2 Words in 1

A Call to the Messengers of the LORD – Let Us Lay Hold of God!

Its 1.00 a.m. in South Africa and I was awakened from my sleep by the Holy Spirit a few minutes ago, with these Words ringing in my spirit … I give them to you as I heard and received them …

Great revivals can only be born in nations, once it has been birthed greatly in men. May God give us big enough hearts so that great revivals may be born in us, that will be birthed in the nations of the world.

Without God we can cry revival all day long, we can stamp our feet and dance. We can clap our hands, laugh and cry. We can shake and rattle and fall down on the floor. We can get the crowds and perform our power rituals to impress the people. We can woo them into a trance with smoke and mirrors and the rhythms of hypnotic beats.

But without God, all we have is a great show.

He Alone holds the keys to open the Heavens. He Alone has the Power to work in men’s hearts. He Alone can bring favour and cause the sweet rains of His Spirit to fall. He Alone can light a Fire in the darkened lives of people.

True revival requires brokenness and broken men are men who have wrestled with God, and who came out limping, but blessed with His Presence for it.

May God find such men and women and lay hold of them soon, the world is in a desperate cry for them!

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What Happens When REVIVAL Comes to Town?

In 1993 we had a great revival in Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa.

It was not a fancy affair. We had a make shift stage built from pallets that we were sponsored with by SA Breweries of all places. We fixed lights to the trees in the park where we held the meetings.

I slept in my car on the field for lack of money to be able to travel home every day, as it was a long distance from where we lived and we lived 100% by faith, but oh, I slept under an open Heaven and rested my head on His heart.

We had no TV cameras, no fancy sound equipment. The campaign was held in the heart of the gangland of Cape Town, among those whom nobody cared for, or cared to minister too.

The meetings were preceded by thirty days of solitude as the Holy Spirit called me aside to lock myself away in fasting and prayer in His Presence. For the ten days we held the meetings there, the Heaven’s were opened.

We saw God come down and walk among men. People flocked to the open field who would normally not set a foot out of their door after nightfall because of the danger in the area.

The worst drunkards dying of the drink, already eaten up inside to the point of bleeding internally, were sobered and healed and today walk the streets of Cape Town declaring the Gospel of Jesus.

We saw people delivered, saved and filled with the Holy Spirit in the middle of open air without anyone laying a hand on them, except God Himself. People who were perishing in sin and who had no idea about God or the workings of His Spirit.

Muslims were freed and saved and great miracles were experienced as God’s Manifest Presence moved in His Power.

Gang members were instructed to keep watch over me while sleeping in my car in the park at night. I would only find this out later, when the sister of the leader of Americans gang, who got saved in the meetings, came to tell me that the meetings had made such an impact on her brother, that he had instructed his gang to guard the park every night and to keep me safe at all cost.

Ten years later I was informed by a friend of mine who worked at the maximum security prison at Pollsmoor, who had been a part of the meetings, that gangsterism soon vanished out of the area after the meetings and that for a period of at least seven years, not a single incedent of serious violent crime was reported from that area. A place where drive-by shootings, rape and murder were the order of the day.

I went to Nantes park myself fifteen years later and as I walked around the streets immediately surrounding the park, I was greeted by those who had experienced those meetings all those years ago.

Testimonies were told and those who were mute and deaf were brought to me to come and testify that they still heard and spoke after all those years.

Why do I share this now?

Strangely there was a prophecy that went out after Nantes that has never been fulfilled.

It was a Powerful Word that I ended up printing in a small book fold. The entire prophecy flowed like a prophetic poem.

It told the story of a greater Glory that was yet to unfold. Of miracles, Power and an unpredicted visitation of God’s Glory as never seen or heard of or experienced before.

It ended in the pregnant Words that what happened at Nantes was only a prophetic expression and a cry of the Spirit across the land!

That the true revival and outpouring of the Holy Spirit had only been prophetically announced, but was still on the way!

Tonight, as I lay here the Holy Spirit suddenly brought this to my remembrance. Could it possibly be that this time could have arrived now?

Could it be that we would see the cry of God’s Spirit given utterance in 1993 being realised in 2016 or 2017?

Could we be on the brink of a Heaven sent revival and visitation of our God?

“Oh Father, rent the Heavens, just this once more for the sake of your servant and take me in Your Glory! Once more LORD! Once more!”

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

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Johann van der Hoven is in South Africa. He has been serving the Lord in ministry since 1991 and has hosted numerous apostolic revival meetings in South Africa and in South America. He also currently pioneers a organic church planting movement across South Africa. For more information about him and his ministry visit www.sonsofsovereignty.com or Revival.

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