Transformation
During his period at the seminary (more specifically, on 10 February 1927) John Sung was baptized in the Holy Spirit during a time of prayer. He once exclaimed, “This was my spiritual birthday! Although I already believed in Jesus since my early childhood days, this new experience is a life changing one for me ”. John Sung described that “The Holy Spirit poured onto me, just like water, on top of my head”, then “The Holy Spirit continuously poured onto me wave after wave”.
It was then that he claimed to have been born again. “At first it seemed that there was no way to get rid of and that he must go to Hell… He turned to the story of the cross in Gospel of Luke 23, and as he read the story came alive. So vivid was the sight of the Saviour dying for his sins that he seemed to be there at the foot of the Cross and pleading to be washed from all his sins in the precious Blood… Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Son, thy sins are forgiven’” (Leslie T. Lyall, “A Biography of John Sung,” p. 43).
After this experience John Sung now felt that he possessed more strength and fervently preached the Gospel to people he met. John became a radically changed man and began to preach fervently to his peers and lecturers in the seminary. It was such a drastic change in the man that his fellow liberal theology students reckoned that he had gone out of his right mind, and the seminary authorities confined him in an insane asylum, where he stayed for 193 days.
Despite this period of isolation, John Sung set himself to read the Bible. It was during this stay that he read through the entire Bible 40 times and soon became very familiar and well versed in its teachings. This period of Scriptural reading and spiritual renewal laid the foundations for one of the major revivals of the 20th century.
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