Evangelist Mario Murillo has become known through the years for powerful gospel crusades. In fact, he’s the subject of the November cover story for Charisma magazine, “Signs of Awakening.” Over the past few months, he has watched his crusades become part of what he has famously called “hurricanes of revival”—and the Holy Spirit has now revealed the defeat of Satan and a hunger for the Word of God in our nation as never before.
Speaking with me on a recent Strang Report podcast after his recent crusade in Batavia, New York, Murillo says, “The devil is being defeated in America in a shocking and unexpected way. The dire news of the takeover, the leftists, the wokeness, the censorship—God is not sitting back. There is a genuine hunger for the Word of God in our nation, and Batavia is just the symptom of it. It’s just the first salvo in what will be a full-scale move of God in America of people returning to morality.”
But why Batavia? Murillo says, “It’s kind of like saying, ‘Why Bethlehem?'” God first revealed His supernatural work there through a planned brunch for leaders. Murillo expected 150 people to show up, but the local leaders kept calling him with reports of more and more reservations.
“We broke 1,000, and we thought, Well, it’s 1000 reservations,” Murillo says. He told the leadership to plan for about 700 people to show up, but they prepared for 800—and God did more.
“One thousand showed up—not reserved, showed up,” Murillo says. “And there were 100 outside whom we couldn’t let in because there was no room in the building. That’s when we knew that Batavia and Buffalo and Rochester were a special moment—something was going on.”
Murillo has identified what he calls the “constant drumbeat” that sparked this move of God. He says people are “sick to death of the intrusion of government. They’re sick to death of what’s being taught their children in school. We’re not talking about Christians; we’re talking about non-Christians.
“Then something sovereign, Pentecostal, charismatic, whatever you want to call it, began to radiate,” Murillo says. “Our team moved out here; we put 20 permanent workers, boots on the ground, to work with people.”
At that point his ministry put out the word, asking for additional volunteers for the New York crusade. Six hundred showed up. “Suddenly, they’re in the churches; they’re in the neighborhoods; they’re everywhere,” he says. “And there’s an openness that nobody can explain. Pastors who have been pouring their hearts out for 30 years suddenly saw an openness that they couldn’t explain.
And Satan reared his evil head as well. “First day of the tent crusade, pouring rain—death knell for any evangelist doing a tent crusade,” Murillo says. “I’m driving in from Buffalo, and my heart is sinking. It’s Sunday. It’s cold, it’s pouring rain. And I said, ‘Nobody’s coming.’ “
When Murillo arrived at the field where the crusade tent was set up, he got what he calls “the shock of my life.”
“The cars are backed up over a mile in every direction from the tent,” he recalls “It is only 4:30 in the afternoon; it is a full two hours before the tent crusade is scheduled to begin. They finally get me through the traffic into the parking lot. The tent is full, we put up 1900 seats inside the tent. They were wiped out, gone. Now people are standing outside—some of them with umbrellas, some of them without—but they are standing in pouring rain. There’s nothing we can do.”
But God showed Murillo what to do. Instead of starting the crusade at 6:30, he began at 5:15. And the Spirit moved in power.
“I had to stop preaching so that the lost sinners could get saved,” Murillo says. “Some of them are in their seats. There they are, rocking back and forth, groaning in the Spirit, under conviction.”
God worked in miracles, healings and countless salvations as previously reported on Charisma News. Murillo even compares the move of God he is watching to what happened in California and beyond during the height of the Jesus People Movement of the 1970s.
“When that struck, America was in the same mess,” he says. “The difference was, there was a spirit in the in the youth that was trying to take over the country. Now, we have the opposite: The government is trying to take over the country. It’s a top-down oppression, and they’re trying to pour in their values—teach you what you ought to say and do.”
Murillo says the desperation today is different than the desperation of that Jesus People era. However, he says, “The result is going to be the same. It’s pushing people into seeking God.
“They know that this other stuff doesn’t work; they’re sick of it,” Murillo says. “I can’t tell you how fed up the general population is with everything that’s going on: everything they’re being told, all the lies, all of the debate. The average family—the average mom, the average person—right now is in a place where I would advise every single pastor who’s listening to me that the harvest is at your door, that people are hungrier than I’ve ever seen.”
For much more from Mario Murillo on the revival now breaking out across America and the part you can play in this great move of God, listen to this entire episode of the Strang Report at this link, and subscribe to the Strang Report on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform for more stories that will inspire you in the power of the Spirit.
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Stephen Strang 
