“Speaking from experience”

The journey involves finer steps: retreat/trust in God, remembrance-ritual, the vision/illumination, and speaking from experience. The ability to speak in tongues was considered merely “the initial evidence of this experience”. The experience is embodied in the broader sense of becoming an extension of one’s mother community, and this becomes an instrument or means of this community’s lateral growth. The experience itself and its manifestations seemed rather ad hoc and dispersed. All believers had the potential and indeed the privilege “to receive this supernatural experience” and this was distinguished from the conversion experience or “the experience of the new birth”. The ability to speak in tongues was considered merely “the initial evidence of this experience”. This was the external sign of the believers’ experience of God through the Spirit. Pillay also notes the exceptional case of Bethesda.