Acts of the Green Apples

"The 'Gift of Tongues,' a somewhat mysterious new phenomenon in recognized denominations, is quietly spreading through the churches of the nation"

(Dan Thrapp, Religion Editor, Los Angeles Times).
One morning I opened the door to an irate Baptist minister who had descended upon me like an avenging angel to "straighten me out." When he departed an hour later, he was speaking in tongues. My last news of his church was that practically the entire congregation had been baptized with the Holy Spirit.

About this time we discovered the Presbyterians. They had been there all along but were so quiet we hadn't noticed them. Hundreds of them from Hollywood Presbyterian Church had received the gift years before, but had not shared it much with outsiders. One Presbyterian told of attending a prayer meeting led by Anne White (Agnes Sanford's sister-in-law). He had not been filled with the Spirit and didn't think he was interested. Anne and some others were praying for someone and Anne beckoned to the man, who was leaning in the doorway, to come and help them pray. Since he didn't have the gift himself, he didn't move but he continued to stand in the doorway and watch. A parakeet in a cage beside him had been trained to say, "Praise the Lord!" and chose that moment to do so. It shocked the man. He thought, "Everyone is praising God but me -- even the parakeet." He began to praise God and very shortly was speaking in a heavenly language.

A Presbyterian woman, Miriam Williamson, was baptized in the Spirit when I spoke at a Congregational church. Later she told me that her husband said she looked different and asked what had happened. She replied that she had had a spiritual experience and became very busy so he wouldn't ask anything else. But he did. He said, "There's something more," and kept pressing until she finally said, "Go ahead and laugh: I speak in tongues."

"Laugh? That's wonderful. Won't you pray for me so I can have the gift?"

She was certain she didn't have the ministry of laying on of hands, but how can one refuse to pray when requested? She placed her hands on his head and prayed for the heavenly Father to give Bill the Holy Spirit for Jesus' sake. He did and Bill worshipped God in a language unknown to himself.

This began a lot of activity. Bill wasn't the man to keep quiet if God was doing something good. He began to share his blessing until some Presbyterian ministers were not considering it much of a blessing. One of them approached Leslie Miller, an Evangelical Free Church minister, and said, "Les, Bill Williamson's gone off the deep end over tongues. You'll have to do something about it." Mr Miller didn't know what he could do. It was suggested that it be arranged for him to share a room with Bill at an upcoming conference. If he couldn't get him out of this during the conference, he was to ask for an invitation to that "crazy Episcopalian prayer group" and show Bill how unscriptural it was.

So it was that the Millers came to our Monday night group. We didn't know it, but they stopped down the street and prayed for protection before they arrived. They had heard we hypnotized people.

Nothing very dramatic came to pass, and finally Mr Miller requested that I "give my testimony." Peculiarly enough, I replied that my testimony wouldn't mean anything to him because we were from different backgrounds and needed different things. But I added, "When you enter into this dimension, God will give you what you need. Whatever you have, when you have spoken in tongues you'll have more."

The next morning Mrs Miller waited until her husband left for the office and then knelt and prayed, "God, I don't want what you have for anyone else, but I want everything you have for me." God healed her completely: mentally, physically, and spiritually, and she received another language in which to love Him.

She telephoned her husband and told him that she was healed and had spoken in tongues. "I'll be home right away!" he shot back. He decided that the best way to convince her that she wasn't really healed was to take her for a drive, since speed upset her badly. He had a new Chrysler "300," so after picking up his wife he got on the freeway and opened it up. She was relaxed as a baby, and he knew then that it was God.

So the Rev Leslie Miller telephoned and requested an appointment. My schedule was full, but he insisted that he had to see me before he went to a conference he was addressing. We managed to make an appointment for early the following morning, since, as I recall, he was leaving that same day for the conference. So it was that the Trinity staff started a new day as usual -- with something unusual.

His first words that I can remember were, "I've never asked anyone in my life to pray for me and if I was going to, it wouldn't be a woman. But will you please pray that I get what she got?" Paul Castle and I prayed and he got what she got. Two weeks later he came back and said he must not have received what everyone else had -- that he didn't feel anything. I asked him if he prayed in the language regularly and he replied that he did because I had told him to do so, but he felt nothing. I inquired if he felt closer to Jesus when he prayed. He stated that he did not -- that he had no emotion whatsoever. It wasn't surprising that he didn't have any physical feelings, but it did seem strange that he didn't feel closer to Christ when he prayed in the God-given language. Yet I knew he had received the Spirit; he was a Christian and I had heard him speak in tongues. I interrogated him further, "Have you noticed any change in your ministry since you spoke in tongues?"

"Oh, yes. In the last two weeks I've brought more people to Christ than in the previous ten years."

"Go on home," I told him, "that's what the gift is for; you can feel something in Heaven."

Les brought people form his church to receive the baptism, and he and his wife came on Monday nights to the prayer group. One night their son accompanied them. He was a pleasant young man with an attractive sincerity about him. At the coffee break he commented that he had never lived as victorious a Christian life as he desired, had noticed the changes and the glow in the lives of his parents, and coveted the Spirit in His fullness. We went into another room with some other people who wanted to be prayed for, and God poured Himself out. I left them praying in new languages.

Later when he came out of the room, he pulled a chair in front of me, sat down and declared, "I injured my knee playing football. Friday I go into the hospital for a major operation. If you'll pray for me now I will be healed and won't have to have the operation." That was a shocker. I had seen a lot of healings but had never understood healing and my faith certainly was not that strong. I muttered something inane such as, "Remember, God also works through doctors." He was calmly insistent. What could I do? I figured I needed all the help I could get so I asked some others to come and pray with us. The next Monday he returned to inform us that he had been completely healed, did not need the operation, and his knee was just as sound as the one that had not been injured.

A Baptist minister in Visalia, California, had an interesting story. He telephoned long distance to ask for an appointment. At the American Baptist Convention several ministers claimed they had received a new impetus in their ministry when they had spoken in tongues. They were even passing around Trinity magazines. When the minister returned home and read the magazine he was convinced that he needed this gift. He telephoned a Pentecostal church and told them he wished to receive. They said they had meetings on Wednesdays and Sundays. He pointed out that he also had meetings on Wednesdays and Sundays. They oblingingly offered to have some people come to the church on Tuesday to pray with him for the baptism in the Spirit. He stated that this meeting was one of the most traumatic experiences he ever suffered. More or less, it went like this:

They assembled around the altar with him in their midst and began to call loudly upon God. They told the minister he had to put his hands straight up in the air or he never would receive. He was rather embarrassed to do this, as it was foreign to his way of praying, but he obeyed. Next they informed him that he couldn't receive unless he praised God loudly. Being a reticent man, this was even more difficult; but he wanted the Holy Spirit badly so he began to pray, "Praise God, Glory to God," and other phrases they suggested. Whenever he thought about it afterward, the entire scene caused him to blush with embarrassment. I questioned, "Did you speak in tongues?" He said, "No. They never said to do that!"

He received the Spirit easily and his wife followed suit some weeks later. Some time after, she told me how much it meant to her, but said she was baptized in the Spirit as a young woman when she wsa converted. I pointed out that she received the Spirit at conversion, but that this was a subsequent experience with the same Spirit which comes with speaking in tongues. She was adamant that she had gotten the whole ball of wax at conversion. I suggested she ask God about it. Later she wrote stating that she had prayed about it and was reminded that when she was converted, her love for God was so intense that she would pray some nights until dawn. She remembered that nearly every time she had been praying at such great length, she would begin to make sounds that were not intelligible to her, and owuld decide she was overtired and go to bed! She was right -- she had obviously received the gift of the Spirit at conversion but hadn't known what it was or what to do with it.

Frequently we come across such cases, people who love God and at some time in their lives have spoken in tongues, either deliberately or unconsciously. But unless they continued praying regularly in the language in their private devotions, they missed the full impact that prayer in the Spirit could carry into their lives and ministries. So the key to the power of the early Church appears to be not so much in having an experience but in what one does with that experience after once receiving it.

A case in point is that of Rev Anthony de Mello, Rector of the Jesuit seminary in Bombay, India. Father de Mello was holding a series of retreats in Hong Kong when two nuns (each from a different order) shared with him their meaningful encounter with the Holy Spirit. He questioned them at some length, and they left him a Trinity magazine. He read an article, found it sound, and did some checking on the sisters. He discovered they were both highly regarded in their respective communities and that one of them, since her experience with the Holy Spirit, had become an outstanding unifying force in the community. He was impressed enough to accompany them to a prayer meeting which was held in our apartment. He and my husband Richard discussed the matter, and Father de Mello wished to have the experience immediately.

After he spoke in tongues he realized that he had done so years before, but having an analytical mind he had decided that what had occurred had not been rational and was of no import, and it did not happen again. Now that he recognized the phenomenon for what it was and understood the implications, he began praying in the Spirit regularly and is enthusiastic about the results.

Even more frequently it happens in reverse. Someone is certain he has received the baptism in the Spirit (if that is the terminology one wishes to use). Then he speaks in tongues and realizes he hadn't had it before. On example of this was the Rev Romule Buchanan in Indiana.

One evening I was praying for some people after I had spoken to a large congregation about the ministry of the Spirit. Mr Buchanan came to me and apologized. He said he had come to the service to see that awful woman who had ruined so many good Baptist pastors by persuading them to speak in tongues. As I spoke to people, he was amazed to recognize the presence of God. How could God be interested in speaking in tongues, a doctrine Mr Buchanan had preached against for twenty years? He asked me to accept his apologies for his previous attitude. He now realized that the experience comes from God. He hastily added that he had received the baptism in the Spirit but did not speak in tongues. I smiled, murmured, "Praise God," and went back to praying with people.

The next day Mr Buchanan telephoned me at my hotel for an appointment. His purpose appeared to be to convince me that he was baptized in the Spirit and had never spoken in tongues. One of his statements to prove he was "Spirit-filled" was that he had actually prayed and seen people delivered from evil spirits in Haiti and had also prayed for sick people and they were healed.

I wasn't trying to prove any doctrine. I agreed that he appeared to be a man filled with the Spirit. However, I pointed out that his arguments were not conclusive, as the disciples had cast out devils and healed the sick before Pentecost. He agreed that was true. I asked him if he would like to have a language from the Holy Spirit in which to worship God. He affirmed that he would. Here is his description of what happened.

We quietly sat in our chairs and prayed. The Holy Spirit began to move deeply within me, and I gave expression to His moving by speaking forth words I had not learned, for my own language was inadequate to express what I was experiencing. I did not understand the expressions of worship and praise which came from my lips but I knew I was truly adoring God with full release.

Afterward he said, "That was the Holy Spirit."

"Yes."

"But I had the baptism in the Spirit before I ever spoke in tongues."

"Will you pray in the language daily?"

"Yes, I will. But this is just more of the same. I was filled with the Spirit many years ago."

"Fine."

Some months later he wrote, "Thank God you came to Indiana and I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. My whole ministry has been transformed."

About this time I was contacted by a psychologist from UCLA, Dr Stanley Plog, who wished to do a study on glossolalia. This new wave of the Spirit that was rapidly spreading across the globe seemed to contradict everything that had previously been concluded by psychiatrists and psychologists on speaking in tongues. The people were not a small group of persecuted, illiterate, underprivileged people, as previous studies had appeared to show. Rather the movement sppealed to large numbers of people from every Christian denomination; from every economic level (their chart didn't extend high enough to include the annual incomes of some of the participants); from every occupational group -- a true cross section of society. Many of them had problems; who doesn't? However, the studies seemed to show that the people involved were better able to cope with their problems than a normal cross section of society.

Probably in gratitude for our willingness to cooperate with the studies, Dr Plog invited me to luncheon at the UCLA faculty dining room. The food was good and the atmosphere charming. We took our food to the terrace. I had brought a minister along whom I thought Dr Plog might be interested in talking with, and he and Stand returned to the dining room for our coffee. Just then a blue jay flew down, snatched the butter off Dr Plog's plate and flew away. The men returned. Stan looked perplexedly at his plate and murmured, "I though I had taken butter."

"You did," I said brightly, "a blue jay took it."

He just looked at me. Have you ever experienced a psychologist just looking at you -- impassive, unemotional -- just looking?

"Honestly," I protested, "a blue jay really did come down and take your butter."

Dr Plog just looked. I fancied he was thinking, "Hmmm -- speaking in tongues -- blue jays stealing butter -- hmmmmm --"

The minister and Dr Plog returned to the dining room for more butter and sugar for the coffee. "Lord," I prayed in frustration, "do something. I'm blowing the whole thing."

From out of nowhere, it seemed, the blue jay swooped down, stole the professor's cheese and flew away. I looked up into the astonished face of Dr Plog. "Thank God," I thought. Dr Plog said, "Amazing. I've been eating here for years, and nothing like that has ever happened before."

Several years later Dr Plog visited me to see if I still felt the same way about glossolalia. While he was there, I told him a dream I had had that my husband, daughter, and I were going to the Orient as missionaries. I asked him if he could explain the dream; after all, he was the expert. He said he didn't know, since it was obviously not a wish fulfillment dream, and that he would be very interested in the outcome. I said flippantly, "If I get to the Orient I'll send you a postcard." And I did. More on that later.

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