028 - Chapter 28

(Illustration: Tapestry of Pentecost: Floors Castle, Kelso)

Val, a Christian colleague of mine, at the Buddle Middle School, began chatting with me about faith during our coffee breaks, and one day she gave me a book called ‘Nine O’ Clock in the Morning’.

It was one of many books which spoke about the Holy Spirit of God, moving like wildfire through the lives of Christians in every Christian denomination in the UK, and across the world. I thought at the time, that it was amazing that quite a few Roman Catholic priests and nuns were very much involved too.

This movement was known as the ‘Charismatic Movement’. The book was about an Episcopalian priest, called Dennis Bennet, who had felt ineffective in ministry, until suddenly becoming empowered and transformed by the Holy Spirit. His life and ministry had changed dramatically, so he said, but he met with a lot of opposition from people in his church, who looked upon all his views as divisive and far too extreme.

I read what he said, both puzzled and intrigued, for he claimed that God’s power, such as was being manifested in the form of the more supernatural gifts:- such as healing, prophecy, miracles, speaking in tongues and interpretation, was for the here and now, and not merely for followers of Jesus in New Testament times!

I could hardly believe what I was reading.

Hadn’t all these ‘gifts’ ceased when the disciples died? And if not, and all this was true, why had no teacher or preacher told their congregations about this?

I started to read the New Testament and Acts of the Apostles myself, with fresh eyes.

I found that Jesus’ disciples and followers, one hundred and twenty of them in all, had been told by Jesus not to go anywhere or do anything after his Resurrection, until they had been filled with power from on high! So they were waiting and praying in one place altogether. Then, on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit came upon them and only then, did they go out and minister to others.

(Acts of the Apostles 2.1-4)

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

When the disciples tumbled outside and began witnessing to people in the streets, about Jesus’ death and resurrection, three thousand people came to faith that day. I use the word ‘tumbled’, because many people thought the disiples were drunk!

Peter told the crowd, “They’re not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning!” (Hence the title of Dennis Bennet’s book.) He told them that what was happening had been foretold by the prophet Joel…that the Holy Spirit would be poured out on all flesh. 

People from all over the known world, there for the festival, actually understood what these disciples were saying, in their foreign tongues!

I went on to read what Peter had preached to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, following their supernatural experience

Acts 2.38-39.

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

As I read scripture I discovered that there were many more instances of such ‘Holy Spirit’ happenings throughout the rest of Acts; in fact, "The Holy Spirit" according to some writers say the Holy Spirit appears about ninety times in the New Testament.

I was also to learn that there had been outbreaks of such power throughout world history that lasted for a time, and came in waves., and that now it was happening again in a big way yet again.

Wasn’t this the missing piece of the jig-saw I had been searching for, all those years ago as a teenager, when I prayed in church, “If you are real God, show me!” I had begged him to demonstrate his power.

Was God answering those heartfelt prayers at long last? 

I began to thirst for such an experience, but I knew such a happening could change my life completely, so I prayed it wouldn’t affect my relationship with Bob.

Val invited me to a special service of praise and renewal in the Elvett Methodist church, in Durham, one Saturday, and once we got there, she introduced me to her friend Wendy, a vicar’s wife, a former nurse and missionary. We all sat together.

But what deeply touched me immediately, was the fact that the entire congregation had come ‘early’ for a time of praise, which had been going on twenty to thirty minutes BEFORE the service had even started! This was unheard of!

The church was full, the place was heaving! People were standing, praising God, with hands raised in the air! What on earth was going on? What was this ‘happy, clappy stuff’ all about, and what had I let myself in for?

Christians didn’t do this! I was used to predictable, orderly Methodist worship. On a Sunday morning we would have Sunday School at the front, and older folk behind. Evening congregations were mainly comprised of elderly people! But now, in this church, people of ALL ages were all joining together in praise as one! Unbelievable! Hadn’t I asked myself as a teenager, where all the young people my age, and middle aged, were, and why did they not come to church?

Well, here they all were. This was where they were all hiding!

As for content, much of what was being taught throughput the day, were points already made in the book that Val had given me to read. The talks seemed lengthy, but the difference was that I was really interested, and so the entire day went like five minutes.

But then, alarmingly, at the close of the service, the leader invited people to get out of their seats and make their way down to the front, if they wanted to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit for themselves! This was the way, they chose to conduct the prayers this time. 

Well of course I wanted what was on offer, desperately! But I hadn’t expected we’d be asked to get out of our seats and go down and get it! What I wanted was for God to come and zap me in my seat.

Val had told me beforehand that some kind of prayer ministry might happen at the end of the service, but I, for one, didn’t expect this, and I certainly wasn’t going to go out there and make a spectacle of myself, with everyone watching. Supposing someone from school saw me, for goodness sake? I had a reputation to maintain, I was a respectable schoolteacher now!

One young woman, however, sitting in the seat across the aisle from me, stood up and went out to the front! Others were going forward too, from all over the church. I so much wanted to join them, I felt myself drawn, to go too, as if pulled by a magnet, but I sat firm, thinking to myself, “No, I’ll just sit and watch that young woman and see what happens to her!”

I watched her very carefully as she knelt down by the altar rail and was prayed for, and even more so, as she made her way back to her seat. It was her face that caught my attention. All I can say is she was radiant, her face was gleaming, tears were in her eyes; she had found something special out there at the front!

I just knew, in that moment, I had to get up and go, for I knew, without a doubt, there was something missing from my life, and I was just about to get up, and head to the front, when the leader announced the final hymn!

The service was coming to an end, and I had lost my chance! The door of opportunity had closed. I felt cheated that they hadn’t waited just a little longer for me to make my mind up. But it was my indecisiveness to blame.

It was too late, and tears began to roll silently down my cheeks, during that final hymn. The service was now over and everyone else began making their way home; the musicians were packing up their equipment.

The vicar’s wife, Wendy took one look at me, and seemed to know exactly what I needed., “It’s not too late,” she whispered, “come with me!”

We went down to the front of the church together. and I found myself at the altar rail feeling rather apprehensive.

Wendy beckoned to one of the young men from the ministry team, and explained why we were there. He then came over to me, and asked what it was that I wanted. I knelt down at the altar rail and said, “I’d like you to pray with me too!”

‘What is it you want prayers for?” he asked.

My crazy answer, I remember to this day. I pointed back in the direction of that young woman’s pew and said, “I want what she’s got!” He smiled.

For three years, and more there had been a massive vacuum inside me, and so much fear about death and dying, and I just knew that day that I needed to be filled to overflowing with whatever it was that God’s Holy Spirit wanted to give me. I knew I needed God’s power in my life, and his healing.

As he and other prayer team members laid hands on me, I felt what I can only describe as a golden shower of warmth, like gentle rain filling me from the top of my head, down through my entire body and back up again. 

I knew at that moment I had received the Holy Spirit, along with a real sense of God’s presence, and oh such joy! It was like I had been given a brand-new start in life, like that of a new born baby.

It dawned upon me some weeks later that I had also received healing of that gnawing fear of ‘death’. Thoughts of my dad’s cancer had never really been far from my mind, but now I realised I’d had no night-time panics; my fear was gone.

I must admit I did try to speak in tongues myself, but that didn’t happen. I was making it up and kept repeating to myself some familiar Latin phrases: ‘Domini Patris et Filius, Sancti Spiritus or something similar, from something I’d heard or perhaps from my days of Latin at school.

But with tongues you don’t make words up, you simply surrender your speech to sounds! Such languages have been reported as actually being understood today by those who heard them, as was the case at Pentecost!

(Acts of the Apostles 2. 7-11)

'Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

Dennis Bennet the author of ‘Nine O’ Clock in the Morning’, wrote in this book (page 139) how one man he knew, had spoken his tongue during the course of a prayer meeting, and there was an interpretation in English, expressing praise to God.

Present at the meeting was a Chinese woman, the wife of a medical doctor, and exchange student at the university of Washington. She spoke up, saying:

“How can this man speak Mandarin so perfectly? Where did he learn to speak such beautiful Mandarin?”

Another woman he knew had prayed for a sad looking man in hospital, who did not speak English. He identified her tongue, as she prayed with him, as Canary Island Spanish!

This is amazing is it not?

I shared my experience of the service, and ‘going forward for prayer’, later with Bob, the minute I got home, and he was very sceptical about it all, and rather concerned, as indeed I would have been, had the circumstances been reversed.

My life continued, in its usual routine but this time there was a new and profound joy in my heart with every step I took, and in every single thing I did.

Nicky Cruz, leader of a criminal gang in New York, once described his conversion as the moment when God took out his heart, kissed it and put it back in again!

It was like that for me too. My heart was filled with love.

My whole world was now technicolour.

All that I have written in this last chapter, gives you the ‘lead up’ to what I spoke of in the very first chapter of this book, ‘God speaks’.

Chapter 29 explains what happened next.