How I Was Baptized in the Holy Ghost – Part 2
It is sad to say that some of us as Christians do not have any quickening of the Spirit of God. What do I mean by that? Let me tell you. When I was a sinner I had the blood of some very very wretched fellows in me. We had a spirit to fight. Fighting was like a daily bread. When I got into a fight I could feel something run from my leg right up into my head and back to the other leg. It was a quickening, and madness would take me. I would be totally uncontrolled. I would rush with joy into battle and the more limbs I broke, the more people I knocked to pieces, the better I felt. My brothers and I would rejoice in beating a crowd of people. When I came to Jesus and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, I could feel the energy run through me. I knew exactly what God was saying. I realized that the same avenues the devil used to use, God had cleansed and used them for Himself. Sometimes people talk about me shouting too much. I never used to shout when I would fight. I used to just hit people. But when Jesus came into me, I bawled like a bull.
One night I was preaching upon a hill and people living five miles away were hearing every word I said. Loudspeaker was not invented in those days. We did not know anything about them, but we had volume. We used to have a saying that when God made a man a preacher, He gave him a voice. I got to know that when the Spirit of God moved through me and shouted, devils were hit.
After I got baptized in the Holy Ghost on the 7th, the 14th came. By that time I forgot about the vision, I forgot everything. I didn’t know what really happened, I didn’t know it was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I only knew that power came into me that made me shout. But I decided to keep it as a secret to myself. My understanding at that time was based on the teachings of the great D. L. Moody. He received tongues and spoke in them, but they decided that it was not for the congregation as a whole, but for the ministry only. So you received tongues in order that you might minister, and this is what I believed.
On the 14th I was sitting down and a brother, a pentecostal minister, came to me and asked me, “Could you take me up to a church at Chalkie Hill up in the mountains? I have a preaching engagement there, but I don’t have any transportation.” At that time I had a little Ford pickup truck. I agreed and so we all jumped into my Ford – my preacher friend, two other preachers and I. Four of us all together went up to this church. I didn’t go to preach, I just took these big preachers there and of course, my secret was still mine, nobody knew. The church at Chalkie Hill was a holy quietness church. Do you know what a holy quietness church is? It is a holiness church, but they don’t believe in any noise. If you say, “Amen,” they put you out. I was so innocent! I had good intentions. I sat down quietly on the long bench, but suddenly I jumped out of my seat and shouted, “Hallelujah!!!” Uncontrollably. I jumped not because I was African, but because Jesus got into me. I was so ashamed of myself! An officer of the government behaving unseemly in the church! This was a holy quietness church I reminded myself. They don’t do these sorts of things. I got control of myself and was going to keep quiet from now on. So I sat down on one end of the bench and locked my arms around it. I didn’t want this to happen again. However, the next explosion came and the bench went up with me. All the people who were sitting on the same bench took off. I felt like I could bore a hole down in the floor. Everybody was looking at me. I was twice ashamed now.
They called the brother, who I went along with, to give the message. I never forgot what he said, for it made me more ashamed than my two previous ‘hallelujah’ experiences. He got up and said, “Brethren, if we don’t let this man preach, we won’t have any service here today.” I felt so terrible. I did not want them to think that I wanted to take over the meeting. With shame on my face I picked up my Bible, crawled to the platform, and started to preach from Matthew 24 about the coming of the Lord. All I wanted to do was to finish with it and get down, for it was the first time I had ever preached in a church. When I looked down in the congregation, which might have been about a hundred people, lo and behold, all of them were bent forward, low down. I was just looking at the top of their heads! I thought, “What is this? Lord, I must be putting them to sleep!” You can imagine my shame now. And then, they kept going down, down, down, until everybody laid flat down on the floor. This same brother, who called me up, had on English tweed, a brand new suit. A brand new brown suit! Suddenly, he pitched forward onto the floor and began to roll slowly until he hit his head on the wall some thirty feet away. When he did so, he began to roll back. When he hit his head on the wall on the other side, he turned and rolled back again. Have you ever heard of holy rollers? This one was totally gone! There was nobody to stop him, because everybody was down on the floor. I had never seen anything like that before. Of course, I was not used to being in a church. I grabbed my Bible and rushed back to my seat. For two hours the people were on the floor bawling. I had never heard of anything like this in my life. I didn’t understand what was happening at all. I just got saved and never went to church before. So I said to myself, “Maybe this is the way they carry on every Sunday.”
Then one sinner in the middle of the meeting hall jumped up and shouted, “Praise God for salvation! Thank God, Jesus saved me!” She gave such a wonderful testimony! Another one jumped up and said, “Oh, thank God!” Then, people started getting up one by one. There was a man near to me, an older man. I saw him struggling to get up so I helped him. The meeting was now dismissed. I went to shake some people’s hands, because I wanted to know what happened, but they ran from me! So I approached this old man and said to him, “Friend, what happened?” He said, “Brother, I am a deacon in this church and I have been here for thirty years. I have never seen anything like this before.” That answered my first question about the matter. I further asked him, “So what happened to you?” He replied, “I was sitting there and felt as if somebody put a heavy hand on the back of my head and began to press me down. I tried to resist, but the more I resisted, the further down I went, until I just sprawled out on the ground. When I hit the floor, all my sins came before me and I just began to confess before God. After I did, I felt such a cleansing and deliverance and felt enough strength to get up.” Then I knew the meaning of Pentecost.
This was on the 14th. Then on the 21st something else terrible happened. Do you remember in my vision Jesus said, “And then…?” Well, I was about to find out that ‘then’ meant the 21st. I was going to bed quietly when I heard a loud knock on my door. Sister Berry, one of my converts, was dying. “She is dying, come quickly,” the messenger insisted. I rushed over to her house as fast as I could. The woman’s eyes were turned over. She was really gone. I laid hands on her with the intention of saying, “Lord Jesus, touch her and heal her.” At that time I was not used to healing or anything like that. As I was about to open my mouth, I heard a mighty voice speaking behind me. He was speaking the same language I heard Jesus speak in my vision as well as in me. He was now commanding the demon to get out of her. I thought, “Boy, who is this that could come in the midst of my prayer and disturb like that?” I turned around to see the person, but there was nobody there. No man was standing behind me. I realized that it was God. I just quickly picked up my hat and went home. But this way everybody knew my secret. Everybody on the farm knew that I was the man who was talking in tongues. Something started there and then that nobody could stop.
Brethren, if you open the door of your heart to God, I guarantee you the Holy Ghost will come in and take care of all problems you have. Practice how to open the door before God. The Word says in Psalm 24, verses 7-10, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.” Practice how to open your hearts to God.
Sonlight Devotional 