Originally Posted by
Berserk
Colonel, how dare you impugn my godly Dad's integrity! And I do have vague memories of a huge uproar from the crowd as Branham forced me to blink and announced that I had just been healed of total blindness. Imagine the hurt to my dear parents who had sacrificed their savings to bring me to that moment! No, he wickedly created a hurtful illusion to brush aside the embarrassment I potentially posed to his reputation.
(5) The major turning point in my life that I'm about to share is also by far the spiritual and emotional high point in my life. Even now, decades later, I constantly draw spiritual nourishment from the very memory of that fateful day I was "ambushed" by an experience of glossolalia at Manhattan Beach Camp in Manitoba. I was 16 at the time and felt I had lost my faith. I was determined to give it my best shot to find God real, but not to succumb to wishful thinking and emotionalism. That fateful, Tuesday, I went on a 7 mile walk towards Ninette, Manitoba, pleading with God to make Himself real to me. That evening, I did something I'd never done before. I fasted for dinner and put my dinner money in the offering plate. After the service, I stayed at the altar and prayed to be filled with the Spirit as I had previously done in vain. After almost everyone (about 1,000) left the amphitheater, my heart still felt like stone as I tarried in prayer. Then suddenly I felt a warm breeze, but it wasn't the wind from nearby Pelican Lake; it was the Holy Spirit first warming me and then possessing me. I was compelled to speak in tongues at the top of my voice. More importantly, wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being with ever increasing intensity until I feared it might kill me. My ego seemed on the verge of collapse into God's mind. Oh, the indescribable sweetness of those moments, more sacred than the birth of your first child! I can only metaphorically testify that that experience was a hundred times sweeter, more powerful, and more intimate than any of my experiences of love before or since!
When it was over, a Lutheran pastor who had observed me, unseen, quietly came and knelt beside me. He told me he didn't believe in speaking in tongues and had only come to the camp meeting as an interested observer. But he added he could tell God was doing a special work in me and he asked me to pray for him. I didn't pray for him; I just touched him gently on the foreheand, and the moment I did so, it was as if I had electrocuted him! Overcome by the Spirit, he exploded into tongues! Another lady was sitting in the now darkened amphitheater and just staring at me. Self-conscious, I asked her why. She replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!"
When it was all over, I realized that God had said to me clearly: "Son, you long for answers to burning questions. But answers aren't good for you right now. They will make you live in your head, and I want to live in your heart. I want you to live your questions until they lead you to the center of my heart." That is the reason for my long educational pilgrimage from BA (U. of Winnipeg) to MDiv (Princeton) to doctorate in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman Backgrounds (Harvard). Interestingly, the experience made me a much better student than I had been. And like marijuana, that experience of glossolalia seems to have functioned like a gateway spiritual drug that soon led to other gripping experiences of other spiritual gifts, especially "the word of knowledge" (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).
(6) Previously, I had not been a stellar student in school and was insecure about God's plans for my future. But shortly after the experience, I suddenly knew that I'd receive the highest GPA in Manitoba in my senior year. Decades later, my cousin, a psychiatrist, reminded me that I had shared "this word of knowledge" with him when I recounted my tongues experience. That experience evidently dramatically improved my mental capacity. When Premier Duff Roblyn publicly acknowledged that achievement at my graduation and scholarships were awarded as a result, I felt that my somewhat awkward attempts at Christian witnessing were rendered more effective and I became more confident in a calling to an academic life.
But my next 2 experiences of "the word of knowledge" (premonitions) were as puzzling and disturbing as they were riveting. More on that in my next 2 planned posts.