That is how I was saved
more than 50 years ago
”””””””””””””””””””””“
Reports have been coming in from Christian groups in widely separated locations of what appears to be a strange new phenomenon. Believers of different ages and widely different social backgrounds are being overcome by prolonged outbursts of laughter which have no obvious cause. Sometimes they may also act as if they are drunk.
Often this laughter appears to be contagious. Those who have experienced it apparently ‘transmit’ it to others. Large groups may be seized by it simultaneously.
Both ministers and lay people from a wide range of denominations have been affected in this way. Some testify that it has had a stimulating effect on their faith and has brought them closer to the Lord. On the other hand, there are those who are sceptical and view this kind of experience as a deception of the enemy.
As a result of all this, I am frequently being asked whether I believe that the Holy Spirit at times produces in people prolonged, exuberant and apparently causeless laughter. ‘I have to believe it,’ I reply, ‘because that is how I was saved more than 50 years ago.’
In the summer of 1941, I was part of a medical unit of the British Army billeted in a hotel on the North Bay of Scarborough in Yorkshire. The hotel had been gutted of all its furniture and fittings. Our ‘beds’ were simply straw mattresses on the floor.
While in Scarborough I had some brief contacts with Pentecostal Christians, who confronted me for the first time with my need to receive Christ as my personal Saviour. At that point in my life I was a nominal Anglican, who never voluntarily attended church. I had never before heard of Pentecostals, and I had no idea what they believed or what kind of people they were.
About nine months previously, however, I had started to read the Bible through from beginning to end. I had no religious motive. I regarded the Bible merely as a work of philosophy. As a professional philosopher, I felt it was my academic duty to find out what the Bible had to say. At that point I had come as far as the book of Job ”“ but it had been a dreary task!
Confronted in this way with the claims of Christ, however, I decided about 11 o’clock one night to pray ‘until something happened’. I had no idea what I might expect to happen. For about an hour I struggled in vain to form some kind of coherent prayer. Then about midnight I became aware of a presence and I found myself saying to some unknown person what Jacob had said when wrestling with the angel at Peniel: ‘Unless you bless me, I will not let you go’ (Genesis 32:26).
I repeated these words several times with increasing emphasis: ‘I will not let you go, I will not let you go …’ Then I began to say to the same unknown person, ‘Make me love you more and more’. When I got to these last words, I began to repeat them: ‘more and more and more …’
At this point an invisible power came down over me and I found myself on my back on the floor, with my arms in the air, still saying, ‘more and more and more …’
After a while my words changed to deep sobbing which rose up from my belly through my lips, shaking my whole body convulsively. The sobs did not proceed out of anything in my conscious mind. I had no special sense of being sinful.
After about half an hour, without any act of my volition, the sobbing changed to laughter. I had no more conscious reason for laughing than I had had for sobbing. The laughter, like the sobbing, flowed from my belly. At first, it was quite gentle, but it gradually became louder and louder. I had the impression that I was being immersed in a sea of laughter that reverberated around the room.
At this point the soldier who shared the room with me woke up to find me on my back on the floor clothed only in my underwear, with my arms in the air, laughing uproariously. Rising from his mattress, he walked around me rather helplessly two or three times, keeping at a safe distance. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know what to do with you. I suppose it’s no good pouring water over you.’ An inaudible voice within me responded, ‘Even water wouldn’t put this out!’
However, I remembered dimly having heard years earlier in church that we should not blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Contrary to all my natural reasoning, I knew that what was in me was the Holy Spirit. In order not to offend my friend, I rolled over onto my face and laboriously crawled to my mattress. Pulling the blanket over my head, I eventually fell asleep, still laughing ”“ quietly. Renewal Journal 5: Signs and Wonders ”“
