A New Wave of Heavenly Experience (Adventures in Religion #2)

By John G. Lake
June 25, 1935

No greater Book has ever been given to mankind than the Bible. The amazing things recorded there that men experienced and that men wrought in the Name of Jesus Christ through faith by the power of God stand forever as an incentive to every man who enters and labours where they did. There is a place in God into which the soul enters and that makes it possible for the Spirit of God through you as His agent to register in the hearts of others.

Henry Fosdick says, “Until the New Theology can produce the sinless character of the old theology, it stands challenged.” We believe that. We believe that the old-fashioned salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ followed by the Baptism of the Holy Ghost make possible an experience that no other religious experience in the world has ever been able to produce.

In the year 1900, there came a new wave of heavenly experience to this land and to the world. It began in Topeka, Kansas. It was in a Bible School conducted by Charles Parham. The founding of that school was an amazing thing. He was moved of God to go to Topeka, Kansas. He obeyed the promptings of the Spirit and went to the city. After looking all around for a building suitable for a Bible School and finding none, one day a gentleman told him of a residence on the outskirts of the city. It contained about twenty-two or more rooms and it was unoccupied. The owner lived in California. He went to see the building, and as he stood looking at it the Spirit of the Lord said, “I will give you this building for your Bible School.” And he said to himself, “This is the house.”

As he stood there a gentleman came up to him and said, “What about the house?” Parham told him what the Lord had said to him, and the man being the owner of the house said, “If you want to use this building for a Bible School for God it is yours,” and he handed him the key without any more ado.

The next day he went to the train and met a young woman of his acquaintance. She told him that when she was praying the Spirit of God told her there was going to be a Bible School here and that she should come. She was the first student. Thirty-five students came, all correspondingly directed by the Spirit of God.

This group began a study of the Word of God to discover what really constituted the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. After a month of study they became convinced that there was one peculiarity that accompanied the Baptism of the Holy Ghost - speaking in tongues.

They went to seeking the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Parham was not present at the time. On New Year’s night at twelve o’clock, 1900, one of the group, a Miss Osmand, a returned missionary, was baptized in the Holy Ghost and began to speak in tongues. In a few days the entire group, with a couple of exceptions, was baptized in the Spirit. When Parham returned and found that the students in his school had been baptized in the Holy Ghost, he himself went down before the Lord and God baptized him in the Holy Ghost, too.

I want you to keep this story in mind for it forms the basis of the wonderful experience I want to relate in my next talk.