Reply to Phaul: Preliminary Experience of Being Drawn to God: My Born From Above ExperienceS, Part One
Phaul asks how to have "the experience of being born from above and holding the baby in swaddling clothes":
"Recently I have been thinking of the birth from above. Even today, I imagine all the experiences Neville had as though I had them. And lo and behold, I come across your statements in one of the blogs that you, too, had the experience of being Born from above and holding the baby in swaddling clothes.
"I WANT THIS EXPERIENCE. As Neville says, only the Father knows the time, and so I have to wait patiently.
"Please narrate your experience of being born from above."
Phaul
________________________________________________
Dear Phaul,
Thank you for reading my blog and for asking an excellent question. Your request made me reflect on the difference between my experience leading up to the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the experience of the baptism itself. Neville often said that everyone will have the exact same experiences that he had. That is true, but we will not have the experiences in exactly the same way as he had them.
I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in response to my seeking the gift of tongues. I did not hold a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Nor did I see Neville's three brothers or any other three witnesses. I have never heard of anyone having the same prelude visual experience Neville or I had, but I know of hundreds, indeed THOUSANDS of people who have had the same experience of being born again/from above in the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
A few weeks ago I posted four short essays on "My Conversation With God, or, The Gospel According To God (1, 2, 3, 4). My point in them was that the experience up to the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit was a CONVERSATION with God. God our imagination TALKS to us, usually VISUALLY. He shows us things in our imaginations. The pictures are his speech. That is him TALKING. Even though we may be willing and seeking, our minds and attitudes are not right toward him. At least in my experience, the conversation we had was to get my mind right toward him so that I could receive the baptism. What he revealed got me past my stupidity and into a humble position of being mentally prostrate before God. If I hadn't gotten there, I wouldn't have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Not then, anyway. And if not, then after some other conversation.
So the visual experience leading up to the experience in the Holy Spirit was a fine tuning of my thoughts, attitudes and emotions to make me conducive to the work of imbuement he wanted to do. This whole thing was HIS engineering.
The conversation I had with God was not one-sided. I had not previously been a particularly zealous Christian, but after learning Eastern philosophies and religions, practicing Transcendental Meditation, reading all sorts of books about mysticism and psychic phenomena, and finally taking up occult meditation, I met a demon. A deceiving spirit. I was in a guided meditation at the metaphysical bookstore in Honolulu, and we were to open our mental workshop to someone, an "ascended master," who would come in from without. "Jesus" was approaching me. The things he had taught his disciples which had been lost by the church he was going to teach me, personally, because I was a for real zealous student.
Yeah, but. An ascended master? Was this the real Jesus? Looked like. Long hair, beard, robe, sash, glow emanating from him. Emanating? Gazing at the approaching figure, suddenly I was able to see past the glow and into the body of the spirit. It was all darkness inside. The "glow" was a facade. I hadn't been a particularly zealous Christian before, but I wasn't brain dead, either. "All darkness within" rang a bell.
It is absolutely amazing how fast the mind can work at times. It took all of about a heartbeat to figure out that the spirit I was seeing did not want to be unveiled. But it had been absolutely powerless to stop the one who had opened my eyes, blowing its cover. The spirit had needed me to lower my natural authority over it to get into me. It had been influencing me through philosophies expressed in music, books, and religious instruction like TM and occult meditation, to get me to a place where I would willingly lower my authority to allow it entry into me. And here I was, but someone had intervened. If my natural authority is of the earth, the spirit's natural authority would be of below the earth, and the one who did not need my authority to open my mind's eyes to see through the spirit didn't need my permission because he is ABOVE the earth. And he must have been watching, monitoring what was going on in my mind and powerful to do what he did at exactly the right moment because . . . .
Only the Jesus I had heard about fit the bill. He must actually be risen, seated in glory and power as God.
I knew I had been allowed to learn things in the occult kindergarten I was in because they suited Jesus who allowed the demon to influence me. Having learned what I needed up to the point of possession, it was time for harvest and to get the hell out of Dodge. And I did. I got up and walked out. I rode my bike over to the pickup truck I was living in at the Ala Wai yacht harbor and dug out my old King James Bible. The concordance for 'deceive' led me to Revelation 12:7-12: "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."
Oh. So Revelation 12 IS what is really going on. I couldn't see it before, but now I am in it. I used to not care, but things have changed (Bob Dylan, sort of). (NB: That is what I thought then, and still do, except now I understand Satan to be our ignorance due to our flip into humanhood.)
I had to tell Lynn, my mother's best friend, who lived in the Hilton Hawaiian Village just across the lagoon (the Hilton's version of a swimming pool) by the Ala Wai. When I found her she started off: "Dan! I got the most horrible migraine from reading all those Jesus books your mother keeps sending me in the dome light of my taxi while waiting for fares all night. My head was throbbing! And I told Raphael while walking back from the car that Jesus had given me the headache, and that he (Jesus) could have it! And it disappeared. In a flash. I couldn't make my head hurt! Raphael (aka Ralph) took me to a Bible study in Kaimuki, and I accepted Jesus. I want you to go with me this Friday." Yeah. Okay.
I went with Lynn to the House of Praise. Kind of a Youth With a Mission Pentecostal hippie commune. This was the early days of the Jesus People and Charismatic Renewal Movement. Just about everyone at the House of Praise spoke in tongues. Remembering my old, spiritually dead church, I wasn't sold on Christianity yet. Jesus or no, I didn't go forward that first week despite Lynn's urging. I kept reading the Book of John and other books and concluded that the Bible is the only book which accurately describes what is really going on in the world, and it says that Jesus is God's Son. The Jews didn't see him the right way, and having nowhere else to go, I decided to go with Christianity. The second week I got up and walked forward. I went through the prayers with them. I felt good, but nothing happened to me. Rod Wilson, the overseeing pastor, looked down at some unkempt, careless dude sprawled across an overstuffed chair. "What about you, brother?" The guy stood up, raised his hands and started sobbing in tongues. Well, at least I felt good. But nothing happened to me except I called my mother on the mainland to let her know I had become a Christian. That was March 21st, 1975.
I rode my bicycle to the Sunday morning services in Kaimuki. Rod baptized me at the beach in Kahala. Then at a Sunday service Raphael asked me to go with him to a performance at the evening service of Grace Bible Church in Honolulu. It was a Bill Gaither thing, songs interspersed with people testifying about how Jesus had changed their lives. Cool, it's over, let's go. No, Raphael wanted to talk to the ministers. After awhile they took Raphael into the fellowship center where everyone had prayed before the service (!), because Ralph had never received the gift of tongues. They were going to pray with him, so I waited in the vestibule reading the bulletin board. At length one of the ministers came out and asked if I had received the gift of tongues. No? Would you like to?
Continued.
"Recently I have been thinking of the birth from above. Even today, I imagine all the experiences Neville had as though I had them. And lo and behold, I come across your statements in one of the blogs that you, too, had the experience of being Born from above and holding the baby in swaddling clothes.
"I WANT THIS EXPERIENCE. As Neville says, only the Father knows the time, and so I have to wait patiently.
"Please narrate your experience of being born from above."
Phaul
________________________________________________
Dear Phaul,
Thank you for reading my blog and for asking an excellent question. Your request made me reflect on the difference between my experience leading up to the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the experience of the baptism itself. Neville often said that everyone will have the exact same experiences that he had. That is true, but we will not have the experiences in exactly the same way as he had them.
I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in response to my seeking the gift of tongues. I did not hold a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Nor did I see Neville's three brothers or any other three witnesses. I have never heard of anyone having the same prelude visual experience Neville or I had, but I know of hundreds, indeed THOUSANDS of people who have had the same experience of being born again/from above in the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
A few weeks ago I posted four short essays on "My Conversation With God, or, The Gospel According To God (1, 2, 3, 4). My point in them was that the experience up to the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit was a CONVERSATION with God. God our imagination TALKS to us, usually VISUALLY. He shows us things in our imaginations. The pictures are his speech. That is him TALKING. Even though we may be willing and seeking, our minds and attitudes are not right toward him. At least in my experience, the conversation we had was to get my mind right toward him so that I could receive the baptism. What he revealed got me past my stupidity and into a humble position of being mentally prostrate before God. If I hadn't gotten there, I wouldn't have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Not then, anyway. And if not, then after some other conversation.
So the visual experience leading up to the experience in the Holy Spirit was a fine tuning of my thoughts, attitudes and emotions to make me conducive to the work of imbuement he wanted to do. This whole thing was HIS engineering.
The conversation I had with God was not one-sided. I had not previously been a particularly zealous Christian, but after learning Eastern philosophies and religions, practicing Transcendental Meditation, reading all sorts of books about mysticism and psychic phenomena, and finally taking up occult meditation, I met a demon. A deceiving spirit. I was in a guided meditation at the metaphysical bookstore in Honolulu, and we were to open our mental workshop to someone, an "ascended master," who would come in from without. "Jesus" was approaching me. The things he had taught his disciples which had been lost by the church he was going to teach me, personally, because I was a for real zealous student.
Yeah, but. An ascended master? Was this the real Jesus? Looked like. Long hair, beard, robe, sash, glow emanating from him. Emanating? Gazing at the approaching figure, suddenly I was able to see past the glow and into the body of the spirit. It was all darkness inside. The "glow" was a facade. I hadn't been a particularly zealous Christian before, but I wasn't brain dead, either. "All darkness within" rang a bell.
It is absolutely amazing how fast the mind can work at times. It took all of about a heartbeat to figure out that the spirit I was seeing did not want to be unveiled. But it had been absolutely powerless to stop the one who had opened my eyes, blowing its cover. The spirit had needed me to lower my natural authority over it to get into me. It had been influencing me through philosophies expressed in music, books, and religious instruction like TM and occult meditation, to get me to a place where I would willingly lower my authority to allow it entry into me. And here I was, but someone had intervened. If my natural authority is of the earth, the spirit's natural authority would be of below the earth, and the one who did not need my authority to open my mind's eyes to see through the spirit didn't need my permission because he is ABOVE the earth. And he must have been watching, monitoring what was going on in my mind and powerful to do what he did at exactly the right moment because . . . .
Only the Jesus I had heard about fit the bill. He must actually be risen, seated in glory and power as God.
I knew I had been allowed to learn things in the occult kindergarten I was in because they suited Jesus who allowed the demon to influence me. Having learned what I needed up to the point of possession, it was time for harvest and to get the hell out of Dodge. And I did. I got up and walked out. I rode my bike over to the pickup truck I was living in at the Ala Wai yacht harbor and dug out my old King James Bible. The concordance for 'deceive' led me to Revelation 12:7-12: "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."
Oh. So Revelation 12 IS what is really going on. I couldn't see it before, but now I am in it. I used to not care, but things have changed (Bob Dylan, sort of). (NB: That is what I thought then, and still do, except now I understand Satan to be our ignorance due to our flip into humanhood.)
I had to tell Lynn, my mother's best friend, who lived in the Hilton Hawaiian Village just across the lagoon (the Hilton's version of a swimming pool) by the Ala Wai. When I found her she started off: "Dan! I got the most horrible migraine from reading all those Jesus books your mother keeps sending me in the dome light of my taxi while waiting for fares all night. My head was throbbing! And I told Raphael while walking back from the car that Jesus had given me the headache, and that he (Jesus) could have it! And it disappeared. In a flash. I couldn't make my head hurt! Raphael (aka Ralph) took me to a Bible study in Kaimuki, and I accepted Jesus. I want you to go with me this Friday." Yeah. Okay.
I went with Lynn to the House of Praise. Kind of a Youth With a Mission Pentecostal hippie commune. This was the early days of the Jesus People and Charismatic Renewal Movement. Just about everyone at the House of Praise spoke in tongues. Remembering my old, spiritually dead church, I wasn't sold on Christianity yet. Jesus or no, I didn't go forward that first week despite Lynn's urging. I kept reading the Book of John and other books and concluded that the Bible is the only book which accurately describes what is really going on in the world, and it says that Jesus is God's Son. The Jews didn't see him the right way, and having nowhere else to go, I decided to go with Christianity. The second week I got up and walked forward. I went through the prayers with them. I felt good, but nothing happened to me. Rod Wilson, the overseeing pastor, looked down at some unkempt, careless dude sprawled across an overstuffed chair. "What about you, brother?" The guy stood up, raised his hands and started sobbing in tongues. Well, at least I felt good. But nothing happened to me except I called my mother on the mainland to let her know I had become a Christian. That was March 21st, 1975.
I rode my bicycle to the Sunday morning services in Kaimuki. Rod baptized me at the beach in Kahala. Then at a Sunday service Raphael asked me to go with him to a performance at the evening service of Grace Bible Church in Honolulu. It was a Bill Gaither thing, songs interspersed with people testifying about how Jesus had changed their lives. Cool, it's over, let's go. No, Raphael wanted to talk to the ministers. After awhile they took Raphael into the fellowship center where everyone had prayed before the service (!), because Ralph had never received the gift of tongues. They were going to pray with him, so I waited in the vestibule reading the bulletin board. At length one of the ministers came out and asked if I had received the gift of tongues. No? Would you like to?
Continued.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
1:52 PM
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