I love to tell my experience of the first vision that I had. This vision made no sense to me at the time and I didn’t understand it until many years later. It was given to me at the age of sixteen when I received the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1962 during a major revival. I went down to the revival and slipped in quietly to the back row. The evangelist was a man by the name of Leonard Conners and he was a WILD preacher. He was built like a football player with unruly hair that was long for those days. When he preached, he perspired so much that he never had a dry stitch of cloths on by the time he finished. His hair would fall down and he would get all red in the face. On this night, he had finished preaching and had begun to pray for people when he caught my eye. He looked right at me and came right toward me. He said to me, "God has been speaking to me about you every time you have come into this church." Then he asked me if I was saved and I said; "Yes, I knew Jesus Christ". He then asked me if I had the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. When I answered "no", he asked if I would like it. I said, "Well...yeah...I guess". He said, "Why don’t you come forward to the front of the church". All I remember is walking half way down the aisle. I did not make it all the way to the front of the church before the "power of God" hit me and literally knocked me off my feet. I laid on my back on a cold concrete floor for hours speaking in tongues. I was shown two visions:

The first vision was that of a heart. It was a very dark heart and as I looked into it, there appeared to be no end to it - like a bottomless pit. I could see things written in this heart like envy, strife, jealousy and fear. Things we referred to as the "sins of the flesh" or the "motives of sin". Today, we would call it the EGO. The Bible calls it the carnal mind. I was looking into my own carnal mind; part of my ego where the seed of fear and guilt had been planted (by religion). Then, all of a sudden, the most beautiful pearl luminous heart appeared. It was very tiny and yet was the most pure white light heart I had ever seen. It stood out dramatically in the background of all that darkness.

The voice said to me, "This is me in you. I have entered your heart as a seed. You must nourish and feed me and I will grow and increase. And, as I increase, you will decrease." The voice instructed me that I was not to address the negative part of darkness. I was not to address the strife and fear or to preach against sin. I was to preach love, light and peace and all the positive attributes of the Holy Spirit as this would be what would feed this luminous heart.

This first vision taught me how important it was to focus on the positive aspects of spirit and life. Therefore, when I started speaking, I did not come from the sin consciousness, but rather began to teach the spiritual aspect of people. The people in my church immediately heard a different sound which they didn’t understand. I would draw that heart for them and address the fact that we don’t feed the Christ or the Holy Spirit inside ourselves and therefore it does not continue to grow. I began to show them how we feed the belief of sin and darkness and evil by talking more about the devil (fear) than about God (love). We preached more about hell than we ever talked about heaven. The result was more hell in our life; more of the "devil" in our life. I have heard it said that the sub-conscious mind is similar to that of a small child who does not hear the word "DON’T" such as in: "Don’t slam the door". BANG! They edit out the "don’t" and "slam the door". They aren’t into the do’s and don’ts, but rather just hear what the subject matter is. The universe is similar to that kind of idea.

This is the genius of new thought as far as I’m concerned. Choose to think more loving thoughts and you will attract more love into your life. Think thoughts of peace and you will bring the manifestation and experience of a peaceful life. It’s all choice! Good and evil lives in our own knowledge. It is our choice as to whether or not we see the glass half full or half empty.

Later, that same night, I had another vision. This time a great white light appeared and I identified It as Christ. I assumed it was Jesus of course, although I didn’t see a figure or form. The Light impressed me with these words: "I want you to gather a dozen yellow roses to be presented to me". I remember feeling very honored because I so loved Christ. I had just had this new experience which caused me to be very much in love with Christ and I was thrilled to be commissioned to do this. In this vision, I ran down to the nearest florist, full of excitement and anticipation. However, when I walked in, my heart sank. All of the roses were bruised and old with the life ebbing out of them. I began to weave through them and in the process, my arms and hands became scratched by the thorns. I was about to give up when, suddenly out of my right eye, I caught the vision of the most beautiful perfect yellow ruse bud I had ever seen and purchased it. Then I was reminded that the voice said to purchase a dozen. So I thought, I’ll have to go to another florist. The same basic thing happened there and I purchased one perfect yellow rose bud. I ended up going to twelve different florists to find the twelve perfect yellow rose buds. When I presented them to the Light, the Light said, "Now, my son, go and gather the fragments of my truth that have been hidden in all the religions of the world. And, when you bring them unto the people, you will have brought them unto me."