[Hope]

In the olden days of the 60s and early 70s, the extreme stuff rarely came directly if at all from WL, JB, JI etc. but from ultra zealous ones from another church and in particular from So. Ca. and especially Eldon hall or from someone from another visiting place. In Dallas, we came to be on the ready after a training or conference for the testimony from a dear local one about the fellowship he or she had had with such and such ultra spiritual person from the much more fantastic church than Dallas.

There was also a kind of competition among the various churches as to who could be the most for the Lord and the most up-to-date with the present move of the Lord.

I know all the details about where the burnings originated and where the re-baptisms came from. They did not have their source in WL. Maybe they had some element of the spontaneous move of the Spirit. In the beginning, WL had a practice not to balance the brothers and sisters. He testified that when the re-baptisms began in Eldon Hall his first impression was to stop it, but he decided to let the Lord do what He would do. It became a movement or contagion that the American saints took to Taiwan in 1967. I was not re-baptized. But I know several in Texas who had great consternation about the whole movement and felt they were under a kind of group pressure and that perhaps in an unconscious and unofficial way some were keeping score. Some of the testimonies of how a brother or sister benefited from the experience were way over the top and left the impression that you were lacking if you did not agree to re-baptism.

I could write a 100 pages on crazy wacky stuff that was happening and its source was not WL but from various dear wacky believers trying to be God's best in God's move on earth today. The brothers in the lead in Texas by the mid 70s had learned to filter reports of great revival, blessing, new light etc. I was not involved in the infamous meeting involving a sister in Houston. When I heard a little about it, my first thought was that BP was perhaps trying to exercise some restraint on the latest movement coming from Anaheim, the so-called sisters' coordination.

In Dallas, we had one sister who desired that we bring whatever it was to Dallas. We looked into it and decided to just let it go by us. Thus, it was no big deal.

We heard all about the Berkeley way to preach the gospel. Some were strongly promoting that we in Dallas had to go there and bring it back to Texas. I went there to learn for myself. I was happy to let them do what they felt the Lord was leading, but we had no need to try and copy Berkeley.

Unfortunately, this desire to copy others led to many problems and comparing one against another. Many of the young leading brothers could not withstand the pressure to measure up to Eldon or Anaheim or Seattle or where ever. They pushed their church and saints into various "the latest and greatest" whatever and this was a real damage.

I know that this kind of often unrestrained foolishness caused WL and JI and others to begin to exercise some controlling influence. When some place or persons did something stupid, it seemed that quite often the blame went to the leaders and particularly to WL

BP desired that the saints not put out any publications which would be of low quality and reflect poorly on the church where they were and the local churches in general. There were instances where sloppy and off beat tracts etc were printed and distributed and then used against the church and or WL etc.

The above was the beginning of the control and ultimately the one speaking, one publication nonsense.

Your brother in Christ Jesus,

Hope