Wednesday, 2 September 2026

Three who Fell under the Power of the Spirit

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I had never heard of this phenomenon until 1975. I was now in my first pastorate, Adat Ha Tikvah in Chicago, which changed its name from the First Hebrew Christian Church. After a bad experience at a charismatic congregation in my last year at Wheaton, I wanted nothing to do with Charismatics or Pentecostals. Though I was still very much a skeptic in my last year at Wheaton, I knew enough to know that the direction of this church was wrong and dangerous. I came back to committed faith in the Spring of 1970. By the mid 1970s, I again embraced the reality of the immersion in the Spirit, speaking in tongues and the gifts of the Spirit. How that happened is a longer story. One part of that story is my Professor in Philosophy of Religion, Dr. Stuart Hackett. His story is my first account.

Dr. Stuart Hackett

I excelled in Stuart Hackett’s Philosophy of Religion Courses in my junior year at Wheaton College. I was thus invited to be his assistant, to grade the exams and student papers. We became friends in my senior year as a result. I sought to keep in touch and would visit him when in Wheaton to visit my future wife, then in our first year of marriage when my wife was finishing Wheaton. Then we moved to Chicago to take the pastorate of the First Hebrew Christian Church. One time Dr. Hackett visited and preached for us. Dr. Hackett was a Christian rationalist. Anything real and important could be proven by rational argument and empirical evidence. Then on one of my visits, he astonished me with the following story.

The first example. I asked him how he was doing with his arthritic elbow. He was now about 50 years old. He used to love to do push-ups but had to give this up. Then he told me the following. I paraphrase, but I believe this account is trustworthy. In answer to my question he said,

“Well Daniel, you are not going to believe this, but God healed me. I not only had arthritis in the elbow but in my spine. It became terribly painful. A friend wanted me to go to a meeting with a healing evangelist. I did not want to go, but he kept urging. I thought, ‘I guess it would not hurt to get prayer.’ After his teaching in the church sanctuary, he invited people up for healing prayer. Some of the people were falling on the floor, fainting. It seemed so bizarre. My friend urged me to go up for prayer, but I thought, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this.’ But finally, after his urging I decided to go up to humor him. I was not going to fall down like these people. The evangelist reached out his hand to pray for me and the next thing I knew I was on the floor with waves of God’s love flowing over me. When I got up, I was praying in tongues and was totally healed.”

The second example was my brother Richard who was 7 years older than I. Richard was an officer in the Airforce. He was also very rationalistic. My sister called him “The head.” He had straight A's throughout school, and when he graduated, the local newspaper wrote that he had the highest average in the 50 year history of the school. He was the last person I expected to tell me this story.

“I attended a meeting of the healing evangelist Gene Lily. I went up for prayer. I did not want to fall down like some people were but wanted prayer for healing. When he reached out his hand, I hardly remember him touching me, I fell down on the floor. Waves of God’s love came over me. It was the greatest experience of my life.”

Until Richard died in 2002 at the age of 68, with complications from Agent Orange exposure, he said this was the greatest experience of his life. I think it helped sustain him in his last years of physical suffering.

The third account is of my best friend in our secular high school. Michael D’lasnow was Jewish. His grandparents were Orthodox Jews, but his parents were secular Jews. From my sophomore year through my junior year, we walked to school every day. Mike was a year older then I, but after he graduated and went as a commuter to a university nearby, we used to study together. He was the best man at our wedding. I shared the Gospel with Mike from when I was 15, and when he was 50 years old in the Spring of 1998, Mike prayed to accept Yeshua. My wife Patty predicted that this would happen on this trip when we visited. Life had been hard for Mike. He had a degree in psychology and worked as an intake counselor. He had many different jobs, but struggled with smoking, some drugs though he was not an addict. He was in a common law marriage and had a son. His wife died not long after of a heart attack and Mike had to raise his son. Mike connected to the Messianic Jewish congregation that was related to us in Rockland, County, New York. He loved the leader who was a drama professor. Somehow, I am not sure how, Michael attended the renewal services at Wycoff, New Jersey, Assembly of God Church. He went forward for prayer and fell under the power of the Spirit. Waves of God’s love overcame him and came again and again. Mike professed that this was the greatest experience of his life. He did maintain a friendship with Pastor Don James.

There are other friends who had this experience and were in my view unliley candidates.

My Evaluation

When I was a leader at Beth Messiah Congregation in Maryland near Washington, one of my elders, Gary Dickenson, said that the Holy Spirit was going to move in our congregation and people would fall under the power of the Spirit. I had never seen this and was not excited about it. However, as we prayed for people, this started to happen. There are amazing stories of transformation. I never was overwhelmed at such a time of prayer, but accepted the testimony of others. I also know that people do courtesy falls to make the healing evangelist look good. I would question people who fell and ask what happened to them. I found some had real and powerful experiences and some did not. I did have two experiences when I was prayed for where I was weak and it was difficult to stand. One was in Singapore in 1989 when I was prayed for by the famous Argentinian evangelist, Carlos Annacondia. I felt weakness and slipped to the floor. It was not overwhelming. But for the next weeks there was a powerful sense of the Spirit’s presence. The second time was at a renewal meeting with a pastor evangelist in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 1990s. Some were having amazing experiences, but others were not. However, after I returned home, I had the same experience of great Holy Spirit presence.

I believe this is a real experience and some find it transformative. I recall the word of the famous hymn, O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus. The words almost seem to describe the experience of my professor, my brother and my old high school friend. I wonder if the writer experience this.

O the deep deep love of Jesus, Vast unmeasured, boundless free.
Flowing like a mighty ocean, in its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love,
Leading onward, leading homeward, to thy glorious rest above.