I had never heard of this phenomenon until 1975. I was now in my first pastorate, Adat Ha Tikvah in Chicago, which had changed its name from the First Hebrew Christian Church. After a bad experience at a charismatic congregation in my last year at Wheaton, I wanted nothing to do with Charismatics or Pentecostals. Though I was still very much a skeptic in my last year at Wheaton, I knew enough to know that the direction of that church was wrong and dangerous. I came back to committed faith in the spring of 1970. By the mid-1970s, I again embraced the reality of immersion in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, and the gifts of the Spirit. How that happened is a longer story. One part of that story is my professor in Philosophy of Religion, Dr. Stuart Hackett. His story is my first account.
Dr. Stuart Hackett
I excelled in Stuart Hackett’s Philosophy of Religion courses in my junior year at Wheaton College. I was thus invited to be his assistant, grading exams and student papers. We became friends in my senior year as a result. I sought to keep in touch and would visit him when in Wheaton to see my future wife, then in her first year of marriage, while she was finishing at Wheaton. Then we moved to Chicago to take the pastorate of the First Hebrew Christian Church. One time Dr. Hackett visited and preached for us. Dr. Hackett was a Christian rationalist — anything real and important could be proven by rational argument and empirical evidence. Then, on one of my visits, he astonished me with the following story.
The first example: I asked him how he was doing with his arthritic elbow. He was now about fifty years old. He used to love doing push-ups but had to give this up. Then he told me the following. I paraphrase, but I believe this account is trustworthy. In answer to my question he said,
“Well, Daniel, you are not going to believe this, but God healed me. I not only had arthritis in the elbow but in my spine. It became terribly painful. A friend wanted me to go to a meeting with a healing evangelist. I did not want to go, but he kept urging. I thought, ‘I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get prayer.’ After his teaching in the church sanctuary, he invited people up for healing prayer. Some of the people were falling on the floor, fainting. It seemed so bizarre. My friend urged me to go up for prayer, but I thought, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this.’ But finally, after his urging, I decided to go up to humor him. I was not going to fall down like these people. The evangelist reached out his hand to pray for me, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor with waves of God’s love flowing over me. When I got up, I was praying in tongues and was totally healed.”
The second example was my brother Richard, who was seven years older than I. Richard was an officer in the Air Force. He was also very rationalistic — my sister called him “the head.” He had straight A’s throughout school, and when he graduated, the local newspaper wrote that he had the highest average in the fifty-year history of the school. He was the last person I expected to tell me this story.
“I attended a meeting of the healing evangelist Gene Lily. I went up for prayer. I did not want to fall down like some people were, but wanted prayer for healing. When he reached out his hand, I hardly remember him touching me — I fell down on the floor. Waves of God’s love came over me. It was the greatest experience of my life.”
Until Richard died in 2002 at the age of 68, from complications of Agent Orange exposure, he said this was the greatest experience of his life. I think it helped sustain him in his last years of physical suffering.
The third account is of my best friend from our secular high school. Michael D’lasnow was Jewish. His grandparents were Orthodox Jews, but his parents were secular Jews. From my sophomore year through my junior year, we walked to school together every day. Mike was a year older than I, but after he graduated and went as a commuter to a nearby university, we used to study together. He was the best man at our wedding. I shared the Gospel with Mike from the time I was fifteen, and when he was fifty years old, in the spring of 1998, Mike prayed to accept Yeshua. My wife Patty predicted this would happen on that trip when we visited. Life had been hard for Mike. He had a degree in psychology and worked as an intake counselor. He held many different jobs but struggled with smoking and some drug use, though he was not an addict. He was in a common-law marriage and had a son. His wife died not long after of a heart attack, and Mike had to raise his son alone. Mike connected with the Messianic Jewish congregation related to ours in Rockland County, New York. He loved the leader, who was a drama professor. Somehow — I’m not sure how — Michael attended renewal services at the Wyckoff, New Jersey, Assembly of God Church. He went forward for prayer and fell under the power of the Spirit. Waves of God’s love overcame him, again and again. Mike professed that this was the greatest experience of his life. He maintained a friendship with Pastor Don James afterward.
There are other friends who had this experience and were, in my view, unlikely candidates.
My Evaluation
When I was a leader at Beth Messiah Congregation in Maryland, near Washington, one of my elders, Gary Dickenson, said that the Holy Spirit was going to move in our congregation and people would fall under the power of the Spirit. I had never seen this and was not excited about it. However, as we prayed for people, it started to happen. There are amazing stories of transformation. I was never overwhelmed at such a time of prayer myself, but I accepted the testimony of others. I also know that people do “courtesy falls” to make the healing evangelist look good. I would question people who fell and ask what happened to them. I found that some had real and powerful experiences, and some did not.
I did have two experiences when I was prayed for where I felt weak and it was difficult to stand. One was in Singapore in 1989, when I was prayed for by the famous Argentinian evangelist Carlos Annacondia. I felt weakness and slipped to the floor. It was not overwhelming, but for the next few weeks there was a powerful sense of the Spirit’s presence. The second time was at a renewal meeting with a pastor-evangelist in Louisville, Kentucky, in the mid-1990s. Some were having amazing experiences, but others were not. However, after I returned home, I had that same experience of a great Holy Spirit presence.
I believe this is a real experience, and some find it transformative. I recall the words of the famous hymn “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.” Those words almost seem to describe the experience of my professor, my brother, and my old high school friend. I wonder if the writer experienced this too.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free. Flowing like a mighty ocean, in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love, Leading onward, leading homeward, to Thy glorious rest above.