How One Revivalist’s Radical Testimony is Transforming California
Can one person’s testimony make a dramatic impact on the masses?
In an interview with Charisma Media, Ross Johnston shared his powerful testimony of how he’s seeing the masses saved for the glory of God. However, it isn’t just the current movement that Johnston is a part of that makes his story so impactful and profound. It’s his story before the story.
“Three years ago, [it] started as a group of just young bucks, young kids, just desiring God to move in a time that was the most crisis and tension that we’ve ever experienced in our own life,” Johnston says. “We’re showing up at beaches, we’re showing up at streets, we’re showing up wherever we could set a sound system up, that’s where we’re at.”
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The evangelistic initiative has seen massive amounts of people come to know Christ and be set free from the things that previously kept them in bondage.
“What started with a couple hundred people per gathering in a few years here has turned into thousands of people showing up, believing for God to yes, touch California, yes touch America, but ultimately to touch the nations of the earth,” Johnston says.
Seeking an outpouring of revival from the Holy Spirit is far different than anything Johnston ever would have thought or expected as a life goal. His upbringing couldn’t have been further from the Lord than most people in America.
“I was born by artificial insemination. I grew up in a lesbian household with two moms,” Johnston says. “I [had] never been to church, never heard a worship song, never heard a sermon, never heard of a Charisma News, right? Like I had zero grid for God.”
Johnston says he recently asked his mother why she decided to have him. He says after recognizing that her time to have children was running out while being in a lesbian relationship, she decided this was the option she had to take in order to become a mother. Despite the circumstances surrounding Johnston’s conception and upbringing, God’s Holy Spirit still drew him in to have a real relationship with Him.
“I was 15 years old, and my friend and her grandma would always go to church. And for some reason, I still don’t know the reason to this day, they decided to invite me one weekend,” Johnston says. “I just felt something internally begin to happen. Like, I felt hope and destiny, and it felt like there was something greater and beyond myself.”
It became Johnston’s heart cry to be more than just a good person on the surface. He yearned to have a relationship with God, responding to the message of salvation. A few years later, Johnston walked out of intimacy with God because of the blessings he hadn’t yet received. These years proved to be troublesome and empty. However, after this season of pain, Johnston came back to Christ with a burning hunger and passion to see the world changed for the glory of God. In fact, the movement that Johnston is part of was even confirmed through a prophetic dream.
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“There was actually a dream that came to us from a friend who’s a prophet,” Johnston says. “And in this dream, he said he saw us standing on the beach, standing on a beach in California, and he said Jesus appeared to him in the dream…and He [Jesus] takes him down to the water, and he says, ‘Do you hear the sound?'”
The dream then talked about victory coming that would be along the Pacific Coast, which is what led Johnston and the group to go to Huntington Beach where the revival has been rich and real.
“He’s doing something significant. He’s writing a story, and His story and our story are converging in this hour, and there’s nothing else that will satisfy the longings of my souls than knowing Him and making Him known to the world around me.”
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
