A young man, Alexander, and his band of rebels sat in the front row of a revival meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, aiming to disrupt it. God convicted him, and he repented. His gang began to leave but fell under the power of the Spirit on the way out. All gave their lives to Christ. Two of them later went to the Bible school where Ed Miller taught in the tiny town of City Bell, just outside Buenos Aires. In June 1951, the Lord led Pastor Miller to cancel lectures so the whole Bible School could give themselves to daily prayer for their nation.
Alexander, the former rebel, was still in prayer long after midnight when he sensed a strange feeling of something pressing down upon him; a marvelous intense light surrounded him, and a heavenly being visited him. The boy was terrified and fled back to the Institute. ‘The heavenly visitor’ entered the Institute with him, and in a few moments, all the students were awake with the fear of God upon them. They began to cry out in repentance as the Spirit of God dealt with them. The next day the Spirit of God came again upon Alexander, giving him a message challenging them to pray for God to come in a fresh way to Argentina.
The Bible school became a center of prayer until vacation time when teams preached across their city. It was the beginning of new stirrings of the Holy Spirit across the land. They continued in prayer for four months, 8-10 hours a day, with constant weeping. While in prayer, the Lord gave prophecies to the Bible School that He would fill the largest auditoriums and stadiums; these prophecies were spoken at a time when the average congregation in Argentina was 30 people:
Those praying for revival tried to get a well-known healing evangelist to come to Argentina, but he was fully booked, and it seemed that he wasn't God's choice. A little-known healing evangelist, Tommy Hicks, received a word from God to go to Argentina. A friend of his later confirmed this. All he had was enough money for the plane ride to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. While sitting on the plane and praying to himself, the Spirit of God spoke to him the word "Peron." Not knowing what that word meant, he asked the stewardess, who told him it was the name of the president of Argentina, Juan Peron. He concluded that he had to see the president.
The year was 1954. Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Tommy Hicks met a committee organizing the evangelistic crusade. He told them God had spoken to him about finding a stadium that would seat at least 25,000 people. The committee thought he was crazy, feeling that 2500 would be far too large for his meetings. They laughed when Tommy told the committee President Peron would give them the stadium. Peron was known to be intolerant and uncooperative with Christian leaders. Argentina was primarily Catholic, with less than 2% Protestant population. Peron was a dictator who carefully monitored every public meeting, and his wife, Evita, was deeply involved in occultism. But the Spirit of God urged Tommy Hicks to go boldly to the presidential palace to see Peron, which was totally impossible...
In desiring to keep these meditations to a 3-4 minute read, we’ll come back to this story tomorrow, but if you can’t wait, the series is found on the All Studies page, scroll down until you come to the series called: On Fire With the Holy Spirit, The study is called: Revival Changes Nations.
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