BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Any fear you have about praying in tongues is unfounded. It’s just carnal junk the devil is using to try to keep you from doing it. He knows that once you start speaking in other tongues, he’s had it. You’ll be able to open your mouth and go through that supernatural gate whenever you want, and he won’t be able to stop you. “I don’t know,” someone might say. “I’ve been told, even after receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, we can only pray in tongues when God gives us some kind of special spiritual feeling.” Sadly, that’s what a lot of believers have been told, but it’s not true. There’s no basis for it in the Bible at all. It’s just religious tradition. Happily, when I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1963, I’d never been taught that tradition. I’d just been born again about six months and I hadn’t yet spent enough time around churches to have much religion to unlearn. Gloria and I had attended a service with my parents. At the end, the man conducting the service invited anyone who wanted to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit to come forward. I turned around and asked my mother, “Is that something we ought to have?” She said, “Yes.” So, Gloria and I both jumped up and went to the front of the room. We didn’t know what to expect, and no one gave us any instruction about how to receive. The women of the church just gathered around Gloria while the men gathered around me and they all started praying for us. Some of them hollered, “Hang on!” Others shouted, “Let go!” I had no idea what to do. When they got tired of praying and sat down, Dr. Reed told me to lay hands on Gloria. At first, I said, “No.” (Can you imagine? I wouldn’t even lay hands on my own wife!) But in his big booming voice he said again, “Lay your hands on her!” so I did. Afterward, I was sitting in a chair on the platform praying in English and he touched me on my forehead and said to me, “That’s enough English!” and I took off praying in other tongues! Later that night, I was flying back to Little Rock, Ark., to be at work the next morning, and I kept thinking about what had happened to me. So I prayed, “LORD, I’m not really sure what happened to me tonight,” I said, “but I’m going to say some of those words again. If there’s anything to it, anoint it.” (I don’t know how I came up with the word anoint. I guess I’d heard it during the meeting.) I tried to remember something I’d said in tongues, spoke the first syllable, and that’s all it took. I took off again praying in tongues and prayed all the way to Little Rock. When I saw the lights of the city on the horizon, I realized I was going to have to talk to the control tower and wondered what was going to come out. I was shocked when I said, “Little Rock approach,” and it came out in English. Hey, that’s good! I thought. After I landed, I was so thrilled I jumped out of the airplane and danced around. Still talking and shouting in tongues, I BLESSED the airplane…I BLESSED the hangars…I BLESSED the concrete I was standing on and everything else I could find. And I’ve talked in tongues just about every day since! Not Just for a Select Few “But Brother Copeland, that was just God’s will for you. Not all Holy Spirit-baptized believers can pray in tongues like that.” Sure they can. The book of Acts confirms it. In every account it gives of believers receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit there’s an indication they spoke in tongues. You can just go down the list: In Acts 2:4, the 120 in the upper room “were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and [they] began to speak with other tongues.” In Acts 8, the believers in Samaria received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and, verse 18 says, Simon (who’d previously been a sorcerer) “saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given.” Obviously, what he saw was believers speaking in tongues, and it so impressed him that he actually asked the apostles if he could buy this supernatural gift. Peter said no and rebuked him. “Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter” (verse 21). Or as it literally says in the Greek, “in these spoken words.” Acts 9 records how Saul (later known as Paul) received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit after his conversion on the road to Damascus. We know he spoke in tongues because he later wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all” (1 Corinthians 14:18). BVOV : 7

• Cover