Stockton Refuses to Let Go

This was supposed to be the final night. It isn’t.

Mario walked up to the microphone tonight and announced that the Stockton crusade isn’t ending. It’s escalating and the Tent stays up. For the next four weeks, 1,000 soul winners will move across Stockton’s streets, schools, and neighborhoods as a deployed evangelistic army. The Tent becomes a prayer mountain, open daily, with church services, outreach gatherings, and continuous intercession.

Then in June, Mario and Catherine return for four more nights. From the 14th through the 17th. What was billed as a closing night turned into a commissioning.

Mario said it himself, watching the altar fill: “How could we take this Tent down?”

\Catherine Mullins and band were back tonight, and they came in swinging. The worship set didn’t drift toward a soft landing. Dancing on the Grave moved into Washed in the Water moved into a flat-out altar call from Catherine herself. She stood at the platform and called a generation to purity. “You’re going to start deleting phone numbers that you were never meant to have. You’re going to start stomping on some cell phones tonight.” She decreed holiness over a generation. She named the lie, the one that says the Church doesn’t need to be radical anymore, and answered it: “There is a man named Jesus, and He healed sickness. He healed diseases. And He’s worthy of radical praise.”

The audience shouted ‘compromise has got to go’ until it sounded like a battle cry, which is what it was.

Then I Speak Jesus. Then Holy Forever. Then Is He Worthy, the whole crowd answering the question back into the Tent like they were the elders themselves. Catherine called specific healings from the platform during worship: sexually transmitted diseases, generational shame, the graves of depression and suicide and pornography. “There’s a change in the atmosphere,” she said. And the worship kept building until Mario walked out.

Mario opened with a confession. “This morning, the Devil told me to leave town. And that’s when I knew. When the Devil wants you out, you stay.” Then he laid out the plan.

A thousand evangelists and four weeks of street ministry. Being trained to go into neighborhoods, schools, the business community, the media. The Tent will remain standing as a prayer mountain. Daily prayer, daily outreach, daily salvations. And then on June 14-17, the four greatest nights this ministry has ever put under canvas.

He told the story of Marysville, California, where he took the Tent down too soon. Drug addicts kept coming to the empty lot for a full month afterward, still feeling the residue of God’s presence on the ground. He said it like a man who learned a lesson once and refused to learn it twice.

Then he called for the war chest. He didn’t dress it up. “These are war bonds.” He commanded the wealthy to be generous, “if you own a business and you’ve complained about the gangs and the drugs and the crime in this city, and you’ve given to a politician, God bless you, but I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with this money. We’re going to turn it into souls and miracles.”

The sermon title was original to Mario tonight, and he knew it, “Why Are All Your Friends Becoming Christians?“. The premise: a trend is happening. Tax collectors and harlots are entering the kingdom before the religious. People who should be the last ones at the altar are showing up first. Why?

Three reasons.

First, they’re reading the signs of the times. Mario walked through Matthew 24. False messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes. He pointed at Iran, at Israel, at the headlines that keep the world on a string. “Your friends read the Bible, and they came up with this. It’s going by the book. All of it is going by the book. And I read the book. I read the end of the book – and God wins!”

Second, they’ve tried everything else. This is where the sermon broke open. Mario told the story of preaching in Malibu years ago, where the pastor warned him not to give an altar call. The movie stars’ careers couldn’t survive a photograph of repentance. But Mario watched late-night TV in his hotel and saw commercial after commercial: Betty Ford for the alcoholics, Schick Center for the anorexics, Al-Anon, domestic violence hotlines, transcendental meditation. He said to them, “You don’t have a free night,” going from clinic to clinic looking for one piece of healing at a time. He said, “Let me tell you what the cross of Christ is. It’s your one-stop shopping. You walk to the cross and the eating disorder goes away. The marriage is healed. The drugs are gone.”

He quoted C.S. Lewis: “I don’t believe in Jesus because I can see Him. I believe in Jesus because by Him I see everything else.”

He cited Peter in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (NKJV) Where else is there? Buddhism? The church of Oprah? Positive thinking? Drugs? They helped a little, fixed nothing. Then comes Jesus, and everything falls into place!

Third, Christians are witnessing again. Mario announced the disbanding of “the Christian Witness Protection Program.” He pointed to John 1:41 where Andrew finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus. “Somebody brought you here because they love you.” Bibles are selling. Pews are filling up. Americans are returning to church in numbers the data is still trying to catch up with. The lukewarm get spit out, he reminded them. The hot draw their friends in.

He told the Godfather III story with the pope and the pebble in the fountain that had soaked for hundreds of years and yet was still bone dry inside. Some people have been around the water of the Spirit their whole lives and never let it in. He stopped and called them.

Mario called them up by section. Over here, over here, over here. The aisles filled. He told the Tent he could see the faces and many of these were first-time decisions, the unmistakable look of someone who had never done this before. He kept calling. The Tent kept emptying out into the front. “How could we take this Tent down?”

He led them through the sinner’s prayer — Jesus on the cross proving love by giving everything, Jesus rising three days later proving power over every evil habit and every destructive emotion. Then he sent them out to the prayer team. And the worship team, and the choir of young voices filled the altar area to worship.

When Mario returned to the platform he set aside his prepared sermon. He’d had a message ready called Moment or Movement, and he told the tent why he wasn’t preaching it. ‘I’m not preaching it because you all put your backpacks on,’ he said, reminding the people of one of the songs the worship team sang during the altar response.

Then he moved straight into the healings. And the healings tonight were specific.

A woman in the audience identified by Mario as a woman in ministry with her pastor present beside her. She received what Mario described as God’s hand reaching in like a scalpel and cutting something malignant out of her body. Multiple growths, he said. They would be gone when she got her next scan. Then her hearing was healed. Her balance. The dizziness, the cancer, the arthritis. Mario kept stacking the conditions as her pastor laid hands on her ears.

Three women in one section, all battling cancer, were called out and stood together while Mario cursed the cancers in the name of Jesus.

A woman with what sounded like an MS-type diagnosis, body-wide nerve disease, debilitating, with a horrible prognosis from her doctors. She was called out for healing of seven symptoms running from her head to her feet.

A woman with migraine headaches and seizure-like episodes. And her sleep healed alongside her head. Mario named “agitation” as the root and commanded it out.

A woman Mario identified as an ‘on-fire signs and wonders missionary’, willing to break into places others couldn’t go, healed of stomach and head conditions.

Multiple healings prayed in Spanish. Mi hermano, vamos a orar (my brother, let’s pray) for heart, knees, lower spine, family. El Señor me dijo todo eso (The Lord told me all that).

Then the corporate healing. Mario told everyone with sickness in their body to raise a hand, told everyone else to touch their shoulder, and led the entire Tent in a declaration of Mark 16: “These signs will follow them that believe. In my name, they will cast out devils. They will speak with new tongues. And they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (NKJV)

He called for those healed to stand. They stood.

Before closing, Mario stopped the room and gave it a marker. “You are on the cusp of the greatest spiritual history of Stockton. From the day this city was founded to this day, this will be the greatest spiritual visitation that it has ever seen. You’re on the cusp of it. God has allowed you to be a part of it. And remember this night when we did the impossible by extending this tent crusade for several weeks.”

What comes next?

The Tent stays up for four weeks and the Living Proof Tent Crusade transitions into a deployed army with street ministry, school assemblies, business community outreach, daily prayer under the Tent. More information will be coming for those who want to enlist as one of the 1,000 evangelists. The Stockton churches are invited to host the overflow.

And then Mario Murillo and Catherine Mullins return to the same tent in the same field.

Sunday, June 14 through Wednesday, June 17. 6:30 PM each night.

LifeSong Church, Stockton, California.

Pray. Show up. Bring someone. We’re not waiting for revival. We are the revival!

 

Do As the Occasion Demands

The wind ceased and we were back in the tent. And Mario Murillo walked to the pulpit and said the moment the church has been praying for has arrived in Stockton, California.

Not because of the thousands packed under the canvas on a Monday night. Not because of the healings. Not because of the salvations. Mario was specific about this. The moment we’ve been waiting for is not what’s happening inside the tent. It’s what God is doing out there in the streets, in the homes, in the schools, and in the living rooms of a city that the rest of America has spent decades writing off.

Catherine Mullins and her band were back at the front for the second night of the extension, and the room knew it. “Praise Like This” came out first, and the lyric, my praise is a weapon, my dance is a weapon, set the tone for everything that followed. Catherine kept calling for the sound. The room kept answering.

“Battle Belongs to the Lord” turned into a contending prayer. “It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by You.” Catherine had the room sing it until you could feel the corporate weight of it. Then she called for breakthrough and the band held the line while she and the team began to release prophetic words from the platform.

A word to a man wearing a necklace and a beard. She said she had seen him in a vision with two scrolls in front of him, two different roads, and he had chosen the right one. She declared boldness over his life. “All of the plans of the enemy, they’re just going to fall off.”

To a woman a few rows over who had been faithfully sowing seeds for years and watching the enemy try to steal her inheritance. The word was that the harvest was coming. Don’t faint. Don’t give up.

Another word landed on a woman holding what was described as a long checklist of things she had been contending for. “God says you have an opportunity in a fresh way to give all of those cares back to the Lord. Don’t you dare give up because I see the things you’re contending for.”

That kind of platform prophecy doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when worship has done its job and the gifts of the Spirit are operating freely. Catherine then led the room into “Is He Worthy,” “Holy Ground,” “Goodness of God,” and “Enemy’s Camp.” The shouting was constant. By the time worship released the room to the preaching, the atmosphere had been prepared.

The mayor of Stockton was in the room. She came to the platform briefly and greeted the crowd. “We need to boldly pursue the Lord in the city of Stockton.” That a sitting mayor of a major California city would stand on a tent platform and say those words is its own sign of what’s shifting here.

Mario didn’t go straight into his main sermon. He stopped, looked at the room, and said the worship had already done so much soul-winning work that he was going after the harvest first. He preached a short, sharp message on Proverbs 24:6 for by wise counsel you will wage your own war (NKJV).

The framing was that every person under the tent, saved or not, is in a private war. An invisible enemy who hates them. A culture that offers no real protection. And a Christ who came specifically because the war was unwinnable without Him.

Mario read Acts 10:38. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him (NKJV). And then he made the point that gets buried in most evangelism: the devil’s goal is not to get people into hell efficiently. The devil is insane. The devil is sadistic. He tortures because he hates, not because he has a plan. “He doesn’t mind a child being raped. He doesn’t mind the hideous things going on around the world. He is reveling in them.”

Then Mario read 1 Peter 5:8. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (NKJV). And he said the line that broke the room open: “Today is the day that you stop being attacked by the devil. Today is the day that you are protected from Satan by Jesus Christ.”

Pictured below are the hundreds who came to Jesus tonight.

He called for hands. Then he called the responders down to the front. They came in a flood. Mario prayed with them and then the crowd cheered as they went out to be ministered to by our great team of workers. And the band led the people in the great old camp meeting songs to celebrate what God had done. The new converts came back to their seats inside a wave of corporate praise that sounded like a Pentecostal camp meeting from another century.

When Mario finally got to his main message, he gave it a title and made the room repeat it. The moment we’ve been waiting for is here.

Mario began by telling the people he had a word that “the Lord told me”. Then told the people how careful he is to use that phrase. That the modern charismatic movement has turned it into a credit card for whatever they want. They use it so casually it has lost its weight. Mario refuses to say it lightly, and said this morning the Lord told him to tell the people of Stockton that the moment had arrived.

And then he made the case.

Mario was specific about what people were going to assume the moment was. They were going to assume it was the crowds. They were going to assume it was the miracles. They were going to assume it was the salvations. He said it isn’t any of those things.

The moment we’ve been waiting for is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Joel 2:28. I will pour out of My Spirit on your sons and your daughters (NKJV). The crowds and the miracles and the salvations are evidence of it. They are not the thing itself.

Then Mario turned to Proverbs 21:1. The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes (NKJV). And he told the room what he believed God was actually doing in Stockton.

Mario said he went for a long walk earlier in the week. He said he didn’t want to call this a revival because he didn’t trust the word anymore. He said he was tired of the church’s tendency to call every emotional spike a move of God. So he asked the Spirit what was really happening, and the answer he got was not about the tent.

“I’m on the streets influencing people toward godly things in Stockton.” That’s what he said the Lord told him. Mothers being moved to bring their children. Fathers who would not pray with their families suddenly loading them in the car. People agreeing to come the first time you asked, when normally it would take ten conversations. Living rooms being visited by the Holy Spirit. Angels being dispatched to protect the children of the city.

Mario quoted Matthew Henry, the 1700s commentator, on Proverbs 21:1. Henry wrote that God can change men’s minds “by a powerful, insensible operation under their spirits, turn them from that which they seem most intent upon and incline them to that which they seemed most averse to.” Mario translated it. “What they don’t want to do, the last thing they want to do, the thing they could never imagine themselves doing, that under their spirit God is at work, suddenly growing an appetite for holiness, growing an appetite to be faithful to their wife, growing an appetite to go to church.”

That is the moment. Not the tent. The city.

Mario read Acts 2:37. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (NKJV). And he said that what he and the room have been watching every night under this tent is exactly that. The word has been cutting straight through people. The altar calls have looked like rivers.

Then he gave the explanation. He went to Numbers 14, where Caleb stood in front of Israel and explained why the giants in the promised land could be defeated. Caleb’s words were that the giants’ protection has departed from them. Mario applied it to Stockton. The drunks, the addicts, the bound, the impossible cases who have been walking into this tent all week have been walking in without their protection. Whatever the enemy had built around them, God has pulled it back. Catherine begins to sing, and they are exposed. Mario begins to preach, and the word goes straight through.

The moment we’ve been waiting for is here.

Mario did not let the room sit in celebration. He pivoted hard.

He told a story about meeting his wife Mechelle. He said the moment he saw her, he knew. He didn’t pick her up on a first date and ask her what she’d like to do. He had a plan. He told her parents over dinner that he was going to marry their daughter. He didn’t ask. He told. He said the thing he was most afraid of was not her rejecting him. The thing he was most afraid of was looking back on a moment he could have asked and didn’t.

That was the bridge.

Then he took the room to the wise men. They saw a star. They did the math from the 70 weeks of Daniel and realized the Messiah had been born. And they rearranged their entire lives, their kingdoms, their families, and spent two years on the road. All to get to a manger. Because they refused to look back at a moment they were invited to and missed.

Mario asked the room the question. “Is it worth changing your schedule? Is it worth giving up your division and coming into unity in Jesus’ name? Are we willing to say something so wonderful has come that we are willing to pay the price to see it through?”

The text he closed on was 1 Samuel 10:6-7. Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. And let it be, when these signs come to you, that you do as the occasion demands; for God is with you (NKJV).

That phrase, do as the occasion demands, became the load-bearing wall of the rest of the sermon. Mario said the thing that has cost the church America is the doctrine that says, “I don’t have to do anything, it’s all in God’s hands.” He said the Bible doesn’t say if My God. It says if My people. God has put it in our hands. Every raped child is an occasion. Every gang shooting is an occasion. Every mother crying over a child killed at school is an occasion. The occasion demands prayer. The occasion demands fasting. The occasion demands intercession that does not stop until heaven moves.

“Turn me from a Bic lighter into a flamethrower, O God.”

Mario closed by reading Acts 4:29-31, the prayer of the first church after they were threatened. Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness (NKJV).

Then he prayed. And he asked God to do under this tent what God did on Mount Carmel through Elijah, let the fire fall in front of a watching nation. Let every person who has not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit receive it now. Let every person who has received it receive a fresh outpouring.

The room responded. Voices rose. Tongues broke out across the tent. Mario began calling out healings as the Spirit moved on him. Gallstones, throat cancer, spines, heart disease, healings from car accidents. He kept saying it. The fire is falling. The Spirit is rising. He said the American church no longer knows how to sustain something like this, but for a moment the tent was getting a taste of what Azusa Street was like. The intercession turned into a chorus of victory and the room shouted.

Mario said something through the tears at the end that needs to be in the record. “There’s some old-fashioned holiness coming out in this room right now.”

Mario closed by asking the room to use their social media. Show the images. Tell the story. He asked them to bring someone tomorrow night. And he asked them to do what the occasion demands.

The mayor was thanked from the platform. Mario prayed that she would preside over a golden age in Stockton, and that she would give God the glory when it came.

This is what we’ve been praying for. When saints have been crying out over a city for decades, they don’t always recognize the answer when it comes. It rarely comes in the form they expected. Mario looked at the room tonight and told them what the answer looked like.

The answer is not the tent. The answer is the city.

God has put His arms around Stockton.

The Living Proof Tent Crusade extension continues.

Lifesong Church, 4950 Claremont Ave, Stockton, CA

Doors open early. Bring someone.

My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts

God’s ways are not our ways. That’s the verse. That’s also the entire story of what happened in Stockton tonight.

The first night of the extended Stockton meetings was never supposed to be inside a church. The tent was up. The seats were ready. And then the wind came. A safety call moved the meeting to the sponsoring church on a few hours’ notice, and as Mario put it from the pulpit, “That wind thing happened before I had time to rebuke it. But now I’m mad.” The tent will be back tomorrow. Tonight, the people came anyway.

And what came with them wasn’t a logistical inconvenience. It was confirmation of the message Mario had been preparing all morning: for My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9, NKJV).

The Worship

Catherine Mullins and her band were back. That fact alone is worth pausing on. Mario said it from the pulpit himself: some of the most gifted Christian musicians in America were on that stage tonight. They are not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. They have full schedules, full lives, full ministries of their own. For them to drop everything and come back to Stockton on a moment’s notice, Mario said, “Is as big a sign from God as anything else going on here.”

Worship didn’t ease in. It came out swinging. “Out of the Grave,” “Praise Like This,” “Power”. Chains breaking, graves emptying, mountains moving. Catherine called for a sound of faith more than once, and the room answered. At one point she stopped, looked at the room, and said, “Heaven responds to the sound of the people of God.” Then she counted to three and the church lifted a shout that shook the air.

A young woman named Bailey, part of Catherine’s team, sang, “Because He Lives.” Catherine introduced it with a testimony. Bailey had been set free from a spirit of suicide. Catherine looked out at the room and said, “There is no pit too deep that God cannot reach down into your situation.” Then Bailey sang it, and the song landed differently than it does in any other context. This was not a performance. It was a witness.

Catherine also spoke a word during worship that needs to be in the record. She said the enemy had come against this event hard “because God wants to move in this region and in your life.” Then she said, “I get so excited when the enemy starts throwing punches. I’m like, do you realize how much harder we’re gonna punch back?” That was the spirit of the worship section. Contending. Not begging.

The Sermon Mario Came to Preach

When Mario took the pulpit, he didn’t open with the usual setup. He opened with a confession. He said he woke up this morning praying and didn’t stop until he was picked up to come to the service. He said he barely had time to study his message because he felt a war in the heavens. And then he said something that explains the whole night:

“For the first time in decades, Satan felt threatened.”

The sermon title was “My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts.” On the LED wall behind him, Moses stood on Sinai while fire poured down the mountain and a field of tents stretched across the valley below. The image did its own work. The tent in Stockton is part of a long line of tents God has met people under.

Mario read Isaiah 55:8 and then walked through a list of moments in scripture when God’s thoughts and human thoughts were not the same. The Egyptians thought the Red Sea was on their side. The Philistines thought five smooth stones were a joke. Herod thought the Messiah would arrive on a white charger. The disciples, even after almost four years with Jesus, still thought Christianity would be a physical kingdom that ousted Rome. “You can be around Him when He calmed the sea. You can watch Lazarus raised from the dead. And yet you cannot separate from the human mind the inability to know His ways versus our ways.”

Then Mario turned the verse on himself. And on the ministry. And on the larger movement he is part of.

The Rebuke

He said he asked the Lord what to preach tonight and the Lord told him to talk about the scandals in the charismatic movement. Mario said he didn’t want to. He said the Lord told him He wasn’t interested in the gory details. He was interested in one thing: what did every pastor who fell, every organization that imploded, have in common?

Mario said he went down the list. It wasn’t sexual immorality. It wasn’t money. There were elements of all kinds of things. But there was one thing universal to every collapse.

“They were not winning souls.”

He named the pattern from the pulpit. Conferences with thousands of people singing and chanting for hours. No altar call. No outreach. No attempt to reach the poor, the lost, or the addicted. “When heaven invades earth, it’s powerful, I love it. But now, unfortunately, earth is invading heaven, and agendas are invading heaven.”

Then he delivered what he called a prophetic warning, and he said it was being delivered through him to the nation and to everyone watching online. “No more Christian conventions without altar calls. No more Christian concerts without soul winning. No more Christian gatherings that are exclusively for us. We are now obligated to preach the gospel and to call people out of darkness in every single Christian event.”

The text was Proverbs 24:11-12. Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Surely we did not know this,” does not He Who weighs the hearts consider it? He Who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds? (NKJV).

Mario was not done. He looked out at the young people in the room and asked the church a question that has been building in his preaching for months: “Do you want them to come out of this with a phony revival? You want the legacy we leave when that tent comes down to be an incomplete work?”

Then he widened the frame. “A generation facing wokeness, facing demonic power, facing the onslaught of the antichrist spirit and we want to give them Nephilim? How about if we get out of the X-Files? Let’s get out of creature features and let’s get back in the Bible and start feeding the next generation the everlasting Word of God.”

The Author and Finisher

Mario said something tonight that needs to be pondered. He said the greatest threat to this crusade is not the devil. It is not the drug dealers or the gangsters or the politicians or the LGBT agenda. He said if this miracle stops, the people inside the move will be the author and finisher of it.

He read Luke 19:44. You did not know the time of your visitation. And he said the difference between someone who knows the time of visitation and someone who doesn’t is sobriety. “They’re not just jolly. They’re sober. They’re not just excited. They are very sensitive.”

He laid out the categories of people who derail moves of God. Revival junkies looking for the next spiritual high. Pastors trying to grow their church off it. Local ministers who get jealous because thousands are showing up somewhere else. Celebrity-chasers who treat anointing like a platform strategy. And finally, the most dangerous category of all is the people inside the move who fail to nurture the infant that God has handed them.

“This thing is in our hands. It’s an infant. It’s crying. It needs milk. We need to get up in the middle of the night to feed it.”

God Wants Souls. God Wants a Royal Priesthood. God Wants the Glory.

Mario organized the back half of the sermon around three things God wants from this moment.

First, souls. “Ask not ‘Will I get a word from God.’ Ask ‘Who shall I bring to the tent.'” He told the room that nobody in soul-winning is ever unpaid. That if you go win souls, God will work on your insecurity while you are looking at His heart. “Soul winners are the happiest people in the world.”

Second, a royal priesthood. Mario read 1 Peter 2:9 and then looked at the young people in the room and said that God will undo whatever they came in with. Mothers who wished for abortions. Fathers who weren’t safe. Poverty. Molestation. Anger. “God will undo all of that and turn you into a chosen generation.”

Then he turned the same scripture on the preachers. He said the modern American church has lost the fear of God. He said preachers are afraid to hold their congregations accountable and Christians are arrogant about spiritual authority. “Is this too much to ask for you to act like you’re in an army? For you to act like you’ve been plucked out of darkness?”

Third, the glory. Mario quoted Psalm 103:7, “He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.” Two categories. The crowd saw the acts. Moses saw the ways. “You can tell the difference between a meeting that has a GPS and one that is flying by the seat of its pants from one stimulating act to another.”

And then he said the line that will probably end up on people’s walls. “Five years from now, none of this will matter. Five years from now, you being here is not going to matter. Unless we dig into God’s plan for Stockton.”

The Altar Call

After all of that, Mario turned. He told the room there was someone there whose life was in danger and he was going to speak to them now. He said he had spent the day praying for the faces he would see tonight. He said he had asked the Lord to make the moment of surrender feel real.

He went back to Isaiah 55, but this time he started at verse 6. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon (NKJV).

Then he said the line that drew the response. “The One who has the most power in the universe also has the most love for you.”

He said it twice. Then he started naming what people had come in carrying. The cloud of hurt. The cloud of fear. The relationships entered out of desperation. The loneliness that feeds on sanity even in a room full of people. The moment in a family when someone first realized they were not safe.

He called for the prayer of repentance, and they came. So many came that the front of the room couldn’t hold them. Mario asked the pastor for guidance and started routing people through the side aisles. He told the room to keep clapping while it happened. The applause didn’t stop. “I don’t know how you can stop clapping. This is it. This is all of it.”

The prayer Mario led was specific. He named the Cross. He named the resurrection. He named the proof of love and the proof of power. He had them repent, surrender, and commit to finding a church, reading a Bible, and telling their friends.

Three Things

Mario gave the room three specific instructions for tomorrow night, and he was clear that he was promising the next level of the meeting if they obeyed.

Fast one meal. He said he would do it too. “This kind does not come forth except by fasting and prayer.” Pray during the time you would normally be eating.

Invite five, bring one. “What is the difference between invite and bring? One is a generous invitation. The other is a kidnapping. You got to let them ride in your car, and you got to be willing to buy them a meal. This is called evangelism.”

Come expecting miracles. Mario said that some of the greatest healings of his ministry are going to break out tomorrow night in the tent. He said it wasn’t hype. He said it was obedience. He preached the message the Lord gave him, called for souls, prayed one mass prayer for healing at the end, and refused the offering. He believes the tent will erupt tomorrow.

When he asked the room to raise their hands if they were committing to all three, the response was so visible that he laughed and said, “We’re going to need a bigger tent.”

The Mass Prayer for Healing

Before closing, Mario had the room stand and lift their hands. The mass prayer was short and direct. Cancer leaving. Diabetes leaving. Spine, skin, stomach, lungs. He prayed in the Spirit. He prayed for the people in the overflow room. He prayed for the people watching the livestream. He prayed that the miracle of Stockton would become an example to America and that the gang violence would be erased, the homelessness erased, the poverty erased.

What Tonight Was

This was not a normal first night. It was the beginning of an extension nobody planned, in a venue nobody chose, with a worship team that rearranged their lives to be there, and a sermon that the evangelist himself did not want to preach. Mario stood in front of his own movement and said the threat to the meeting is not the wind and not the city and not the devil. The threat is us.

And then he called for souls. And they came in a flood.

His thoughts are not our thoughts. That was the message. It was also the explanation for everything that happened tonight.

Where We Go From Here

God willing, we will be back in the Tent tomorrow. But those Mario spoke to tonight have been given an assignment.

The extended Stockton meetings continue this week at the Living Proof Tent Crusade.

Lifesong Church – 4950 Claremont Ave, Stockton, CA

Doors open early. Bring someone.

WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING TO HAPPEN TODAY?

WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING TO HAPPEN TODAY?

As the nation festers in bitter division, Donald Trump attempts a highly controversial and defiant act. He intends to rededicate America to God.

Millions hail this as a long overdue course correction for a nation which is about to go off the rails. Millions more hate it because, in their mind, this nation and all it stands for should die.

The division cannot be clearer and the consequences of it deepening cannot be exaggerated. America needs a miracle.

Far away from Washington, in Stockton, California, a highly unnoticed miracle is in progress. What does this large white tent in the heart of a war-torn city mean?

At this moment, all of us at Mario Murillo Ministries are holding our breath.

What possible role can this growing meeting have on the larger picture of our American crisis? Those who scoff ignore history.

Because in fact, it is gatherings like these, that seem inconsequential, that can suddenly shake nations with unpredictable results.

At this moment, all of us at Mario Murillo Ministries are holding our breath.

Yes, we have seen thousands saved before. It is true that we have seen healings like these in many other cities. That is not why we are holding our breath. It is because of something we have never seen before.

In less than 48 hours over 800 people had to book flights, hotels, and change job schedules in order to return to the Tent. The Bible says, “Your people will volunteer freely in the day of your power” (Psalm 110:3).

Just as amazing is the fact that there are 300 new volunteers! They were not at the first week and decided last minute to volunteer! 

It is unheard of for people to do this on such short notice and it tells me that we are truly in A DAY OF GOD’S POWER!

What will it be like when Catherine Mullins begins to lead worship tonight? What then will it be like when I take the pulpit?

Here is something else totally unique: word is spreading on social media in a way I have not seen before. Thousands of people are sharing what God has done for them. They are not talking about me. They are talking about what God is doing.

Then there is the Tent itself. It stands as a beacon of hope in Stockton. It is as if God is broadcasting a message, not by human voice but by a general sensation to the community from the Tent.

The fact is, people believe there is peace in this tent. A voice is telling them to come. There is a sense there in the middle of a cultural combat zone that God has established a holy oasis.

Hope is becoming forceful. Something that has been very scarce in Stockton, California.

What will it be like when Catherine Mullins begins to lead worship tonight? What then will it be like when I take the pulpit?

Pray fervently, pray long, we have never needed it more. Stay tuned, the world may be about to change…

Ask yourself, what would it mean for a city famous for going bankrupt, notorious for homelessness and poverty and stained by the blood of children because of gang warfare. What would it mean for this city to be turned upside down by the Gospel?

I don’t know if I have ever felt the fear of God the way I feel it now. What is going to happen in the Tent tonight? We have never added three days to a crusade. We are wading into uncharted waters.

The verse that comes to mind is where Paul said in first Corinthians 16, verse 9, “For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.”

I have never needed prayer more. I have never needed anyone and everyone who has any heart for our ministry to pray, as I need them to pray now.

Pray fervently, pray long, we have never needed it more. Stay tuned, the world may be about to change…

 

MY TAKE ON WHAT IS HAPPENING IN STOCKTON

My take on what is happening in Stockton

No doubt you have heard many reports about what God has done among us in Stockton. But you have not heard anything from me directly.

Yes, it has impacted tens of thousands in this region. Indeed, God has saved and healed many. How many have been saved? There have been several reports about the number—perhaps thousands—but only God knows the real number.

And yes, we have done the unthinkable by adding three extra nights May 17-19.

Having said all that, I want to clear the air about Stockton.

Whenever something like this happens there is a buzz. That buzz can distract from the pure work the Holy Spirit is doing.

It is precisely because it is so wonderful that I am trying to protect it.

When the buzz dominates facts, it is known as “the tail wagging the dog.” I do not want that to happen in Stockton. It has happened so many times. The organizers begin to market it until the marketing outruns the actual moving of the Spirit.

Yes, this is not to say that what is happening here is not supernatural or wonderful—and could be in fact—the visitation we have yearned for. It is precisely because it is so wonderful that I am trying to protect it.

Without a doubt, a true move of God travels by word of mouth, not by hype. People—everyday people—are the instruments of an awakening. This is how Mark 6:55,56 describes it: “And when they came out of the boat, immediately the people recognized Him, ran through that whole surrounding region, and began to carry about on beds those who were sick to wherever they heard He was.”

This is what is happening in Stockton. People are bringing people. Their expectancy is releasing miracles. Hype is the furthest thing from their mind.

Stockton goes against type and that excites me.

The next important fact about this miracle is where it is happening. It is happening in Stockton. This is not the spicy, fashionable revival location. Modern believers thrill at campus rallies and suburban mega church events.

Stockton goes against type and that excites me. This is happening among the downtrodden. We are in a gritty, wounded, devastated city. Gang violence here is out of control. Even the homeless have become predators. Few feel safe here at night.

However, nothing tells you more about Stockton than this: We have just been asked to do a mass prayer for parents whose children have been shot and killed.

When you factor that in, the nightly attendance becomes astonishing.

 

Clearly, Stockton reminds me of where Jesus began His ministry. 700 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah made this strange prediction about where the Messiah would begin:

Isaiah 9:1,2, “Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first He lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”

However, the most important breakthrough in Stockton is the youth. They have taken over the crusade.

In fact, the Pharisees never got over how Jesus began His ministry in the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,. They all believed it would begin in Jerusalem even though the scriptures were very clear.

We also have our favored locations for a move of God. But God often has other plans.

However, the most important breakthrough in Stockton is the youth. They have taken over the crusade. That, my friend, is truly the devil’s worst nightmare. Nothing fuels an awakening like young people. When God harnesses youth – look out!

The bottom line is that something has started in Stockton. What it is isn’t exactly clear. But we are fighting to be faithful with all our might.

Here are some final thoughts:

I avoid calling this a revival. The word “revival’ now has a bad connotation. It creates a mindset that often stops soul-winning and healing the sick. Too many “revivals” become about self. They attract those who just want to get a spiritual high.

That is how they go to extremes. When people start gyrating on the floor and making loud weird sounds, they make revival look crazy to outsiders.

Thank God, in Stockton the outsider is enthralled by the presence of God. The sincere worship, the clear message of the Gospel, and healings in the name of Jesus.

Another sad tendency of modern “revivals” is trying to recreate a past revival or compete with another one. We are pressing in to hear God’s voice. We want fresh instructions.

The life’s blood of this simple but powerful event in Stockton lies in our ability to get the people to keep asking the right question. If instead of asking, “Will I get a word from God at the tent?” They can ask, “Who am I going to bring to the tent?” Then there will be no limit to what this tent crusade can become!

We want something that will win a nation back to God.

Again, I am not trying to downplay what is happening in Stockton. It is because it is so real and wonderful that I am using wisdom in stewarding it. We are using extreme caution to keep it healthy.

Because of this, our credo is very simple: Win the lost. Heal the sick.

The other thing I do not want to do is put a name on this act of God. It is interesting that William Seymour never called it the Azusa Street Revival. That was added later.

For our part, we will run after God and leave labels to others.

The life’s blood of this simple but powerful event in Stockton lies in our ability to get the people to keep asking the right question. If instead of asking, “Will I get a word from God at the tent?” They can ask, “Who am I going to bring to the tent?”

Then there will be no limit to what this tent crusade can become!

P.S. PRAY,PRAY,PRAY FOR THE TENT CRUSADE IN STOCKTON. We also wish to thank Lifesong Church in Stockton for the astounding way they have hosted this crusade. It would never have been possible without their amazing people and leadership!

Revival Has Come to the Next Generation

Revival has come to the next generation. The front of the Tent told the story before Mario said a word. Packed shoulder to shoulder with young people. Hundreds of them. The kind of crowd the older generation has been crying out for in prayer rooms for so many years. And here they were, on the final night of the Stockton Tent Crusade, leaning in, hands raised, ready for whatever God was about to do.

This was the night the prayers got answered.

The Worship Set That Wouldn’t Quit

Catherine Mullins and the team came in carrying weight from the start. “Hell Lost Another One” detonated early, and the tent answered. From there it built into “Praise the Lord, Oh My Soul,” then “Let the Heavens Open Up” and somewhere in that progression Catherine stopped singing songs and started prophesying.

She declared “I want to break off this lie of the enemy over the older generation that says you’re not needed, that your time is done. And I want to prophesy that it’s just the beginning. God is just getting started.” She kept calling out individuals. A young man with a hat backwards near the pole, a man in an Upper Room shirt, a young woman with a braid; and each word landed with a sniper’s precision. The older generation got their commission back. The younger generation got their starting line.

By the time they hit “Lion of Judah” and “Lace Up Your Boots,” the place was running on rocket fuel.

The Praise Break Mario Had to Calm Down

Then came the moment that should be in the history books.

The praise break went where praise breaks go in our Tent. It was wide open, full throttle, the band locked in and the crowd erupting. Catherine led them through “Look What the Lord Has Done,” into “I Got a Feeling,” into “Something Happens When I Call Your Name,” into “To God Be the Glory.” Each song higher than the last.

When Mario finally took the platform, he tried to speak and the place exploded again. He shook his head and said something he’s never said in his ministry: “You are the first audience in the history of my ministry that I had to calm down.”

The crowd answered him by getting louder.

He looked at them and tried again: “This is for Jesus, right? Nobody else.”

The shout that came back was the loudest noise of the night. Maybe the loudest noise the church has ever made in Stockton, California. Mario said it himself from the platform: 120 decibels of pure declaration that, yes, this was for Jesus and Jesus alone.

That’s when you knew. The next generation isn’t waiting for permission anymore.

Catherine’s Spirit-Led Detour

Mario stepped to the pulpit and admitted he’d been thrown off course. “Three nights in a row, Catherine has messed up my sermon. And I’ve never been more glad to have it messed up.”

He spent the first stretch of the message on a topic he said almost no one is preaching: the Christian’s protection from the Devil. He told the story of being invited to the “Holy Man Jam” in Marin County years ago, asked to defend his faith alongside gurus from Scientology, Buddhism, Islam, and Transcendental Meditation. While they pitched higher IQs and deeper meditation, Mario asked them one question: “Can you protect anyone from the Devil?”

He took it straight at the audience. Frequent nightmares, anxiety, perverted lust that controls behavior, rage that wants to do something violent, grief so deep you wonder if life is worth living? These are the symptoms of an unprotected target. “Pray not that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17, NKJV).

“When you’re right with God, you are safe from the Devil.”

The altar call that followed was the largest of the week. Many hundreds. Possibly a thousand. The pictures couldn’t even capture it. There was no single frame that could hold the river of humanity coming forward. People who had been standing outside the Tent because there were no seats left came running to the front. Mario kept saying it from the platform: “Not because of my preaching, but because of the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The Big Announcement: Hezekiah’s Letter

Then he got to the sermon he’d been advertising since night one, The Big Announcement. And it wasn’t what anyone expected.

He took us to 2 Chronicles 29 and the story of Hezekiah, who became king of Judah at 25 years old. Hezekiah inherited a wreck. His father had taken the temple of God, turned it into a garbage dump, locked the doors, killed the prophets. The Levitical priesthood was corrupt. The Passover hadn’t been celebrated in 250 years. The ten northern tribes were lost. Two of them under Assyrian slavery, the rest holding centuries of bitterness against Judah.

And this 25-year-old king said: I’m going to bring them back.

Mario worked the parallel hard. America is about to turn 250 on July 4th, 2026. The same number. The forefathers who founded the country weren’t deists, they were Christians, and you couldn’t hold political office in the 13 colonies without being able to prove you were born again. The church didn’t lose her way because of liberals or the LGBTQ agenda. She lost her way when she chose church growth over revival, members over disciples, making people feel good, over making them good.

Then he turned to the youth. “Don’t you let anyone tell you that your dream is impossible.” He worked the older generation just as hard: “Don’t you let your children put you in a rest home. You don’t need assisted living. You need Spirit-filled living. God doesn’t want you sitting in a chair gumming applesauce at Leisure World. He wants you on the front line of the next revival.”

Hezekiah wrote a letter. He sent runners into enemy territory to deliver it. Two of those tribes were under Assyrian guard. The runners were going to get killed, or the king of Assyria was going to kill the slaves who tried to leave. But Hezekiah believed one letter could undo 250 years of separation.

And it did! The runners delivered the letter, the tribes were released, and they came back to Jerusalem singing the songs of Zion that hadn’t been heard in two and a half centuries. “Now many people, a very great assembly, gathered at Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread” (2 Chronicles 30:13, NKJV).

And then the line that broke the tent open: “Then the whole assembly agreed to keep the feast another seven days” (2 Chronicles 30:23, NKJV).

The Tent Is Staying

Mario set it up carefully. He told the story of Pastor James Bird from Life Song Church asking him if the Tent could stay. Mario at first saw how impossible that would be, and said, “No.” He listed all the reasons it was impossible: the city, the fire permit, the logistics, the team, the worship. Every domino looked stacked against it.

Then he announced what had quietly happened that day: the city of Stockton extended the fire permit. The Tent is staying. Three more nights. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, May 17, 18, and 19. And, Catherine and the worship team will be coming back.

The Tent erupted. Nothing you’ll see in the broadcast captures the cheer that went up when he said the meeting was extending. It was the kind of shout that comes from people who didn’t want the visitation of the Lord to end, and now realize it doesn’t have to end.

He also announced that he and Mechelle would stay an extra few days, and that he would preach Sunday morning at Life Song’s tent service for Mother’s Day. He charged the room to make Mother’s Day the biggest soul-winning day in the region’s history. “Tell your children that you don’t want chocolate, roses, or a day spa. You want them to come to church next Sunday morning.”

The Sign Over the Tent

Yesterday Isaiah Saldivar sent Mario a picture of a ring of clouds that had formed over the tent. Mario sent it to Bill Johnson. Bill’s response: “God is giving you an open heaven over the Tent.”

Sid Roth has the picture. Lance Wallnau has the picture. Mario said it from the platform: this revival is now operating under an open heaven, and thousands are praying for us!

Healings

Mario moved into healing prayer by coming against diseases: diabetes, then heart disease, then ulcers and acid reflux, then cancer. A woman in the back was healed not just of diabetes but of joint pain in her hands — hands she had used to make things to give to other people. She had had to stop making those gifts, and it had broken her heart. Mario called it out before she said a word, and her hands were restored right in front of all the people in the Tent. 

A man’s shoulders, locked up with bursitis for 15 years, opened up the moment he raised them in worship. Eyes, headaches, dizziness, numbness in the feet. They were all called out, all answered.

Fifteen people standing for diabetes were also healed of heart disease. Mario counted the hands that went up. Then he had everyone who was near those with raised hands to pray for healing.

The Bigger Frame

This was a final night that wasn’t a final night. The marketing card said, “Held Over.” Mario laughed about wanting it to read “Hell’s Over.” Either one fits.

The youth at the front of our Tent are what the church has been crying out for. The older generation that’s been faithful in prayer rooms for decades got to watch their grandkids run to Jesus. Hezekiah, the 25-year-old king bringing the lost tribes home isn’t just a Bible story. It’s the script being written under this canvas right now.

The tent didn’t come down. It’s staying. And the next generation isn’t sitting in the back anymore.

Stockton Tent Crusade Continues

So, be here for the meeting that starts at 6:30 PM on Sunday, May 17; Monday, May 18; and Tuesday, May 19!

Mario will also be preaching at Life Song Church’s Mother’s Day service, Sunday morning, May 10, under the Tent by way of saying thank you to Life Song Church!

You do not want to miss any of these visitations of the Holy Spirit!

 

The Youth Take Over the Tent

Night 3 in Stockton, CA, something new broke open.

Every night of this crusade, the front of the Tent has filled up with young people. It’s been building over the past several tent meetings, but in Stockton it’s exploded. Tonight after the altar call, when Catherine and the worship team came back up to lead, the young people packed the front again. And they were explosive. When Mario walked back to the platform, they cheered for what felt like several minutes without stopping. When he reacted, they cheered louder.

But here’s what mattered: they weren’t cheering for Mario. They weren’t cheering for Catherine. They were cheering for the presence of God in the room.

And Mario saw it. He stopped and said it from the platform: “The young people have taken over this crusade. It’s theirs now.” Then he said it again, slower. “Whenever Christianity turns back into a youth movement, that is Satan’s worst nightmare.”

The prophet Joel said it would happen. In the last days, God would pour out His Spirit on the sons and daughters. We’re watching the beginning of it.

Catherine and the Prophetic Setup

Worship tonight didn’t feel like a warm-up. It felt like a setup. Catherine led the room into “Glorious Day,” then “Goodbye Yesterday,” then “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”. And the room sang back like it meant every word. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). She had everyone in the Tent declaring it.

Then she stopped and pointed at a young woman in a white shirt with a cross necklace. And what she said was a prophetic word that turned out to be the key to the entire night.

“I heard your yes in the quiet,” Catherine said. “Maybe your, ‘Yes’ didn’t seem really, really loud, but when you began to say, ‘Yes’ to Jesus, it was like your hand reached back to the kids behind you and you started pulling people to Jesus with your, Yes.’

Then she prophesied over the next generation. “I decree that you are not going to be a generation that knows Egypt, but you’re going to know the presence of God. You’re going to know the purpose of God. You’re going to know the glory of God.” She broke off the spirit of gender confusion. She broke off every lie that says you have to look like Hollywood, sound like Hollywood, dress like Hollywood. “You are a blood-bought saint. You’re called to live differently. You’re called to look different.”

That word landed before anything else happened. And then everything else happened.

Mario Scraps the Plan

Mario came up and announced he was throwing out his sermon. The Holy Spirit had told him not to wait, but to go after souls right now, immediately. He said the heaviness of this meeting had been more intense than any in his life. “I am not going to disobey the Holy Spirit. No matter what He says, no matter what He requires, no matter what change I’ve got to make.”

Then he told a story about a young couple about to be married. A car accident. The bride was killed instantly. The groom survived but lost his memory. Couldn’t remember his name. Couldn’t remember his parents. But when he walked past a restaurant where the two of them used to go, an overwhelming grief came over him that he couldn’t explain.

“That’s spiritual amnesia,” Mario said. “California is beautiful. But when people sit out in nature, they get the same feeling that young man with amnesia had. Because something is wrong. Humanity lost its connection to God.”

He called it like he saw it. The loneliness you can’t explain. The vague fear, like some tragedy already happened. The relentless search of the young on social media for meaning and purpose. “Christianity is God’s answer to that amnesia.”

Then the warning. “If you say no to what I’m about to offer you, you can no longer blame anyone else but yourself for the pain in your life. You’ve replaced your parents as the villain. You’ve replaced your enemies as the villain. You’ve become your own worst enemy.”

Hands went up across the Tent. Mario asked them to come forward. They came in waves and he led them in the prayer: “I was lost. I was on my way to hell. I had no hope. And out of mercy, you brought me to my senses.”

The Praise Break

Catherine and the band came back and that’s when the Tent erupted. The young people swarmed the front. The team launched into “Look What the Lord Has Done,” then “Goodness of God,” then “I’ve Got a Feeling Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” and the room turned into something that doesn’t have a name in modern church vocabulary.

Mario asked who remembered when tents had sawdust on the floor. When people danced not because the music told them to but because they couldn’t help it. He told the young people they were dancing for relief, not entertainment. The room went up. Catherine kept driving the songs. The youth kept driving the room.

This is when it became impossible to deny. The atmosphere shifted from a service into a movement.

How to Save America

When Mario finally opened the Word, he preached out of 2 Kings 7. The four lepers at the gate of Samaria during the famine. He named the sermon, “How to Save America.”

He walked through it like this. Three of the lepers were stuck. The first was a cynic, “If we sit here, we die.” The second was a pessimist, “If we go in the city, we die.” The third was a nihilist, “We’re going to die wherever we go, nothing matters.” That spirit, Mario said, is in the American church right now.

But the fourth leper got up, put on his finest robe, his gold sash, his fine shoes and walked across the desert toward the enemy’s camp. The other three trailed behind him grumbling, “You can’t do that. You might die.” Mario’s voice sharpened. “Wait a minute. This was the church of die. And I hear that language in the body of Christ all the time. We can’t do that, this bad thing might happen. That bad thing is already happening.”

Then came the rebuke he’d clearly been waiting to deliver. He told the story of being on TBN years ago when a famous prophecy preacher spent 30 minutes telling a room full of young people that no great revival was coming, that America wasn’t even in the Bible. Mario watched their faces shatter. When it was his turn at the microphone, he stood up and said, “I want everyone to totally disregard everything you’ve heard for the last 30 minutes. Because our God is an awesome God.”
He turned to us tonight and pressed it harder. “How dare you say we cannot obey God and see revival in America. How dare you say that to us.” The young people roared.

Then he made it personal. He said the lepers in the story aren’t just America. They’re the fallen ministers. The pastors who lost it morally. The men of God who failed and got shamed off the platform. The elderly preacher dreaming of the days when his Bible was marked up and he was traveling. Mario said that God is going to resurrect them. Some of them shall fall… to refine them, purify them, and make them white (Daniel 11:35, NKJV).

“There’s got to come back in the body of Christ that pioneer spirit,” he said. “Who is God going to use? He’s going to use the wild teenager and the heartbroken grandpa, and He’s going to put them together.”

Then the climax of the sermon. The LORD caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses and the noise of a great army (2 Kings 7:6, NKJV). In reality, it was just four lepers walking on sand — but God amplified them through what Mario called “hydroponic nuclear million-watt speakers” until the enemy heard a marching army and fled. “If you will get a big vision for saving America, God will go before you. Go before you have the money. Go before you have all the guarantees. Go in the name of Jesus and watch God go before you.”

He closed the sermon with a declaration he made the room repeat. “We are not going to be non-binary. We are not going to be socialist. We are not going to be atheist. We are not going to be Muslim. We are going to be Holy Ghost-filled, blood-bought children of God. And America will be saved. And America will be saved. And America will be saved!”

The Wave

Mario said he’d wrestled with God about how to end the night. He didn’t call the youth forward. He didn’t do a traditional healing line. He told us to lay hands on each other.

“Sickness is going to be healed across this Tent. I am not going to call out any illness. I won’t need to. It’ll be on everyone.”

Then it broke. Healings. Baptisms in the Holy Spirit. Deliverance. People stood up across the Tent as the power hit them. Tongues broke out in clusters. Mario walked the platform pointing at people who’d just received. “That’s a baptism in the Holy Spirit right there. Another one. Stand.”

He told the room he’d never felt the power this strong any night of the week. The waves kept rolling. People standing. People weeping. People shaking off demonic oppression. The youth at the front pressed in like they’d been waiting their whole lives for this.

It was probably the most powerful single moment of the entire crusade so far.

One More Night

Wednesday is the final night. Mario hinted there may be a major announcement. He said, plainly, that you don’t want to find out secondhand.

Stockton has been called the most spiritually significant moment of Mario’s entire ministry. The youth have taken over the Tent. Catherine has prophesied the generation out of Egypt. The fallen are being resurrected. The Spirit is being poured out on sons and daughters. And we’re not done.

We’re not waiting for revival. We are the revival.

Living Proof Tent Crusade — Stockton
Wednesday morning, 10 a.m. with Pastor Marco Garcia
Wednesday night, 6:30 p.m. the final night with Mario Murillo

Lifesong Church
4950 Claremont Ave.
Stockton, CA

 

The Holy Spirit Took Over in Stockton

The Holy Spirit  took over in Stockton. The largest crowd in the history of our tent crusades was Sunday. Monday was a continuation, not a comedown.

If Night 1 broke the record, Night 2 broke the program. Mario had a sermon. The Holy Spirit had something else in mind. And before Mario read a single verse, the worship had already taken those in the Tent somewhere most services don’t go on their best night.

Catherine Mullins and band were back, and they were a level above. That’s not a throwaway compliment. They’ve been incredible night after night across this crusade season, and last night they went higher.

They opened with “Jesus Did It, It Is Finished,” the kind of declaration that hits differently in a tent full of people who came expecting something to be settled. From there into “Praise the Lord, Oh My Soul,” Catherine paused mid-set to call out the American church’s polite worship problem. “We sing this song sometimes with our arms crossed. The clubs are full on a Saturday night going crazy. When did we become too dignified to give Jesus what He’s worthy of?” She wasn’t joking. She wasn’t venting. She was setting an order.

Then “Raise a Hallelujah” turned into open-air warfare. Catherine prophesied between phrases. Drug addiction breaking. Prostitution breaking. The spirit of murder being driven out of California. “I Call You Jesus” hit the line “dead things come alive every time I call your name” and the Tent audience leaned in.

And then they sang “I Exalt Thee.”

I don’t have a better way to describe what happened than what I felt. It was not a gentle filling. It was an instantaneous and weighty presence. As if a cloud the size of the Tent dropped in suddenly and pressed out all the air. I was standing just off platform where the team waits. Every one of them threw their hands in the air at the same instant. Tears came. It was heavy, and it was full of love, and it was unmistakably God.

Mario named it later. “It’s because Catherine obeyed God that we reached a level of His presence that requires us to do two things.” But the team off-platform knew it before he said a word. The shift was that obvious.

Mario Refused to Break What the Holy Spirit Built

When Mario stepped up, he kept his eyes shut for a reason. “The glory is on me. Part of me is here. Part of me is not here.” He sent the kids back to their seats so the fire would carry across every section of the Tent. He asked the room to sit reverently and quietly. “There is so much power under this Tent that to me the idea of the dead being raised would be nothing. That’s how much power is in this Tent.”

Then he announced what was coming. Not a sermon. A takeover. “The program for tonight has been taken over by the Holy Spirit.” Two things were going to happen. He was going after lost souls. And then there was going to be worship again before any healing began.

He went to the prophet Amos and the picture of the plowman overtaking the reaper. A harvest so massive that the ones planting the next crop ran into the ones still gathering the last one. “While preaching is important, the day is coming when people will want to get saved at the very beginning of a meeting.” He referenced Charles Finney, who used to empty the first four rows of his crusades and call them the mourner’s bench, deliberately reserved for people under such conviction they couldn’t wait for the sermon to end.

That’s exactly what Mario was about to do.

Matthew 8 and 2 Timothy 3: The Word “Fierce”

He gave himself two verses. One in Matthew 8. One in 2 Timothy 3. The Greek word translated “fierce” appears twice in the New Testament. Once for the demon-possessed man among the tombs. Once for the times we’re now living in.

“In the last days perilous times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1, NKJV).

Mario read it back the way the Greek allows: in the last days, demon-possessed times will come. “Satan knows his time is short. He’s not even hiding anymore.” He listed the strategies. Islam as an international weapon. Addiction as a prevalent weapon. And the one nobody talks about: madness. The assault on sanity itself.

“You know, we think about cancer and paralysis and advanced diabetes. But we don’t talk about madness. And if you’ve ever been near someone that has lost their mind, a catatonic person you could yell at and their eyes won’t even blink, what are you doing to protect your sanity?”

He named it for what it is. Nightmares. Daymares. Sudden outbursts of rage that no medication touches. Depression that won’t lift. Drug binges where you don’t even care who you wake up next to. “You are under the final assault on the human race where the final battlefield is going to be the mind.”

The answer wasn’t a self-help formula. It was Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind. 2 Timothy 1:7. “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind.” And the man in the cave, after the demons left him, who was found “clothed and in his right mind.”

The Altar Call That Came Before the Sermon Finished

Mario didn’t wait. He cut his own message off mid-stream. “I’m going to interrupt the middle of my sermon, because you should not be going to hell. You shouldn’t be sitting there on your way to hell. You got to be saved now.”

Hands went up. He told them to stand. He told them to come.

They came from every section. Mario had them recreate the parting of the Red Sea, splitting the responding crowd to either side and marching them out of the Tent past the seated congregation while the church cheered them into the kingdom. The volunteers were waiting. The aisles filled. The harvest came in before the healing service had even begun, exactly as Mario had said the prophet Amos described.

“This was not me. This was not my eloquence. This is God working in Stockton, California.”

The Worship Came Back, and Then the Healings Came

Mario kept his promise. He brought the band back up before any healing began. “Look What the Lord Has Done.” “Goodness of God.” “I Got a Feeling.” Catherine led the Tent in shouts and dance until the air was charged again. He had warned them. They were not done worshiping.

When he finally moved into the healing portion, he honored every pastor in the Tent first. He had every ordained minister stand to their feet and prayed over them by name and by category. He prayed against Muslim acquisition of church property in the region. He prayed for revival to break out in their pulpits, for words of knowledge to become normal in their services, for finances to be released. “No Christian property is going to pass to the Muslims in this region in the Name of Jesus.”

Then he turned to Acts 3:16 (NKJV). “And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness.”

His message on healing faith was set up by a story most of the audience had never heard. Warren Rogers. Baltimore. Beaten nearly to death by two robbers in his bread truck, a birthmark on his face sliced open like an artery, nearly every one of his bones broken, his body locked in a brace, scheduled for surgical fusion that would leave him a slap-walker for the rest of his life. Mario was preaching a crusade nearby when his wife was hit with sudden excruciating pain in her hip and spine, an attack out of nowhere on the night of a healing service. Mario went into the forest behind the hotel and prayed so violently he said you could feel leaves falling off the trees. She was healed. Then in the lobby, he had a vision of a man in a delivery truck being beaten. “There’s a man right down there. Spine, neck, back, legs, heart, and lungs. All of them are going to be healed.”

That night Warren Rogers was in the back of the meeting wearing his body brace. When Mario gave the word of knowledge, he undid the hinges, set the cage beside him, and ran to the front. Healed. He went on to lead his psychiatrist to Christ. Then his surgeon. Then his Jewish attorney, the one who’d won him $350,000 in damages. “It was done by your Messiah.”

The point wasn’t the story. The point was the principle. “Why would I know what’s wrong with you if God wasn’t going to heal you? Why would I know?”

The Woman in White

Then Mario called out a woman in white. He had her stand. Her hips were the worst of it. The pain made her walk shift. She couldn’t take a flight of stairs without help. Her heart, her lungs, her knees, her neck, all of it was carrying years of weight.

Mario quoted Peter at the gate Beautiful: “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6, NKJV).

He told her to come out to the aisle.

She rushed out and ran full speed across the front of the Tent.

That’s not a figure of speech. She ran. After the Acts 4 sermon Night 1 about the healed man at the gate Beautiful enraging the powers of darkness, the same scene played in the same tent the next night. Acts 3 and Acts 4 unfolding in sequence in Stockton. The book is opening here.

Healings Across the Tent

From there it didn’t stop. A man in a white hat in the front row had something deeply hidden in his body that Mario called out by the Spirit. The lady in the pink beside him received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the spot, her spine being straightened as she stood, a new language coming out of her mouth that wasn’t English. Mario revealed that she’d been praying for the baptism for months.

A man toward the back was healed of pain in his lungs from chemical fumes. A woman with ringing in her ears was told the miracle was actually in her brain, with a series of conditions following. A veteran in a white hat was told the Lord was rewarding his service, with healing released into his blood. A young woman was healed of one-sided body pain. A man identified by the Spirit was healed of injuries from a car accident, including one leg shorter than the other. He ran in place to prove it.

Mario then had everyone needing a healing raise their hands and called the rest of the Tent to lay hands on the people next to them. He led the whole Tent in prayer in the Holy Spirit and called out diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, asthma, cancer, neurological disorders, every category in turn.

Hundreds stood at the end to declare they had received their healing.

Looking Forward

Tuesday night, Mario said the power of God will intensify.

He’s not exaggerating. Two nights in, this was the largest crowd in our tent history. The altar call came before the sermon finished. A woman was healed in her hip joints and ran across the Tent! The Holy Spirit took over the program because the program was too small for what He came to do.

Stockton is not a flyover stop on the way to somewhere bigger. Stockton is the headline.

Living Proof Tent Crusade — Stockton, CA Tonight and every night this week at 6:30 PM 4950 Claremont Avenue, Stockton, CA

This is just the beginning!

 

Nothing Enrages Hell Like a Miracle

The tent in Stockton just broke its own record.

Mario said it from the platform, plain and unambiguous: this was the largest crowd to ever attend a Living Proof Tent Crusade. The previous record was set in San Bernardino just a few weeks ago. Stockton broke it on opening night. Not the healing service. Not the final night. Night one.

The tent was packed early. By the time worship began, the entire front of the tent was filled with young people, including children. That alone would have been worth writing about. There’s something happening with the next generation in California that the headlines aren’t catching, and tonight you could see it in the faces of the kids pressed up against the platform before Catherine even sang a note.

Catherine and the band carried the room before Mario opened the Bible

Catherine Mullins and her team were incredible as always. From the first song, the tent didn’t feel like an audience getting warmed up. It felt like a war room being assembled.

They opened with “I Thank the Master, I Thank the Savior” and you could feel the weight of testimony in the room. Then came the declarations that have become anthems in this tent. “I’ve Been Washed in the Water.” “When I Move My Body, When I Move My Feet.” “Holy Forever.” And the warfare anthem that always does what it’s meant to do: “The devil can’t have me or my family. This is an eviction notice to the enemy. The chain breaker’s in the room, and there’s no telling what he’s gonna do.”

Catherine paused mid-set and named what was actually happening. “What I love about the people in this tent tonight is you didn’t come for a show. We came to see Jesus glorified. We came to see Jesus magnified. We came to see the lost set free.”

By the time worship moved into “Holy” and the angels song, the air in the tent had changed. Catherine said it out loud: “I feel like in this moment, we’re right on this edge of truly heaven meeting earth.”

She wasn’t exaggerating.

Mario refused to break what the Holy Spirit had built

When Mario stepped up, he did something I’ve watched him do over and over but it never stops being striking. He read the room. He sent the kids back to their seats so they could carry the fire with them across every section of the tent. Then he said, “One of the dumbest moves that modern preachers make is they never discern what the Holy Spirit is doing in a room. They go by a program or they go by habit or they want the attention.”

Then came the line that set the tone for the whole night: “We are living in a day where the margin of error is razor thin. Nobody can preach the wrong sermon anymore. No one can afford the mistake of a throwaway service. Every single gathering of the Christians in America now has to be anointed and strategic and undeniably within the design of God.”

He told the tent he was about to preach one of the most important messages of his life. He prayed for scales to fall, for pride to break, for the unshakeable to be shaken. And then he announced what the camera would later confirm: this was the largest crowd to ever fill the Living Proof tent.

He honored the pastors next. He had every ordained minister in the tent stand. He called it one of the greatest displays of unity in the history of Stockton. Then he addressed something that quietly poisons crusades in church-host situations, the fear that a pastor hosting the meeting on their campus is going to “get all of the result.” He named it and killed it. Pastor James and Sharice of Life Song, he said, want every church in this region to grow. They don’t want an empty seat in any house of God in this region. He charged the body to drop sectarianism on the spot. Then he asked the question that landed: “What do we really want? Do we really worship the idea of having the biggest church in town or getting America back to God?”

The Sermon: Acts 4 and the Cost of an Undeniable Miracle

Mario opened in Acts 4:14-17 (NKJV): “And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it… What shall we do to these men? For indeed that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it… so that it goes no further, let us threaten them severely.”

The setup was the healing of the man at the gate Beautiful. Mario painted the scene with the kind of specificity that wakes a sermon up. Imagine, he said, if Stockton had its most visible quadriplegic, the one everyone knew through the media, the one everyone walked around at the corner. And one day he gets up and walks. “That would shake up Instagram. And it shook up Jerusalem.”

Then he made the move. The same five members of the crime family of Jerusalem who had crucified Jesus were now staring down Peter, who only weeks before had denied even knowing Christ. But the coward was gone. “This pussycat had his subatomic molecules scrambled by the fire and the tongue of the Holy Spirit. And suddenly the coward is a lion.”

“Everyone believes that miracles create such beautiful reactions,” Mario said. “Nothing enrages the powers of darkness like miracles.”

He drew the modern parallel without flinching. The same authorities who tried to outlaw the Apostles are at work today. England, Colorado, Canada, where you can be jailed for quoting the Bible. The closing of the churches in 2020 wasn’t an emergency response, it was a rehearsal. “We thought the mark would come a different way. We didn’t know that it would come through an injection… Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in the middle of the book of Revelation right now.”

The Half Christian

Mario then turned the blade on the Church.

He went to 2 Timothy 3 (NKJV) and explained the literary technique Paul was using. When you list dangers, you save the worst for last. Paul lists lovers of self, lovers of pleasure, heady, high-minded, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, unthankful. And then verse 5 lands like the heaviest weight: “having a form of godliness but denying the power of it.”

“It’s the half Christian,” Mario said. “It’s the twilight zone Christian. It’s the believer that is in and out, up and down, sometimes right, a lot of times not. Thinking the opposite of what they should be thinking. Instead of thinking I’m in mortal danger, they’re thinking my occasional bouts where I turn to Jesus prove that I have a good heart.”

Then the line that exposed every backslidden pew-sitter in the tent: “How many of you have ever heard a person say, I can quit smoking anytime I want, I’ve done it a hundred times. See, I can quit being out in the world because I’ve done it a hundred times. And you don’t know that every time you have turned from God’s way to your own way, it was Satan who was setting you up.”

The Desire and the Power

Mario quoted Philippians 2:13 (NKJV): “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” He pointed out that even secular behavioral scientists have isolated the two things that make change possible, motivation and power. “What they don’t realize is that they are preaching the gospel. They’re imitating Jesus, and it’s a sad imitation. Because Paul wrote it first.”

Then he stopped the sermon. Mid-stream. He said it plainly: “I’m going to interrupt the middle of my sermon, because you should not be going to hell. You shouldn’t be sitting there on your way to hell. And I can’t make you sit through a whole sermon before you finally are saved from your sin. You got to be saved now.”

The Altar Call

What happened next was as powerful as any altar call we have witnessed. And given what we just walked through in San Bernardino, that’s saying something.

Mario asked for hands. Then he asked them to stand. Then he told them to come.

They came from every section. The altar area filled clear across the tent. They lined the three main aisles. When they spilled out into the field, our volunteer team was waiting and the line of volunteers stretched the entire 40,000 square foot width of the tent and wrapped around both ends. I went outside to see them being ministered to and I literally could not see the entire line of volunteers at once. The tent had prepared for a wave. Stockton sent a tide.

Every single volunteer was put to work.

The Healings: God Did Not Wait

When Mario returned to the platform, the healing service was clearly already underway. He shifted into healing without ceremony.

He called for everyone in the tent who had difficulty walking, who was being healed, to get up, move into the aisle, and come toward the front. The response was so heavy that I got trapped behind a line of people walking back and forth across the altar area. I couldn’t even get out to take my usual photographs. I had to retreat to the platform.

Then came the woman in the green dress.

Mario called her out and identified five things in her body before she said a word. A fall years earlier had broken her pelvis and she had been in pain for 20 years. She was in her second round with cancer. Her eyesight was failing. There was more, condition after condition that Mario named one by one.

All of it healed. Powerfully. She walked across the tent free of pain.

Mario closed the night by asking everyone who still needed prayer to raise their hands, and there were hands in every section. He had the tent pray in tongues and lay hands on one another. The Holy Spirit moved row by row. Healing was happening in places Mario never named, because at that point He didn’t need to. The tent itself had become the altar.

This Is the First Night

Mario said it earlier in the night and it bears repeating. This is the first night. Not the third. Not the healing service. The first.

The largest crowd in the history of the Living Proof tent. An altar call response that filled the front and three aisles and required the entire volunteer army. Healings breaking out before the designated healing service. A Holy Spirit who refused to follow the program because the program was too small for what He came to do.

If you live within driving distance of Stockton and you are not in this tent, you are missing what this region has been waiting decades for. The pundits told us California was finished. God did not get the memo.

Bring the sick. Bring the lost. Bring the desperate. Bring the kids. Bring the neighbor you’ve been praying for. The tent is open every night and the meetings are getting bigger, not smaller.

Living Proof Tent Crusade — Stockton, CA

Monday – Wednesday, 6:30 PM Lifesong Church, 4950 Claremont Ave, Stockton, CA

This is just the beginning.

Jesus Didn’t Want the Cross

He said so Himself

The night before He died. His face pressed into the dirt of Gethsemane. He asked His Father to take the cup away, then said:

“Not My will, but Yours be done.”

That’s not the language of someone who wanted what was coming. But the language of someone choosing obedience over comfort.

We skip past this too quickly. We view the Cross as the intended plan Jesus was excited about. As if He strode toward Calvary with some kind of stoic peace. But Luke says His sweat became like drops of blood. And He asked three times for another way.

There wasn’t one.

The Cross was the Father’s will. But it was not the Son’s desire. And the obedience Christ modeled in the garden is more uncomfortable than most of us will admit. Because it means obedience and desire don’t always point in the same direction.

The God Thing

Go back about two thousand years before that moment in Gethsemane. Abraham has a son. Not just any son, but the son. The one God promised when Abraham was 75 and didn’t arrive until He was 100. There were twenty-five years of waiting and doubting. And there was that detour involving Hagar, before the impossible. Isaac.

Isaac is not just Abraham’s boy. He’s the proof that God keeps His word. Every time Abraham looks at his boy he’s looking at a covenant fulfilled.

Then God says, “Sacrifice him.”

Not ‘give him up,’ or ‘send him away.’ He’d already heard those commands with Ishmael, and it nearly broke him. But this time he was told to kill his son. Then burn him as an offering.

This is most often framed as “Abraham had to sacrifice something he loved.” And that is true. But it’s not the hardest part. The hardest is Abraham had to sacrifice the thing God gave him. The thing that was itself the answer to decades of prayer.

The promise and the command were in direct contradiction. And Abraham had no framework to reconcile them.

Hebrews 11 tells us he reasoned that God could raise Isaac from the dead. But think about that for a minute – it means he wasn’t operating on understanding, but on trust beyond the point where anything makes sense. The only way forward was to obey a God whose instructions had just made His own promise look like a lie.

Now Spread That Out

Put yourself in Jerusalem, around 33 AD.

For generations, Israel had prayed for their promised Messiah. The deliverer. The one who would restore the kingdom, break the occupation, and make everything right again. Then He showed up. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He taught with an authority the Pharisees couldn’t touch. Crowds followed Him by the thousands wanting to make Him King.

And then He died on a Roman cross like a common criminal.

Try to imagine that. You’ve prayed your entire life for God to send the answer. He sends it. You watch that answer walk among you for three years. Then that answer gets nailed to a wooden cross and stops breathing.

God gave the thing they’d been begging for. Then He let it be destroyed in front of them.

The disciples did not process this as the first in a series of phases of a much larger plan. They saw it as a catastrophe. Luke 24:21 records two of them on the road to Emmaus saying, “We had hoped He was the one Who was going to redeem Israel.” Past tense. Had hoped.

They watched the promise die and they went home.

Intersection of Will

Here’s something that should make us uncomfortable.

When we pray, when we plan, when we imagine what God is doing in our lives, we’re only solving for one variable. Ours.

My calling. My family. My ministry. My timeline.

But God is solving for every intersecting story simultaneously. Your obedience doesn’t just affect your life. It affects people you’ll never meet, situations you can’t see, outcomes that won’t materialize for years, or even generations. Abraham’s obedience on Moriah is still shaping theology four thousand years later. He couldn’t know that while he was climbing a mountain with a knife in one hand, and his son in the other.

That’s why our version of events would almost always be the wrong solution. Not because we’re foolish, but because we’re working with a small part of a much larger puzzle. If it were left up to us, we would write an ending that resolves our own tension.

God is writing an ending that resolves the tension for everyone.

And His version often requires the death of our hopes.

What Dies

This is where it gets personal.

For Jesus, the death was literal. For Abraham, it was a willingness for it to be literal. For us, it’s often something else, but no less real.

It might be a ministry you built that God asks you to walk away from. Or a calling you were certain about that suddenly goes silent. A relationship, a church, a career, a version of your life that you were absolutely sure God had authored.

And then He says to let it die. Sometimes at your own hand.

Not because it was wrong. It might be your Isaac. The thing in your life God gave you in fulfillment of a promise. And now He’s asking you to put it on the altar. And you can’t reconcile the promise and the command. You can’t see how the two fit together.

And those around you won’t understand it either. You won’t be able to explain it to them. They’ll likely think you’ve lost your mind. Or that you’re wasting the thing God gave you. Some will say you heard wrong.

Because from every human angle obedience will look like destruction.

You Can’t See it From This Side

Both stories do finally resolve in resurrection. Isaac comes off the altar. Jesus walks out of the tomb.

But neither Abraham nor Israel could see that resolution from inside the obedience. Abraham walked toward Moriah for three days, the whole time believing he was going to kill his son. Jesus sweated blood in a garden, asking for a different way. The people sat for three days with Jesus’ body buried in a tomb.

The resurrection was real, but it was invisible from where they were standing when the obedience cost everything.

I think we want the Easter part without the Friday. We want to see the ending before we agree to the task. We want God to show us the resurrection before we agree to the death.

He usually doesn’t.

What He offers instead is what He offered Abraham and what He offered His own Son.

Himself.

His presence. His character. The track record of a God who has never once broken a promise, even when His instructions looked like He was about to.

The Cross was not Jesus’ will. But He was obedient to the will of the Father. And that obedience produced something no human will could have ever designed or even imagined.

You probably can’t see that from where you’re standing right now. Abraham couldn’t see it from Mount Moriah.

Obey anyway.