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.

Mary Magdalene’s pain and glory.

This is the story of pain and glory. One of the greatest cruelties—if not the greatest in history—was done to Mary Magdalene.  She knew the yawning blackness of total despair.

Then Jesus rescued her.  Jesus cast out seven vicious devils—devils she thought would never leave. Luke 8:2 “and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities—Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons.”  Once deemed human garbage, she is now redeemed and planted into a family of indescribable love.  Things would never be the same.  Her nights of remorse, her days of futility, her shame, her emptiness, were now all distant memories.

For three years she lived a life she could have never imagined, crisscrossing Judea, hanging on Jesus’ every word, weeping gloriously over every miracle.  Each morning, she awakened a more powerful and joyous woman of God!  She thought that this would go on forever.

Each morning, she awakened a more powerful and joyous woman of God!  She thought that this would go on forever.

People use the phrase “nothing could be worse…”  They use it before describing something unimaginably terrible.  I will use it this way: Nothing could be worse than to be in hell, and then taste heaven, only to return back to hell.

Then on that fateful Friday, it all went horribly, horribly wrong.  How could the One Who called the dead back to life and silenced a storm at sea, be arrested?  How could the One Who gave words of exquisite beauty, love and wisdom, be tortured and killed?  No one wanted to save Jesus more than Mary.  No one felt more horror and helplessness than she.

No one wanted to save Jesus more than Mary.  No one felt more horror and helplessness than she.

That night, profound hope had given way to even deeper bitterness and disappointment.  She must have thought, “If only I had never met Him.  If only He had left me to die in the streets.”  She slept only after exhaustion became more powerful than sorrow.   Too wounded to go on living, and perhaps too tired to commit suicide…

Mary is of special importance to me today, because her testimony is the best one I can think of as we commemorate this Good Friday, in such a dark time as the one we are living in.  Mary’s miracle is the miracle America needs now!

Here’s why: When the first shafts of Sunday morning light stirred her awake, she dreaded it.  If ever a heart was broken beyond repair—if ever a soul would rage against the approach of hope—if ever a woman just wanted to go back to sleep and never wake up, it was Mary.

That is why she was shocked when she felt an odd energy coming over her.  She soon felt an even stranger impulse—to go to the tomb where Jesus lay!  How could she return to the only spot on earth that could reopen her wound?

What overruled her despair?  What fuel was driving her so completely against her common sense and her broken heart? 

What overruled her despair?  What fuel was driving her so completely against her common sense and her broken heart?  Paul answers that emphatically! “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11).

Do you know any therapist capable of rebuilding the ashes and rubble of her soul?  Can any drug, any teaching, any relationship, reassemble her heart the way the gentle but powerful Comforter could?

We all know about the power of the resurrection: it was the greatest display of power the universe has ever known; even greater than the alleged “big bang” that, theoretically, began the universe. The resurrection sent shock waves through the principalities and powers of darkness.  It shattered Satan’s power and stripped him of the keys of death and Hell (Rev. 1:8).  Jesus set the captives free in the bowels of the earth, and “led captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8).

But, the first burst of resurrection power was much gentler. Mary was the first human to feel the power of the resurrection.  Her eyes, which were red and sore from sobbing, were now refreshed and clear.  Her arms which had hung limp from heartsick lethargy were now responsive, strong, and full of purpose. She sat up and found hope pumping through her veins. She wondered, “Why!”

A notion seized her, gently, but firmly.  She knew she was to go to the tomb, and she immediately got going!  Washing up, brushing her hair, and quickly getting dressed. All the while the expectancy of an indescribable ‘something’ was building in her soul.  Before she knew it, she was out the door, and charging toward her worst fear.  Only, now, she was not afraid.

She found the tomb vacant. Then she turned and saw Him whom her soul loved.  Many awesome things happened that Easter, but none more wonderful than Mary reunited with her Savior.

 She is the best testimony I can think of for our national dreams that have gone up in smoke. 

In the genetically altered, politically charged, drug addicted, violent purgatory that is America today, Mary Magdalene stands as a poignant figure.  She is the best testimony I can think of for our national dreams that have gone up in smoke.  Our culture has wearied itself with perversion…hunting down everything natural and replacing it with a disfigured counterfeit. It has marched, protested, and boycotted the very color and life out of everything—to the point that everything is a cause for taking offense.

What happened to Mary, is proof that there is nothing better than the Gospel.

America!  This is what you need!

“Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons” (Mark 16:9).

JESUS APPEARED FIRST TO MARY!  He had never forgotten her. He knew she was suffering the most, so He healed this precious soul first!

THE DAY AFTER JESUS DIED

It’s the day after Jesus died. Peter screamed until he could scream no more. He fell off a cliff into the abyss of broken souls. The force of his crash could have moved the earth. Fragments lay around him—the hideous replacements of his former self. Shame replaced love. Fear drove away hope. He watched his destiny plunge into a black hole.

Then to survive, Peter became a robot. He went fishing. It’s what he was programmed to do. Peter went through the motions.  Avoiding feeling, suppressing emotion.

Now, the difference between Peter and Judas Iscariot is razor thin. The same fever of despair and regret burned in them both. It drove Judas to suicide. Why didn’t Peter kill himself?

Because Jesus prayed for him!

Nevertheless, Satan caged Peter in a lie. The same lie that tortures America right now: everything good is gone forever. And we are totally alone.

But Peter’s agony went beyond this. He found out he is a coward. Denying Jesus three times. The rooster still crows in his mind.

Not only that, but he found out he was a fool! Thinking he would save Jesus, he cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus.

He fished all night and caught nothing. 

Now another memory tortures him. It’s the day he met Jesus. Jesus interrupted his entire life. He fished all night and caught nothing.  He had nothing to show for a brutal night out on the water.

Then the strange Teacher said, “Let your nets down again for a catch.”  Peter half-heartedly did as he was asked. Suddenly the catch is so enormous it terrifies him.  He begged Jesus to keep His distance, “I am a sinful man!” Peter cried. Instead of leaving Jesus spoke the eternal words, “Follow Me and I will make you a fisher of men.”

But Peter is now convinced—after his failure and denial—it is too late. He believes his destiny is lost forever.

If not for these two little words: “and Peter,” the whole world would have been different. 

Finally, it is dawn on Resurrection Sunday.  An angel is talking about Peter!  Mark 16:7 says, “But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that Jesus is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told to you.”

If not for these two little words: “and Peter,” the whole world would have been different. Think about it. The only pronoun the angel needed to use was “His disciples.”  After all he would not have said, “Tell His disciples, and John” or “and Matthew.”

And now Peter rises from the dead. Oh, the unmatched glory of another chance.

God knew Peter would disqualify himself if the invitation was “for disciples only.”

You can imagine Peter insisting, “Are you sure the angel said my name?”

“Yes, the exact words were, “Tell the disciples, and Peter.”

And now Peter rises from the dead. Oh, the unmatched glory of another chance.

This is Peter’s destiny. More than that, it is his identity and reason for living.

But wait, there is much more.  Satan now has a new and terrifying enemy! The former coward is now the perfect weapon to shake the gates of hell.

 Peter is utterly transformed. He is now a devastating witness. On the day of Pentecost He roared the global invasion of the Holy Spirit. “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel!”

Two chapters later, the man who couldn’t admit he knew Jesus stands before the Sanhedrin and calls them murderers.

Because of Easter you can come back from the darkest failure. Because of Easter God will look over you to protect your destiny.

How mighty was Peter’s destiny? For that we look back to that night Jesus healed Malchus’ ear. Jesus knew Peter must not be sitting on death row on the day of Pentecost. Jesus reattached the ear, in order to protect Peter’s destiny.

If Easter will ever mean anything to you it is this: Everything that we hope for rests on the Resurrection of Christ. And that same power can do something in you. Romans 8:11 says “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.”

Because of Easter you can come back from the darkest failure. Because of Easter God will look over you to protect your destiny. And because of Easter we are saved and alive forevermore.

 

THE CHURCH AFTER TRUMP

THE CHURCH AFTER TRUMP

What happens to the church after Trump? Here’s a chilling hint: even the pastors who despise him admit the church will lose protection.

Donald Trump has been president a year and 2 months. He will be gone before we know it. The remaining 2 years and 10 months will go by like a blur.

Worse still, the end could come as soon as November—if we lose the House and Senate.

Then the Democrats will go for blood. Obama operative Susan Rice said that those who “take a knee” to President Trump will be “held accountable.”

The fear he invokes in them protects the church.  Even the churches that hate him!

She predicted an “accountability agenda.”  She added, “This is not going to be an instance of, you know, forgive and forget.”

Many in the church find Trump offensive. He is blunt and forceful. But it is his alleged rudeness that the Left fears. The fear he invokes in them protects the church.  Even the churches that hate him!

Here’s the funny part: they hate us as much as they hate Trump. That is ironic because the church has not done much to help Trump. We are innocent of making any big changes to America. But they are coming for us anyway.

And, here’s the worst part: we are totally unprepared. Ask the average Christian “do you have any idea what it will be like after Trump? Cue the blank stare.

But the real damage is in the once fervent remnant. They endured slurs. The left called them Christian Nationalists. They energized voters. You could see them at school board meetings prophesying against evil. They condemned abortion from their pulpits.

Instead of being in the Book of Acts, they are in the X-files.

In fact, the list of their exploits is endless. Until it ended. What ended it? And what, pray tell is fascinating us now? Ancient giants, UFOs, and the scandals of failed Charismatic preachers.

Instead of being in the Book of Acts, they are in the X-files. And for what? How do giants, flying saucers, and gossip save a nation?

A once mighty momentum—created by the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk—has given way to exotic side shows. How tragic that millions of youth who were set ablaze and ready to go, find resistance and even indifference to their revivals.

Looking at us now, critics might label us Operation Failed Fury.

We had the fire and the glory but somehow it faded right before victory.

Looking at us now, critics might label us Operation Failed Fury.

So, is there any hope? Yes, there is a great hope. But like I have said so often, before a great awakening there must be a rude awakening.

Now, do I have your undivided attention because I want to open wide my heart and deliver a message.

The cause of our national disaster is clear: THE CHURCH STOPPED WINNING SOULS.

The answer to our crisis is to ask ourselves a question. What brought America to this dire state? Answer that, and you will discover the road back to deliverance.

The cause of our national disaster is clear: THE CHURCH STOPPED WINNING SOULS. An entire generation missed the Gospel because that church had “better things to do.”

But now God has done a miracle for us. He has prepared millions to receive the Gospel.

A converted heart will oppose abortion, open borders, same sex marriage, and transgenderism.

The fact is we are in the midst of two extremes. One side hates America and gorges on evil. The other side is broken, empty and yearns for a real experience with God.

It is that other side that has the power to stop our national disaster! A converted heart will oppose abortion, open borders, same sex marriage, and transgenderism.

These verses describe America: “Do you think the work of harvesting will not begin until the summer ends four months from now? Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us, and are ready now for reaping. The reapers will be paid good wages and will be gathering eternal souls into the granaries of heaven! What joys await the sower and the reaper, both together!” John 4:35, 36

The Holy Spirit fell. A vast, strange yearning for God gripped millions.

When the Jesus movement struck in the late 1960s most universities, and a majority of the media were far left. The cover of Time Magazine said God is dead. Lyndon Johnson drowned America in socialism.

Not only this, the youth generation was on hallucinogenic drugs. Thousands of cults rose over night. Young people were written off as hopeless. Then it happened!

The Holy Spirit fell. A vast, strange yearning for God gripped millions. At the same time soul winning dominated the church. Millions turned to Jesus!

Now here is the most important point: The seismic shift in youth brought Ronald Reagan to the White House after decades of leftist control.

Fittingly, the first thing Reagan did as president was to get our hostages out of Iran.

Beloved, we are full circle! God is handing us the keys to the Kingdom!

Let us declare with one voice—AFTER TRUMP COMES A GREAT AWAKENING!

In fact, our tent crusade in San Bernardino had every feature of an awakening. Nearly 3,000 came forward. On the last night the majority of the 4,000 in attendance were under the age of 31. And they made a total commitment to Jesus!

That is why Mario Murillo Ministries will invest millions to reach youth. God will punish us if we ignore this moment. Stockton California is next. When the tent goes up there I know it will the greatest harvest we have ever seen.

Here is the bottom line: Trump has done his part. Now the church must shake herself from the chains of apathy, fear, and unbelief. Every service must now have an altar call. Every preacher must do the work of an evangelist.

The alternative is too horrible for words!

How can we dare to ignore this harvest? What more could we ask for? The stage is set. Masses are ripe. The stakes have never been higher.

Let us declare with one voice—AFTER TRUMP COMES A GREAT AWAKENING!

 

 

 

 

San Bernardino’s Closing Word

The Tent came down. The fire did not.

On Wednesday night, Way World Outreach Church in San Bernardino became the epicenter for what Mario Murillo and the pastors of the Inland Empire had been announcing all week. It was a mass baptismal service for the thousands who gave their lives to Christ under the Tent. And what unfolded was not an afterglow. It was confirmation that what God started in San Bernardino has legs, lungs, and a future.

Nearly ten baptismal tanks were set up across the property. The lines of people waiting to be fully immersed stretched deep, one after another after another, each one a life being publicly buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness. It was an incredible sight. It was not a ceremony, but a harvest being sealed.

The worship team opened with declarations of surrender and authority. “I Have Decided I Will Follow Jesus” set the tone. Tonight was about commitment, not sentiment. Then “All Authority” rang through the room with the kind of conviction you only get from people who watched God move all week and decided they weren’t going home the same:

“I’m taking back what the enemy stole from me. In the name of Jesus, I’m breaking off every lie that I once believed. The one who lives in me has all authority.”

Testimonies From the Water

Before Mario ever took the stage, the testimonies told the story.

Ernest had been addicted to methamphetamines for 40 years. Since he was 11 years old. Homeless. In and out of prison. A self-described bad father. Seven months ago he entered treatment, and something changed. On Wednesday night, with two of his four daughters watching, he stepped into the water and declared: “I’m ready to put my bad life behind me and live a new life.”

Selena, whose family nearly collapsed in 2025. Separated from her husband, going hotel to hotel with her children, her sister on her deathbed, her brother battling illness in his body. Then the crusade happened. Her brother was healed. Her sister was healed. Her marriage was restored. She stepped into the water and said: “I’m leaving the old me behind and walking with God today.”

Keith and Mara. A couple in their 70s, ministry veterans with decades of service in California and Africa. Both had been sprinkled as children but felt the Holy Spirit pressing them toward full immersion. They flew here from Canada specifically for the crusade and the baptism. When asked why, Keith said simply: “God told me if I do this, He’s going to bless me.”

Cameron, a young man who had been in and out of church attendance for years, always wanting to commit but never fully crossing the line. Two weeks ago he heard Pastor Marco announce the mass baptism and something clicked: “God’s timing is always right. It’s time.”

Each story was different. Yet in a way, each story was the same. Broken people encountering Jesus and publicly declaring that the old life is dead.

The Mayor of San Bernardino

In a moment that captured the scope of what God did this week, Pastor Marco introduced the mayor of San Bernardino to the congregation. She had been invited to a morning session at the Tent and stayed through the preaching. Then she came back Monday night. Then Tuesday night. Then Wednesday.

Her words to the church were direct: “San Bernardino is a city of many challenges, as we all know. But what you did through your crusade is a major breakthrough. And Pastor Mario, when he said it last night, it’s not going to end. Last night was not the last night. It’s just the beginning. And you’ve all kept saying that, and I said thank you. Because it is just the beginning.”

The mayor of the city confirming what the Spirit had been declaring all week. That’s not politics. That’s the kingdom of heaven touching civil authority and finding an open heart.

Mario’s Message: You Didn’t Teach Me How to Die

Then Mario took the stage for what would be the final message of the San Bernardino crusade season. And he came loaded.

He looked at the crowd and said: “No one ever heard me preach by accident. Everyone that ever heard my voice in a meeting, God arranged it.”

The message was built around a single devastating story. A young woman, beautiful and talented, trained from childhood in voice, piano, dance, and acting. Her mother orchestrated every detail of her life. Then she was hit by a car in London, where the traffic runs opposite to what she expected. As she lay dying, she looked up at her mother and said: “Mama, you taught me how to dance. You taught me how to sing. You taught me how to dress. But you never taught me how to die.”

Mario used that story as the blade for a soul-winning message that went straight to the heart of every person in the room who had not yet surrendered to Christ.

He then went to John 3:16 and asked the crowd a question. What is the scariest verse in the Bible about hell? Not Revelation’s lake of fire. Not Jesus’ words about weeping and gnashing of teeth.

None of those. It is John 3:16.

Because the way you measure how terrible a place is, isn’t by describing it. But by looking at what someone was willing to do to keep you from going there. And God bankrupted heaven. He gave His only Son to die the most cruel death the world had ever seen. That’s how real hell is.

“You say, Mario, I don’t believe in hell,” he said. “Where do you think Jeffrey Epstein is right now? In the happy hunting ground?”

He dismantled the argument that a God of love couldn’t create hell by recounting the time he met a university professor who made that claim. Mario’s response was, “You just broke the first commandment. You made God in your image.” Then the analogy that cut through: “Have you ever taken an antibiotic? Then you believe in hell. Because that antibiotic is creating hell for a vicious virus in your body. God is going to purify His universe.”

But the message wasn’t ultimately about judgment. It was about the simplicity of the choice. Jesus said His yoke is easy. The drug you’re using is not easy. The abusive relationship is not easy. The fear and rejection of this world is not easy. The offer on the table is better than anything the world has ever put in front of you. And unlike buying a house or choosing a college, this is not something you go home and think about.

“I spoke to the Devil today,” Mario told the crowd, “and I said, I’m not done stealing people from you. I’m not going to leave town until I finish my job.”

The altar call came with the same weight and directness he carried all week. People stood. People filled the aisles. People walked forward. And many of them walked straight from the altar to the baptismal tanks.

Mario estimated over 2,000 people, perhaps 2,500, received Christ across the three nights under the Tent. Wednesday night added more. And the lines for those awaiting baptism just kept going.

A Promise to Return

Before he handed the microphone to Pastor Marco, Mario made a declaration that the crowd had been hoping to hear: “I’m going to come back to San Bernardino.”

The tent is gone, now. But the tent was never the point. The point was what happened under it and what’s continuing without it. Churches across the Inland Empire baptized new believers on Wednesday night. Way World Outreach launched new believers directly into their Holy Warriors Discipleship School. The infrastructure for follow-up is in place and functioning. This is the local church doing what the local church is supposed to do.

Pastor Marco’s team at Way World carried the evening with excellence and heart. The worship, the testimonies, the baptisms, the hosting of Mario’s message. It all reflected a church that didn’t just support the crusade from a distance but absorbed its fire and is running with it.

The Week in Full

What happened in San Bernardino this week defied every natural expectation. The largest crowds in tent history. An estimated 2,000-plus souls saved. Healings that multiplied night after night. A prophetic rebuke to the charismatic movement that demanded gold instead of bronze. A generation of young people commissioned as an army. A city’s mayor standing in a church declaring it’s just the beginning. And mass baptisms sealing the harvest across the region.

This was the first crusade of 2026. And if this is how it starts, the enemy has every reason to be terrified of what’s coming.

The Tent will be in Stockton, California next. But the fire moves everywhere.