Chapter Nine: Tmhmsdkkhfhakd!

“RIDAMAHONDAINAGADDADAVITASTAYATARAMADATHASSASPICYAMEATABALLA!”

pause…

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line?…

line?…

“Yea, though you walk through the valley, I am with thee…” yadda yadda; some person in the congregation would interpret the message. I never, for the life of me, could figure out why interpretations were given in archaic and totally irrelevant King James’ English. Welcome to Tongues and Interpretation, just one of the many gifts of the Spirit. Enjoy your trip!

Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up and hope you’re not shy, you WILL be called to the altar because you are in a Signs and Wonders church! It’s the three-ring circus of Christianity, and let me tell you, they do NOT disappoint. You may even get lucky enough to see the Dollar Freakshow in the Back Tent. I saw most of these first hand and experienced others, there’s only one so bizarre I never actually saw it. You ready for a list?

Here it is, the Top Ten Weirdest Signs and Wonders:

10: Tongues and Interpretation: This is the opening reference, it’s basically one person yelling in an unknown language and then another interpreting it, usually in Ye Olde English for no reason whatsoever. What’s really awkward is the silence after, when you wonder if anyone is EVER going to do the interpretation. Line??…

9: Just plain old Speaking In Tongues: Mainstay of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Apostolic movement, this is theoretically God speaking through you in another language. All of the tongues-speak kinda sounded the same to me, why did I never heard click-language?

8: Prophecy, Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom: AKA knowing shit you probably really don’t, from life direction to which car you should buy. This one can get kinda funny, I heard SEVERAL accounts of God telling some young gentleman that some lovely puritanical girl was to be his bride. Imagine some guy informing you God told him you were meant to be together. What the hell are you supposed to say to that??! Sometimes this would result in the hysterical, like the time a guy pulled this: Brother Desperate Dan stands up, “BLA BLA BLA, Sister Hotchick is to be this man’s wife. He doesn’t realize he’s saying this right now, as he is overcome by the Holy Spi…” Pastor: “SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, Brother Dan!” and yes that actually happened. You will ABSOLUTELY be hearing more stories about Prophecy in the Church. Shit happens when people believe God is giving them direct information.

7: Casting Out Demons: This is just about exactly like they show it in Hollywood, minus makeup and poorly digested pea soup (dating myself with that reference) with all the histrionics, yelling, lurching, and whatnot. I often wondered if those who were “demon possessed” were actually mentally ill. I suspect schizophrenics can be in churches for years and be viewed as having special “gifts” that others don’t have, but actually are in desperate need of psychiatric care. For example, several individuals I knew over the years would be extremely demonstrative up front, speaking in tongues, dancing in the spirit, giving words of knowledge listed in #6, etc… and later would be in the parking lot screaming at the Pastor about some minor infraction. ABSOLUTELY the church has an inordinate number of crazies. Or the possessed. Whatever you choose to call it, you can find plenty of ’em at church.

6: Anointing with Oil: Little dab’ll do ya, little more is better? When David was anointed King in the Bible, he was anointed with oil and it ran over his head and down his beard. Why not continue? Often, when people would come forward to receive prayer, the pastor or an elder would dab oil on the person’s forehead. No biggie, right? Whelp. I met a lady who would drive over decrepit bridges pouring gallons of Crisco out the window. Lo and behold, those bridges would get fixed!! Never mind the fact decrepit bridges are generally scheduled to be repaired anyway…

5: Slain in the Spirit: If you have seen Benny Hinn wave his coat at a crowd and they all fall over, you are already familiar with this gift. It’s this experience in which you become overwhelmed with the Spirit of God, and fall slap over. I have experienced this, and who knows? Was it real? Was I just tired of standing? One thing I do know is that pastors would invite you up to be prayed for, then they would put one hand on your forehead and the other behind your neck in such a way that it’s almost impossible to remain standing. Pastor South told us of a camp meeting in which a woman fell FORWARD and broke her nose, but no one knew for a while because if you came into a service at this point, it looked like casualties on a battlefield, bodies lying everywhere in all manner of twisted contortions. Sometimes, if a woman fell over in a skirt and was, well,…indecent, the men would take off their suit coats to cover her. You will meet a hypnotist in Part 2 of this book. I watched his performance, and how he was able to get people to do things on stage, and it was so eerily reminiscent of this… but we have a lot of ground to cover before I become Wonder Woman.

4: Dancing in the Spirit: “Dancing” is a bit of a misnomer here, I have to say that I LOVED dancing at the churches that had fantastic music, but this reference has little to do with the common understanding of the word dance. This is theoretically someone being completely taken over by the Spirit of God, which I never understood, because we were taught when you get saved the Spirit of God is in you?? So is it just more Spirit of God, like a bigger dose? Or they would say the Spirit is moving. Does it otherwise stand still? Anyway, it’s more of a lurching or sometimes like a running in place while in a sort of trance (the sort of trance thing happens a lot in these parts), voice wailing like a truck arriving at a five-alarm fire. It’s very noisy… and very time consuming, this can go on for hours.

3: Dreams and Visions: I tried REALLY HARD to see something, ANYTHING, during my time in the churches that believed this. I didn’t see shit. I heard so many accounts of people seeing things or hearing things, I’m not saying this didn’t happen, but does anyone ever stop to think when someone keeps seeing visions of things that don’t exist that there’s just a teensy chance they might be delusional? How do you tell the difference?

2: Holy Laughter, Barking And Other Strange Sounds: Happened in both the Pensacola Outpouring and the Toronto Blessing in the 90’s. In revival services as they would call them, if the spirit was really REALLY moving, and people were being Slain in the Spirit and already lying on the ground anyway, they sometimes roll around and start making noises, sometimes laughing uncontrollably, sometimes just crawling around repeating shouts that well, yes, sound just like a barking dog. By the way, this rolling around started in the tent revivals earlier in the 1900s, where the term Holy Roller originated.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, the number One Weird Thing that Goes On in Gifts of the Spirit???

1: Snakes in the Church: Once again, yes, there is scripture to support this. I never saw this personally, but if you get on the fringes of these denominations, there are churches that take literally the verse “they shall take up serpents” and handle poisonous snakes during the service. Wonder if that’s in their advertising? I never attended a snake handling church, but it is estimated there are about 120 in the US, so if you want to visit, they’re unsurprisingly mostly in the South.

I dealt with snakes in the church, but they had little to do with reptiles…