When the Holy Spirit outpouring of the Latter Rain comes, will it sweep like a tidal wave throughout the church?

When the Holy Spirit outpouring of the Latter Rain comes, will it sweep like a tidal wave throughout the church? Let history speak and tell us something.

An example is the birth of Jesus. The coming of Jesus of Nazareth did not create a "tidal wave" for the scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem. The great Messiah, the "Desire of all nations," anticipated throughout the world, came in that humble birth of a Baby in a cowshed.

A handful of "wise men from the East" responded to the call of the Holy Spirit; in Jerusalem here was Anna, a very old woman, who came to see Him (Luke 2:36), and there was old Simeon who was ecstatic with joy at His birth (vss. 25ff.); but beyond them, no one gets a mention in the Bible.

Apparently the lesson is clear: when the Latter Rain comes, no one will get a morsel of bread except the hungry ones who are famished for it, and no one will get a drink of water except the desperately thirsty ones. The Latter Rain may be falling in copious showers of grace all around us and we slip through the grand experience untouched, only to embrace a counterfeit cleverly done up by the "father of lies." And then we would collide with the "mark of the beast" test--unprepared.

Some fearing and trembling is appropriate now.

"The high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" is wide awake and is responding to prayers that are arising here and there throughout the world. He "dwells in the high and holy place" but "also [only] with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones" (Isa. 57:15). He pays special attention to the prayers of him who "trembles at My word" (66:2).

All around the world He is doing that today. Things are happening, beneath the surface.