By Mark Ellis –
For an evangelist holding outdoor crusades, this is the best kind of problem one can have, rapidly outgrowing your tent.
“It’s been very explosive,” Mario Murillo told God Reports. “The tent that we have is our third tent in four years. We’ve had to buy a tent virtually every 18 months because each one was twice the size of the previous one.”
Their first tent was 8000 square feet, then they more than doubled that to 20,000 square feet. Their newest tent is 40,000 square feet.
Three years ago, Mario Murillo Ministries began to focus their crusades on the Central Valley portion of California, along Highway 99, between Bakersfield and Red Bluff. “There were several cities there that made it to the top 10 most miserable places in America to live,” he recounts.
Murillo found hunger for God amid the places high on the Misery Index, with many won to Christ along that stretch of highway.
His newest tent will be set up in Charlotte, North Carolina, March 23 – 26.
Murillo found Jesus at a tiny church in San Francisco in his high school years, as hippies descended on the Haight Ashbury area of the city, and the Jesus Movement was beginning north of the city in a communal house ministering to hippies.
“Within 14 days, I had won 14 of my classmates to Jesus. I had to win one a day. That was a goal I set myself, and hilariously, I never heard the word witnessing until after 14 of my friends were Christian,” he recalls.
In 1970, he started a student ministry called Resurrection City at UC Berkeley. “These were the top one percent intellectually in the nation, and I’m from a community college, and yet the Holy Spirit told me to go, and we ended up with a student ministry that had 2000 university students in it, not only from Berkeley, but from San Francisco State, San Jose State, Stanford, and Hayward.
“It was an amazing outpouring of God,” he says, lasting 10 years.
In 1982, he witnessed a supernatural outpouring of God in San Jose, California, where a planned four-day meeting he led went on for 22 weeks, with an attendance between 2000 and 4000 every night.
“That is when the crusade ministry was born, and I left Berkeley and began to focus on auditoriums.”
He thought he had retired a few years ago, but was surprised by a nudge from the Lord. “The Holy Spirit said, I want you to buy a tent. And if you do, you will see miracles. That’s how this second wave of my life came about.”
While Murillo had studied apologetics in the days of his campus ministry, he also saw the limits of that emphasis. “After I was filled with the Spirit, it became clear to me that God was saying, ‘It’s not by might, it’s not by power, but by my Spirit,” — that debate had its limits in being a transformative force.”
Amazing things began to happen. “We began under the guidance of the Lord to pray for the sick. We made it clear that if healings were to occur, doctors had to be consulted. That was the catalyst to our explosive growth at Berkeley, God’s healing power.
“That’s been a feature ever since. But in the tent, it went to a whole new level. We are very grateful, broken, humble before God at what He has done.”
Murillo believes the healing gift has been abused. “Satan understands what miracles would do when they are properly addressed, properly preached, Christ centered and done with integrity. They become a real, powerful tool.
“Let’s follow Paul’s instructions on gifts of power, the prophetic healing, casting out devils. When we outlaw the gifts of the Spirit, only outlaws have the gifts of the Spirit, so those evangelists that corrupted it are guilty. But likewise, the theologians are guilty and have been afraid of investigating the Word of God to see where miracles lie.
“Paul fully preached with signs and wonders the gospel of Christ, so I believe there is a place for it in the center of our evangelism at this time, because of the occult activity, demonic activity, we need authority.
Murillo believes pastors who want to see the Spirit flow in their services need to give messages centered on the Scripture. “We need to get back in the Bible,” Murillo says. I really believe the secret to the flow of the miracles is the preaching of the Bible.
“Peter was focused on the gospel. He said, ‘Give us boldness to preach your word by using miracles as a catalyst to get the word out.’ So the key is the Gospel itself. The more Bible that we preach, the more of Jesus that we quote, the more authority we have for the Holy Spirit to work.
“What I tell people is, you have to prepare a sermon that isn’t designed to move the crowd. It isn’t birthed out of your passion to be eloquent. It is something the Holy Spirit can use. And you pray and you say, ‘God, what would I say? What would you have me say to this crowd, I give up my private opinion. I give up my confidence in myself.’
“Whenever truth is told to a hurting, broken, diseased audience, in the name of Jesus, it’s inevitable that some powerful things are going to happen.
Some note a difference between miracles in the US and other parts of the world. “Our tent proves that the miracles can happen in America every bit as powerfully as they do in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It’s absolutely essential that we understand it isn’t that it’s because it’s in America, it’s because of the attitude and that can be broken through prayer and repentance, and we can see a flow of the Spirit of God.”
Murillo recently completed a film that documents the miracles taking place in his evangelistic crusades, I Am Living Proof.
“This is a wonderful story. We could do a movie about how it was made. It doesn’t feel like a documentary. It feels like you’re in a movie. Shane Gilbert, an award-winning independent filmmaker, heard about two of the healings that occurred in our tent in Colorado Springs.
Gilbert interviewed several of the people healed at Murillo’s crusades and was so moved by their remarkable stories, she had tears in her eyes. “She said I’ve got to do a documentary on this.”
The documentary was shown in 700 theaters during a limited engagement in March and can now be viewed on YouTube.
To learn more about Mario Murillo Ministries, go here
