Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Dream of of Bonnie Brae Seeds



"Dream of being given a container of Brae Seeds on 4-15-12"

In the dream, it's summertime and I am outside ministering to a large group of people. I then walk around them and go into a House. In the House, I am talking with a man and woman who have a problem with their son and wife who have overstayed their welcome there with no signs of leaving. The couple had marital problems. I begin to talking with them about the healing power of love. I then talk to the parents again and he gives me a plastic container labeled Brae. The Brae inside look like small granules much like brown rice, but also looks like thin slivers of broken shards of brownish glass. He tells me that they now have invented a cooker that will cook the Brae. I told the owners that the young couple are to leave their house because they're too comfortable there. Then at 9:28 pm, I get a phone call that it is time to go home now. So, I go outside and begin to walk towards a parking lot. Several young men start to come towards me, I realize I am going to be ambushed for an attack. I scream for help and a couple of people from among a group further away from me, hear my cry and they turn and run towards my direction to help me. Many from that group saw the attack and they turn away and do not help me. I yelled at them that when they need help that they wont have any help come to them. The ones that do come to help me engage some of the men who were trying to harm me. I turn towards the one who is grabbing me and I got mad and I begin to bind the devil in him. I grab his bottom lip and pull it hard. He fights back and I don't let go. I command the murderous spirits to leave him very boldly. A strange look comes over him, and I got bolder and I bind the devil more and he begins to manifest. I command the devils to come out of him and the man says something about, "just wait till the towers come". Then he starts to throw up all of the demons in a great big flood. As he is throwing up, I am saying back to him, "then those towers will also fall." Then he becomes calm and a smile breaks out on his face. -Then I wake up.

I immediately knew:

The time of 9:28 pm was important. I didn't know why, but I was going to look up info on it. I also knew that because it was a phone call to come home, that it was symbolic of "my calling" to now go to the root of things. I later learned (Seymour died of a heart attack on September 28, 1922) So, God was going to restart what had died, and the church must pick up that baton and finish what God wants to be completed now in our generation. It's now our turn to ignite entire cities for God!

The container of Brae was the seeds of the former Bonnie Brae House revival now needing to be cooked, or re-birthed. The cooker had now been invented and developed that would now be able to cook the Brae, meaning that we were now at the maturity level to begin to birth forth and ignite the Bonnie Brae seeds outwardly now.

The couple who lived in the original house were the owners of the Bonnie Brae former times of revival, Richard and Ruth Asberry at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street. The couple with marital problems were the children of the owners and they were living off of them and were being lazy there and not moving out. They had marital problems and were in discord, division and strife in their relationship, and this depicts the condition of the church now.... (seen as the children of the former move.)

After I was given the Brae seeds and left, immediately the devil attacked me through the group of men outside. The enemy will attack anyone with the calling and mandate to restore the former moves and to birth forth the church into the new things of God for their areas. The towers the attacker spoke of were the higher ruling powers, (likened unto towers), that would come after them to attack us next. But I said, "even those towers would also fall."

So, I got up and researched on the Azusa Street Revival from Wikipedia to find out more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival#cite_note-father-22

The Azusa Street Revival was a historic Pentecostal revival meeting that took place in Los Angeles, California and is the origin of the Pentecostal movement. It was led by William J. Seymour, an African American preacher. It began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915.

The revival was characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by miracles, dramatic worship services, speaking in tongues, and inter-racial mingling. The participants were criticized by the secular media and Christian theologians for behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time. Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.

In 1905, William J. Seymour, the one-eyed 34 year old son of former slaves, was a student of well-known Pentecostal preacher Charles Parham and an interim pastor for a small holiness church in Houston, Texas. Neely Terry, an African American woman who attended a small holiness church pastored by Julia Hutchins in Los Angeles, made a trip to visit family in Houston late in 1905. While in Houston, she visited Seymour's church, where he preached the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, and though he had not experienced this personally, Terry was impressed with his character and message. Once home in California, Terry suggested that Seymour be invited to speak at the local church. Seymour received and accepted the invitation in February 1906, and he received financial help and a blessing from Parham for his planned one-month visit. 

Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, and within two days was preaching at Julia Hutchins' church at the corner of Ninth Street and Santa Fe Avenue. During his first sermon, he preached that speaking in tongues was the first biblical evidence of the inevitable baptism in the Holy Spirit. On the following Sunday, March 4, he returned to the church and found that Hutchins had padlocked the door. Elders of the church rejected Seymour's teaching, primarily because he had not yet experienced the blessing about which he was preaching. Condemnation of his message also came from the Holiness Church Association of Southern California with which the church had affiliation. However, not all members of Hutchins' church rejected Seymour's preaching. He was invited to stay in the home of congregation member Edward S. Lee, and he began to hold Bible studies and prayer meetings there.

Seymour and his small group of new followers soon relocated to the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street. White families from local holiness churches began to attend as well. The group would get together regularly and pray to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. On April 9, 1906, after five weeks of Seymour's preaching and prayer, and three days into an intended 10-day fast, Edward S. Lee spoke in tongues for the first time. At the next meeting, Seymour shared Lee's testimony and preached a sermon on Acts 2:4 and soon six others began to speak in tongues as well, including Jennie Moore, who would later become Seymour's wife. A few days later, on April 12, Seymour spoke in tongues for the first time after praying all night long. 

The Asberry home on 214 North Bonnie Brae Street. News of the events at North Bonnie Brae St. quickly circulated among the African American, Latino and White residents of the city, and for several nights, various speakers would preach to the crowds of curious and interested onlookers from the front porch of the Asberry home. Members of the audience included people from a broad spectrum of income levels and religious backgrounds. Hutchins eventually spoke in tongues as her whole congregation began to attend the meetings. Soon the crowds became very large and were full of people speaking in tongues, shouting, singing and moaning. Finally, the front porch collapsed, forcing the group to begin looking for a new meeting place.

A resident of the neighborhood described the happenings at 214 North Bonnie Brae with the following words: 

They shouted three days and three nights. It was Easter season. The people came from everywhere. By the next morning there was no way of getting near the house. As people came in they would fall under God's power; and the whole city was stirred. They shouted until the foundation of the house gave way, but no one was hurt.

The group from Bonnie Brae Street eventually discovered an available building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then a black ghetto part of town. The rent was $8.00 per month. A newspaper referred to the downtown Los Angeles building as a "tumble down shack". Since the church had moved out, the building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable with rooms for rent upstairs. It was a small, rectangular, flat-roofed building, approximately 60 feet long and 40 feet wide, totaling 4,800 square feet, sided with weathered whitewashed clapboards. The only sign that it had once been a house of God was a single gothic-style window over the main entrance. 

Discarded lumber and plaster littered the large, barn-like room on the ground floor. Nonetheless, it was secured and cleaned in preparation for services. They held their first meeting on April 14, 1906. Church services were held on the first floor where the benches were placed in a rectangular pattern. Some of the benches were simply planks put on top of empty nail kegs. There was no elevated platform, as the ceiling was only eight feet high.[18] Initially there was no pulpit. Frank Bartleman, an early participant in the revival, recalled that "Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there.... In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors..." 

The second floor at the now-named Apostolic Faith Mission housed an office and rooms for several residents including Seymour and his new wife, Jennie. It also had a large prayer room to handle the overflow from the altar services below. The prayer room was furnished with chairs and benches made from California Redwood planks, laid end to end on backless chairs. The Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street, now considered to be the birthplace of Pentecostalism.
By mid-May 1906, anywhere from 300 to 1,500 people would attempt to fit into the building. Since horses had very recently been the residents of the building, flies constantly bothered the attendees. People from a diversity of backgrounds came together to worship: men, women, children, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, illiterate, and educated. People of all ages flocked to Los Angeles with both skepticism and a desire to participate. The intermingling of races and the group's encouragement of women in leadership was remarkable, as 1906 was the height of the "Jim Crow" era of racial segregation, and fourteen years prior to women receiving suffrage in the United States.

Seymour and the other revivalists at the Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street held to five core beliefs:
  1. Salvation by Faith.
  2. Sanctification (or Holiness) of the believer.
  3. Tongues as evidence of Baptism with the Holy Spirit.
  4. Faith healing as part of God's redemption.
  5. The "very soon" return of Christ.
By October 1906, Charles Parham was invited to speak for a series of meetings at Azusa Street, but was quickly un-invited. Several reasons can be given for Azusa Street's disassociation from him. Firstly, Parham had personality conflicts with Seymour and wanted to be the chief authority figure of the movement that was taking place, but the presiding leaders of the Apostolic Faith Mission were slow to make any changes to their methods or leadership.

Christians from many traditions were critical, saying the movement was hyper-emotional, misused Scripture and lost focus on Christ by overemphasizing the Holy Spirit. Within a short time ministers were warning their congregations to stay away from the Azusa Street Mission. Some called the police and tried to get the building shut down. 

By 1913, the revival at Azusa Street had lost momentum, and by 1915 most of the media attention and crowds had left. Seymour remained there with his wife, Jennie, for the rest of their lives as pastors of the small African American congregation, though he often made short trips to help establish other smaller revivals later in life. After Seymour died of a heart attack on September 28, 1922, Jennie led the church until 1931, when the congregation lost the building. The building was torn down and replaced by what became the Japanese-American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles after it was lost to foreclosure in 1938.

-Susan O'Marra  04-15-12