It was a Saturday night, and I remember reading this book on spiritual awakenings. The author was talking about the largest water baptism in American history that the LA Times covered. And what caught my attention was that it was in 1990, which I would've thought it would've been back in the '60s or the '70s. It was also at Pirate's Cove, which is in our backyard, where I live.

When I read it, I just heard this internal whisper from God saying, "Mark, I want you to do this again. I want you to pray for this. I want you to organize it. And I don't want you to put your name on any of it. This is going to be a big C Church endeavor." It's a continuation of what God has already been doing. It feels like it seems to be getting stronger and there's more urgency and more desperation and more hunger.

I think this young generation has everything, yet they are realizing that you can have the whole world but without Jesus, you feel empty. It would've been about six months later, I saw a video for the great Greg Laurie, a movie about his life called “Jesus Revolution”. It was as though God had teed up perfectly the timing, the setting, and the desire to get baptized at Pirate's Cove.

So, we ended up going about six months after that movie came out, on Pentecost Sunday 2023. We landed at Pirate's Cove, where we baptized almost 4,200 people. The first little girl that got baptized was a sweet girl from our church who has special needs. She was the first baptism that day and I'll never forget just seeing the rocks full of this massive crowd. This little girl, who was probably 11 or 12 years old, was baptized, and as soon as she came out of the water, it was like everyone started flooding the lines.

The beauty of that day was just seeing the interdenominational collaboration with so many different types of churches; from some of the largest Baptist churches in our state, the largest evangelical churches, to Charismatic churches, Pentecostal churches, churches big, and churches small. We had over 300 churches host the event during their Sunday morning services. And in that atmosphere, we baptized nearly 6,000 there. At Huntington Beach, we had over 1,000 churches represented the day that we saw 6,000 people get baptized.

God is using the church to awaken America and awaken California. And I believe this is just the beginning for America. So many states have been sleeping, and God is waking up the sleeper. I think our posture in prayer should always be of expectancy, full of faith that our God can, and he will, move in our cities, in our regions, in our nations.

I believe that as the darkness is getting darker, the light is going to get brighter, and we will see God's greatest outpouring of His Spirit. The greatest revival that humanity has ever witnessed is not going to be in the beginning. It's going to be at the end. Jesus saved the best wine at the first miracle wedding for the very end. And I believe that as times get darker in society, the kingdom of God is going to shine brighter because God always reserves his best for the end.