People
were very sad this day as an old friend was leaving.
Steve Hill was going to seek God about the mission
field. He will be 
missed and you could
sense and feel something was ending. God had moved
through this Evangelist for five years as souls and
churches were changed all across the land and all
over the world.
PENSACOLA, FL — It is five
years later and still there is an overflow at the
Great Revival, more than a thousand people were
located in the new building next door and a small
line was at the front door of the church.
Five years ago Steve Hill, an
unknown missionary-evangelist, had been invited to
the Brownsville Church to preach on Father’s
Day. He was asked to sit on the side pew because of
that fact. If the crowd would have seen a visiting
speaker it might have sent a signal for a long
service. The pastor even said at the time he
didn’t want to be delayed. His mother had just
passed and he didn’t want to be there at all.
That was five years ago and the length of services
are no longer a problem, now God is welcome to come
and stay as long as He wants. God very often chooses
to move into places where people are least expecting
Him to be.
Hill’s sermon that day was,
"I Will Remember the Wonders of the Lord."
On June 18, 2000, five years later, another large
crowd and another strange feeling of Spiritual warmth
was in the Holy Place. Something was happening today
in the spirit and you knew it was going to happen.
Steve Hill was going to say good-bye to the faithful.
Bill Lutz came to the pulpit and
called for the elders to come forward to pray for the
sick. At different points around the church the
elders laid hands on the sick. Richard Crisco said
the roses on the altar at the front of the church had
been placed by Pine Forest United Methodist
Church. The Methodist church had been a constant
friend that had always been there through the five
years of revival. At 10:25 AM John Kilpatrick, Steve
Hill, John Davis and Lindell Cooley came out to begin
service. Lindell announced that he would be playing
some of Steve Hill’s favorite worship songs.
Through the initial worship the
power was once again in the Holy place. John
Kilpatrick approached the pulpit the first time and
then he came up a second time at 11:11 AM. He made it
clear that the revival was not about a man, it was
not about any personality. He said, "We want to
honor God, to recognize God for what He did here five
years ago. What could we give Him -- a plaque -- what
could we give to honor Him. Happy Father’s Day,
Lord." From that moment on the pastor encouraged
people to worship Him by openly praising Him. For the
next 20 minutes the huge crowd gave honor and glory
to the Lord by praising Him. It got louder and louder
until eight minutes into the spontaneous praise the
chant of JESUS, JESUS, JESUS began and the feet
started stamping loud from the upper balcony. You
could feel the power of God becoming more intense as
the drums began to play. Bill Arcea came to the
keyboard and began to play Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Praise to Your Name, and the lady playing the violin
added to the full praise. Twenty minutes after the
spontaneous worship started the pastor returned to
the pulpit to honor the evangelist.
It was a very difficult thing for
Pastor Kilpatrick to say good-bye to Steve Hill but
the Brownsville pastor followed in saying, "I
believe we are going to a brand new level." All
three of the Hill children were asked to come forward
along with Jeri Hill, Steve’s wife.
It was going to be Hill’s day
today and the emotional day would be filled with
memories and recalls of many of the events and
situations that came through the last four years of
ministry at the great church.
At 12:17 AM Hill came to the pulpit
to begin the last sermon of revival time at the
church. Hill, on June 18, 1995, was supposed to just
give a sermon and dismiss the people to go to their
traditional Father’s Day meal around the
Pensacola area. It was designed to not be a long
meeting. Hill was positioned on the front pew instead
of the staged area next to the pastor. It was done
that way so as not to delay the private plans of the
people to go to the restaurants early on
Father’s Day With all this planning you would
think nothing could happen but Hill came to the
pulpit like a match next to a gasoline can. He would
be the igniter of a five year run of God’s glory
in Pensacola.
"When I was 16 years old my
father died in his sleep, I never got a chance to say
good-bye to him. When I started to preach on Father’s
Day I only had a one page sermon called, "I
will remember the wonders of the Lord." On
Friday night when I preached I had a 24-page sermon
prepared."
Hill said as the revival broke
forth speakers were installed in the restrooms around
the church. Many people used to hide in restrooms
around Brownsville for not wanting to be in service
and many came to the Lord through the speakers. As a
youth before salvation, Hill spoke of the times he
would go to the missions across the country and have
to sit through a sermon just to receive a hot meal.
The evangelist recalled the times when he was thrown
into jail and the rustle of jail keys would be heard
as doors were opened and closed. Many times when he
was in jail a man would enter the cell full of men
and chose young boys to have sex with and threaten
those who were his witness with death if anyone would
tell of circumstance or situation to the jail guards.
"I remembered the day Jesus
save me. On October 28, 1975, a Lutheran minister
fulfilled an obligation to my mother and came to our
Huntsville home in Alabama to talk with me. After he
led me to the Lord that day, God began to move
quickly in my life. It was at a Full Gospel Business
Man’s Fellowship and when I stood up to receive
the Baptism in the Holy Ghost I immediately received
it as I began to speak in tongues. I’ve always
been favored as many times I was put around great men
of God such as David Wilkerson and Leonard
Ravenhill."
Hill remembered an Assembly of God
pastor that noticed him preaching in a park and
leading people to Christ in an intense way one day.
The pastor asked him with whom was he affiliated and
when Hill said no one, the pastor asked him if he
would like to be an Assembly of God pastor. "You
need to be an Assembly of God minister," were
the words of the pastor. It was from these humble
beginnings that his association with the Assemblies
of God and mission work began.
He was always led to mission work
and even now he is moving toward this situation
again. At his beginning he understood one thing about
mission work and that was you have to raise money so
you can stay in your work. Hill very often reminds
those who are heading toward the mission field that
they are there alone and once they leave the places
of those who said they would pray and support them,
they were on their own, out of site out of mind. He
said this was the reality of being a missionary. One
of the first times he met Pastor John Kilpatrick he
had devised a plan to raise money. He had built a
pyramid with different type blocks on it and each
brick had a dollar value. At the Holiday Inn in
Marietta, Georgia, he approached the Brownsville
pastor for a donation as he showed him the pyramid.
There were all kinds of bricks but the Brownsville
pastor saw the brick at the top for $5,000 and said,
"I’ll take one of those." It was a
relationship that was made in heaven. From that day
until this John Kilpatrick would be a life long
friend of the missionary-evangelist and that man
would become the greatest blessing ever to happen in
his life.
People were very sad this day as an
old friend was leaving. Steve Hill was going to seek
God’s will about the mission field. He will be
missed -- you could sense and feel that something was
ending. God had moved through this Evangelist for
five years as souls and churches were changed across
the land and all over the world.
