“The greatest thing that the church of Jesus Christ has ever been given lies straight ahead. It is so hard to help men and women to realize and understand the thing that God is trying to give His people in the end times. […]”
Reverend Tommy Hicks, a US Pentecostal preacher, is credited with reviving the Christian faith in Argentina during the 1950s.
Pentecostalism is a Christian movement that believes in the direct and personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The word Pentecost is derived from the Greek word pentēkostē, which means fiftieth. According to the Holy Bible, on the fiftieth day after Lord Jesus Christ’s resurrection, or 10 days after His ascension, the Holy Spirit came upon His apostles.
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
Pentecost is now a Christian holiday that is celebrated on the seventh Sunday after Easter.
To Reverend Hicks, bringing Christianity to Argentina was not a choice, but a Divine calling. The first vision of going to South America came to him in 1952. He was shown that a large number of souls there were ripe for “harvest” or ready to hear the gospel of God.
“For two snows will not pass over the Earth until thou shalt go to this land, for thou shalt not go by boat nor by land, but as a bird, flying through the air shalt thou go.”
As prophesied, two years later, Reverend Hicks boarded a plane to fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to fill a post that hadn’t been filled by another preacher. On the plane, the name “Perón” appeared in his mind repeatedly. He asked the airline stewardess and was informed that the President of Argentina at that time was His Excellency President Juan Domingo Perón. He knew that they were destined to meet.
Upon his arrival in Buenos Aires, Reverend Hicks immediately set out to organize a service at a 25,000-seat stadium. However, to do so, he needed to get permission from the President. Wasting no time, he promptly went to the presidential office, Casa Rosada, to seek an audience. However, he was denied an audience by a ministerial official. At that time, the minister’s secretary walked into the room with a limp. Through conversation, Reverend Hicks learned that he suffered great pain in his leg and offered to pray for the secretary in the name of Jesus for his healing – and it worked right away.
Subsequently, Reverend Hicks was granted an audience with the President. On this occasion, his powerful prayer healed the severe skin disease the President was suffering from at the time. As a result, he was permitted to use a large stadium with 45,000 seats, access to state radio and press, and the freedom to preach anywhere in the country.
On April 14, 1954, Reverend Tommy Hicks conducted his first service at the Atlantic Stadium with thousands of attendees. Soon, the service was expanded to another stadium with 110,000 seats. In several weeks, his message reached millions of people and jump-started the propagation of the Christian faith in Argentina. His story demonstrates the power of faith and the determination to follow one’s Divine calling.
Another valuable legacy left behind by Reverend Tommy Hicks was his Vision of the Body of Christ and the End-Time Ministries, which he noted down carefully in detail.
“My message begins July 25, about 2:30 in the morning, at Winnipeg, Canada. I had hardly fallen asleep when the vision and the revelation that God gave me came before me. The vision came three times, exactly in detail, the morning of July 25, 1961. I was so stirred and so moved by the revelation that this has changed my complete outlook upon the body of Christ, and upon the end-time ministries.
The greatest thing that the church of Jesus Christ has ever been given lies straight ahead. It is so hard to help men and women to realize and understand the thing that God is trying to give His people in the end times. […]
God is going to take the do-nothings, the nobodies, the unheard-of, the no-accounts. He is going to take every man and every woman and He is going to give to them this outpouring of the Spirit of God.”
He then went on to describe his amazing vision.
“As the vision appeared to me after I was asleep, I suddenly found myself in a great high distance. Where I was, I do not know. But I was looking down upon the Earth. Suddenly, the whole Earth came into my view. Every nation, every kindred, every tongue came before my sight from the east and the west, the north and the south. I recognized every country and many cities that I had been in, and I was almost in fear and trembling as I beheld the great sight before me: and at that moment when the world came into view, it began to lightning and thunder.
As the lightning flashed over the face of the Earth, my eyes went downward, and I was facing the north. Suddenly, I beheld what looked like a great giant, and as I stared and looked at it, I was almost bewildered by the sight. It was so gigantic and so great. His feet seemed to reach to the north pole and his head to the south. Its arms were stretched from sea to sea. I could not even begin to understand whether this be a mountain or this be a giant, but as I watched, I suddenly beheld a great giant. I could see his head was struggling for life. He wanted to live, but his body was covered with debris from head to foot, and at times this great giant would move his body and act as though it would even raise up at times.”
“All of a sudden, this great giant lifted his hand towards heaven, and then it lifted its other hand, and when it did, these creatures by the thousands seemed to flee away from this giant and go into the darkness of the night.
Slowly, this great giant began to rise, and as he did, his head and hands went into the clouds. As he rose to his feet, he seemed to have cleansed himself from the debris and filth that was upon him, and he began to raise his hands into the heavens as though praising the Lord, and as he raised his hands, they went even un- to the clouds. […]
And from those clouds suddenly there came great drops of liquid light raining down upon this mighty giant, and slowly, slowly, this giant began to melt, began to sink itself in the very Earth itself, and as he melted, his whole form seemed to have melted upon the face of the Earth, and this great rain began to come down. Liquid drops of light began to flood the very Earth itself and as I watched this giant that seemed to melt, suddenly it became millions of people over the face of the Earth. As I beheld the sight before me, people stood up all over the world! They were lifting their hands and they were praising the Lord.”
What Reverend Hicks witnessed seems to be the spiritual transformation of the Earth at the End Times represented by the giant. The spirit of the Earth was on the verge of dying because of the corruption and erosion caused by the “dark creatures” on his body.
The diminishing state of established religious institutions is a reflection of the dying spirit of many people in our modern times. Decreased attendance, frequent misconduct, wrongdoing, and even crimes of the clergy members have been reported. Many people worry that this generation could see the last of the church.
“I think that people are frustrated and so am I... There were people trying to alert high church officials, and were often just ignored... It's all a big lie... This week, Catholic Bishops are meeting in Baltimore to discuss the priest sex abuse crisis in the American church…
The Archbiship of Canterbury resigns from his role. This comes following a report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England...”
ETC…
However, Reverend Hicks saw that the giant fought to live. He cleansed himself of the filth, and reached out to God. He was then rained upon by God’s Blessing and was transformed into a collective of new people spread out all over the world, with renewed faith.
He observed: […] “These people that He [Lord Jesus Christ] had anointed, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, in Africa, England, Russia, China, America, all over the world, the anointing of God was upon these people as they went forward in the name of the Lord. I saw these men and women as they went forth. They were ditch diggers, they were washerwomen, they were rich men, they were poor men. I saw people who were bound with paralysis and sickness and blindness and deafness. As the Lord stretched forth to give them this anointing, they became well, they became healed, and they went forth!
And this is the miracle of it – this is the glorious miracle of it – those people would stretch forth their hands exactly as the Lord did, and it seemed as if there was this same liquid fire in their hands. As they stretched forth their hands they said, ‘According to my word, be thou made whole.’
As these people continued in this mighty end-time ministry, I did not fully realize what it was, and I looked to the Lord and said, ‘What is the meaning of this?’ And He said, ‘This is that which I will do in the last days. I will restore all that the cankerworm, the palmerworm, the caterpillar – I will restore all that they have destroyed. This, my people, in the end times will go forth. As a mighty army shall they sweep over the face of the Earth.’”
Who are the God’s people in Reverend Tommy Hicks’ vision? We’ll continue to explore his Vision of the Body of Christ and the End-Time Ministries in the next few episodes.
