Author: Hugh Holmes Morgan
Scripture text: Luke 3:16
John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of Whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (NIV).
The account of the first Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2:1-4:
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
NIV
[Editor’s commentary: Please note that Jesus Christ is the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit and fire.]
I was born and reared in a Pentecostal Holiness home in Birmingham, Alabama.
My father, Hugh Henry Morgan, was an ordained minister and a bi-vocational evangelist, pastor, and church planter/builder of churches. My mother, Julia Payne Morgan, was a missionary to China for nine years prior to marrying my father in Oklahoma City in 1929 at the General Conference. Bishop Dan T. Muse, the first bishop from the west, performed their wedding ceremony. Both my parents were graduates of Holmes Bible and Missionary Institute in Greenville, SC, when it was located on Paris Mountain. N. J. Holmes was the founder and president, and Paul F. Beacham was a teacher of the Bible.
I have an older sister, Mary Evelyn Morgan, who is almost three years older than I. She was beautiful with dark brown curly hair, olive complexion, and brown eyes. She was an exceptional student and a member of the National Honor Society in high school. She was a creative writer and a gifted teacher. She played the piano.
I tell you all of this to let you know they all had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. My mother would pray in tongues daily in her devotional time with the Lord. I have often heard her praying in other tongues early in the mornings as she poured her heart out to God. I knew in my spirit that her Pentecostal experience was genuine, and I desired to experience this blessing from God too.
When I was six years old Mary Evelyn and I attended a daily vacation Bible school in our neighborhood at a Christian Missionary Alliance Church. On the last day of the school, my teacher gave a presentation of the Gospel using a flannel graph. She showed how black our hearts are because of sin. She compared it to a heart that was white to illustrate purity as the blood of Jesus is applied to the heart inside of us. She talked about the Holy Spirit giving us the ability to repent, and place our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. She asked me if I would like to invite Jesus into my heart. I immediately said, “Yes, I would.” She led me in the sinner’s prayer as we knelt on our knees. What a change happened instantly; I became a new creation in Christ Jesus. I knew something had happened inside of me, and I knew my name was written In the Lamb’s Book of Life. She told me to tell my parents.
On the way home, I told my sister. Then, I told my mother after we got home. She rejoiced and prayed with me.
Meanwhile, I felt a strong urge to go tell my neighbors on my street called Division Avenue. There were 13 homes with families. Each house had a front porch with a swing, a rocking chair, and a straight back chair. The floor of the porch was high off the ground. Children enjoyed dangling their feet over the edge. Fathers worked eight hour shifts and would come home and the wives would have a delicious supper for the family. After dining, they would retreat to the front porch. This was family time during the late 30s and 40s. There was no television, and children entertained themselves. However, telling family stories were an exciting time of every day. Of course, on Sundays, we all walked to church, or rode the street car that came to the area where we lived in East Lake. The track made a circle for the turnaround for the streetcar. I loved to ride them.
I went to every home and gave them my testimony. Mind you, I was a stutterer and very timid. When I shared what Jesus had done for me, I did not stutter at all. That was a miracle. I told them that I was a sinner and asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins, come in my heart in order that I might live for Him the rest of my life. Then, I added, now my name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life never to be removed. One day I will go to heaven. I then said I want to invite you to give your heart to the Lord. You can do it this very hour.
It is my belief that when I got saved or born-again God gave me the gift of evangelism. It is very easy for me to talk to people about God and Jesus His Son. Witnessing is like breathing for me. It is natural. I enjoy sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It satisfies my soul like eating a delicious meal. When the disciples asked Jesus if someone had brought Him food to eat, He responded by saying, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of” (John 4:32, KJV).
However, I had a problem. I was not sanctified and baptized with the Holy Spirit. I heard these doctrines preached and taught. I desired to have a cleansed heart and to live a holy life, and to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. I went to the altar when invitations were given many times. However, I had not received the promised gift from the Father and the Son, i.e., the Baptism with or in the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. I graduated from grammar school, high school, college, and seminary and had not received this blessing personally. I desired with all my heart to have this promised gift and be empowered to be a witness to Jesus. In fact, I was ordained by my denomination without this experience. How they approved me for credentials is a mystery to me.
After graduation from Asbury Theological Seminary in May 1963, Leon O. Stewart, my conference superintendent, assigned me to the Brownville Pentecostal Holiness Church about 6 or so miles from Evergreen, AL. The church was out in the country. The membership was 66 but I never saw that many people when I began my ministry there. I, say my ministry . . . but I need to back up. I was married and Melvine, my wife, shared equally in the ministry God had given to us. My salary was $35 a week with an unfurnished parsonage with lights and water from a well. We had indoor plumbing. There was no air conditioning and it does get hot and humid in South Alabama. Somehow, you learn to live with it.
Leon Stewart told me that the church had great potential. He was right. Every church has great potential if God is in it and has called you to be there and you are willing to work at it.
Prior to being assigned to the Brownville church at the annual conference, I understood that it was the only church available in the conference that year and that I would be assigned to be their pastor. We had no place to sleep when we came to the annual conference at River Springs Camp Grounds approximately 10 miles from the church. The lady who was the secretary and treasurer had the key to the parsonage, but was gone to Pensacola, Florida for an all-night Gospel Singing. So, I was able to open a window to the dining room and crawled in, and opened the door for Melvine to come into the house through the kitchen. There were no beds, so Melvine and I made a pallet and slept on the floor.
When the people of the church found out that we had slept on the floor, they responded immediately. They came to our rescue and brought us a bed and furniture. When my superintendent heard about it, he called me aside privately to inform me that “I had no authority to sleep in the parsonage. You are not the pastor until I read out the stationing committee report.” That shocked and upset me. I started to tell him that I was no longer a candidate to be the pastor of the Brownville church, and walk away. I had received numerous offers from the United Methodist Church from bishops from north to south, and coast to coast. I graduated from Asbury Theological Seminary in the top 6% of my class. The president and the academic dean encouraged me to become a Methodist pastor. They had recommended me to several Methodist bishops. Something inside of me rose up and said, “Hugh, you can’t do that. You cannot denounce your Pentecostal Holiness heritage and just walk away. You need to come under the authority of your superintendent and commit to being accountable to him.” I am so glad I did not turn and walk away. God intervened for me and gave me a word of wisdom. Sure enough, at the annual conference the superintendent read my name assigning me to the Brownville Pentecostal Holiness Church. It was then I was officially the pastor of the Brownville church. I needed that authority and covering to be the pastor from the conference to begin and accomplish our ministry to those wonderful country people.
The parsonage was next door to the church. It had an electric stove and oven, a refrigerator with a freezer unit, and a washing machine. In those days we washed our clothes and hung them out to dry on the clothesline. When Greg was born in June 1964, I remember washing diapers and hanging them on the clothesline. What a blessing it is today to have depends and you don’t have to wash and dry diapers anymore. How blessed parents are today.
I read the Scriptures daily and sought the Lord for the baptism with or in the Holy Spirit. I fully believed and expected to receive this blessing personally. I knew in my heart it was Scriptural and for me.
However, I had a wrong conception of speaking in tongues. I thought that the Holy Spirit would take my tongue and I would hear the language with my ears. I was totally wrong. It is little wonder I had not received the Pentecostal blessing in the many years of seeking this gift.
Meanwhile, Oral Roberts came to Pensacola, Florida for a tent crusade. Melvine and I were invited to a breakfast at the hotel with the other pastors and wives in that area. We accepted the invitation. Little did we know that George Fisher, who had been Melvine’s pastor at the Draper Pentecostal Holiness Church in Eden, NC, now worked with Oral and was one of his right-hand men. George and Elsie Fisher, and their children, had gone to South Africa to be missionaries when they left the church in Draper. It was George Fisher who helped Oral plan and carry out a successful crusade in Johannesburg, South Africa.
We were glad to see George. He was a great pastor when Melvine was growing up. He played the piano and sang. George asked me what degrees I had from college and seminary. He seemed to be interested that my major in college at Furman University was in psychology. Apparently, he went to tell Oral, and Oral came to ask me if I would be interested in getting my Ph.D. degree in psychology, if so, he said he would pay all the expenses if I would agree to teach in the university. I was overwhelmed by such an offer. I didn’t really know what to say. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. I thanked Oral for the offer and told him that Psychology was my first love and it was rather easy for me. I told Oral that I was humbled and grateful for his offer to do such a thing for me. However, I told Oral, “God has called me to be a chaplain to men and women in the military. That call came during my three years in the Marine Corps at Quantico, Virginia, and I must obey God." That ended that discussion.
Shortly after that conversation with Oral Roberts, George Fisher received a call informing him that Air Force Chaplain, Colonel, Eugene Meyers, was killed in a USAF Military Transport Aircraft, a C-135, over Manilla, Philippines. Some 57 souls went down in that plane in that tragic accident. Within a few days after Melvine and I had gotten home in Brownville, Bishop J. A. Synan, the general superintendent of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, called me. He informed me that Chaplain Meyers had died in an air crash in the Philippines. He asked me if I would consider resigning my commission as an Army Reserve chaplain, and going into the Air Force Chaplaincy to fill the vacancy Meyers had left. I told the bishop that God was blessing the church I was pastoring and that the church was filled on Sundays in the morning and evening worship services. God had given to our church families with children and a number of teenagers who were very active in the church. I said, “If there is a man who has been called to be a military chaplain, and has the educational requirements and pastoral leadership experience to qualify for the chaplaincy, then give him the opportunity first. There was no one. So, Melvine and I took it that this was God’s Will for me to go into the Air Force Chaplaincy. Every major decision I ever made during my marriage of almost 60 years to the love of my life I consulted with Melvine.
However, it took quite a while to fill out all the paperwork to resign my commission as a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve, take another physical exam, and be sworn in as an officer in the Air Force. In due time, everything fell in place and all was Go for the Air Force.
I prepared a farewell sermon for my congregation about “Making up the Hedge and Standing in the Gap.” The Scripture text is recorded in the Book of Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 22:30
30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
KJV
Meanwhile, let me tell you that Oral Roberts spoke to us that day in Pensacola, FL, about the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. He made it crystal clear for me for the first time in my life. He spoke about the Holy Spirit coming up in your body from the stomach and permeating your body. He explained that the Holy Spirit will give you words, or word formations that you have never heard, known or learned. It will be your responsibility to speak those words whether it is one or two, or more words you have never learned or heard before. That means God is giving you the utterance, but you have to speak the words God gives you. I had never known that before. I thought the Holy Spirit would take over my tongue and mouth and speak through me. All I had to do was to listen. I was wrong. It is little wonder in all the years of seeking to be baptized with the Holy Spirit I had not been able to receive. I did not know that I would be required to speak words the Holy Spirit would give me in that moment of time.
Oral gave us his book, The Baptism with the Holy Spirit, which explains all of this in minute detail which I read and devoured. You see I was hungry to receive this promise gift from the Father and the Son. I desired the Pentecostal blessing.
Not long after our meeting with Oral Roberts in Pensacola, FL for that breakfast meeting I was kneeling around the old wooden altar in the Brownville church on a Wednesday night after teaching a lesson in the Bible to about 25 adults. That altar rail was lower than I would have liked, but I often went there to pray. All of a sudden without praying to receive the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit came upon me and filled me from my stomach or inmost being and came to my mind, heart, and mouth. I heard three words . . . just three words that I have never heard. I was listening now because Oral Roberts had taught me to listen. He did not tell him how to speak in tongues but to hear what the Spirit gave me in that moment. I spoke them. They sounded funny to me, but I spoke them anyway. As I spoke those words as the Spirit gave the utterance or words, other words began to flow and I continued to speak in a fluent language I have never known or studied. It was exhilarating, exciting, enriching, and encouraging. I spoke in tongues off and on for three days. I needed that kind of infilling of the Blessed Holy Spirit for my own personal benefit, as well as the expansive ministries God would be giving me in a matter of weeks in the Air Force Chaplaincy. I had never thought of being an Air Force chaplain. I was an Army Reserve chaplain and assigned to a medical group in Birmingham, AL. I had graduated from the Army Chaplain Basic Orientation Course at Fort Slocum, NY, off the shore from New Rochelle, NY, on David’s Island in the summer of 1962, just before my senior year in seminary.
Melvine thought I was going crazy.
My life changed completely. I was able to read the Bible with an understanding I had not previously experienced. Passages that had been troublesome for me vanished and I understood at a new level God’s written Word. I had labored for hours over commentaries that never made sense to me. Now, I was no longer holden to them. God had something better instore for me.
I want you to know that this Pentecostal experience with speaking in tongues is for real. It is genuine. I claim it and will proclaim it in accordance with what the Bible says about it. My personal experience has come into conformity with the written Word.
This Pentecostal Blessing is real and I know it is real. PTL