Luke Roberts, a former Pentecostal who hasn't been to church in years and whose wife grew up Baptist, rediscovers his faith and ends up answering God's call to become an evangelist. Along the way, however, he discovers that he now thinks differently from many of his fellow Pentecostals about a number of issues. He still sees lots of success in his ministry, though, but just when things really start taking off for him, a couple of major events transpire no one could have predicted.
The book is set in the time period immediately prior to the Rapture of the Church, and I couldn't find any books set in that time period written from a distinctly Pentecostal perspective. That's the main reason I wrote one. I also noticed that most of those books clearly promote a particular set of political views. As a result, another reason I wrote this book was to show that some Christians see some of those things a bit differently. Accordingly, while some political issues do come up in my book, I take a slightly different approach to them than I've seen other writers in this genre take.
Readers who are familiar with or curious about Pentecostalism will likely enjoy the descriptions of several revival services that take place throughout the story.
The district convocation wasn’t scheduled to begin until Thursday, which was nice because it meant the group from Ridgeview wouldn’t have to miss their own Wednesday night service. When Thursday night finally arrived, the men and women showed up at New Vision early enough to find a large group of adjacent seats for them to occupy. Even before they found those seats, however, the group noticed that they were the only Caucasians in the building. That fact didn’t seem to bother any of the other congregants, though, so the Ridgeview gang decided they wouldn’t let it bother them either. Besides, the service would begin in just a few minutes anyway.
To kick things off, an elderly gentleman led the congregation in a few choruses, all of which Luke recognized from his years as a Pentecostal teenager. After the last one, “We Have Come into This House,” it was time for the choir to sing. At the end of the choir’s first song, Abby got to witness something she had never seen before, something she would later learn was called a “praise break.” After the song’s last vocal note, the organist and the drummer started playing faster.
Then, it happened. It started in the choir loft, but it didn’t take long to spread through the entire congregation to the point where people all over the sanctuary were dancing–their eyes tightly closed, their arms flailing, and their feet shuffling with seemingly supernatural speed. Somehow, Abby instinctively knew that this was no normal, earthly dancing. She could tell by the ecstatic glow on the faces of the people engaged in this intense worship that they had been overwhelmed by the Spirit; that they were simply letting their bodies respond to a feeling–a feeling that, for the first time in her life, she wanted.
As the high praise began to subside, the choir sang a song with a slower tempo as the worshippers continued to bask in the presence of the Lord. Sensing the time was right to deliver his sermon, a younger man approached the pulpit. All the musicians except the organist left the stage. Abby had never heard a sermon with musical accompaniment, but she really thought it added something.
The young man began his sermon by saying, “I want to thank God tonight for the opportunity to be here and to bring you a word I believe he led me to minister. I know the Spirit is already moving in this place, and as we break the bread of life together, it’s my prayer that His anointing will continue to rest upon us.”
At that moment, several members of the crowd responded with a loud “Amen!”
Unflustered, the preacher continued, “I know most of you here tonight have already been baptized in the Holy Ghost. I can tell by the way you worship.”
“Come on, now!” cried a voice in the crowd, encouraging the preacher.
“But I also know,” he went on, “that in a crowd this size, no doubt several of you here tonight have not yet received the baptism in the Holy Ghost. Perhaps some of you, like the Ephesians Luke mentions in Acts 19, ‘have not yet heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.’ If that’s you tonight. . .”
At that moment, the organist struck a chord. “If you’re in one of those categories. . .” As the organist struck another chord, Abby could feel her heart racing. This preacher had her full attention, and the hair on the backs of her arms was standing straight up. She knew God was speaking to her. “This message is for you,” said the preacher, and Abby knew he was right.
It wasn’t that she had “not yet heard whether there be any Holy Ghost,” she had. Having grown up Baptist, however, she hadn't believed that the baptism in the Holy Ghost was a separate experience from salvation–an endowment of power God offers to those who are already saved and hungry for something more. As the preacher continued, though, she listened closely.
“Turn with me, if you will, to the 8th chapter of the book of Acts.” Abby opened her Bible to that passage and read along silently as the preacher read out loud. “Beginning in verse 14: Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: Who, when they had come down, prayed for them, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.”
Even before the preacher explained that passage, Abby had already noticed something she had never noticed before. These people had already been baptized! As a Baptist, she knew full well that, if they were already baptized, then at some point before their baptism, they had gotten saved. Yet, even though they were already saved, there was at least some sense in which they had not yet “received the Holy Ghost.” For the first time in her life, she realized that she hadn’t either, and she immediately determined in her heart that she wasn’t going to leave that church that night until she had.
During the rest of his sermon, the preacher explained not only that the baptism in the Holy Ghost is indeed a separate experience from salvation available for the asking to any Christian who wants it; but also that, according to the Biblical pattern, everyone who receives it speaks in unknown tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance. He closed his sermon by quoting Acts 2:38-38: “The Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”
Abby knew that word “all” included her, and she didn’t hesitate for even a moment when the preacher invited anyone who wanted to receive the Holy Ghost to come forward. In fact, she had already started trying to get to the aisle before the preacher even finished giving the invitation. Her hands had already been trembling for a while, and, as she stood up to make her way to the front, she could feel her legs shaking as well. As Abby squeezed past Luke, he could sense what was about to happen, and his heart leapt for joy. He got up to follow her, and as the two of them pressed past their brothers and sisters from Ridgeview toward the aisle, Tabitha reached her own trembling hands toward them and started quietly praying in tongues.
Luke and Abby made their way to the front of the sanctuary where they stood in line with others who had also come to receive the baptism. Luke stood behind his wife, one hand on each of her shoulders, as the musicians and singers returned to the stage. As they began to play and sing, the preacher walked down the platform steps to his right where, speaking loudly in tongues himself, he laid his hand on the forehead of the person standing at that end of the line. Immediately, that teenage boy collapsed, trembling uncontrollably, with tears streaming down his face as he opened his mouth and began to cry out in his own heavenly language. Luke watched as every single person the preacher touched responded similarly, knowing that Abby’s moment was drawing closer and closer.
As all this was happening, Luke also noticed that the singers were singing another song he remembered from his Pentecostal upbringing as they belted out the words, “Send it on down, Lord, send it on down. Lord, let the Holy Ghost come on down.” Before they made it through the next repetition, the preacher got to Abby. Before his hand even made it all the way onto her forehead, her whole body started convulsing wildly. Once his hand made contact with her head, though, Luke didn’t even have time to catch her. Instead, she fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes thrown from the back of a truck. She lay there for nearly an hour, shouting in syllables Luke had never heard her use in that order before. Even though she eventually regained enough balance to make it to the car for the ride home, she could barely speak English for the rest of the night.