The Phenomenon of Singing in the Spirit
By Dottie Gravely
I will never forget my introduction into the charismatic movement of the late sixties when I visited a small house church in rural Hartselle, Alabama, in 1966. A former Baptist minister had a persistent desire to start a “New Testament” church in the pristine order. His daughter was a new friend of mine who obviously had something in her Christian walk that I did not have. She assured me that people in her church did not go into hysterics or anything unusual like that. (Photo from Assembly of God archives)
I had accepted an invitation from her to spend the night one Tuesday, the night of their usual mid-week service. It was during the song service, after some hymns and maybe a chorus or two led by a Texan with a guitar accompanied by my friend at the piano, that I heard for the first time a beautiful chorus sung by the congregation of perhaps twenty to thirty people. The chorus did not have a definite tune but was a wonderful blend of harmony, the voices rising and falling and blending in an unusual way. I thought, “My, he’s done well with these country people.”
Some of the folks in my country church could not stay in one key throughout most hymns and certainly could never produce harmony like that. The chorus stopped without a cue from anyone.
Later that same year my friend invited to attend a conference in Waco, Texas, sponsored by Grace Gospel church. It was a quiet heartthrob of the charismatic movement. Some six hundred people gathered for a student/young professional meeting during the Christmas holidays, 1966. By now I had learned that the strange chorus was corporate singing in the Spirit. Six hundred voices sending up praise to God was even more impressive that what I had heard in the small living room in Hartselle. (I had also learned that the Texan with the guitar was not coaching the people; each one was led by God’s Spirit in worship. The miracle of harmony was the Latter’s doing.) The lovely tones lingered in my mind and seemed to blend with the highway sounds as I leaned by head against the window of the car on my return trip to Alabama.
In some of my reading, I have been surprised to read similar descriptions of this type of worship in early Pentecostal accounts. I noted that the phenomenon was the same literally from California to New York wherever earnest seekers pressed into God for their baptism in the Holy Spirit. As an inexperienced student of revival movements, it seems to me that revivals are like mountain streams—they are purer at their source. So, beginning at Azusa Street, Los Angeles, California, 1906, here are some accounts which I found of Pentecostal pioneers:
Book: Another Wave Rolls In! (formerly What Really Happened at Azusa Street?) by Frank Bartleman, edited by John Walker & John Myers, Voice Publications, Northridge, CA, 1962.
“At ‘Azusa Mission’ we had a powerful time. The saints humbled themselves. A colored sister both spoke and sang in ‘tongues.’ The very atmosphere of Heaven was there.” 54
Friday, June 15, at “Azusa,” the Spirit dropped the “heavenly chorus” into my soul. I found myself suddenly joining the rest who had received this supernatural “gift.” It was a spontaneous manifestation and rapture no earthly tongue can describe. In the beginning this manifestation was wonderfully pure and powerful. We feared to try to reproduce it, as with the “tongues” also…. No one could understand this “gift of song” but those who had it. It was indeed a “new song,” in the Spirit. When I first heard it in the meetings, a great hunger entered my soul to receive it. I felt it would exactly express my pent up feelings. 57-58
I had not yet spoken in “tongues,” but the “new song” captured me. It was a gift from God of high order. No one had preached it. The Lord had sovereignly bestowed it, with the outpouring of the “residue of oil,” the “Latter Rain” baptism of the Spirit. It was exercised, as the Spirit moved the possessors either in solo fashion or by the company. It was sometimes without words, other times in “tongues.” The effect was wonderful on the people. It brought a heavenly atmosphere, as though the angels themselves were present and joining with us. And possibly they were. It seemed to still criticism and opposition and was hard for even wicked men to gainsay or ridicule. 57-58
“All the old, well known hymns were sung from memory, quickened by the Spirit of God…. The ‘blood’ songs were very popular…But the ‘new song’ was altogether different, not of human composition. It cannot be successfully counterfeited.” 58
The spirit of song given from God in the beginning was like the Aeolian harp in its spontaneity and sweetness. In fact it was the very breath of God, playing on human heart strings, or human vocal cords. The notes were wonderful in sweetness, volume and duration. In fact they were ofttimes humanly impossible. It was indeed “singing in the Spirit.” 58
At the New Testament Church a young lady of refinement was prostrate on floor for hours, while at times the most heavenly singing would issue from her lips. It would swell away up to the throne and then die away in an almost unearthly melody…. All over the house men and women were weeping. A preacher was flat on his face on the floor, dying out. Pentecost was fully come. 62-63
“I felt after the experience of speaking in ‘tongues’ that languages would come easy to me. And so it has proven. Also, I have learned to sing in the Spirit, although I never was a singer and do not know music.” 77
Now, let's look at another book which originated in New York. Book: Chronicles of a Faith Life by Elizabeth V. Baker & Co-Workers, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London, 1984.
Mrs. Baker and her sisters worked faithfully for God for several years in Rochester, New York, starting the Elim Faith Home, Elim Tabernacle and Elim Bible Training Center. One of their graduates, Ivan Spencer, started the Elim Bible Institute currently located in Lima, New York. The sisters did much of their work before the Pentecostal outpouring, teaching divine healing and holy living. In 1907 their prayers were answered to receive the Pentecostal power they had heard about from news of the Azusa Street revival. A fourteen-year-old niece who had resisted the message began speaking in tongues; several were touched by the power of God. All this began to happen during the annual June convention. The next day several gathered and immediately several were prostrated and began singing in the Spirit. A professor of music who was in the room and heard the singing, writes this: “To my amazement and admiration they sang so perfectly, so harmoniously, so artistically as no trained choir could sing. Their intonation was sure, with no deviation of pitch: Their duos, and trios, their full chorus so overwhelmingly beautiful, as to thrill the heart of the hearers. We heard anthems of classical harmonies, embellished by passing notes and runs, closing with superb cadenzas. The dynamic shadings were exquisite; every singer given up to God, guided by the Spirit. To me as a musician this singing is conclusive proof of the absolute divine origin of this present manifestation of the Holy Ghost.” …It was the nearest to heaven I had ever been, and the glory of it has never died out. With the new song came the new tongue with its glory and power. Only those who have entered into the experience can understand the depths or the meaning of it all.” (Quote by Mrs. Nellie Duncan Fell, sister of Mrs. Elizabeth V. Duncan Baker) Mrs. Fell visited Wales and had this to say about the singing there:
The marvelous Welsh singing comes nearer to the Pentecostal gift of song than any other to which we have ever listened. We could feel the power of the Spirit resting upon these dear ones as we sang and prayed together. Like a fire leaves its mark upon objects touch after it is quenched, so the fire mark of the great revival could be still felt and seen upon these dear Welsh souls.” 98
Mrs. Baker writes:
We had read about the “heavenly choir” that the Spirit is forming, but we never imagined its power and sweetness until we actually heard its notes . . . they. . . rolling out heavenly music like the waves of the sea for power, and again soft and sweet as the cooing of doves. . .. The anthem, begun by one voice, was taken up by an alto or tenor, and rolled on in rapturous sweetness to the end, which seemed to die away in the distant heavens.
. . . We were to have an address from one of the visiting brethren, when as he rose to speak, to our amazement a dear little woman sitting in the audience, who had received her baptism the evening before, began to sing in the Spirit. She had not heard this special manifestation of the Spirit in the others, nor had she ever herself sung in the natural. She had no ear for music, and could never tell whether on the key or not, so did not venture to sing even the simple hymns in the church services. But now with closed eyes and a smile like heaven on her upturned face she sang with a wondrous voice, clear as a bird, and sweet as an angel, with a range and compass past belief.
…tears flowed unhindered down their faces. When at last it ceased I rose and said a few words about surrendering to the Spirit, invited those who wanted to know the fullness of a life in the Spirit to come to the front, when they seemed to rise as one man and pressed unhesitatingly forward till two-thirds of the auditorium was filled with kneeling people, many crying aloud upon God.
It was a most marvelous scene, and filled our hearts to overflowing with praise. The sense of the immediate presence of God was overwhelming. One states that all during that wondrous song service, he saw an angel standing on the platform with a harp in his hands leading that heavenly choir . . .the majestic presence of some mighty angel with white flowing drapery, folded wings and seraphic countenance leading God’s people forth in triumphant anthems of mighty praise. One of the most precious manifestations of the Spirit that has continued up to the present time is this heavenly song, breaking out in the regular services of the church. 136
Mrs. Baker writes of the time her sister, Mrs. N. A. Fell, was healed at the point of death and revived with a shout. . .. “Oh, the victory of Calvary,” ending in a most beautiful song in the Spirit as in the early Pentecostal days. . .. how gloriously the Spirit sang through her at times in the services. 262, 265
Now, we see another witness. this time a decade later from a well-known author, speaker, Bible school and denominational founder from California, originally from Canada, Aimee S. McPherson.
Ten years after the Pentecostal outpouring in Rochester, New York, Aimee Semple McPherson reports on her cross-country travels in the summer of 1917.
Book: This Is That by Aimee Semple McPherson, 1919, The Bridal Call Publishing House, Los Angeles, CA. (Reprinted by Garland Publishing)
“(Washburn, Maine, camp) . . .waves of glory and marvelous singing swept over the audience.” 152
“(Durant, Florida, Pleasant Grove Camp Meeting) There were wonderful messages in prophecy and prophetic song. Dramas were worked out, accompanied by tongues and interpretation. Heavenly music filled the place, and angel choirs were heard.” 157
The picture of hundreds of saints standing upon their feet with hands lifted toward Heaven, eyes closed, and their upturned faces streaming with tears as they sing, as it were, a new song, and heavenly anthems voiced by the Holy Spirit through their lips in wondrous harmonic chords of love and thanksgiving, is a never-to-be-forgotten sight, and resembles much the conception that I have always had of what it must be to be in Heaven before the throne of the Most High God. 186
Surely other witnesses can be found to testify that God is fulfilling His word through the prophet Amos (quoted by James in Acts 15) that God is rebuilding the tabernacle of David, known for its marvelous praise. Both Amos and Joel would rejoice with us to see what has happened in our day and in the days of our Pentecostal forerunners. May there be a revival of these heavenly anthems so that our contemporaries release their own pent-up expressions in glorious praise! (Amos 9:11-12/Acts 15:16-17; Joel 2:28/Acts 2:16-17)