Dear friends:

A brief look at recent history in perspective...

Some say that events in the church parallel events in Israel.  That was surely true in the 20th century, when God picked two prophetic decades to pour out His Spirit.
 
THE 1940s.  The 1940s was one of the two most prophetic decades in history, caused by Israel’s rebirth on May 14, 1948.  Great evangelistic ministries also began in that decade or shortly thereafter.  Billy Graham’s worldwide ministry was launched in Los Angeles one year later in 1949.  Major youth ministries, InterVarsity and Youth for Christ, began in the 1940s.  Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ came along shortly thereafter in 1951, and several others began about that time.  It was a momentous decade, with World War II, the holocaust, Israel’s rebirth, and the launch of the most powerful ministries in history to help fulfill the Great Commission.
 
THE 1960s. The 1960s could truly be called “the decade of destiny.”  They are followed by “the four decades of history” pointing to the present time.
 
The second of the two most prophetic events in 2,000 years was in 1967.  In June 1967, in the Israeli-Arab miracle Six-Day War, Israel recaptured Jerusalem and the Temple Mount for the first time since A.D. 70.  That was exactly 40 years ago, a number which is significant. 
 
Not coincidentally, other great moves of the Spirit also began in the 1960s, with 1967 being prominent. 
 
1.  The church goes to the street, as in Jesus’ day. By most accounts, the Jesus Movement also began in 1967 with the opening of a small storefront evangelical mission called the Living Room in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district.  Though other missionary type organizations had preceded them in the area, this was the first one run solely by street Christians.  Within a short time of these first stirrings a number of independent Christian communities sprang up all across North America.  The Word of God spread like wildfire among the "street people."  Soon there were Christian coffeehouses, counseling centers, and communes all over California and the rest of the country, from Sunset Strip to Washington, DC.

2.  The charismatic renewal. Church historians show that the gifts of the Spirit have been manifested in church history since the original Pentecost, and they especially began to flow at the Azuza Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906.  But the worldwide charismatic renewal that swept through all denominations began in 1960.  The late Dennis Bennett was the Episcopal priest who verbally fired the shot that was heard around the world. On April 3, 1960, he spoke from his pulpit at the thriving St. Mark's Church, Van Nuys, California and shared with his congregation that he had received a personal Pentecost or “baptism with the Spirit.”  I highly recommend his classic and inspiring book, “Nine O’clock in the Morning.” Characteristic of the millions to become involved in this movement are a greater love for God’s Word, desire to study the Word, intensified love for God and fellow believers regardless of denomination, and love for Israel.  The movement met every test of authenticity.  As with any movement, there are some extremes, but the bottom line has been millions of souls on fire for God -- the purpose of Pentecost -- and unprecedented worldwide evangelism, with literally hundreds of millions brought into the kingdom. 
 
The charismatic renewal even swept through Catholicism.  In 1967, there were in the Notre Dame university area about 30 zealous Catholics who had received the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." In 1968, about 100 to 150 met for a Catholic Pentecostal conference. In 1974, the Notre Dame conference was attended by 30,000 people.
 
The movement mushroomed in all denominations.  For the first time in hundreds of years, dead formalism was replaced for many by simply a zeal for Jesus and His Word, and the gospel went from inside the walls of ornate church buildings with pastors in fancy robes to homes, the streets and workplaces.  Thousands of home groups sprung up.  The Holy Spirit broke out of His confines, where man in his tradition would dare try to keep Him.

The most powerful medium for evangelism.  I believe God reasoned, “If people won’t go to churches to hear, and in some churches they still would not hear, I will invade their living rooms and tell them about my love and my Son.”  In His mercy, He did just that, through the miracle of technology.
 
It is no accident that the very same year Dennis Bennett made his epic announcement, on the other side of the country God was raising up a young Yale law school graduate, Korean War Marine vet, and businessman, Pat Robertson, to pioneer a virtually unheard-of concept: Christian television.  After having the same Pentecostal experience as described by Dennis Bennett, Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, formed the Christian Broadcasting Network on January 11, 1960.  CBN first went on the air on October 1, 1961, on WYAH-TV (from Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God), a UHF television station with barely enough power to reach across the Portsmouth, Virginia city limits.  WYAH was the first Christian TV station in the nation and the world!
 
The rest is history.  CBN grew exponentially, and through their programs and networks, the gospel with signs following has gone throughout the world to billions, in scores of languages.
 
The CBN model was emulated, and many other Christian TV networks were established, with similar worldwide successes and coverage.  Even with its warts, the miracle of Christian television has been the most powerful evangelistic force in history, with the gospel proclaimed worldwide in power 24/7/365.
 
The Jesus movement, the charismatic renewal, and the advent of Christian television came at the same time as widespread apostasy and liberalism in mainline denominations (spell that u-n-b-e-l-i-e-f).  God's Word is true: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20).
 
The devil was also busy in the 1960s.  Knowing his time is short, the devil was also busy. 
 
The sexual revolution took off in the 1960s.  Use of the term hippie caught on in the mass media in early 1967.  Beginning in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, a new culture of "free love" arose, with millions of young people embracing the hippie ethos and preaching the power of love and the beauty of sex as a natural part of ordinary life. By the start of the 1970s, it was acceptable for colleges to allow co-educational housing where male and female students mingled freely.

On January 14, 1967, 20,000 hippies gathered in Golden State Park.  The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16-18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love."  Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967 TIME magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." 
 
In the early 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored all legal precedent and in three separate cases effectively removed prayer, religious instruction, and Bible reading from America’s public schools: Engel v. Vitale, Murray v. Curlett, and Abington v. Schempp (1962–1963).  At about the same time, students began to be taught that there is no God, no absolute truth, that the universe is a cosmic accident, and that they evolved by the chance collision of sea-slime molecules and are the same status as apes. Since then, God, the Bible and prayer have been replaced in our schools by drugs, handguns and condoms.  It is little wonder that among many young people today there is no respect for life, in the streets, in the womb, or even their own.
 
But God wins and Satan loses -- always!
 
CONCLUSION. We live in amazing, historic times.  With many other factors not included here, there is irrefutable evidence of end-time prophecies being fulfilled right before our very eyes. 

If the past 40 years have been this powerful, what will the future hold?  We do not know, but we know who holds the future, and it will be exciting.

 
“When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).
 

 
 
(Material taken from personal files and various Web sources.)