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The Tent on Sleeman's Flats
"The Holy Rollers have hit town. They're in a tent down on Sleeman's Flats."
"Hey, let's go see what's going on." This exciting information came from my teenage pals Sam Stewart and Alex Irvine. The three of us had been reared in fervent Brethren homes, though none of us had personally met the Savior at this point in our lives. Yet, we possessed a fair amount of theological smugness. As a trio of budding young Pharisees, our rating wasn't bad!
"Who are the Holy Rollers?" I asked.
"Well, maybe they call themselves 'Pentecostals' or something like that. But I hear that they roll, clap, sing and shout. That's how they got their name." said Sam.
"That's not all," Alex interjected. "The preacher is a woman!"
A woman preacher?
Wow! We all knew that was unscriptural. What fun this spectacle would be!
The tent was neither large nor elegantly equipped. The benches were crude and the platform simply furnished with a lectern, a few chairs, and a wheezy pump organ. Mrs. Sharp, a buxom middle-aged woman, was the evangelist. She appeared to be running her Gospel campaign single handedly. She preached, prayed, sang, and pumped that reluctant organ between puffs and droplets of perspiration. Hecklers lay on the grass around the open flaps and mocked with unholy glee especially at an outburst of tongues or prophecy.
We three young fellows missed few meetings that summer. Those services were never dull. They crackled with the unusual-a blend of fervent evangelism, shoutings, strange languages, excited outcries, and plenty of laughter.
At times we were honestly impressed by Mrs. Sharp's evangelistic earnestness. Always, we were amused by her platform gyrations reinforced by loud denunciations of the Devil, whom she recognized as a nightly member of the audience.
One evening we were stunned at the sight of a man moving around the tent brandishing a stick and shouting for the Devil to leave at once! On another occasion a man was literally propelled from his seat two or three feet into the air, as by an electric shock, as he shouted wildly, "Glory"!
Nor will I forget that late hour when three or four women stood sobbing and shaking in a united paroxysm of noisy emotion. Their hair, once arranged in tidy buns, hung in disarray around their shoulders because of their swayings. Their sleepy children cried at their sides. On another evening we saw a man crawl around on his stomach and mutter incoherently. And once a new male convert actually jumped over the stove!
The following year, 1921, brought revolutionary changes into all our lives. Each of us came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior of our souls. The Christ we had heard about as an important historical figure now became a living person to us as each, in turn, opened his heart and life to the man of Calvary, the Lord of glory. Shortly after our conversions, we were baptized and received into assembly fellowship. This assembly was less exclusive than the one I had known in earlier years.
What glorious weeks followed! The Bible became a new book, and the fellowship we discovered with other new Christians opened an entirely new dimension of living.
I have always been a book lover. Now my appetite turned to the Scriptures, and I ravenously devoured them. It seemed that I could not get enough of either the Word of God or fellowship with God's people. How thankful we were for the men who guided our little assembly, who opened the Scriptures to us at Tuesday evening Bible studies, and who helped us over the hard spots. They loved us, and we knew it.
By now the Pentecostals had a permanent beachhead in our town, and were meeting regularly in a shabby upper room on a side street. When there were no meetings in our Hall, we three fellows would often attend their lively services.
The format continued much like the one we had witnessed in the tent, but without the lady preacher. Our interest and curiosity grew. We even questioned these people, but their answers often left us floundering.
Acts 19:1-2 was one of their favorite texts, and I was usually sore pressed for a satisfying explanation. Just what did Paul's strange question mean? Among other thorny passages they threw at us was Acts two-and-four, the cornerstone text, which we felt a bit more confident to handle.
We had only one thing to do: unload these sticky questions on our Brethren teachers-both the local men and the visitors. Did we get answers? Quickly and decisively. And it was easy to detect their disapproval of our contact with those misled people and their dangerous doctrines.
The Tuesday evening Bible studies at the Hall now acquired a keener edge. Difficult questions were aired; the elders tackled them courageously.
The sign gifts such as miracles, tongues, prophesyings, and exorcisms, they explained, were divine manifestations given to corroborate the new message of Christianity at the beginning of the dispensation. Because they were primarily directed to the Jews, and thus coterminous with that probationary period, they were withdrawn at the close of the apostolic era when Israel's rejection became official and final. For support they drew on Hebrews 2:3, 4: ". ...so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will."
We concluded that miraculous confirmation was necessary for and limited to those who had personally known the Lord Jesus. Furthermore, although the period covered by the Book of Acts was ushered in by a mighty gush of miracles, these wonders receded as a sort of ebb-tide toward the close of the same book. They did a quiet fade-out as Paul's ministry concluded and the apostolic period closed. In the words of l Corinthians 13:10, "the perfect" had come with the completed Scriptures; prophesyings were no longer necessary.
"But," we asked, "what of the other miracle gifts and supernatural enablements available to Christ's body and catalogued in I Corinthians 12?"
Again, the answer was quick and precise. "Most of these should also be regarded as passe', if only because many centuries have elapsed since the Christian church possessed them. Was it not obvious that these gifts had been withdrawn by the Church's Head?"
A special word of caution came for what the Scriptures described as "tongues." Tongues, we learned, were divine vehicles for preaching the Gospel to foreigners, such as on the day of Pentecost. This spiritual gift rendered language study unnecessary during that period, and that period only. Anyone who really had the gift of tongues today would prove it by marching into the foreign-speaking enclaves of our large cities and fluently proclaim the Gospel to these people in their various dialects!
With these pronouncements, we young men were urged to forget the Pentecostals. Further contact would not only be condoning serious error, but also exposing ourselves to demonic delusions. Since Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, it should be no surprise if his ministers transform themselves into the ministers of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. (2 Corinthians 11:4)
In the face of these condemnations, we now had serious misgivings, if not deep apprehensions about our previous observations. Evidently we had witnessed satanic counterfeits, all the more deadly because they paraded under the guise of genuine evangelism and Biblical Christianity. Those folks were deluded fanatics; their products were religious contraband.
Our interest was pretty well finished. Henceforth we would stay closer to harbor and attend our own meetings. You might say we had developed a spiritual fear of these people, at least a healthily respect for what our brand of theology taught as error. Hence we choose isolation as a safety mooring to a secure dock.
But a troupe of question marks still danced on the backstage of my mind. I wondered how this could be. During a hurricane there is no safe mooring. A ship is only safe by riding out the storm. The ship must head straight into the wind to survive. And I was planning to spiritually survive.
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