I'm always amazed that all those who have never been baptized in the Holy Spirit are experts in the distribution and operation of God's spiritual gifts. Confusion, misinterpretation/misrepresentation due to ignorance about the events of Acts chapter 19.
At least in my case I
did receive what my church called "baptism in the Holy Spirit". I was twelve years old and an evening service (I think it was Sunday night) a traveling evangelist came and the focus was on God using young people. After the sermon young people were invited to come up and receive "the baptism in the Holy Spirit", hands were laid on me in the front of the church, and like those before me that evening, I was "slain in the Spirit" and like I had seen others in my church do I began to make noises. It was all quite the experience, and for many years I was very emphatic that this was a legitimate experience of the Holy Spirit and that I had been "baptized in the Holy Spirit". I began to regularly "speak in tongues" a couple years later, primarily in private, and only once to my memory ever out loud and publicly in church. For years tongues were a major part of my private devotions and prayer life, even after I stopped attending my Pentecostal church and even after I had stopped identifying myself as a Pentecostal.
My views on the subject have changed slowly, over the course of the last 15+ years; chiefly through constant and rigorous biblical study and understanding the historical views of the Christian Church.
So my criticism of your statement here is twofold:
1) At least in some cases there are those of us who experienced those things you say we haven't. I'm an example of just such a person.
2) Since a fundamental point of contention is what Scripture means when it speaks of baptism with the Holy Spirit, making an argument based upon an assumed conclusion does not profit the argument or case being made.
I reject that what I experienced was the baptism with the Holy Spirit spoken about by St. John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Peter; because in Scripture the baptism with the Holy Spirit is used in reference to two very specific events in the history of the Church, the most prominent of these being what took place on Pentecost as recorded in the 2nd chapter of the Acts; the other is what transpired when St. Peter went to preach to Cornelius and his household. At no point is baptism with the Holy Spirit ever identified with anything other than these two public events in which the first was the inaguration of the Church as the Church, and the second the signifier of God's inclusion of the Gentiles into the Church and its Gospel mission. Baptism with the Holy Spirit is never spoken of as a private or personal experience, but as the corporate act of God historically in the birthing of the Church, in fulfillment of Jesus' promise that He would ask and the Father would send the Holy Spirit. There exists no exegetical reason to apply it to anything else.
The individual promise of the Holy Spirit is not attached to a private spiritual experience, but is attached to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism as per Acts 2:38, historic Christian practice has been that the Baptismal Rite includes two things: Baptism itself and anointing (Chrismation), the application of oil with the laying on of hands which, in the ancient Church as well as in the Eastern Churches today go hand-in-hand; but which in the West became a somewhat complicated matter with Chrismation being put off and evolving into the Western Rite of Confirmation; that said, it is standard practice in many traditional churches even in the West to apply the oil of chrismation immediately after Baptism as the sacramental sign and seal of the Holy Spirit promised to us in Baptism (or at least this is true in the ELCA and other Lutheran churches). This practice follows what is observed in the Acts, for example in the case of the Samaritans who though being officially baptized were not yet chrismated, further we see this also in Acts ch. 19 where St. Paul baptizes the disciples of John the Baptist then lays hands upon them.
Error has crept in the modern age by identifying baptism with the Holy Spirit as being
1. Chiefly a secondary blessing,
2. Chiefly being identified with the speaking of tongues
In Scripture, rather, it is identified with Pentecost. And the Church's practice has been since the beginning to baptize and lay on hands, which go hand-in-hand as part of the rite of Christian initiation; Holy Baptism with which the promise of the Holy Spirit is connected in Scripture (as previously mentioned) and the laying on of hands as (normally) following immediately after, though apparently in some cases happening later as in the case with the Samaritans, and also which began to become normative in the West.
-CryptoLutheran