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When a teenager, my friends were going to a church of another Christian sect, a holiness one. I was Baptist. Baptists held in suspicion the holiness brothers and sisters, with their dancing, shouting, and speaking in what they called an unknown tongue. We Baptists were calmer, only a shout from my grandmother Missy and rarely. She would stand suddenly, shout a short time, lifting hands toward the sky, and sit. That was over, and would be over for many months. The holiness Christians were held in such suspicion, some of the Baptists of my church thought of some of their worship being of the devil. The holiness, toward us, claimed we did not have and needed that second blessing, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Thankfully, in time, Ghost became Spirit, which sounds less scary. I would rather be taken by a spirit than a ghost, even if they are the same.
My first recalled memory of the holiness church was visiting one night as a child. An aged man stood up during worship, and he began doing what we called hooping and hollering. Along with this yelling, he ran down the middle isle toward the front, the altar. On the say he bumped against the sides of the wooden pews, and did not seem to mind. When he had danced and hooped and hollered to the front, he did a jig, he was not through dancing. As a boy, used to the sedate worship of Baptists, this was scary, maybe as scary as that ghost.
When a late teen, some of my friends, ones not church going kind or necessarily moral examples of good teens, were going to that holiness church and coming away saying they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Well, I had long been ardently devoted to Christ, and I felt something was missing. I wanted all of God I could get, even if it scared me, like a ghost might.
I decided I needed more than I had gotten at Philadelphia Baptist Church, and that the holiness station seemed to be where I would receive it. I needed, so I thought, a baptism in the Holy Spirit. We Baptists were saying that is received when one says “Yes” to Jesus, I decided we had been wrong.
One evening, my home congregation was in revival meeting. I told my parents I wanted to go, instead, to the holiness congregation. They were not pleased. My father informed me I had better not, and I had better be seen by him that night at the Baptist church. They left, I was to arrive later.
Continued...
