An unexpected, irrefutable, and the most awe inspiring miracle I have ever been an upfront eyewitness to has forever muted my criticism of Charismatics and Pentecostals.
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| My brother Ted, Julia, and Mary when they came to visit us in Michigan. |
“My dog is not in that fight!” was one of my dad’s favorite sayings.That was the standard answer that he would give whenever anyone would bring up denominational differences.
Mom, however, had a different approach altogether. She let all the Dittmer boys know up front that the last women she wanted us dragging home for her approval was “Pentecostal girls!”
My brother, Ted, married a Pentecostal girl. She is a lovely and gracious lady who has warmly adopted our family and the Church of the Nazarene as her own. I was at a large family gathering sitting across from her and Ted, when I asked them both if they ever remember Mom mentioning anything about the type of girls Mom wanted us to date. Mom promptly kicked me in the shins under the table, so she must have backed down a little from her former fervor.
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| One of my favorite pictures of Mom, after Dad passed away. |
I became acquainted with the Royer family right after I graduated from high school. The Royer Quartet was looking for a pianist. Mike Royer stopped after working a typical day as a welder in the steel mills of Gary. He was covered in black soot from head to toe, but I noticed his irrepressible smile and enthusiasm, and after meeting the family, I became an adopted member of the Royer family and the pianist for the Royer quartet.
This friendship caused my poor mother a lot of stress. It also made me evaluate everything that I saw or heard very carefully, for even at that young age, I was measuring everything against the Word of God.That brings me to the incident which keeps me, a Wesleyan, from criticizing the Pentecostals and Charismatics.
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| Dave and Jane Smith are on the inside. Lynne and I are on the outside. The picture was taken at Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. |
My late wife Lynne and I had formed a singing group called the Insights in Colorado. Our first partners were Dave and Jane Smith. Dave and I were Bible College students at Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs. After Dave left to pastor a church in California, Lynne and I sang with the Dittmer family, then we reformed the Insights with the help of Dave Royer in the winter of 1972.
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| Dave Royer is on the right. Again, this is taken in Colorado Springs, Colorado. |
The Insights sang at a gracious Church of the Nazarene in LaJunta, Colorado, pastored by the outgoing and cheerful Corby Grimes. The church had a strong youth group, with young people from several denominations attending.
When the Assemblies of God Church decided to have a revival, we were asked to bring the music program on two separate week ends.The revival was unique in two ways. First, it was led by a lady evangelist by the name of Betty Swinford, a writer of Christian children’s books for Moody Publishing. She was soft spoken, and logical. Second, it was open ended. There was no closing date. The revival would continue as long as the meetings were being blessed with success.
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| Betty Swinford was the author of numerous children's books, including this one I found with Google. |
The first weekend services were well attended by teenagers, including quite a few from the Nazarene church, for they had come to hear the Insights sing. Betty would have seekers come up and stand in a circle and close their eyes as she prayed for them. As she would point to them while praying, the person being prayed for would fall back as if hit by a wind, then they would regain their balance and stand upright. I wondered at that, for many of the seekers were not pentecostals, and had their eyes tightly closed. How did they know Betty was pointing at them?
The next weekend, the kids had gone out into the community and dug up the neediest kids in town. I had a front row seat to all the action, for my job, after we sang, was to provide music background for the service. Lynne took her post back by our recordings, to greet people as they left.
I noticed a cluster of teenage girls talking to a rough looking young woman on my right. They were fervent and tearful, full of love for this very lost sheep of the flock. She was a drug addict, a user of heroine, and the mother of a child. She was in danger of losing custody to her child, but she wasn’t ready to give up her drugs. She walked out of the service.
Dave and I always matched in our dress when we sang. Our favorite suit at that time was a bright cranberry colored polyester suit jacket, with red and white herring bone bell bottom pants.
Lynne would make her own dresses, and her most stunning was a solid white floor length dress. She always looked radiant, and her waist length hair was done up in a high bun. She was wearing the white dress that night.
I had been softly playing at the piano when I noticed a tumult at the doorway, then I saw Lynne. Her beautiful white dress was covered with bright red blood, and the troubled young woman who had left was leaning on her as Lynne was half leading half dragging the troubled girl to the front where the office and the phone were located. Betty, the evangelist was at my right at the altar. As Lynne passed them she leaned down and whispered in the evangelist’s ear. The evangelist beckoned Lynne to kneel down, and she kneeled at the altar with the broken bleeding girl.
Lynne later told me that she had been at the back when the young woman had burst into the back door, and had collapsed in her arms. The troubled woman had gone out into the church yard in despair, and had slit her wrists LENGTHWISE! (I was told later by an EMT that if you are really serious about suicide, you slit your wrists lengthwise to cut the arteries several times with one slice!)
Lynne logically was dragging/leading the girl to the office where the phone was located, when the evangelist had asked if they could pray for her first. Lynne’s response was, yes, but very quickly, please. As they knelt down, the blood was spurting from the girl’s wrists in rhythm to her heart. As the evangelist prayed, the bleeding geyser suddenly stopped.
You may doubt what I will tell you next, but for those who knew Lynne, you will say, Yep, that was Lynne! When Lynne saw the bleeding stop, she did the most unwise thing any emergency response aide has ever done. She placed her hands on both sides of one of the woman’s wrist, and using her thumbs as pry bars, tried to peel the woman’s formerly slitted wrist skin apart! It was very unwise, yet with all of that effort, she could not find any slit!
You may draw your own conclusion as to what happened. The pastor of the Church of the Nazarene did. Since so many Nazarene teens had been to the revival, he was asked by his church board to renounce the revival as a work of the devil. He could not, and he had to take another church. Lynne is no longer alive to back me in this unbelievable account. Dave Royer, however, is. His profile is on Facebook.
My perspective was forever changed. I no longer viewed the world as a rationalist, but as a true believer in the power of the Almighty God. Others may enjoy getting into a doctrinal or denominational fracas. But when they ask me for my opinion, I quote my father.
My dog is not in that fight!
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| My favorite picture of Dad. |
Update: My mom and dad Bill and Carol Dittmer are in heaven, along with my late wife Lynne and precious Pat Royer, along with the patriarch and the matriarch of the Royers Mr and Mrs Royer.
