Full Salvationists

For the revival meeting he conducted one night last fortnight at the Full Salvation Union Church in Dearborn, Mich. Evangelist Benjamin Wright had chosen the text: I will pour out my spirit in the last days and the young men shall prophesy and the young women shall dream dreams. In Revivalist Wright's small, fervently praying congregation sat a grizzled Ford Motor Co. employe named La Verne Tapp, his wife Myrtle, his 17-year-old daughter Shirley. The Tapps had been looking forward to the meeting. Shirley, who was "saved" at 14 by the Full Salvation Union, remarked: "It's going to be a great meeting although the Devil has sent ice and snow to try to thwart the Christians." So when Evangelist Wright brought his exhortations to a shouting climax, pale, pious Shirley Tapp was among the first to hasten up to the altar, burst into prayer. "Oh, Lord," cried she, "I will always praise You and never be afraid to bear Your name!" Then & there she collapsed.

That Shirley Tapp was obviously in a trance neither surprised nor alarmed her parents or the other church members. They gathered around the limp body, prayed loudly until 4:30 a. m. Then they took her to the home of Brother Harold DeMille, prayed some more. Finally the Tapps carried Shirley home to their small bungalow, wrapped her in blankets on the sitting room sofa.

When the Press discovered Shirley Tapp three days later, she was still on the sofa, her hair in two neat braids, her eyes closed, her body relaxed, her face expressionless. Father Tapp had explanations ready. His daughter, he declared, was "slain of the Lord." "She was saved from the sins she had committed," said old Mr. Tapp confidently, "but the sinful nature remained. Now that nature has died and her present condition occurs." He summed up: "Shirley is suffering for the whole world." Declared Mrs. Tapp: "This sort of thing is not uncommon among us. But we are mighty proud of Shirley."

The Tapps' family physician examined the girl, who thrice had had pneumonia. He found her pulse normal, her reflexes satisfactory, declared she was in a state of autohypnosis, responding only to religious stimuli. Thus when the Full Salvationists sang Have Thine Own Way, Lord, a newshawk took Shirley's pulse, found it increased from 93 to 103. And Shirley smiled dreamily for a cameraman when she was asked, "Shirley, do you love Jesus?", by her friend Elmer Wood.

To diagnose Shirley Tapp's state, doctors and psychiatrists used various words adding up to much the same thing--"hysteria," "mental anesthesia," "self-hypnosis," "a neurotic's struggle with reality." Because the girl was able to perform the feat of holding her arms upraised for 40 minutes when an ordinary person would tire in ten, no one suggested she was faking. Not the least bit interested in what the doctors thought were the Tapps and their devout friends. They bridled when it was suggested Shirley be hospitalized. Instead, the Full Salvationists jampacked the little room which resounded with hymns, prayers, exhortations.

Cried Rev. Doss Kilgore, assistant pastor of a nearby Full Salvationist Mission, to a writhing, wailing group: "We want to snuggle up to the Lord tonight and look right into Heaven. He needs a band of people to do his will." When Shirley's rigid arms slowly rose up, the shirt-sleeved evangelist exclaimed: "It is a manifestation of God's power."

Next afternoon:

"Let's pray and see what she does."

"We need the power. The power must be upon us."

"God lets us pray any time."

"Oh, Lord, Oh God, Oh help us now."

"Are you with Jesus? Do you walk with God, Shirley?"

"She's with you, Jesus. She's safe with you. No one can help her but you."

Shirley smiled, twitched, seemed to whisper "Amen."

Finally, one day last week, Dr. Martin R. Hoffman, psychiatrist from a nearby hospital, announced: "She will wake up tomorrow, because in repeated conversations all around her she has constantly heard it said it is the Lord's will that she waken on that day [the seventh]. If I had been able to convince her today that it was the day, or that we were alone in the room, she probably would have awakened immediately."

Instead, however, Shirley Tapp awoke that night after 143 hours of coma. Said she: "I seemed to be standing on a cloud, with the earth far below me, and I had a glimpse of Heaven. There seemed to be a veil. I saw God walking toward me on a white path. There was a veil between us. I saw little Jimmie Kilgore [son of Doss who died six years ago]. He was dressed in white and had white hair. He seemed to be picking flowers on a mountain pathway."

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