autobiography_sh2

University of Southern California

At the end of that first year (1952-1953), I left Fuller Seminary to begin graduate study in philosophy at the University of Southern California. During that year at Fuller, I learned what a minister was expected to do; he was not only expected to preach and teach, but to run a church, counsel people, as well as many other things that I did not think I could do or was called as a teacher to do. It seem to me and to Edith that I should pursue graduate work in philosophy (since that was what my undergraduate degree was in) and prepare to teach philosophy at a Christian college. So we put the kids into a day-care center and we both found full-time jobs so I could on a part-time basis pursue graduate work. Edith found a secretary job in downtown Los Angeles and I found a job as a quality control inspector at night in West Hollywood. We bought a car and I learned to drive. It all seemed to be working out, until in the summer of 1954 I got laid off along with all the other employees at the machine shop where I worked. The employer did not want to pay them for their vacation. I decided to try to find some other employment and began to look around. I remember going to North American Aviation Company and being offered a job, if I would go back to school and get an engineering degree. They like my background in philosophy or liberal arts as they called it, and they wanted me to be trained in engineering so they could make me a manager. I told them “No”; I did not want to be a manager, but a teacher. As the summer went on, I found no job and began to think that what I needed to do was to develop a trade that I could work at on my own schedule. I decided that radio and TV repair would be interesting and profitable trade. So as I went about to job interviews, I visited the various electronic trade schools in Los Angeles. One school that I found in the yellow pages, was a college of electronic engineering, Pacific States University. It offered a B.S. in Electronic Engineering in 32 months. I was curious; how could they do that in 32 months? I had a job interview down near where that school was and after the interview I stopped by the school. I talked with the dean of the school, Harry Evans, and after finding out about the school (the degree could be completed in 32 months because school went year round, three semesters in the year) and after telling him about my background, he offered me a teaching job, teaching liberal arts, and in the semester which was to start in two weeks he wanted me to teach a course in Business Organization. I told him that I never had taken a course in Business Organization; how could I teach that subject? He said to me, “You have a B.A. degree, and you are now working on your masters. You know how to study, then you can teach the course.” Well, I wanted to teach and I needed a job. So after calling Edith, I took the job.

Pacific States University

So while I was pursuing second year of study toward a master degree, I was hired in 1954 to teach liberal arts courses at Pacific States University, College of Electronic Engineering. Dean Evans hired me as a full-time instructor, teaching six hours a day. There were four liberal art classes to teach and to fill out my full-time schedule, he gave me the engineering drafting class and the algebra math lab to teach. While assisting in the algebra math lab, Dean Evans urged me to study mathematics and to take at other schools all the courses in mathematics that were being taught at PSU; he said that the school would pay for it. So I started taking lower division mathematics courses at USC and Los Angeles City College. (Many years later in 1964, I completed an undergraduate major in mathematics and did graduate work in mathematics at California State University at Los Angeles.) While pursuing this study, the dean at PSU moved me from teaching liberal arts to teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry. I helped revised the curriculum, introducing new courses, such as Elementary Physics (for those who did not have high school physics), Chemistry and Introduction to Philosophy. I got so involved in teaching (I was teaching not only in the day school, but also in evening school, which school was launched in 1956), that after I finished all the courses required for the masters in philosophy at USC, I put off writing my master’s thesis.

Edith’s B.A.

During the summer of 1955 at the end of my first year of teaching at PSU, we took a two week vacation between semesters and drove back to Springfield, Illinois, to visit our families and friends there. Finally, Edith graduated in absentia from Wheaton College during 1956 with a B.A. in Bible. She took the last two courses that she needed to complete the requirements for her college degree: a course in English Literature at Los Angeles Pacific College, on whose campus we were still living, and a course in Ancient History at USC. She took the comprehensive exams, which were administered by Pacific States of University, where I was teaching, and she was graduated in absentia from Wheaton in the summer of 1956, almost twelve years after she started to college. Also in 1956, we moved to Westmoreland Ave in Los Angeles near Culver Academy where we wanted to put Stephen and Barbara in school. In 1957, we had our third child, Judy Rae Shelton, who was born on Feb. 9, 1957. In the 1958, we moved to North Hollywood so that we would be close to the North Hollywood Free Church, where I taught a young adult Sunday school class. The pastor was Robert Johnson, who was a graduate of Fuller Seminary in 1952.

Fuller, Again

While I was teaching the young adult class at the North Hollywood Evangelical Free Church in the late 1950’s, I taught the book of Romans. In preparing to teach Paul’s letter to the Romans, the Lord showed me the meaning of the righteousness of God which is the theme of that letter (Rom. 1:17). I had been taught in the theology and Bible courses that I had taken at BJU, Wheaton and Fuller, that the righteousness of God was the justice of God, that is, that attribute of God whereby God deals with man according to their works, rendering punishment to those who transgress his law and rewards and blessings to those who keep his law. This concept of righteousness implied that salvation is by meritorious works which is contrary to Scripture (Rom. 4:3-6; Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5-8). In fact, the Reformation doctrine of Justification by faith actually teaches that salvation or eternal life was earned for us by Christ’s active obedience, by the good works that Christ did during His life on earth, and that these merits of Christ are imputed to the account of those that believe. The Reformed doctrine of Justification is vicarious salvation by works. I could not find this doctrine in the Scriptures and in particular not in Romans; the Scriptures never speaks of the merits or the righteousness of Christ nor of them being imputed to the believers account. In fact, it says that “faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5, 9, 22-25) and that faith excludes works. In my reading as I investigate this difficulty, I found that Luther had a problem with the concept of the righteousness of God as justice. But Luther attempted to solve the problem by denying the active meaning of righteousness (the attribute of God by which He punishes sin and rewards man’s good works) and by equating the righteousness of God with righteousness in a passive sense as that given by God, the righteousness from God. The Protestant scholastics after Luther accepted both senses and equated the passive righteousness with the merits of Christ that He earned for us by His active obedience. Because their explanation of the death of Christ was still grounded in the legalistic concept of justice, that is, that Christ died to pay the penalty for man’s sin which the justice of God requires to be paid before God can save man, they had to retain the active sense also. This concept of the righteousness of God is the doctrine that I was taught in the courses that I had taken. Then I came across the commentary on Romans by C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans and his book The Bible and the Greeks where he shows that the Biblical concept of righteousness of God is different from the Greek-Roman concept of justice. Instead of as an attribute, the righteousness of God is an act or activity of God where God puts right the wrong. In the Old Testament, it is the activity of God in which He delivers the oppress and vindicates the righteous, those who trust in the true God. The righteousness of God is a synonym for the salvation of God which emphasizes deliverance from that which is wrong to that which is right. Justification is therefore the act of putting or setting right the wrong. In the New Testament, the righteousness of God is the activity of God whereby He sets man right with Himself. Justification is not just a vindication of the righteous who has been wronged (this view is in Jesus’ teaching in Matt. 5:6; 6:33; Luke 18:7), but it is also the salvation of the ungodly who are delivered from their ungodliness and unrighteousness;

“And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5).

Justification not only saves the ungodly from their sins, it also brings them into the righteousness of faith. Justification is not a legal declaration or pronoucement of one’s legal status (the Protestant doctrine of justification) nor the infusion of His grace in order that one may earn salvation (the Roman doctrine of justification); it is the activity of God for salvation. Justification is essentially salvation; to justify is to save (Isa. 45:25; 53:11; Rom. 6:7 where the Greek verb dikaioo is translated “freed” in RSV). The righteousness of God is not justice nor is it the righteousness from God; this is a different though related concept. The righteousness from God is the righteousness of faith; it is being set right by man’s response of faith to God’s activity of setting him right with Himself. To be set right with God is to have faith in God. “Abraham believed God, and it [his faith] was reckoned unto him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3,9; cf. Rom. 10:9; Phil. 3:9). Justification as God’s act of setting man right with Himself brings man into faith, in which he is set right with God.

As I studied this in the Scriptures, I realized that I needed to know the Hebrew language and to study Church history. So in 1959, I decided that I needed to go back to seminary and get my theological degree, and so I applied to Fuller Seminary again. I also wanted to teach Bible and theology, not math and physics. So Edith went back to work again and eventually got a job as an editorial assistant at Gospel Light Press in Glendale, editing adult Sunday school materials. Teaching part time at PSU in the fall of 1959 (That semester I taught Introduction to Philosophy at PSU), I started taking classes at Fuller Seminary. I took a class in Historical Theology and my first courses in Church History both from Doctor Geoffrey W. Bromiley. I also took a class in Contemporary Theology and a beginning course in Biblical Hebrew. Two weeks into the fall semester at Fuller, I had an automobile accident in which I broke a bone in my left hand and Edith’s left knee cap was damaged. The accident was not my fault; the car had turned left in front me at an intersection. But that accident took the money that I was using to go school to fix the automobile. I dropped out of Fuller at the end of fall semester to go back to work teaching full time. Later that spring the insurance company settled the accident claim and we received a substantial payment. So the next summer, we moved back to Pasadena, intending to return and enroll again at Fuller. But I had to finish my master’s degree at USC. The dead line of five years for completing the degree was approaching. So I quit PSU and spent the summer trying to write the master’s thesis. But I could not get my thoughts together. I now think that I had picked too difficult a topic that at that time I was not prepared to handle. The thesis topic that I had chosen was: “The Influence of Christianity on the rise of Modern Science.” Also we were running out of money. So I abandon the thesis and during August of 1960 I started looking for a job.

Los Angeles Pacific College

I applied for teaching positions at Christian colleges in Southern California. I got only one positive reply and that from Los Angeles Pacific College. I went for a interview with Dean Davis and was hired to teach. So beginning in fall of 1960 I began to teach mathematics and physics and for the next three years I taught at Los Angeles Pacific College; later in 1965 it merged with Azusa College to become Azusa Pacific University. I taught advanced mathemtics: differential equations and vector analysis; another teacher taught the lower division mathematics courses: algebra, trigonometry, and beginning calculus. I taught basic physics and the required general education course, Introduction to the Physical Sciences; all the students had to take this course no matter what their major. I enjoyed teaching this course, because it allowed me integrate my Christian faith with the physical sciences: astronomy, physics and chemistry. I used an historical approach tracing the rise of the modern physical sciences. In the research for that course, I learned about the early modern scientists and found many of them were real Christians, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. This was the material that I had needed for my master’s thesis and after several times teaching the course (I taught the course a total of 6 times), I now could have written the master’s thesis. But I didn’t; the 5 year dead-line for the degree was passed and I didn’t have the money nor the time to retake those courses.

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

We lived in Pasadena until the summer of 1962 and attended Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church, where I taught a young adult Sunday school class. During that time, our fourth child was born on January 29, 1962, a boy that we named David Allan Shelton. Edith retired from her job as editorial assistant at Gospel Light. In the summer of 1962, we moved to Highland Park near the Los Angeles Pacific College, where I was teaching. And we left the Lincoln Avenue Church and returned to the North Hollywood Evangelical Free Church. It was just about as far to drive to North Hollywood as it was to drive to Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church on the northwest side of Pasadena. Our friend and the pastor of the North Hollywood Free Church, Bob Johnson, had left the church and it now had a new pastor, Mr. Leslie Miller, who had been Edith’s boss at Gospel Light Press in Glendale. From him, we heard of the move of the Spirit in the Episcopal Church. Mr. Miller, after a long struggle, was prayed for by some Spirit-filled Episcopalians from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where Dennis Bennett had been rector. Pastor Miller received the baptism of Spirit with speaking in tongues and preceded to pray that the members of the North Hollywood Free Church would receive the baptism of the Spirit. They made a list of the members and preceded to pray that they would receive. Edith and I were on that list.

I was having spiritual problems and went to talk with Mr. Miller and he told me about the baptism of Holy Spirit and I began to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I received on Nov. 10, 1962. In spite of all that the Lord had shown me about salvation and the need for salvation, I was having difficulty believing that God loved me, personally. I believed that God loved all men, but because of my struggle with sin, particularly with anger, I was having difficulty believing that God loved me personally. When I received the baptism of Holy Spirit, that difficulty was removed. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was a baptism of love. A verse from the book of Romans summarized my experience, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.” (Rom. 5:5b). The baptism of Holy Spirit is the initial filling of a believer by the Holy Spirit. I had sought to be filled with the Spirit many times before. I remember in college reading R. A. Torrey’s book The Fullness of the Spirit, and following the steps that he gave in the book. But nothing happened. When Pastor Miller prayed for me to be filled with the Spirit, I began to speak with other languages. This time, I knew something had happened and I became convinced that God loved me personally. The Spirit of God had been trying to tell me this in all the things that He was showing me about salvation and the need for salvation. What He was saying to me about these wonderful things were getting through to my mind, but they were not getting to my heart. God was telling me that He personally loved me, but I was not believing that from the heart. When I began to speak in other languages, I got the message. And a few months later, Edith received her language. Edith believed that she was filled with the Spirit when she went forward in Joe Maronie’s meeting to dedicate herself to the Lord, but she did not then speak in tongues. After much prayer, Edith did speak in tongues.

Before the baptism of the Spirit, I believed that there were the gifts of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit along with speaking in tongues are taught in the Scriptures. In I Cor. 12, the Apostle Paul teaches that they exist in the body of Christ and he deals with the abuses of the gift of tongues in I Cor. 14, but he does not deny them. Unlike many of my evangelical brethren, I did not think that the spiritual gifts ceased when the New Testament was completed, at the end of the apostolic age of the early church. But at that time, I believed that I had received from the Lord the gift of teaching, and not the gift of tongues; others in the body of Christ had other gifts. I also earlier thought that it was too bad that those who had the gift of speaking in tongues had split off from the rest of us evangelicals who had other gifts and formed the Pentecostal denominations. I later found out that this is not what really happened. The Pentecostal denominations were not just people who had the gift of tongues. but was about an experience that happened subsequent to or at the same time as conversion, called the Baptism of Holy Spirit, in which believers in Christ began to speak in tongues, when they were prayed for to receive the baptism. But even among the Pentecostals there was different theological interpretations of the baptism of the Spirit. The original Pentecostals at the beginning of 20th century were from a holiness background who identified the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with John Wesley’s doctrine of the second work of grace, the first work of grace being salvation at conversion and the second work of grace was the eradication of the sinful nature. According to these early Pentecostals, they took speaking in tongues as the sign of the second work of grace that would remove the sinful nature from the believer. Most of the holiness denominations, like the Nazarenes and the Free Methodist, rejected this speaking in tongues as the sign of the second work of grace. These holiness people who believed that speaking in tongues was sign of second work of grace were driven out of their denominations, and formed the early Pentecostal denominations. During the first decade of the 20th century there was a real move of the Spirit and it spread through the non-holiness denominations. Many had an experience of speaking in tongues. But because their denominations held that speaking in tongues was among the gifts of the Spirit that ceased at the close of formation of the New Testament, these who had this experience were also driven out of their denominations and near the end of first decade of the 20th century they formed their own Pentecostal denominations, the largest of them was the Assemblies of God, which did not identify the baptism of Spirit with the second work of grace.

But what was this Pentecostal experience? There was no unanimous agreement. Some believed it was an empowerment for Christian service, others believed that it was work of Spirit to control the sinful nature, but not to eradicate it as the holiness Pentecostals believed. As I studied the Scriptures, particularly the book of Acts where the term “baptism of the Holy Spirit” was used (Acts 1:5), I came to the conclusion that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the initial infilling by Holy Spirit. In a Christian’s life, there may be many filling with the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31); Paul exhorted the Christians to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18-19); thus the baptism of Holy Spirit was only the first or initial experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit. And this was often accompanied by speaking in tongues, which was called later by Charismatics: “one’s prayer language” (“praying in the Spirit”, Eph. 5:19).

The phrase “to be baptize with the Holy Spirit” was first used by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33) of Him who was to come after John, that is, the Christ or Messiah. Luke reports in Acts that the risen Jesus said,

“John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5).

This is obviously a reference to the coming of the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost, of which Jesus also said,

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

This baptism with the Holy Spirit was an empowerment for service. Later, Peter refers to Pentecost as the baptism with the Spirit when he explains what happened at the conversion of Cornelius, the centurion:

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?”  (Acts 11:15-17).

How did Peter recognize that Holy Spirit fell on them?  Because the same thing happened to them that happened to Peter and the others at Pentecost, they spoke with other tongues or languages (Acts 2:4; 9:44-47). This baptism with the Spirit of Cornelius, and those with him, was a sign to Peter, and to those with him, that the Spirit was also given to the Gentiles. Luke also refers to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as being filled with the Spirit;

“And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance”  (Acts 2:3-4).

This coming of Spirit to them, which is the baptism with the Spirit, is the initial in-filling of the Spirit. Later they were again filled with Spirit (Acts 4:31). I believe that each believer, like these first believers, may be baptized with the Spirit as the initial in-filling of the Holy Spirit and may be refilled with the Spirit as the Spirit sees fit. Paul exhorted the Ephesian believers to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). The Greek verb here translated “to be filled” is in the present tense, which indicates a continuous or repeated action. Thus Paul is exhorting the Ephesians to be filled over and over again with the Spirit. If anyone objects to the use of the phrase “baptized with the Spirit” to refer the initial filling of the Spirit, I will not quibble with him, as long as he recognizes that Christian believers should be filled with the Spirit and that there must be a first filling of the Spirit which may occur at conversion or later. Whether he speaks in tongues at this first filling of the Spirit, which he may do as the Spirit leads, is between him and the Spirit. But I will tell you that if anyone makes an issue with God of not speaking with tongues, he may not be filled the Spirit until he yields. This yielding to the Spirit is the necessary condition for being filled with Spirit. Paul makes it clear in his letter to Romans that presenting our bodies and its members to God is the logical implication of our acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord and Savior (Rom. 6:13; 12:1-2); and that includes presenting or yielding one’s tongue. This does not mean that the Christian believer has to become morally perfect or that he must clean up his life before he can be filled with the Spirit; the Holy Spirit will take care of cleaning up the believer’s life after he is filled with the Spirit.

One more point; speaking in tongues at the initial filling of the Spirit is not the gift of tongues of which Paul speaks in I Cor. chapters 12 to 14. While all believers may speak in tongues at the initial filling of Spirit, not all have the gift of tongues and the accompanying gift of interpretation of tongues. The Spirit distributes the gifts of the Spirit as he wills (I Cor. 12:11). As Paul makes clear in I Cor. 12, the gifts of the Spirit are manifestations of the Spirit in the body of Christ for the common good (I Cor. 12:7). The empowering of the gifts and ministries of the Spirit are to be concrete expressions of love for one another in the body of Christ and those outside. And the preaching of Gospel should be accompanied by signs and wonders, and the gifts of the Spirit:

“It [the so great salvation] was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will”  (Heb. 2:3-4).

True Christians (not nominal Christians, in name only) have the Holy Spirit. True Christians have accepted Christ and put their faith in him and his death and resurrection. And as such, they have received the Holy Spirit. To be born again and to be alive to God is by the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2). The Holy Spirit does this by revealing Christ and convicting (convincing) the unsaved of their need for Christ (John 16:7-11); He presents Christ to the unbeliever in the preaching of the Gospel. And to receive Christ is also to receive the Holy Spirit. Paul writes in Romans 8:9 to the believers at Rome,

“But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone have not the Spirit of Christ, this one is not of him.” (Rom. 8:9 ERS)

To be “in the Spirit” is to be saved, and to be “in the flesh” is to be unsaved (Romans 8:9). But not everyone who has the Spirit dwelling in him is filled with Spirit; some are not “walking according to the Spirit,” but “according to the flesh” (Romans8:4; Gal. 5:16, 25). And to walk according to the flesh is to attempt to live the Christian life by human effort alone apart from the Spirit of God; such ones attempt to live up to divine standard in the law. They are “under law” and thus experience only defeat and frustration (Rom. 6:14 and Rom. 7:18-19). They are trying to do what only the Holy Spirit can do. To be under law is to walk according the flesh (by human effort). To walk according to the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit is not to be under law (Gal. 5:18). Those who walk according to the Spirit bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit cannot be had apart from the Spirit; no human effort can produce that fruit. Those who walk according the Spirit fulfill the law without being under law. “For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8-10). The goal is not moral perfection (conforming to the divine standard in the law) but is love; love of God and love of our neighbor. This goal can be reached only if one is filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18-20). And this was my experience.

LAPC and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

My students at LAPC saw in me immediately the fullness of the Spirit. They began to come to me after class to my office in the physical science building and to ask me what happened to me. I told them and some of them wanted to go with me and Edith to the prayer meetings to which we had started going.

As the word got around the student body of about 200 students, I found out that there were many students who had come from a Pentecostal background and in particular the student body president that year, John Gotoso, was a Pentecostal and his father was a Pentecostal minister in Glendale. He invited me to preach at his church which invitation I gladly accepted. I personally did nothing to approach any student and try to convert them to my views on the fullness of the Spirit; I only honestly answered their questions about what had happened to me. Toward the end of that year when my contract for teaching came up for renewal, Dean Davis and President Cox met with me and ask me to stop propagating this speaking in tongues among the students. I told them that I was not propagating the teaching but was only honestly replying to the student’s queries. I did not teach anything about it in my classes, but outside my classes I did not think that I could honestly refuse to tell what the Lord had done for me, when I was asked. They would not accept my explanation and refused to renew my contract for the next year. The Free Methodist Church was adamantly opposed to speaking with tongues as the sign of second work of grace. Some of their students had taken that position after I shared with them what God had done for me. That was not my position about the baptism of the Spirit with speaking with tongues. But I believe that the dean and president, as well as the pastor of college church thought that I was teaching this doctrine. In fact at that time, I had come to the conclusion that doctrine of sinful nature was not even taught in the Scriptures and that Christians do not have a sinful nature. But I did not share these views with my students or with the teachers at LAPC.

The Blessed Trinity Society

Not only did we go to a prayer meeting of other Spirit-filled members of our North Hollywood Evangelical Free Church, but we went to a prayer meeting at the home in North Hollywood of a Spirit-filled Episcopalian, Joan Weddle. She introduced us to Jean Stone, another Spirit-filled Episcopalian from St. Marks Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California. This was the Episcopal Church where Dennis Bennett had been rector, when the move of Spirit among the Episcopalians began. At this time, Father Bennett had left St. Marks and gone to Seattle. Jean was editor of the Trinity magazine which was published by The Blessed Trinity Society, an organization dedicated to maintaining the fullness of the Faith, that is, the move of the Spirit in the Episcopal and other main-line churches. The magazine had beautiful art work and contained many testimonies of those in the main-line denominations who had received the fullness of the Spirit with speaking in tongues. Jean had heard about my experience and she asked me to write an article for the Trinity magazine. She sent her art director and photographer, Paul Castle, to the LAPC campus and took pictures of me teaching, one of which appeared with my article. The article and picture appeared in the spring 1963 issue of the magazine. Jean was also conducting what she called Christian Advances (instead of Christian Retreats) in various cities to promote the Christian renewal in the churches. She asked me to give my testimony at the Christian Advance conducted in Los Angeles that spring. Edith and I met many other Spirit-filled Episcopalians, as well as many Spirit-filled believers from other denominations. We met Larry Christensen, a Spirit-filled Lutheran pastor in San Pedro, California, and David J. du Plessis, a Dutch South African Pentecostal leader, who was one of the directors of the Blessed Trinity Society. We met David du Plessis at Joan Weddle’s prayer meeting in July, 1963, and as we talked with him we told him about the trip that we were planning to visit our folks back in Illinois after the summer session at LAPC was over (I was teaching again the required general education course, Introduction to the Physical Sciences). David said that he could give us a list of Spirit-filled individuals, groups and churches that we could visit on our trip to Illinois and back. So we arranged our trip so that we could stop and visit these people. On the way to Illinois we stopped at Oral Robert’s new university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On the return trip back, we came across the northern states, visiting Bethany Fellowship in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and several Spirit-filled Episcopalians in Montana, Washington and Oregon. In Seattle, we stayed with Gene and Carol Lind and visited St. Lukes Episcopal Church, where Dennis Bennett was rector. Father Bennett’s wife had just died; later he married Rita Reed, who was Jean Stones’s secretary at the Blessed Trinity Society. We attended a big Wednesday night prayer meeting in the parish hall of the church and visited with some of the Spirit-filled Episcopalians after the meeting. When we got back to Los Angeles, it was just in time for the Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade at the L.A. Coliseum. Edith and I had taken the personal workers training in the spring and we were personal workers at the meetings. We attended every meeting of the two week campaign.

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