I wasn't raised in a Christian home.   My mother is serving the Lord now and I'm so thankful for that, but I wasn't raised in a Christian home.   My grandmother on my father's side had been a preacher for almost fifty years before she passed away.   God began to deal with my heart, and I was just a boy when I started a public ministry.

Some people don't believe or have confidence in that.   It's all right, but when I was seven years old, He baptized me with the Holy Ghost.   Now what is the evidence of that?   It's not speaking in tongues.   It's a changed life.   It's whether or not you can say "Amen" to every Word of God. I was saying "Amen" to every Word of God that I heard, and when I heard more, I had to say "Amen" to that, too.   It was something within me.   Hallelujah!

God was so good to me, to give me a good background.   My grandmother was a healing evangelist.   She traveled all across the South.  Knowing what I know now, doesn't undo all the things my granny told me that were the truth.   It doesn't make me doubt the miracles I saw.

I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost at the age of seven.   My granny and I were on the way to church, and I said, "Granny, I want the Holy Ghost."

She thought on it a minute to see if I was old enough to have it.   Then she said, "Sweet baby, God wants you to have the Holy Ghost."

I said, "I don't believe God wants me to have the Holy Ghost."

Well, I’m telling you.   To her that was blasphemy.   She was so upset with me.   She swerved and nearly wrecked the car.   “What do you mean?” she said.

I said, “I’ve prayed for the Holy Ghost.   I fasted for the Holy Ghost.”

She said, “You mean you fasted?”

I said, “Yes ma’am.”   And it wasn’t easy, because my mother wasn’t a Christian.   So I had to be very careful about fasting, because she’d be so angry.   I said, “Yes ma’am.   And I just still, I just can’t get the Holy Ghost.”   I said, “Every preacher that comes to the church, I ask him to pray for me.   And I just can’t get the Holy Ghost.”

I mean, I could have talked in tongues like people were being taught in other places.   But I didn’t want to talk in tongues.   That wasn’t what I wanted.   I wanted the Holy Ghost.   I wanted to know that God was now living inside of me.

I mean, I understand as a Baptist, because my parents were, my mother and grandmother on that side were Baptist.   And they believe that when you’re saved, Jesus and the Holy Spirit come in, and they live inside of you.   And that’s all you need.

But that didn’t satisfy me.   I hate to be blasphemous, you know.   But that wasn’t enough.   I knew I felt good when He came in and forgave me of my sins and helped me.   But I saw that people had something more than I did.   I saw people that had the power of God in their life.   I wanted that.   That’s what I wanted.   And I was praying.

And Granny said, “Well honey, you’ve got to come to the place where you want to be filled with the Holy Ghost more than anything else in all the world.”

I said, “I’m almost there.”

She started quoting Scripture to me.   "Son, do you want the Holy Ghost more than you want a new bicycle?"   My, I had to think about it.   I didn't really know what all the Holy Ghost was.   I wanted a bicycle, and I thought I wanted the Holy Ghost.

She asked, "Do you want Him more than you want a pony?"   Well, I thought I wanted a pony. But, "Yes, ma'am.   I want the Holy Ghost more than I want a pony.   I want the Holy Ghost more than anything else in the all the world.”

She said, "Darling, you might get it tonight."   That was her faith.   You might get it tonight.

In church that night I tried to sing, clap my hands and say "Amen".   I didn't know why I was sad, but I was sad.   They were shouting and praising the Lord, but I was sad.   While they were singing a song, I slipped down by the pew and began to pray.   "Lord, I don't know what all the Holy Ghost is.   I'm just a child, probably not old enough to have it.   And I don’t understand a lot of things. But I need to know that You can fill me with the Holy Ghost.   My granny said I could have it.   And so, Lord, I want You to fill me with the Holy Ghost.”   That was my prayer.

I don't know how to describe it, but the next thing I knew, I was looking down on my body.   God had caught me away spiritually.   He lifted me, what I thought and felt like, was completely out of my body.   I was at the top of the building looking down on my body, praying. My, what a feeling!   I stayed up there, just kind of flying, but I looked down and saw myself kneeling there.   That was what was so amazing to me as a child.   And I began to hear this language that I’d never heard before.   I could hear it.   It was loud.   I could hear this voice speaking in another language.   I could also in some way know that I was in a service.   I could somehow know other little glimpses that were going on around me.

And I said, “Lord, I want that.   I want that.   If I could have that, I think I’d know that the Holy Ghost had come.   I believe I would know.”

And as soon as I said that, I came right down back into my body.   I realized for a moment where I was.   I shifted a little bit.   And I prayed again, “Lord, I want to be filled with the Holy Ghost and Fire..."   And up again I went, floating above my body, looking down at myself, seeing myself pounding and praying, asking the Lord to give me the Holy Ghost.   Here I was, way up like a bird.   Brother, I didn't have a care in the world.   I was just floating and praying.

I looked down and saw my body.   I began to hear that language again.   And I said, “Lord, give me that.”   And back down into my body I came.

I’m praying again, “Lord, fill me with the Holy Ghost.”   He lifted me the third time.   And somehow in this I began to get an understanding, even as a kid.   This was me.   This language that I’d been hearing, was coming out of my spirit.   God had placed a language in me by the Holy Ghost.

I remember physically reaching up and touching my lips.   And when I touched my lips, my lips were moving.   And I couldn’t stop them.   I could feel them moving.   And I thought, I don’t know that I’m talking.   This was a strange feeling.   I don’t know that I’m talking.   But my lips are moving.

But what God let me know.   I know it sounds strange.   But remember, I wasn’t thirty.   I was seven.   And what God let me know was, He had filled me with the Holy Ghost.   And this language that I was hearing was coming out of my own mouth the whole time.

But every time I focused on that language, I came back down.   Kind of out of the Spirit. But when I prayed, “God, give me the Holy Ghost,” He’d lift me up again.   And then when I heard the language, I said, “Give me that. I think if I’d get that…”

Over an hour later, when I finally came to myself, my fingers came up and touched my mouth. When they did, my mouth was moving.   I realized it had been moving all the time for a solid hour. That language I was asking the Lord for, He'd already given me.   I'd been speaking in tongues. Oh, that felt nice.

I didn't say you had to speak in tongues, but as a seven-year-old boy, God knew what it was going to take.   I heard Bro. Branham say that God knows what it's going to take to let you know you've got the Holy Ghost.   God knew what it was going to take and that's the way He gave it to me.

I just started screaming, "I got it!  I got it!  I got it!  Granny, I got it!"   Well, I couldn't find my granny.   The last I remembered, they'd been singing, but now I couldn't find her.   I looked back, and my granny was having a spell back there.   When she came running past me, she yelled, "My baby's got it!"

They carried me out, drunk in the Spirit.   Lying in the back seat of the car, I spoke in tongues all the way home.   Granddaddy said, "I'm worried about him, Mildred.   He hasn't come out of that yet.   I want to put him in here."   (There were twin beds in the room.)   He said, "I'll stay in one and put him in the other."   All hours of the night, I woke up speaking in tongues.   My granddaddy jumped up and asked, "Oh, are you all right?"   When he heard I wasn't speaking English, he laid back down.

In the morning at breakfast, my granny said, "Do you want milk or juice or something?"   I started to tell her what I wanted, but out came tongues.   My granddaddy said, "Mildred, this young-un's got the biggest dose of that I ever saw.   It's lasted clean through the night."   Boy, I wish my granddaddy could know that it's lasted more than overnight, for seventeen years.   Oh, hallelujah!   Brother, I tell you, I'm more excited about the Holy Ghost tonight than I was in Pentecost.   Now I know that I have more than the gift of the Holy Ghost.   I have the Person of the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ living inside of me.

When you have an experience like that, there won't be enough devils in hell to move you off that. Somebody said, "But I didn't have any kind of experience."   Keep praying, keep believing.   I believe everybody ought to have some kind of experience, some kind of joy, some kind of something.