The Holy Spirit is raining down on Latin America with tens of thousands of people either laying prostrate on the ground or standing with hands raised as tears stream down their faces.
Jennifer LeClaire, senior editor of Charisma, says she personally witnessed one such astounding revival during a Sunday service led by Pastors Ricardo and Patricia Rodríguez, founders of Central Mundial de Avivamiento (World Headquarters of Revival) in Bogotá, Colombia.
"It was as if I stepped into a river of Holy Ghost fire," she writes. "In one accord, over 25,000 people worshipped Jesus with all that was within them."
She says she personally saw miraculous healings. When she spoke with members of the congregation, they shared with her testimonies of deliverance from demonic possession, financial prosperity and numerous verified healings and miracles.
LeClaire says similar revivals are taking place in other Latin American countries such as Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Ecuador.
According to a Pew Research Study, tens of millions of Latin Americans have left the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades to embrace Pentecostal Christianity. The study projects that by 2025, the number of Pentecostals and charismatics in Latin America will surpass 202 million.
Indeed, Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), told LeClaire that majority of Christ followers worldwide are now Latinos.
"Even here in America, the majority of Christ-followers will be of Latino descent by 2030," Rodriguez said. "This is our reformation. Seventy years ago, the majority of Latin Americans were Catholics."
C. Peter Wagner, president of Global Harvest Ministries and a former missionary to Bolivia, also underscored the emergence of an overwhelming number of Pentecostal and charismatic ministries, which he attributes to a sovereign move of the Holy Spirit.
"Many were never trained in seminary; a lot come from the business world," Wagner said. "These people have multiplied megachurches in every metropolitan area. Many number in the tens of thousands; few are led by people who have gone to theological school."
Evangelist Lee Grady, who is a former Charisma editor, says "there is a move of God sweeping so many parts of Latin America that nobody can claim they have a corner on that."
"I have yet to go to any place in a major metropolitan area there where there's not an outpouring of the Holy Spirit," he says.
