The Birth of the Charismatic Movement

The Latter Rain movement of the late 1940s and 1950s significantly impacted Pentecostalism in the United States and around the world. In the height of its popularity, it also impacted mainstream Christianity before church leaders realized the doctrinal and financial threat that it posed to churches. As more and more people began attending the revivals, passing large sums of money to the famed evangelists, pastors of local churches began to struggle. Their humble ministries did not have the emotion and stage presence of the big revivals.

The Assemblies of God was one of the first organizations to recognize the threat. To protect their churches, leaders in the assemblies began to censure certain stage acts and would ultimately issue sanctions to protect local assemblies. This proved to be successful. In 1953, Gordon Lindsay began working to reconcile differences between the warring factions, leading to an ultimatum being issued to William Branham. As a result, Branham joined the other ministers who attempted to thrill audiences with bigger “miracles”, more “supernatural”, and theatrical presentations of fictional details.

In the end, Gordon Lindsay and many denominations of faith would abandon some of these these stage acts and become more closely aligned with the requirements of mainstream Christianity to avoid a complete loss of financial support. Lindsay’s transition created a separating line between the more radical evangelists and mainstream, causing many of the radicals to become more desperate in their attempts to salvage failing ministries. This marked the end for the Healing Revivals, but also marked the beginning of the Charismatic Movement.

You can learn this and more on william-branham.org