My Introduction to Pentecost
“As I lay on my back and prayed into the darkness, I saw a Scripture in light—Luke 3:16…” All Scripture passage are from biblegateway.com New International Version (NIV) Because I was raised Catholic, until I went away to college I had never read the Bible. I heard about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for the first time as I read the book by David Wilkerson, The Crossand the Switchblade . He was an Assembly of God (Pentecostal) pastor loving his rural Pennsylvania congregation until the night that God spoke to him clearly to go to New York and help the street gangs there. He converted several gangs and gang members, including a leader named Nicky Cruz, and started an organization called Teen Challenge. It was 1965, and I was a flaky student at the University of Washington. While I was on lunch break at my summer job in the university district, a female colleague sashayed up to the table where I was talking with a fellow student worker. At that very moment, I was disparaging stupid ...