Something has started in New York. Mario had a sermon ready for Monday night. He’d worked on it all day. He never preached it.

“Every once in a while Catherine will lead worship in such a way that it makes a soul winning sermon unnecessary,” he said when he took the platform. “The presence of God, my friend, has been beating up on you for half an hour. You don’t need a sermon. You need relief.”

So he skipped the sermon. He gave the altar call cold, with no message in front of it, and people came from every corner of the Tent. Mario stood there watching them walk and said the line that sums up the night: “No sermon, just an altar call. New York is ready for revival.”

Worship

Catherine Mullins and the band opened with a welcome that was really a declaration. Last night was living proof that Jesus Christ is alive, and tonight was going to be greater. Then they went straight into “Washed in the Water” and didn’t let up.

“Vagabond” turned into “hell lost another one,” and the Tent picked that up and ran with it. But the song that broke something open was the one that just kept saying “get up, get up, get up out of that grave.” Catherine wouldn’t leave it. She started calling things out over the crowd while the band held the groove: depression, suicidal thinking, cancer, leukemia. “It’s happening tonight. Get up out of that grave.”

Then she stopped and said what she was feeling. “I feel his presence sweeping through the Tent. Probably the strongest, to some degree, that I’ve felt on a Monday night.” She told those in the Tent that Jesus the Healer was in the room, and if you’d come believing for a healing, to get your hands up. And she started naming conditions before Mario had said a word: blood issues (“a holy exchange, you’re getting the blood of Jesus”), sexually transmitted diseases, asthma, thyroid conditions.

They moved through “I Speak Jesus” and “Gratitude” and landed on an old chorus, “He Is Not Here, Jesus Is Risen.” Catherine knew it sounded odd and said so. Then she explained why she went there. Jesus wasn’t just a good man or a good prophet. He’s the only one who came back from the dead. Muhammad is still in the grave. Buddha couldn’t make a way. “Every other god is in the grave. But Jesus is alive.” That’s why you can believe God heals tonight. That’s why you can believe anxiety dies tonight.

By the time they closed with “I Exalt Thee,” the Tent was gone. Mario came up, looked at the room, and decided the work was already done.

The Worst Day in History to Be Without Jesus

Mario had everyone close their eyes and said something he wanted the Tent to hear before anything else. “There has never been a day where it was good to be without Jesus, ever. But if you were to ask me, I would tell you this is the worst time in history to be without Jesus.”

His reasoning: “The Devil is in a sprint. He sees the finish line. He understands he’s headed for a lake of fire. He’s got to take people down with him.” The old line that Satan’s greatest trick was convincing people he didn’t exist? That trick doesn’t work anymore. “Everybody that has watched the current events knows he exists.”

Then he stacked up the world’s religions and philosophies (Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, New Age, “the Church of Oprah”) and made the one point that matters: “Only Christ has power over the Devil.”

He had a story to go with it. Floyd Brown, who preached the morning session, told Mario about a U.S. government advisory on what to do if attacked by aliens. According to Mario, the document said only one thing works: command them to leave in the name of Jesus.

Then he got to the real diagnosis. A lot of people chasing deliverance right now don’t understand that their fundamental problem is they aren’t born again. “They’re a convicted sinner who’s toyed with the idea of Jesus.” Jesus said you can’t enter a man’s house without binding the strong man. Once Jesus owns the house, demons can oppress you, but they can’t possess you.

He named the spirit he thinks is on this generation more than any other: “the feeling of being unwanted and totally alone. That’s a demonic feeling and it is enhanced by devils.” And to the person who says, “Mario, but I know God,” he answered, “Your soul is telling you different. Your soul is telling you you’ve got harmless religion.”

The Altar Call

He went to Matthew 18:19. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven” (NKJV). His offer was agreement: he and the person would agree together that God hears them, that the drug habit breaks instantly, that the alcohol, the fear, the anxiety, the pornography all break.

But he wouldn’t pray it over anyone who wasn’t willing to raise a hand. And here’s the part that told you where the room was: when he said, “Don’t do it yet,” hands were already going up. “That’s how ready this audience is.”

Then he called them, and they came. From every section. Mario was almost laughing at the rest of the Tent for sitting still through it. “I don’t know how you can be so calm. This is the greatest thing. To see this under this Tent.”

The repentance prayer had a picture in front of it. Mario described footage from Chernobyl, workers who’d been exposed to radioactive water running out and throwing themselves at the people with the decontamination hoses. Frantic. Wanting every inch scrubbed. “That’s how biblical repentance works. I want you to have all of me.” And then the line I wrote down twice: “You don’t want to feel good. You want to become good.”

Hand over heart. “This is where you end and Christ begins.” They confessed it out loud: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV).

Mario told them he’s led people to Christ all over the world and has never once had one come back and say they regretted it. “The only regret I had, Mario, is that I didn’t do it sooner. But now look at me. You’re going to make up for lost time.”

The aisles opened like the Red Sea and the newly saved marched out to the workers while the whole Tent stood and welcomed them into the family. Mario called it the world’s greatest victory parade. And he made a point of the follow-up: “We don’t believe in a one night stand. We believe in discipleship.” Pastors were all over the Tent (a lot of the same ones from Sunday came back), and Mario told the new believers where to find a church home: find out who backed this crusade, because they’ll preach what you’re hearing here.

Sawdust and a Praise Break

Because souls got saved that early, Mario decided the audience needed to sing. Not politely. “You’re Holy Ghost, right? You’re not Unitarians, right?” He talked about the old tent meetings with sawdust on the floor and people sweaty from dancing before the Lord, and asked how many could bust a move for Jesus.

The band went straight into “Look What the Lord Has Done” and “When I Think of His Goodness.” In the middle of it, one of the band members grabbed the mic to give a testimony that wasn’t his. He said Catherine has been his mentor for about 15 years, and that early in the Mullins’ marriage they spent eight years believing for a baby. That baby, Hayden, is here. And now there’s another one on the way. “If you trust in the Lord, he will give you what you need.” He dared them to praise like the victory was already won, and for 30 seconds it was the loudest the Tent had been all night.’

Living Proof, and a Word About Doctors

Mario asked everyone healed Sunday or Monday to stand, and told them something I’ve heard him say before but it landed differently in New York: “That healing is not just yours. You are now a witness. You are now living proof. And you need to go to your doctor and get it confirmed.”

Then came the caveat. He used to respect the medical profession almost blindly. Post-COVID, post-Fauci, he doesn’t any longer. There are good doctors and bad doctors, same as preachers. But he’s had people healed of cancer and told by a physician it was just an emotional experience. (“How many of you know the doctor’s having the emotional experience?”)

From there he did five minutes on the modern doctor’s visit. The 2-hour wait you have to show up on time for. Nurse Diesel and the gown that doesn’t do the job. The 50-pound block of ice rubbed on the exam table so your skin sticks. He told of an HMO president who accidentally got into heaven and ‘had to leave after three days.’ The Tent was howling, and then he flipped it: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:2-3 NKJV). “I read your policy today. The benefits of God are better than the benefits of your medical insurance.”

The Healings

This is where the night went somewhere I haven’t seen a Monday night go.

Mario pointed to a woman in blue on the aisle, third row, and named it: pain in the lower spine radiating down the leg. Sciatica. Then he called a woman named Lee to walk over and lay her left hand on the base of the woman’s spine. He called Lee “a real woman of God,” and she didn’t pray like a bystander.

While Lee’s hand was there, Mario kept going. The sciatica was one of five conditions. One of them was scary. “There is a tumor in your body. You have cancer.” It had started in one spot and metastasized. He had her put a hand on her stomach and one just below her chin, because that’s where the fire was going. He called for an usher for her and then said he might need one himself. (“I’m getting a little wobbly up here.”) A bone disorder eating at her joints. Dramatic bone loss. Balance and dizziness. Then, borrowing Peter at the Gate Beautiful: “In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.”

She ran. Down the aisle, no impediment. Mario: “For those of you that believe the day of miracles is over, I’m showing you right now that the day of miracles has just started.”

Then he stopped and put his own finish line on record. “My finish line is not when I give her a word. My finish line is not when you all clap. My finish line is when the tumors are gone.” That’s the whole ministry in three sentences, and it’s why the film “I Am Living Proof” exists.

He indicated a woman in a bright light blue hoodie: a disease that runs in her family, showing up in her blood, her legs, her heart. Mario said the doctors think they know what it is, but only Dr. Jesus really does. Blood, joints, back, feet, and (he almost forgot) her ears. Healed and waving both hands at the Tent.

Then he did something he does when he’s sure. He made a section of the Tent nod on record: if I describe accurately what’s happening in your body, will you obey God? They nodded. He pointed to a woman in white with blonde hair, next to a man in black. She’d come for him. She wasn’t expecting anything for herself. It started with her anyway.

Neck, shoulders, back. Three places with abnormal bone structure: one in the neck, one by the shoulder blades, one near the waist. “When you get up in the morning, it takes all of your courage to get out of bed.” She’d been holding her right hand in the air for almost two minutes while he talked, something Mario said she’d never done without agony. Then it was her turn to lay hands on her husband’s chest. His heart. And the after-effects of what Mario called a mini stroke: memory, speech, balance. “This man doesn’t get emotional, but he’s wobbling right now under the power of the Holy Spirit.” Mario also told him something bigger than the healing: Mario said that early in his life, this man had seen something in the church so wrong it made him doubt the whole thing. That was over. “You’re gonna turn into a man of power.”

Third row, a young man with an injury from childhood whose after-effects had been debilitating. Mario didn’t lay hands on him. He turned to the man in the hat next to him and said, essentially, ‘You’re up.’ On Sunday Mario commissioned a healing evangelist from the platform. Monday he did it again, right there in row three. He fed the man the words, and the man delivered them with hand motions which Mario rated at “level 2.” “Be healed in the name of Jesus. And be filled with the power of God.” Mario called it the first double-barreled commissioning, two healing evangelists formed in one prayer!

And one more in that row, a gentleman to the left: a neurological condition in the muscles and nerves. Mario said the proof would be his grip. He also named a lying spirit that had been telling the man he only had a little time left. “The label with an expiration date on it is being torn off of your soul. You’re gonna be here.” Heart, lungs, bones, blood.

Blind Bartimaeus and the Window

Then Mario taught for maybe four minutes, and it was the sermon he did preach.

Blind Bartimaeus heard a ruckus on the Jericho road and found out Jesus, the Son of David, was walking by. He had a window of opportunity, the width of a man’s hearing, and he didn’t waste it. He yelled. People told him to be quiet. The Bible says he got louder.

“This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Psalm 34:6 NKJV).

“Jesus is in this Tent. This is your window of opportunity. This is your moment to get out of your embarrassment and your inhibitions and resistance and say, “I believe.”

Then he tested them. He told everyone to be quiet. Then the entire Tent did the Bartimaeus thing: “Yes, Lord!” came back at him, and it didn’t stop. Most of the audience was on its feet and the cry went on and on, well past the point where a crowd usually runs out of breath. Mario just stood there and let it roll. When it finally settled he said, “Well, y’all get an A+.”

And then the words of knowledge came in a flood. Acid reflux. Diabetes, more than one. Neuropathy in the feet. An esophageal hernia. Three people with migraines in one section. Numbness in the legs. A young person with congenital heart disease. Someone who’s been surviving on a couple hours of sleep a night, tormented by physical insomnia, who’d tried everything: “God is speaking to you like he’s calming the storm at sea.” Ringing in the ears. Someone who fell on a slippery floor and landed on a hip. An open wound that won’t heal, on the same person with diabetes. A car accident that left pain across the jaw and down the back. Two of the miracles were for children.

Mario slowed himself down in the middle of it. “I’m starting to get a little scared now. I beg God, please move, please move. Now I’m going, maybe we slow down a little bit.” Then he had everyone he’d described stand, in all three sections, and they stood. Every one of them. One man stood the instant Mario’s finger landed on him.

“The healing virtue of Jesus is not only on them, it’s on everyone in this room now.”

Something Has Started in New York

Mario said it while the woman with the tumors was running: “I have a feeling that something has started in New York.” He said it again at the end, and this time he put weight on it.

Then Mario closed with the thing that’s been under every night here. “In front of all of the world, we’re going to feel the reality that the Lord has chosen Albany. Chosen it.” The closing prayer called the Tent a launching place, not a destination.

There are two nights left. Come and join us!

Altamont Fairgrounds, 129 Grand St, Altamont, NY 12009

Tuesday and Wednesday night @ 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday morning @ 10 a.m., with Todd Coconato