The Prophecy of William Seymour
In 2000, Time-Life published The One Hundred Most Important Events Of One Thousand Years 1000-2000AD. Number 68 on their list: the Azusa Street Revival of 1906.
During the 2006 Azusa Street Centennial in Los Angeles, a new book showed up on the book table along with lots of other new books — AZUSA STREET: They Told Me Their Stories by Tommy Welchel.
Tommy Welchel was a teen-age runaway in the mid-1960’s. Wandering along Venice Beach, he came across who he later named the Senior Saints. In this case, a couple elderly women struck up a conversation with him.
Tommy went with them to their home at Pisgah, part village, part religious commune, part retirement community in Highland Park that began in 1900 and was later heavily connected to the Azusa Street Revival ten miles away in Downtown Los Angeles. The Senior Saints Tommy began to hang out with at Pisgah were deeply involved in Azusa Street as teen-agers.
Over time, the Senior Saints began to tell Tommy stories they rarely told and never wrote down — what they witnessed at Azusa Street in their teens. Stories of extraordinary healing miracles and phenomenal mystical experiences when a cloud would descend upon the religious services led by Rev. William Seymour, the son of slaves when it was illegal in some parts of Los Angeles for a Black man to be on the streets at night.
The stories told Tommy by the Senior Saints were written down but not published in book form until forty years later. Published in 2006.
The book caused quite a stir during the Azusa Street Centennial. One reason is one of the stories told Tommy by a Senior Saint was that towards the end of the four year long revival, William Seymour gave a prophecy that in one hundred years there would be an even greater and more far reaching outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Shekinah Glory than what was experienced at Azusa.
Shekinah Glory as a phrase is not in the Bible. It’s a Hebrew concept referring to extraordinary manifestations of the Presence of God. Moses and the Burning Bush is an example of the Shekinah Glory.
My reaction when I learned all this was, “Yeah, let’s go for this baby!!”.
In ensuing years, especially from 2010 to 2014, I had so many incredible encounters with the Lord that I can’t even remember them all. I was not the only person in this place. Lots of prayer ministries had a focus of seeing Seymour’s prophecy come to pass.
In April 2016, Azusa Now brought 40,000 folks from around the world to the Los Angeles Coliseum for the day to prayerfully pursue fulfillment of Seymour’s prophecy. While I thought some aspects of Azusa Now were fantastic, it seemed to have little or no impact after the day ended and certainly there were no reports of an even greater and more far reaching outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Shekinah Glory taking place.
As 2016 went into 2017 and so on, the prophecy of William Seymour became less and less front burner for me though once in a while something would catch my attention I felt was a sign from the Lord to not be discouraged.
But now the prophecy is extremely front burner. If in 2017, you asked me why not much seemed to be happening connected to Seymour’s prophecy I would have shrugged my shoulders and said I don’t know.
January 6th in DC made me look back over the past four years and what was sort of cloudy back then is now incredibly clear today.
Most of the prayer ministries and church leaders on the forefront of taking Seymour’s prophecy seriously became intensely loyal followers of President Trump. Quite a few of them bought into the narrative massive voter fraud meant the election was stolen — the foundation for January 6th.
I now realize if Seymour’s prophecy of an even greater and more far reaching outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Shekinah Glory than Azusa took place in recent years, church leaders would use it to validate the legitimacy of actions of Donald Trump as President.
This isn’t about Civil Government/Politics. It’s not even about Christian church leaders. This is about Holiness.
I believe we are increasingly close to the literal fulfillment of Seymour’s prophecy. The reason is Holiness: valleys are now being lifted up and mountains are now being brought low. From the Book of Isaiah: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all humanity together will see it.”