Sid Roth - Azusa Street Revival
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. My guest is the last living link to the greatest revival to ever hit America and he says that a greater revival is about ready to come. Now let me tell you what happened at the Azusa Street Revival. He tells stories about people missing limbs and not just one leg a half an inch shorter than the other and growing out, missing legs, missing arms, and the arms just shoot right out. And he says an anointing that he wants to transfer to whosoever is hungry. Is that you?
Sid Roth: In 1906, one of the greatest revivals the world has ever known in America. It was called the Azusa Street Revival. And there was a young man and he was in trouble. He was an alcoholic. He was a drug addict. He was homeless and some women from the Azusa Street Revival felt sorry for him, led him to the Lord, set him free. And these were elderly people that actually were part of the Azusa Street Revival, and they told Tommy, your job is to tell the next generation where the greatest move of God's spirit to ever hit Planet Earth just before Jesus comes, to tell these stories. Tommy, why did they want you to tell these stories?
Tommy Welchel: Because they believed the anointing was going to set forth a revival. When I tell these stories now, Sid, things start happening. People start getting healed and people start getting ministries themselves, supernaturally, especially when I pray of prayer of impartation on them.
Sid Roth: I'm going to have Tommy do that in a little while. But Tommy, tell me about William Seymour, who started the revival.
Tommy Welchel: Seymour is the son of a slave. He wasn't that awful educated. But listen, he said when the anointing came on him he started preaching, saying words so everybody couldn't understand him, but he was so intelligent. Had an anointing him all the time and he was obedient. I don't know that a pastor could get away with this today, but he had set on a pew and put a box on his head.
Sid Roth: What kind of box?
Tommy Welchel: A wooden box?
Sid Roth: Why did he do that?
Tommy Welchel: He said God told him to. And sometimes he'd set there for 10 minutes, and he'd sit there for over an hour.
Sid Roth: While all the people were there? How would you like to be, have a wooden box over your head and you sit there praying in supernatural language for an hour while the congregation is just sitting there. Now when he'd take the box off, what would happen?
Tommy Welchel: He would always get up and then everybody would sit down and start listening. A lot of times, he'd just walk around and tell, he'd say, "Charles," he's talking to Brother Sines, "play this tune". And when Charles Sines started playing the tune, he said he wouldn't be long. And he said, "Brother Tommy, I would just sit back and watch my finger play". And the people in audience said it sounded like a thousand pianos playing. And he said he was sitting and looking at the people and said, "Now start singing in tongues". When he sang in the Spirit that meant tongues. When he started singing in tongues, that Shekinah Glory that lingered would start rising and it would fill the whole building. And then a flame would shoot up out of the roof, a big flame, and the fire department called many times.
Sid Roth: It was real.
Tommy Welchel: Yeah.
Sid Roth: All right. It would shoot out of the roof. But you told me another flame, a bolt of lightning almost would come from Heaven. Explain that.
Tommy Welchel: Well it would shoot up about 50 feet, they said. And then about 50 feet from that a ball of fire would appear and flames would start shooting down and go through the flames that were coming up.
Sid Roth: What were these flames? What was the point of this?
Tommy Welchel: Well I know I had a Jewish rabbi explain to me that there are flaming angels that knew each other in the Bible. This is known. He said those angels, that the flames that were shooting down were angels bringing miracles to Azusa Street and the ones going up were going back to get more miracles. And that's, during that time, flames, when the great miracles would happen.
Sid Roth: They had wonderful creative miracles. It's going to be hard for you to believe. Tell me about the man that had an artificial arm.
Tommy Welchel: He had had his, even his shoulder blade ripped out at a job. Back then they didn't have the benefits they have now. He had an artificial arm hanging on it, but it was starting to really give him trouble. And Seymour said, "Well, you'll need to take the artificial arm off". And he looked up and he says, "You all want to have some fun like we did about a year ago when the man's leg grew out"? He says, "We're going to". And he laid his hands on his shoulder. Brother Garcia looked down and said, "Brother Tommy, I can look down into that hole in his shoulder and see the bone". He said he started praying for it, he said, all of a sudden the bone started growing out in about four inches. The flesh growing around it. And he said, it took only seconds. For him, it was slow motion. And he watched it as it just grew it. And he said as he watched it, the fingernails appeared all of a sudden.
Sid Roth: You know, if that would happen for me, I'd put a wooden box on your head, on my head. Would you do it? I know you would. We'll be right back. I can't wait for him to pray for this impartation for you.
Sid Roth: This is so amazing. Three of the generals that had been at the Azusa Street Revival, they were part of the revival that was spreading throughout the United States that just didn't even know each other was prophesying this, all prophesied the same thing about a great revival that was coming. What was the prophecy?
Tommy Welchel: That in about a hundred years, there would be a revival like Azusa Street, only greater, that will return and greater miracles, and it wouldn't be in one place with one person. It would be all over the world, Sid. Record people, record church members, even children, older people, even people in nursing homes would start having healing ministries there, and it would last until the Second Coming of the Lord.
Sid Roth: How far off is that revival?
Tommy Welchel: I believe it's starting now. I've seen it.
Sid Roth: I do, too.
Tommy Welchel: I've seen some miracles. Shawnee, Oklahoma, you should have seen some miracles I saw.
Sid Roth: Tell me one.
Tommy Welchel: Okay, one. A young man, 17 years old, it looked like a mass had been carved in his back. He came up. This young minister, when he heard my stories, people started getting healed. The young man didn't, he didn't touch the young man. But the young man, he fell out the spirit. He didn't go forward. He fell sideways. When he got up, his back was perfectly straight.
Sid Roth: But you know, that is a miracle. But what I want you to hear is that this almost hard to believe. Tell me about the person whose face supernaturally became normal, no plastic surgery, supernaturally.
Tommy Welchel: You mean like the elephant man.
Sid Roth: Yes.
Tommy Welchel: This man, his chin dropped down to about here. How he ate, I don't know. And even those people at Azusa told me, they didn't know. But they started praying for him and then you could hear bones popping and his chin started coming back up. And in just about a few minutes, he was normal again. It was really kind of attractive.
Sid Roth: Well speaking of attractive, even a movie star that had a horrible accident.
Tommy Welchel: Yes.
Sid Roth: Robert Montgomery. Tell he what happened to him as a child? Most people don't know this.
Tommy Welchel: He had, had fallen and his head had hit on concrete and it had busted his head. They said you could see the skull and you can even see some brain matter coming out. Well Mama didn't run him to the hospital. She ran down to Azusa Street and took him in there, and they started praying for the kid. And things starting coming back in, and it went together. When he grew up, he was one of Hollywood's golden boys, Robert Montgomery.
Sid Roth: And listen to this. Many of these saints had like specialties, just like in the natural. A medical doctor might be a specialist for a heart, a specialist for skin. Well those that have gifts of the Spirit have different specialties.
Tommy Welchel: That's true.
Sid Roth: Tell me about the woman that had a specialty for teeth.
Tommy Welchel: That's Lucille. Now Lucille was only four-foot-10. But she would tell me, she says, "Tommy, I even play games with it". She says she would get people with no teeth. She wouldn't pray for all the teeth to come back in. She prayed for one at a time. She wanted to put her finger down on the tooth, push down, pray for God to grow it back and have the tooth with her finger on it. And she'd go around the mouth, bottom and top, take some time, but she had fun doing it.
Sid Roth: There were young people that would be just playing in the Glory. Explain that.
Tommy Welchel: That was Ralph Riggs and C.W. Ward. Not C.M. Ward, C.W.
Sid Roth: Okay.
Tommy Welchel: That, when that Glory would get thick, Ralph told me it's about you could see more than 10 foot in front of you. He said him and Ralph would play hide and go seek until their parents, their mothers found out, caught them and then put a stop to it.
Sid Roth: Tell me about Goldie who had a specialty for growths.
Tommy Welchel: Goldie, that's the one that led me to the Lord in Venice and bought me to Pisgah. She even would take a little dust pan and put it in a towel and throw it away. People had growths growing out all over, she just loved praying for them. She'd stand there and watch them just falling off, and some, you'd hear the little clicks as they hit the ground. And she didn't want them laying around a rotting, and getting bad. She'd clean them up and put them in the towel, and then throw them in the trash.
Sid Roth: How about the woman who had her ear off?
Tommy Welchel: She had caught her husband with another woman, and the other woman and the wife got into a fight, and the other woman bit the wife's ear off. She had come to Azusa Street. Sister Carly saw her come in with a bloody bandage over her ear. She said, you can see she was in tremendous pain. So she went up to her to minister to her, and she told her what had happened. She said she pulled it back. She said, "Tommy, it looked like a raw piece of meat. There was nothing there. A raw piece of meat". She started praying for her. And the woman said, "Oh, I feel tingling. The pain's all gone. The pain's gone". She says, she looked back and right before her eyes there was created miracle. She said, an ear, a brand new ear.
Sid Roth: Now for those that don't know, Pisgah was the place, like a retirement place where all the elderly saints were, where Tommy heard these stories and received this amazing impartation from all of these people that had these miracle ministries. I'm going to ask him to pray for you when we come back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here with Tommy Welchel. And you've seen people on television where they've been prayed for, and they've been overcome by the presence of God. What would happen if this happened miles away because the power of God was so strong. It can't say the evangelists pushed them down. Tommy, what would happen at Azusa Street? How far away was the train station?
Tommy Welchel: Six blocks.
Sid Roth: Six blocks. What would happen at the train station from the Glory that was at Azusa Street?
Tommy Welchel: People would come into Azusa Street. They would ride in the train and they'd get off and start walking on the platform, and falling out, speaking in tongues. Some of the innocent workers were close to them, it would happen to them, too. And David Garcia came by and saw it. He thought a disaster had happened. And he'd go up and exam them, and he's realizing they're just speaking in tongues.
Sid Roth: Let those disasters happen. Speaking of David Garcia, tell me about the time he prayed for the man with the hole in his stomach.
Tommy Welchel: That was something else. He said he had a big handkerchief hanging down over his stomach and it didn't smell too good. When he came up, he asked the man, "What is your problem"? He said, "Well," he told him, he said, he picked up and looked under and he says, his entrails just hung out, hung down on his side. And he says, so he put the flap back down and started praying. And he could feel his hand going in. And all of a sudden, he says, there was nobody. So he just grabbed it and put it back up. There wasn't even a hole.
Sid Roth: It just closed up.
Tommy Welchel: It closed up. His entrails went back into his stomach and it closed up.
Sid Roth: And you know what one of the things that impressed me, Tommy? A lot of people that God were using were young people, 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds.
Tommy Welchel: Eleven year-old.
Sid Roth: Eleven. Tell me about someone 11 years old.
Tommy Welchel: Ralph Riggs. Ralph said one of his biggest miracles that he, an old drunk had come in off the street, stunk of alcohol, very giant of a man, about six-foot-four, maybe 250 pounds. Ralph didn't like it. But then all of a sudden he got close and he realized the man was blind, stone blind. So he had more compassion for him. He says, "What did you come here for"? He says, "Well there are people telling me people are just, people come in here and they get healed". He said, "I want my eyes healed". He said, "Okay, let's pray". He prayed for the man. His eyes got healed. Even the stench of alcohol left. And later on through the Midwest, he had great revivals with the Assemblies of God, even my hometown. He had established his church there.
Sid Roth: And you know what's so wonderful? Not only did Tommy hear these miracles stories, but these elderly people retained their anointing.
Tommy Welchel: Yes.
Sid Roth: So you actually saw miracles actually before your very eyes. Tell me one.
Tommy Welchel: There was a couple that was brought from England. The child was a greyish color. He had some kind of blood disease. He wasn't supposed to be alive. They brought him there and of course, they came up and said, "We want to see Sister Dundee". I said, "Oh yeah, I'll go get her". And I got all excited". So I ran up to Sister Dundee, literally dragging her over there. I said, "They got this sick child". I said, "Give them the child". She took the child and then she just prayed for him. She stood there and finally she just handed it back and said, "Okay, the child is healed". Gave it back to them. She turned and walked on back and went into the church. And I sat in there upset. I said, "I want to see the baby". The woman brought the baby and she about dropped it. It looked normal. She prayed with it and it, we had a good time.
Sid Roth: You know what I think is so wonderful? Tommy, sometimes when he prays for people, he then prays for the impartation and others pray. Tell me about a man in California, the 13-year-old girl.
Tommy Welchel: A little girl. I really love this story because it was the revival that broke loose after I left. Her pastor, youth pastor, had hurt his leg in a football game, and he had it in a cast. Well when I was speaking, I had to come down and set in a certain area. And I said, "Now you people up there, you pray". And I said, "I mean you young people as well as these older ones. You pray and if God tells you go preach and go pray for somebody, obey, go down and pray for them". Well this little girl got up and she looked about 10, but she was 13. She walked down there, laid hands on this man and all of a sudden he started jerking and yelled, "Get the cast off". They busted his cast off and he started dancing around the church. It took me a while to get that little girl over to me. Everybody was going crazy. And I said, "Sweetheart, how old are you"? She said, "Thirteen". I said, "Did you know you could do this anywhere, any time"? She looked puzzle. She said, "Anywhere, any time"? I said, "Yes". Sid, she went to her school and she was they called "the towel girl". You see these little girls. Okay, quarterback got injured bad. They had him up on the gurney. She walked up to him and said, "I believe in Divine healing. I believe if I pray for you, you will be supernaturally healed. Would you like for me to pray for you"? She said he grunted out a "yes". She laid hands and prayed for him. He got healed. He got up and the next play, it was him out there playing.
Sid Roth: Not only one time, two times, another player got healed. Pray for that impartation. Look into the camera and pray for the impartation.
Tommy Welchel: I'm now praying for God to move in a supernatural way. Those saints laid their hands on me and imparted supernatural anointings on me, and now I'm going to do the same thing for you. I'm going to pray right now and ask God to come supernaturally upon you to receive supernatural gifts on you working this same anointing that was at Azusa Street, in Jesus' name right now. Now listen. There is somebody out there that is laying on a couch and you're very ill. Doctors say you're not going to live. You're a man. You're going to live. Start saying, "I will live and not die". Start getting up and you will be healed. Do it by faith now, in Jesus' name.
Sid Roth: It's time for that hundred-year prophecy to be on Planet Earth. Why not now? Why not you?