In the spring of 1972, I went to Florida to visit a friend who had become a Christian shortly before I did.  He was staying at a "Jesus house" somewhere in Fort Lauderdale.  The people who ran the house were Pentecostal ex-hippies with a heart for Latin America.  They held all things in common and were starting outreach into the islands and Central and South America.  We had a pleasant visit, a meal,  some interesting fellowship, and that was that.

About five years later, my mother received a package addressed to me at her home (I had since moved to Michigan) from a group in Fort Lauderdale.  When I opened it, it was a stack of pamphlets on the end-time move of God.  Prophetic and bible prophecy stuff.  Some of it still pretty cutting edge and perceptive.  It came with a note asking me to see that these materials were released at the proper time.  No signature or further explanation.  Only a defunct post office box and the name Santos Olabarrieto.  I didn't recognize the phrase, so I asked a Puerto Rican pastor friend about it.  He said it was an odd term, but the closest it could be translated was "Holy Tidal Wave".

 I don't know about the group or the pamphlets (I still have a few in my file cabinet). But I do know that the experience planted something prophetic in my spirit.  A vision.  An expectation.  A handful of hippies living in a commune on the seedy side of Fort Lauderdale praying and reaching out and filling the atmosphere with prophetic expectation that God would sweep Latin America with a Holy Spirit Tidal Wave of revival.  In 1972.  So now, almost 30 years later, this term keeps resurfacing. The wave. The next wave.  Big wave.  Waves of the Spirit. Tidal wave.  And Argentina is sending missionaries to America.

This move of God will begin in the Church, but it will not stay there.  I received a word on this a little over a year ago.  One brief excerpt read "The church is about to undergo a catastrophic upheaval, which will change the face of Christianity forever. Like the forces of plate tectonics, pressure has been building for a long long time, and the separations will be a short work, explosive , powerful.  Things never before seen will be brought to light and revealed, and other things will be instantly buried and hidden, or washed away in a flood.  Like the earth, this will NOT be a drawn out evolutionary process, but a burst of destructive and creative power. The result will be a totally new map, a totally new landscape, and a totally new atmosphere.  The Lord does nothing of this magnitude without first revealing it to His servants the prophets."
   

Somewhere deep below those things which are seen, there is a pressure building where two worlds, an old and a new, have been pressing against one another for a long long time. Something is about to give.  We talk of shaking, often glibly and with little thought to  the implications. But this will be a SHAKING like the world has never seen before.  A release of power when the points of tension snap.  All that can be shaken will be shaken. All.  Afterward, the landscape may be totally unrecognizable in many ways. Familiar routes and places will be gone.  Edifices, works to which years and lives have been committed, gone. Crooked paths will have been straightened.  Valleys raised up.  Mountains made low.  Grave sorrow to those who are clinging to what is passing away in an instant.  Glorious preparation to those whose eyes are fixed on a city not made by hands.

Then, when it seems the shaking has stopped, its full effect will have just begun.  The release of great power, the explosive dunamis, creates a stirring, unseen at first.  We have not seen this yet.  It is yet to come.  A stirring deep in the sea (the mass of people).  A stirring that will rise up and spread outward in all directions.  A wave.  A wave does not move water. It is power that moves through the water. So with this wave.  It will move and gather force through a mass of people, crashing over every place they touch.  Sudden.  Drenching.  Flooding.  A wall of water. A holy tidal wave.  Finishing the work begun by the shaking.  Changing the face of the world forever.