Over the years, Florida has been a key to international revival, and prophets Chuck Pierce and Dutch Sheets are saying it will happen again on a greater scale. I find this interesting because I live in Florida, so I discussed Florida’s revivals with my longtime friend Stephen Strader. He grew up helping his father—Pastor Karl Strader of Carpenter’s Home Church—steward revivals in Lakeland, Florida. One of those revivals even spread into Argentina and impacted countless people for Christ.
Strader tells me that God isn’t done moving. On my “Strang Report” podcast, he says Pierce and Sheets both recently prophesied that God is going to stir up another revival in Florida that will spread throughout the globe. (A few days ago, I wrote about how Strader often walks in a miraculous healing anointing when he prays for people with spinal issues. Read it here!)
“They believe—and I believe—that the entire state of Florida is going to be the key to another outpouring that this time is going to blanket the United States, and then it’s going to flow out to the nations,” Strader says. “In the spirit realm, I feel there’s a hurricane coming of a ginormous move of God. And I believe that it’s going to be a combination of all the previous moves—healing movement, worship movement, river movement, prophetic movement, apostolic movement—I believe it’s going to merge into a huge river with fire on top. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
Strader is excited about this prophesied move of God because he has seen firsthand how powerfully God can move through revival. In the podcast, she shared with me the details of the revival in Lakeland that spread to Argentina.
That revival began in 1993 when Rodney Howard-Browne came to minister at Carpenter’s Home Church (now called Ignited Church under Stephen Strader’s leadership). By January of 1994, the church had experienced 16 weeks of revival, which wasn’t something churches did often back in that time.
Strader says before the revival struck, his church was desperate. Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart had both fallen morally, and Carpenter’s Home Church felt the aftereffects of it. The congregation decreased from 5,000 to 3,000 in a span of only two years.
“Then in the 1990s, the church split and we were down to maybe 1,900 people, and we were desperate,” Strader says. “That’s when the whole prayer movement started. We started praying and fasting every Monday night in 1993.”
That same year, Strader’s father saw Howard-Browne on TBN and decided he wanted the evangelist to speak at his church.
“Six weeks before Howard-Browne came to our church, my dad said, ‘Hey, go over and check him out,’ because none of us had been in his meetings or anything,” Strader says. “I took a group of intercessors over there, and we all got hit by the power of God. We saw children being hit by the power of God.”
From the very first day Howard-Browne came into Carpenter’s Home Church, the anointing of God fell. The revival was scheduled to last one week, but as God kept moving, the church kept meeting.
“By January 1994, we had gone 16 weeks of revival,” he says. “No one was doing that in the mid-1990s. Nobody.”
But the revival didn’t stop with Lakeland. God had much bigger plans in mind. Strader says the Holy Spirit came upon Argentinian pastor Claudio Freidzon when Howard-Browne prayed over him.
“Claudio didn’t speak English,” Strader says. “So nobody interpreted for him who Rodney was or what he was saying. And Rodney prayed for him. So then Claudio goes down to Argentina and the revival blows up there in the Assemblies of God. [The Assemblies of God] didn’t know that the Argentinian revival had come out of Lakeland.”
Soon Strader started traveling with Howard-Browne. He remembers when Howard-Browne and Freidzon officially met, and he describes the greeting as spiritually powerful.
“When they walked into the room—I was standing there about 10 feet away—both of them fell under the power before anybody could catch them or anything,” he says. “By that time, Claudio was speaking a little bit of English, and Rodney brought him up to the pulpit to share the story.”
Strader was amazed at the power of God to use a relatively unknown city like Lakeland to bring revival to a country as far away as Argentina. We certainly can’t limit God when He wants to move in power!
And for that reason, Strader has faith that God can move again in Florida in a bigger way than ever, just as Pierce and Sheets are prophesying. For the sake of our country, I pray these prophecies come to pass!
For those of you who don’t know me, you may be surprised that Strader and I grew up in Lakeland. His father was my pastor until I went to college at age 18. But we know a lot of the same people and I have been well aware of everything he said. We reminisce a little bit on both podcasts which I hope you enjoy.
Click here or scroll up to hear Strader tell more exciting stories of mass revivals. And if you’re praying for another huge awakening in our nation, share this article with a friend and on your social media.
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