Chapter 6
The Anointing To Preach
I remember how it shocked my Grandma when I announced, “I’m going to be a preacher.” Grandma said, “Why, son, you can’t preach—you can’t talk!” It was true. Because my heart didn’t beat right and I would pass out if I tried to exert myself, I had learned in my younger years to sit around and keep my mouth shut. In fact, the year before I became bedfast, Grandpa Drake said one night at the supper table, “I saw your teacher Miss
Bessie Mae Hamilton today, and I asked, ‘How is Kenneth doing?’
“‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Mr. Drake, he’s just like he always was. If you waited on him to say anything, he’d never say anything. In
fact, he could miss the class and nobody would ever know it.'” That put an idea in my mind! I decided to try that out. I had
only two classes in the afternoon—Miss Bessie Mae’s and another—so two or three times a week I’d play hooky and go to the show. You know, they never did miss me. They never counted me
absent. Of course, after I got saved, I quit doing that. When I went back to high school after my healing, I never missed a day. But that’s how quiet I was.
After I was saved and healed, I began to preach as a young Baptist boy preacher. I knew I was called to preach, and the
anointing to preach would come upon me. I didn’t have any anointing to teach, and I didn’t like teaching. I’d pray, study, and prepare sermon outlines—and I’ve got nearly all of them still. I don’t preach some of them anymore, but they represent all the light I had then. (God will bless you
because you’re walking in all the light you have.) The first time I preached, I preached 45 minutes. Some beginners go 10 or 15 minutes. I went 45. And I’ve been going ever since! For a number of years I was a preacher—and, oh, I could preach! I was a preaching machine! I liked that anointing! When it came upon me, I’d preach so hard and fast, the congregation would say, “Slow down! Slow down! We can’t get half of what you say, you go so fast.” I didn’t have the baptism in the Holy Spirit then, but I had the Holy Spirit in me, and an anointing would come on me, because I was called to that office. (In the Old Testament, too,
the anointing came on people to stand in certain offices.)
The Glory Cloud Manifests
I could relate some phenomenal things that happened when the anointing to preach came upon me as a young Baptist boy preacher.
One Sunday night I was preaching an evangelistic-type sermon from James 4:14, where James asks, “For what is your
life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” I’d been preaching about 15 minutes, anointed by the Holy Spirit, when the power of God came into
that church auditorium and filled it like a cloud. I could not see a single member—I was in the cloud. I could hear the sound of my voice, but I didn’t know one word of what I said. For 17 minutes—I looked at my watch—I couldn’t distinguish a word. Finally I could see people on the first three rows of seats. Then the anointing began to go away. It was just like a cloud lifted from the whole group. I didn’t say anything about it; I closed the service normally. Several days later I asked a very spiritual old gentleman who
had been there, “Was anything different about the service Sunday night?”
“Well, why?” he replied.
“Well, you tell me if there was, and then I’ll tell you why.” He said, “Well, the only thing was that people have been
talking about it all over the community. It seemed like your face shone. It didn’t look like you—it just looked like the face of an
angel.” Then I told him about it. I told him I hadn’t known one word I said for the last 17 minutes of the service, the anointing was upon me so. That’s all a work of the Holy Spirit: the anointing and the glory cloud.
The Anointing Increases
After being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I entered into a greater dimension of the power of God, and that anointing to
preach increased. There is a scriptural basis for this: Elisha desired a double
portion of Elijah’s anointing. Elijah was anointed by the Holy Spirit to stand in the office of prophet, and Elisha had a double
portion of that anointing—a greater anointing, in other words, to stand in the same office. After I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, I didn’t announce it to my church. I followed that anointing in me that teaches you all things. Something on the inside of me said, “Don’t say anything about it in church.” So I never mentioned it; I just went right on with our services in that little country church. It wasn’t 30 days until people started saying, “What
happened to you?” “What do you mean, what happened to me?”
“Well, you’re different,” they said.
“What do you mean, I’m different? Is it good or bad?” “It’s good,” they said. “Well,” I said, “what is it? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you’ve got power you didn’t have before. When you preach, you have power you didn’t have before.” I had been anointed to preach before, but now the anointing to preach was increased.
The people said, “When you preach now, it almost knocks us off the seats.”
They didn’t mean I was a hard preacher—it was just the power behind the preaching. One member of the congregation was a Presbyterian. Ours
was a community church—the only church in the community— and 85 percent of the people were Baptists. This Presbyterian gentleman was wealthy even for that day. He owned many acres of land. All of his children were grown
and married. Just before he and his wife left on a tour to Europe, he had heard of a couple in the community who had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and he had announced, “If that talking in tongues gets in here, I’m pulling all of my folks out!” There were seven families of them. While he was in Europe, I received the baptism. When he returned, he asked another member, an elderly Methodist man, “What happened to our little preacher while I was gone?”
This Methodist gentleman was a spiritual giant. He told me he had answered, “Oh, has something happened to him?”
“Yes, it sure has,” the Presbyterian said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s a better preacher than he used to be.” “Well, I always thought he was a good preacher,” the Methodist answered. “Yeah, but he’s more powerful now than he ever was before. He’s got a power he never had before.” I had shared my experience with the Methodist man, although I hadn’t told it publicly, because I didn’t want the church split.
So he said, “Mr. C, you know what happened to our little preacher while you were gone?” “No.”
“He got baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues!”
The Presbyterian dropped his head, and the Methodist didn’t know if he was about to announce he was pulling out or not.
But we never lost a member, we never lost a family. They saw the value of the experience. The Presbyterian announced, “I’ve heard him preach before, and I’ve heard him preach since, and I want it!”
Ninety-three percent of them followed me in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the other seven percent still attended. Although I would be anointed to preach, that strong anointing with the glory cloud didn’t happen again in my
ministry for three more years. During those years I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, had come over among Full Gospel people, and was pastoring a little church in the black land of northcentral Texas. One Sunday night I was preaching away on prophecy—it was the second Sunday night of September 1939—and the anointing came upon me. I don’t know what I said, and I couldn’t see anything or anyone. It was as if a cloud or dense fog filled the church. When I came to myself, I was standing down in front, off the
platform. That was the first time I’d ever done that. In fact, my wife had said, “I believe you could preach standing in a wash pan,” because I never moved from behind the pulpit when I preached. I had been trained that way when I was a Southern Baptist. But here the glory had come down and I didn’t know one
word I had said for 15 minutes. I had been in the glory cloud. When I found myself walking around the altar, I got so embarrassed my face got red, and I ran back on the platform, got
behind the pulpit, said, “Amen. Let’s pray,” and gave the invitation.
When the Anointing Is Present
Every sinner in the church came and got saved. We had revival that night! Twenty were baptized in the Holy Spirit that night. That may not sound big now, but back in 1939 if we had half a dozen saved and three baptized in the Holy Spirit, we thought we had a landslide.
In that service everybody who didn’t have the baptism was baptized, and everybody who was lost or backslid got back to God. It wasn’t my preaching that did it; it was the anointing. The glory cloud still appears quite frequently in our healing meetings and other services. People have seen it. It comes in and
fills the room. Sometimes when I am preaching or teaching, it comes in and
absolutely blocks everyone from view. Most of the time it just hangs above their heads. It is at times like these that people receive healing without anyone ministering to them, because the
anointing is there. Sometimes the anointing comes into visible manifestation. Do you think it wasn’t visible when the house started shaking
where the early Christians were praying? And when that jail at Philippi started shaking and every door flew open, it came into manifestation again as a result of Paul’s and Silas’ praying. I have the anointing of the Holy Spirit in me all the time, as any believer has, but we’re speaking here of an anointing to
preach. I don’t preach much anymore—I mostly teach—but I like the
preaching anointing. I love it.
It’s different from the anointing to teach. It feels different. It’s more exuberant. It’s the same Spirit, but a different
anointing. Thank God for the anointing to preach! If I had any control over it, I’d bring on that anointing to preach often, because I like it.
The difference between preaching and teaching is that to preach means to proclaim, but to teach means to explain.
Once in a while, that anointing to preach still will come on me. If you’ve never heard me preach, get my tape “El Shaddai.” I’m preaching on that one, not teaching. I preached “El Shaddai” years ago at a Full Gospel Business Men’s meeting near Washington, D.C. The special singer was singing the last song, and I was sitting there on that platform
minding my own business, ready to give my testimony about going to hell, when something like a cloak came on me. It fit
over me like an overcoat. It was this anointing to preach. You talk about a fellow feeling “preachy”!
Remember, Elijah threw his cloak over Elisha, signifying that the Holy Spirit was coming on him in that way: just like a mantle was on him, and that’s the way it was with me. After all, these Old Testament types and shadows were fulfilled in the New. When they turned the service over to me, I didn’t have my sermon notes on “El Shaddai,” but the anointing was there to preach, so I just took my text and took off. We had a service!
