When God began to visit Argentina in the 1960s through Ed Miller and his Penniel community, and then through the charismatic renewal via such groups as the Comunidad Cristiana and the Movimiento, these first ripples went fairly unnoticed by the outside world. The vibrations increased in the 1970s with Omar Cabrera and his evangelism, as church planting gradually became part of a nationwide consciousness. In the 1980s Hector Gimenez and his downtown Buenos Aires theater drew 10,000 people with five daily services. Then the mighty salvation and deliverance crusades of Carlos Annacondia united the rest of the churches, which had not yet experienced the overflow of revival. This was followed by a mighty wave sweeping in and filling smaller Argentine churches to their capacity. In fact, in many larger cities if a pastor didn’t have 500 people it was asked, What is he doing wrong? Other names became prominent, such as Scataglini, Churruarin and Carlini, and then Freidzon, Motessi, Carnival, Prein and many more in every large city.

 

Having been intricately involved with this tremendous revival, however, I can also say it’s important to remember that every man of God is nothing more than an earthen vessel. It has been well documented how some of these men and the churches and cities they represent were unable to avoid the pitfalls that often come with such a move of God. The Bible makes no effort to hide the sins of God’s great servants; yet it also highlights leaders who, despite falling, got back up again to continue running the race. The same can be said of the Argentine church. Despite losing many battles during the revival, the church has continued to fight in the overall war—and today it is maturing, growing, expanding, sending missionaries and praying for a new wave of revival.

 

How, then, can we avoid repeating our mistakes? How can we win the war this time and gain the long-lasting spoils of a revival harvest? I believe it begins by identifying those elements that can ruin such a harvest, no matter how flourishing it seems. Though all these warnings come from my experience with the Argentine Revival, I believe they are just as applicable to any major move of God.

 

 

As the Argentine Revival grew, the number of congregations spontaneously springing up from evangelistic campaigns soon surpassed our ability to train workers fast enough to attend to all the new believers. Many ministers had to attend multiple congregations and pastor them from their home cities, with hundreds of miles between each work. For instance, an apostle I know went months, if not years, with the following schedule: After preaching on Sunday evening to his “home” church, he would travel the next day to another congregation 600 miles west and preach Monday evening, rest one day and then preach on Wednesday night. After preaching he would drive 250 miles south and sleep, then awake and drive 100 miles more in time to preach Friday morning to a large congregation in a major Andean city. After this, he had to drive 200 miles south to preach at lunch to another congregation, and then another 200 miles south to preach that evening in an evangelistic campaign. Finally, after getting some sleep that night, he’d travel eight hours east back to his own city, rest for one day, and then begin the whole cycle over again.

 

It’s exhausting just relaying this man’s schedule, yet this routine was not uncommon. When hundreds and thousands continue to ask, “Can you please come to our city and teach us about God?” few ministers can deny the call. What made it even more difficult to say no were the ongoing miracles and supernatural occurrences. It didn’t matter if the homiletics were perfect or not; what mattered was that the minister gave room for God’s miracle power to manifest and for God to be glorified. In many cases, it mattered little if the preacher had prepared for the message or not. More important was that he knew how to get out of the way, recognize that he was ultimately incompetent, and that it all depended on God’s grace anyway. God had poured out His anointing all across Argentina to save it from falling into the abyss of terrorism, corruption and destruction—and this is what empowered every preacher and even those who were struggling with defeat to plug into God’s overflowing and abundant power falling across the country.

 

I can remember many times preaching three times a day in a 200-mile radius and having no time whatsoever to prepare. I’d literally get out of my car after traveling, walk up to the platform as the worship was ending during a service and begin to preach. Often I’d open the Bible and start preaching from wherever it opened, and the anointing would fall. Within 30 minutes miracles and deliverance would fill the room.

 

The obvious conclusion was that, “It must be OK if I’m not having any time to pray or seek the Lord because the miracles are continuing to fall.” What a deceptive trap for the inexperienced minister!

 

Unfortunately, reality set in for many of us—no matter how good our intentions to save the world were. Our superhuman demands began to take their toll as more ministers experienced accidents, nervous quirks, sickness, nervous breakdowns and even paralysis, not to mention family problems and moral breakdowns. Sadly, many ministers realized they were on a roller coaster that could only be stopped with a complete—and devastating—crash.

 

Simply put, there is no replacement for intimacy with God. No matter how great the miracle, no matter how large the crowd, Jesus always made time to seek His Father. We must do the same.

 

Though similar to the pitfall I just explained, there is a difference with this second false sense of security. Just because God is showing up and pouring out His power doesn’t mean in any way that this is His approval stamp on all that is being done in His name. God answers because He has bound Himself to fulfill His Word, because of His love for His people, and because He has divine purposes to fulfill for people and nations. How can God’s servants ever assume that God is showing up because of something they’re doing? God’s kingdom is about His purposes. It has nothing to do with giving His servants personal approval ratings by showing up or not.

 

Unfortunately, this faulty reasoning became commonplace during the Argentine Revival. Leaders failed to recognize that God’s anointing had nothing to do with their preparation. In fact, it was perhaps the single greatest sin that derailed the revival in its latter years. This was the sin of presumption, of a twofold reasoning that believed you could not only neglect personal growth time with the Lord and still be OK, but that you could also assume you were OK because God continued to bless mightily.

 

This is the spiritual pride of saying, “I can continue to do God’s works without God.” It is to reason, “The miracles must have something to do with my own spiritual state, and even though I am completely depleted and am becoming more carnal and spiritually empty, I don’t need to seek God because His miracles keep flowing.”

 

How foolish! We must realize that this pride is from the devil. It is a subterfuge, a trick to suck out the life of God in us and eventually kill us. As ministers, we must realize that God’s grace is one thing, but our own spiritual lives are another. When a snowball rolls down a slope with ever-increasing speed, it’s too late to stop it. Likewise, if you’ve already been duped into a pattern of self-destruction and moral depletion, when the enemy attacks there are no inward forces left to resist any temptation whatsoever.

 

That’s why we must always know how to avoid the inevitable parades that will come in our honor as revival increases. And trust me, they will come. As the anointing flows, there will be multitudes clamoring to make you a god. Revivals often prove how easily the sheep will flock to the most charismatic of personalities. When we are unable to resist such foolishness, we display a spiritual pride that believes God cannot operate without us. Yet anyone who has seen true revival—where the anointing falls upon the ungodly and the godly alike—must confess that it has nothing to do with you!

 

 

In revival, this deceptive thinking often follows a rebuke of some sort. No one likes to be corrected or proven wrong. And in revival, when God’s anointing and power are abundant, correction from authority can easily be followed by a soulish response of thinking you are more spiritual than those providing the correction or rebuke.

 

This is born out of hurt and jealousy. In Numbers 12:1-15 we see that Miriam was punished with leprosy for rising up against her brother Moses. She assumed that she was just as deserving to speak to the Lord face-to-face as Moses. In fact, she thought she was more spiritual than him because he had sinned in marrying a heathen Ethiopian woman. It’s understandable why Miriam would feel a bit jealous. She’d faithfully been with Moses as a child and probably watched as her brother was set in the little basket in the Nile. She was with her brothers throughout the exodus, was called the “prophetess” (see Ex. 15:20), and probably thought she was just as qualified to lead the people as her brother.

 

Yet through this jealousy Miriam also allowed herself to feel hurt by God in the sense that He wasn’t choosing her to do as much as her brother. Perhaps she had a feeling that God wasn’t realizing her spirituality was every bit as good as Moses’. Many of God’s servants allow themselves to be hurt because God is using someone else more than He is using them. They never realize that this is the trap of Satan to bring hurt, jealousy and then rebellion and a fall. As Miriam saw Moses’ mistake in marrying into an unequal yoke, a heathen, perhaps the devil spoke to her and said, “Now Miriam you have your proof that Moses is less spiritual than you are and that you are more obedient.” Miriam took the bait and rose up in pride, never realizing that she was assuming the role of judge—which only God has the right to do.

God never called us to compare ourselves and our spirituality to others, but rather to compare what we are with what we can be. God reserves the right to judge and call, bless and use one more than the other. Our own responsibility in all of this consists in nothing more than responding in a right way to God and His movement. We are to rejoice when others rejoice, weep when they weep and esteem others as better than ourselves. If we follow these rules and let God do the judging and blessing, we will never be hurt and prompted to rise up against our leaders who rebuke us when they themselves are less righteous than us. It is God alone who must judge. Our job is simply to respond correctly to honor Him.

 

How much pain we can bring to ourselves by allowing jealousy to hurt us! If we would just respond in humility, as Moses did, we would be immediately set free from worrying about how much authority we carry or what leadership role we have. It is God who advances us, holds us still or demotes us, and it is He who we must please with our attitudes in order for Him to bring advancement in position, prosperity and blessing over our lives. 

 

 

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