Holy Spirit of Yahweh

 

Personal Testimony:

 

We had a couple of married friends that had moved to the same college for grad school that we did. They talked to us about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We did not know even how to respond.

 

My sister had met a group of Pentecostals and had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I talked most of the night with a friend of my sisters about the Holy Spirit. I could not get past what I had been taught about dispensationalism and the Holy Spirit; that is that the gifts of the Spirit were just for Yeshua's time and not for today. The gifts today were from the devil. The lady that I had talked to wrote up a 6 page list of scriptures proving that the gifts had not ceased. It took me about a year to study every verse and conclude that the gifts are still functioning today. I told the Lord that I needed to see the gifts of the Spirit at work before I could accept it.

 

At this point we were part of a Bible study group at a Church of Christ. We had become really good friends with a couple in that group. The wife of the couple had gotten involved in a women`s group that were Baptized in the Holy Spirit. A couple of days after I had told the Lord I needed to see it the wife of our good friends called and said that there was a conference nearby that Charles and Francis Hunter were putting on called Delightfully Charismatic. She invited us to attend with her. What else could I say but yes.

 

So we went to the seminar. I went well prepared to test it. I had my scriptures all lined up for the use of the gifts of the Spirit. They started out with singing and then a time of testimonies and then the use of the spiritual gifts for deliverance and healing. Of course this was all new to me and I was a little spooked, but the order followed Corinthians. I think, in hind sight, that the Lord followed that order just for me that night. Then they did something and upset my apple cart. I was raised in a denomination that came from the Holiness revivals in the early 1900`s and we did not dance, go to movies or play cards. The Hunters decided that we were to dance before the Lord! I had never heard of such a thing (except for David and I hand not brought a loin cloth). I decided to sit this one out. However, my wife and my friend`s wife had other ideas. They each grabbed one of my arms and said lets go. Well these were the two women I loved the most and I had no choice. So we went down to the floor to dance. I stood on the sideline taking it all in not having enough nerve to dance. Then some little old lady danced up to me, grabbed my arm and said come on sonny lets dance. So off I went. I`m sure I looked like a wounded duck out there but the presence of the Lord was there.

 

They next asked everyone who wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit to go over to some bleachers and they would pray for us to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and to speak in tongues. We did and they did. Neither of us started speaking in tongues but we both know that something had happened.

 

We were baptized in the Spirit in 1976 after the Lord whittled away at my dispensional theology for two years. We were attending the Brady Lane Church of Christ at the time. We had a bible study of about 15 people. Our experience resulted in about 1/2 the group also becoming filled with the spirit and the other half running as far away as possible. The Lord the started doing miracles. He healed a nurse, who was pregnant at the time, of a collapsed lung. He would give us directions to places we had never been as we traveled. He would arrange meetings with others so we could share about Him. One of my watershed experiences was in 1977 in southern Indiana near Seymore. We had gone to some friends for the weekend to hear a man named Marvin Ford speak. He had died and gone to heaven for thirty minutes.

 

The evening before the meeting i went out walking and talking with the Lord. For the first time in my Christian experience ( I'd been a Christian for about 20 years by then) i discovered that God talked. So i was experimenting with it. i was walking down a small country road talking to God. i told Him that i knew so little since i had thought i knew Him only to find out about the Holy Spirit and that God would carry on a conversation with us. We talked for a hour or so when He said that He would teach me like he taught Peter, John, and Yeshua. i stopped dead in my tracks. i was used to the idea that Yeshua was the good shepherd (i thought i was talking to Him), but to be talking to the vengeful Judge of the universe scarred the daylights out of me.

 

i fell on the road face down expecting a bolt of lightening to strike me dead.

 

i layed there for a few minutes and nothing happened. So i asked who i was talking to. He said that i was talking to God the father. i was still in shock. i asked His what i should call Him. HE said that i should call Him dad. i was still ducking and there was no way i was going to call Him Dad so i used sir. He went on to tell me four things that were going to happen in the next few years. i walked back to the house in a state of shock and told Ann what had just happened and the four things that were to happen. She decided that i was nuts. The next night during Marvin's speech, he described heaven and his conversation with Yeshua while he was in heaven. He then told us that the Lord had told him that four think were going to happen in the next few years. He then repeated word for word what i was told the night before. Ann and i just looked at each other like we'd seen a ghost.

 

After our initial experience with the baptism of the Spirit i have an unusual experience one night in the barn that was on the property were we lived. I was told to go into the barn into the haymow and while i was there a large angel showed up in front of me. i had never seen an angel before and ended up on my face again. It spoke to me but i don't remember what it said anymore.

 

Needless to say i was impressed by it's presence. The next thing that happened was a friend of Ann's from Panama was having emotional problems and we started to help her. We unknowingly dove headlong into deliverance ministry. This was probably the most frightening and instructional period of our lives. We spent 18 months throwing many demons out and learning all about demons and the power of God.

 

The first experience we had with demons was when we were burning some records that she had purchased in Panama. The Lord had told her to destroy them so she gathered them up and gave them to me to burn. It was mid August and hot. It was about 4 in the afternoon when i stacked up the records up on a concrete slab to burn. i used to burn brush piles when i was a kid. i got about a quart of gasoline and poured it on the records (about 50 of them) and poured a 20 foot strip of gas out into the yard to light. i tried to light the gasoline and it would not light. i used about 20 matches and still could not get it to light. I moved right up to the gas puddle on the concrete and trough matched into the gasoline and it would extinguish the matches. This was very strange. She came walking out and i told her that i could not get the gas to light. She said that of course not because there was a demon there blocking it. i looked where she was pointing and about 4 foot from my face was a small cloud about head high  about a foot in diameter and 3 foot high. When i saw it the hair on the back of my head stood on end. i asked the Lord what to do and He said to rebuke it, I did and it left instantly. i then light the gasoline with one match. It burnt until the next afternoon.