The One-Eyed Preacher Who Saw the Future

In April 1906, a one-eyed son of former slaves named William Seymour stood in a crumbling former stable on Azusa Street in Los Angeles and watched something the world said was impossible. Black and white worshippers knelt side by side. Mexican immigrants lifted their hands next to Chinese laborers. wealthy matrons wept beside domestic workers. In an America where Jim Crow laws dictated who could sit where, this broken-down building at 312 Azusa Street became, for a shining moment, a glimpse of heaven on earth.

The Los Angeles Times mocked it. Respectable churches condemned it. But for three years, people poured in from every continent, drawn by reports that something was happening there that defied every social boundary the world had erected.

Seymour himself insisted this was the point. "The color line has been washed away by the blood," he said. Not theological theory — observable fact, playing out nightly under sagging rafters.

What Seymour saw in that humble mission, John saw in breathtaking fullness: a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing together before the throne, their voices joined in one thundering declaration — "Salvation belongs to our God."

Azusa Street faded. The color lines crept back. But the vision holds. What Seymour glimpsed through one eye, we will one day see face to face — every tear wiped clean, every wall forever fallen, every tongue singing as one before the Lamb.