
Like the Azusa Street Centennial, which took place in April 2006 in Los Angeles, speakers and presenters for the event were not formally introduced. Some of the messengers included Bill Johnson, Dutch Sheets, Nick Hall, Shawn Bolz, and a concluding salvation and Holy Spirit message by Daniel Kolenda. Three 40-minute sets by Bethel Music of Redding, California highlighted the praise and worship in the late afternoon and evening.
–Cameron Fisher, Faith News Network
