Acts of the Green Apples

"Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is stressed in Pentecostalism, a revivalist movement that began most prominently in a church in Los Angeles in April, 1906 ... the movement has curiously made its most rapid progress among Episcopalians in the last three years" (McCandlish Phillips, The New York Times).

It became fashionable for Pentecostals to have me speak in their churches. Most of them were delighted we had received the gift of the Spirit and were anxious to accept us and to overlook our idiosyncracies. Thye couldn't understand us, but they were, in the main, terribly kind about it. All of our adventures delighted them, because they were the same kind of things that had happened when there had been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now Pentecostal churches, following the way of the other churches, had become organizations rather than organisms, and those wonderful events were not occurring as frequently as they had in the beginning. Because of that I used to tell Pentecostals that it was safer going places with them than with Episcopalians. They knew how to behave, but the Episcopalians didn't know the rules.

One night after a service, half a dozen Episcopalians went to a restaurant for a light supper. After we ordered, one woman began to speak in tongues. I wanted to disappear. I thought, "I'll pretend I'm not with her." Immediately another Episcopalian interpreted the message from God. The waitress, who turned out to be a Baptist, had been standing beside the table with a tray of coffee. As the interpretation came, the tray began to shake wildly and the cups clattered dangerously against one another as the waitress burst out crying and wept aloud, "I'm not where I should be with God!" The last I heard, she is now. No those Episcopalians definitely didn't follow the rules.

Once when I was speaking in a Pentecostal church a friend of mine was seated in the back row. The friend noticed that a Pentecostal teen-ager had brought three Baptist schoolmates with her to church. At the conclusion of the service, the minister invited anyone who desired to come to the altar and pray. The Pentecostal teen-ager ran down to the altar, wept copiously, prayed loudly, got up, dried her eyes, came back and sat down. One of her friends inquired, "Why did you cry?" The teen-ager retorted, "That's what you're supposed to do -- everyone does."

In the Episcopal Church, the procedure is for one to kneel before being seated and pray. Father Ewald related questioning one teen-ager, "Carol, you look so radiant when you make your private devotion to God before the service. What do you say to God?" Carol replied, "Oh, Father, I never know what to say, so I just count to ten and sit down."

Each tribe has its own peculiar customs.

Years ago Joan Baker and I spoke in a Pentecostal church in the Northwest. The people in the church who had "tarried"** for years to received the baptism in the Spirit came to the altar. (**The term "tarrying" is taken from Luke 24:49, when the disciples were instructed to "tarry ... until ye be endued with power from on high." This led to the teaching among Pentecostals that every Christian must wait, perhaps for years, for the unknown time at which God sees fit to grant him the gift.) Joan and I prayed for them. Some of them had waited for as long as twenty years to received and were extremely exuberant over finally having the gift. They were so exuberant that one could have heard them several blocks away. About fifty of them spoke in tongues for the first time, and we couldn't keep them quiet. It was absolute bedlam. Some friends of ours were in the rear of the church and heard two Pentecostal ministers discussing us while the some fifty or so people were whooping it up at the altar. One of them shook his head and said, "Well, I don't say they don't have something, but they'll never have all they're supposed to have until they join the Assemblies of God."

A delightful incident transpired when an Episcopal priest who is filled with the Spirit was speaking in a Pentecostal church. He related how at the close of the meeting they asked him and a number of Pentecostal ministers present to lay hands on a woman who was ill and pray for God to heal her. The priest said they all began shouting so loudly he couldn't even think, let alone pray. As they left the church he said to the pastor, "You know, God isn't deaf." The pastor answered, "No, and he's not nervous either!"

One day I spoke in a Pentecostal church in Grapes of Wrath country. Afterward I prayed with a number of people in the "prayer room" who wanted the baptism in the Spirit. As I left the prayer room, a woman pointed to me and screamed, "That's the devil -- wearing lipstick. We had the devil in the pulpit today." I was too surprised to speak; and the pastor, who was also the supervisor for the entire district, looked as though he might faint. Before anyone could move, a young man dashed out of the prayer room, ran up to the woman, hugged her soundly, and blurted out, "I got it! I got it! She prayed for me and I spoke in eight languages!" That was the end of the devil and the lipstick.

Click here for the Table of Contents