Does the name R. A. Torrey ring a bell? No. How about D. L. Moody? They were good friends and contemporaries.
Moody is remembered as the forerunner of Billy Graham, the man [Moody] who answered, “I will be that man” when he heard the challenge to be the man God could use if he was fully surrendered to Him.
Moody was a shoe salesman who became a famous evangelist in the mid-1800s. He reached hundreds of northern Army men during the Civil War in our country before they marched to their deaths.
Moody regretted he had not issued an invitation to accept Christ at the close of one of his sermons. He told the inquirers to return next week for the conclusion of the matter. Alas! The terrible Chicago fire broke out before he could allow many of them the opportunity to decide for eternity.
He traveled to England with his famous song leader (Ira Sankey) and saw similar success there that he had experienced in the U. S. Thousands responded to his invitations to eternal life.
These vignettes from Moody’s life are unforgettable. But who was R. A. Torrey? D. L. urged Torrey to be his successor at his (D. L. Moody’s) school, the D. L. Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL, which is still on the Internet and radio.
Torrey had been holding his own crusades with the same evangelistic passion as Moody when Moody urged him to become the first dean of Moody Bible Institute. (The ever-fruitful Torrey was later also the first dean of BIOLA, Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now a major Christian university.)
Torrey made the decision to lead the famous Moody school into the next century. He leaned on the same Power that guided his friend, Moody. He remembered that Moody once said that when he felt a loss in Power, he would take a day off and seek a refilling of the Power that propelled him to the pulpit.
Torrey said he also experienced that infilling of Power. In fact, he taught his followers to seek that infilling of Power in an actual encounter with the Holy Spirit. He said it would be characterized by such an exhilarating experience that the believer would remember the date, the time, and the place where it occurred. Why wouldn’t someone remember such an event? One moment his life is Powerless; the next moment a heavenly Guest had come to take up residence in a yielded life. Torrey didn’t expect any of the “sign” gifts of I Cor. 12 or the personal prayer language, or glossolalia--just a changed life.
I have come to call such an experience as Torrey taught as the R. A. Torrey version of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Some testimonies along these lines are shared later in this article.
On the other hand, there are those Christians who have the “Acts 2:4” version of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. They begin to speak in tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance. They date their experience from the time that they suddenly experience a baptism of power accompanied by a fluent, supernatural prayer language, or glossolalia. Some good-humored fellow Christians have described them as speaking like a “Chinese typewriter.”
Either way, the R. A. Torrey or the Acts 2:4 versions, produce the same results—changed lives. And each version dictates lives that must stay “plugged in” to the Source of power, the Head of the church.
What happened to the “R. A. Torrey” version of the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Sadly, subsequent leaders at the Moody Institute have stripped it both of Moody and Torrey’s secrets. They dictated the removal of any mention of such doctrines from them. My husband found these sad facts in some of his research:
John R. Rice (Sword of the Lord Ministries) was very familiar with this history and wrote the following interesting description of events in those early years:
R. A. Torrey, the closest associate of Mr. Moody, preached again and again on “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost,” and has a book by that title. In his memorial sermon on “Why God Used D. L. Moody,” he said that Moody had a definite baptism of the Holy Ghost for power. And remember that again and again Moody insisted that everywhere Dr. Torrey should go, he should preach on this baptism of the Holy Ghost or enduement of power….
There came a time when some of the teachers in Moody Bible Institute decided to take out of the curriculum the teaching of Moody and Torrey on the Holy Spirit….
And so the fad…left people to disregard that clear Bible teaching that one can have a mighty enduement of power by waiting on God for soul-winning power….Our seminaries pour out men who are taught to play down the enduement of power from on high and to minimize any teaching of waiting upon God for the fullness of the Spirit….”
Spirit of the living God fall fresh on me,” has been used all over this country with great blessing to Christians as they prayed for the fullness of the Holy Spirit, despite their ultra-dispensational theology! (From The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Believer by Allan Gravely, pp. xxii-xxiii, available on Amazon).
And what does the Bible have to say about these two baptisms? Acts 8 and 9 lend some credibility to the R. A. Torrey version because they are limited in detail about how they occurred. Acts 2, 10 & 11, and Acts 19 are specific that they (the believers) did speak with tongues and/or prophecy.
It is interesting that those of the Torrey version who showed toleration were led onward to receive their own glossolalia. For example, Edsel Steverson, my former Baptist pastor who performed our wedding, had a definite, powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit when he was still a Baptist pastor; a few months later he experienced the receipt of his prayer language when two men from Oneonta, AL, read about his experience in a newsletter-type paper (Herald of His Coming) and drove over an hour to come share with him the benefit of praying in tongues. His complete testimony is included as an appendix in my autobiography, Alabama and Beyond. I also share in my book how I had the R. A. Torrey version of the Holy Spirit baptism with the enablement of praying in tongues at a later date. My husband, Allan, also received both blessings with a space of time between them.
Edsel Steverson had read about the Shantung Revival of China in the 1920s and immediately wanted what those Chinese Christians had experienced. They didn’t know what to call that move of God except a “revival.” It was definitely not routine. One Chinese pastor testified that before the revival, he was too lazy to walk to the next village to share Christ; after the revival, he packed a lunch and walked a 25-mile circuit to share the good news he had come to love. The Baptist folks saw healings, confessions of sins and resentments, and exciting salvations. It created such a stir that the head of the Baptist Convention traveled to China to see for himself about the reports of the revival and decide if they were genuine. He concluded that all was biblical. Even demons were cast out of some, along with the other miraculous things. Rev. Steverson, as a Baptist minister, found great credibility in the convention head’s endorsement. No wonder he prayed that this Power encounter would happen to him soon. He was completely open to it. It came the next day. He became one of those who stood on Luke 11:13--
“How much more, then will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Holman Christian Standard Bible) He knew that such a promise was not for a sinner but a Christian.
The R. A. Torrey version of the baptism of the Holy Spirit has been called other names by various groups. It was called the “second blessing” by some early Methodists. Some of the Holiness and early Pentecostals termed it “sanctification” or “instant sanctification” with additional purging later by the Holy Spirit. The sanctification crowd has also been called the “second stage” believers, testifying to having experienced a “second stage” of the Holy Spirit before He gave them tongues (the third stage).
May we have tremendous love in both camps while we wait for the Second Coming. In that day, we will see the “heavenly waste basket” where all our differences will be tossed, and God’s reign will be supreme.