SITE DISCLOSURES
Even if I didn't understand the logical problem involved in insisting that my experience, or "our" collective experience, must also be everyone's experience, my experience is not the average or normative Pentecostal experience. I received salvation in a Charismatic-leaning Disciples of Christ Christian church on December 26, 1971. That church taught that all of the gifts listed in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 are still in use today, and it taught our need for the filling of the Holy Spirit, i.e., the day to day, moment by moment control by the Spirit in our lives. But I cannot recall ever hearing any teaching on the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" as a one-time, post-salvation experience. Indeed, as I recall, although the denomination with which that church that church was affiliated taught that the Holy Spirit was received at the time of water baptism and the great emphasis of that church was on obedience in water baptism, the pastors of that particular congregation were somewhat vague on the question whether the Spirit was received at salvation or at the time of baptism. However, the teaching of that church clearly was not that the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" is a separate post-salvation experience.
It was while I was a member of this Charismatic church which had no emphasis on Spirit baptism that I first found myself, in about 1973 or 1974, praying in a language I did not recognize. It frightened me, to some degree, and I didn't do it very much, because I understood at the time that tongues were only supposed to happen in church meetings, when scheduled as part of the meeting by those in charge (which messages in tongues never were, because they were too divisive) and with an interpreter present. I first saw a tract about the baptism "of" the Holy Spirit after I moved to Ames, Iowa in 1976. But in Ames I associated with a Baptist church that taught that most of the gifts of the Spirit died with the Apostle John, and I did not seriously consider the Spirit's work again for the next 9 years. From 1985 until 1992, I learned gradually about God's love and the work of His Spirit.
I did not come into regular contact with a Pentecostal church until 1992, and by that time it was far too late to attempt to convince me that, based on my own "personal experience," manifestation of tongues is always the initial evidence of the Spirit's control. God had gotten the temporal sequence backward in my life, giving me tongues before I first heard of a separate experience of Spirit baptism.
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