‘Scrupe said: “I don't get it…God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands…And if we reduced that mindset to its most direct form, i.e., “I’m going to Brownsville Assembly to get God’s anointing from Billy Burke”, does it begin to sound just a wee bit insane (if not downright un-Biblical)?” 

‘Scrupe, I agree that Christians can too easily become obsessed with "anointed" people, places, churches and movements. I also agree that "God does not dwell in temples made with hands” (Acts 7:48-49). Nevertheless… 

I am not willing to go so far as to say that since God does not live in material temples, that all meetings in buildings will never experience his power or presence. In 1906, in Los Angeles, California, there was the Azusa Street Revival. Thousands visited this little run-down building on Azusa St. to see what God was doing.  I don't consider their interest or even curiosity wrong or automatically unnecessary. Tens of thousands have visited Toronto for the same reason. I was blessed to have gone twice myself and both times had a wonderful experience in input. 

After coming home, however, I felt it was my responsibility to take the blessing that I had received and share it freely with others (cf. Genesis 12:2). I knew that I should not horde the blessings by telling others that the only place that they could experience God was in Eastern Canada; neither did I dare to twist true visitation into emotional manipulation. 

Your post raises a legitimate question: Why does God seem to visit certain places at certain times and use certain individuals? I don’t know. God is sovereign and he does whatever he wants to do whenever and wherever and through whomever he wants.  “God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases” (Psalm 115:3). 

Some people in Jesus’ day did not believe that any good thing could come out of the small town of Nazareth (John 1:46), but that did not stop God from having Jesus raised there and begin his ministry in the town (Luke 4:16; Matthew 21:11). 

Naaman, the leprous commander of the Syrian army, became furious when Elisha’s messenger told him that he would be healed only if he dipped seven times in the Jordan river (2 Kings 5:10-11). The Syrian commander replied with pride and indignance: “Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” (I Kings 5:12). He walked away angry and unhealed (cf. Luke 4:24-27). 

Did Jesus not appear uniquely at one point in history? Did he not travel around specific areas like Galilee calling disciples and healing the sick? Was there not a special day of Pentecost in a particular upper room where 120 disciples were filled with the Spirit of God (Acts 2)? Yes, these were all time- and place-specific events.

Accordingly, if I had been living in those days, I would have made every effort to get to the mount or the plain or the desert or the city or the lakeside or Solomon’s porch in the Temple to be wherever Jesus was. I would not have cared where Jesus was teaching or doing the works of God; I would have wanted to have experienced or at least to have observed for myself his multiplying of the loaves, his raising of the dead, his anointed teaching, etc. I would have rented a donkey, if necessary, to get to the upper room before Pentecost so that I could have been a part of that spiritual outpouring. By attempting to get to the upper room with the other disciples before Pentecost, I would not necessarily be saying that I felt that God dwelt exclusively in that upper room. I would simply be saying that I would like to experience the divine visitation that Jesus promised was soon to come (Luke 24:49). 

Such efforts, in my view, do not automatically indicate carnality, “unbiblicalness,” or a lack of faith for God to do the same mighty deeds in one's own home or place. They can simply indicate a sincere spiritual hunger to personally experience a sovereign move of the Spirit wherever it is occurring.    

Jesus told his generation that many of them missed their time of divine visitation because they rejected him when he walked among them (Luke 19:44). I think that Christians can also miss out on spiritual blessings – throughout church history – if they hold too strict of a definition of who, what, where, when, why and how God moves or “should” move. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus come to mind: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).” 

Theologically speaking, God brought revival in New England through Jonathan Edwards who was a Calvinist. He also brought great revival in England through John Wesley, who was an Armenian. God chose to use two men even though they held opposite theologies to bring revival and spiritual awakening to people. When the famous evangelist George Whitfield preached to thousands seated in open fields, it was no more or less spiritual or biblical a place or event than when John Wesley, founder of Methodism, sat in a chair or a pew in a society meeting on Aldersgate Street in 1738 and exclaimed, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation…”   

God was in both places because the true message of Jesus Christ was being preached – not because one was outside and the other was in a material building. We know that God does not restrict himself anymore to living in “temples made with hands,” but history, experience as well as the Bible show us clearly that God certainly chooses often to visit them – for the sake of those “temples made without hands” that are hungering after him on the chairs or pews inside (Luke 24:53).  

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Suggested reading: Accounts of a Campus Revival: Wheaton College 1995, ed., T. Beougher and L. Dorsett; I Saw the Smithton Outpouring by Ron McGatlin; In the Latter Days by Vincent Synan; The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States by Vincent Synan; The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent; www.azusastreet.org