'The Jesus Movement'

In time my parole ended and I got a better job that paid more where my mother worked. Since I now had the weekend free, I decided to check out that Jesus Movement Church. I had to drive there as it was in another town. As I pulled in their parking lot, I heard them singing those same old gospel songs that I first heard on the old family Victoria that my dad had given me when I first became a teenager. I felt comfortable so I went in and found a seat although it was crowded. After the singing ended and their evangelist gave his sermon it was time to pray. Since I was already a nominal Christian and knew more Bible than they did since I came from the Bible belt, I didn't think that I needed much prayer since God was already blessing me big time. Why ask for more, if you have much?

But I went down to the altar to pray anyway even though I felt that I didn't have any real needs since God was already blessing me and I felt thankful. So while I was thanking God in English, suddenly I began to thank God in other tongues too. (Now at this time there had been no mention of the baptism in the Holy Ghost). So at first I didn't really understand what had just happened. Until a few minutes later when I started to shake again just as I had done as a teenager. Then things came together as I figured out that my shaking had something to do with God. The Pastor of their fellowship also seemed to recognize that God was all over me and motioned me to pray for another young man nearby. Which I moved over to do and that guy began to speak in tongues too. Well it was all wonderful and I drove home thanking God. But I still did not really understand it.

I first learned on subsequent visits to their church that these Jesus people were mainly of two different types. Most, especially the regular worshippers were native Californians. Other Jesus people were transients from everywhere and anywhere. The native Californians were more educated and more middle class than most Americans. They were the all white children of California aerospace workers. They were not racially diverse but still had revival anyway.

The next Sunday I visited that church again. After service and praying some it was time to go to Katherine Khulman's miracle crusade that afternoon in downtown LA. I went because I liked to see God doing stuff. I guess I went several times. Her meeting was held in the Shrine auditorium in downtown LA, once each month back in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Once I happened to arrive late at one of her meeting. So I was at the entrance, way down in back trying to find a seat like everyone else. Katharine Khulman was far away up on the stage. The service had just started and they had sung her theme songs about 'Believing in Miracles' and 'He Touched Me'. As the songs ended, she stopped the service and pointed to where I was standing and said that the Holy Ghost was doing something back there where I was. Some of the women by me started shrieking. We all looked to see what was happening. We saw a young woman with a red dot on her forehead (apparently a Hindu) carrying a baby that had water on the brain with a head as big as a watermelon. As we looked at the baby's head I guess our vision became like what the dopers call 'trails' or intermittent vision. Anyway we saw the baby's head shrink in stages from watermelon size down to the size of a football right in front of our eyes. This was the most 'out of sight' miracle that I ever personally saw. It caused some of us who realized that we were now in the presence of the living God to fall on our faces. Thank You, Jesus!

The next Sunday I went to that Jesus people church again and found out that it was called Bethel Tabernacle, founded by the pastor Lyle Steenis of the California Evangelical Association. It was full gospel but not part of any Pentecostal Denomination. It was not a teaching church with programs. Instead it was a Spirit filled independent deliverance church. They took most scriptures literally. It seemed that their main concern was to get new converts baptized in the Holy Spirit. Since the ex-dopers there believed in feeling and had taken dope for that purpose, they insisted that one's conversion and salvation was not complete without feeling God in Holy Spirit baptism. And once one was baptized in the Holy Spirit they did not need any man to teach them (1 John 2:27). This seemed to work out well as I never saw any of them arguing about anything. No one ever seemed to raise their voice and I never saw any fights there.

Although I was neither a native Californian nor an ex-doper these Jesus people wanted me to move in with them and become part of their ministry of evangelism and miracles. They seemed to recognize that I knew more Bible than they did. But this was because I was from the Bible belt of the South. Where almost all of us know a whole lot more Bible than what we really live out in our daily lives. Since I had also always been a loner to some degree I was reluctant about moving in and told them I'd pray about it.

I knew that these people also prayed about things first before they did them, so I figured that this must be God and I moved in and went where they went all over Southern California ministering.

Looking back on it all now, I spent the best three years of my life there and I thank God that I was given the privilege and the high honor to give to the Lord Jesus the best three years of my life, from age 20 to 23. And I was not yet wheelchair disabled back then.

I moved into one of their apartments. (That church owned several apartments). I had my own room in one of them. My days were very busy. We did not read devotions, we lived them. Sometimes we'd get to pray before we ate. Sometimes we didn't even have enough time to eat. Each day began with me going with big AL on his flatbed truck to obtain groceries for the beloved. We got that food by 'dumpster diving', eating for free what the supermarkets had thrown away. Our job was to keep five separate rehabilitation homes supplied with good food. We always had enough and sometimes we gave good food away at the church or on the street or at the beach or at the airport.

Every Sunday Pastor Steenis, the old dirt farmer from Kansas would give us our 'Marching orders' via his sermon for that week. One Sunday he told us that he had heard about a new book about the end times that some of us were reading. This book was entitled: The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.

He went on to tell us that 'Hal Lindsey had been a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, a Baptist school in Texas and had just published information taken from his class notes in his eschatology class. The pre-tribulation rapture was a common heretical Baptist Viewpoint which Hal Lindsey had presented as his own. Such plagiarism and calling it revelation is theft. And theft does not authenticate any theology especially Revelation....