As a result of his meetings in Lakeland, Florida at the Carpenter's Home Church, Rodney Howard-Browne was invited to Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and to Oral Roberts University, also in Tulsa, where Oral Roberts spoke to Rodney Howard-Browne as follows: "When my son Richard went down to Lakeland where you had preached ...when he got in the building [Carpenter's Home Church], the Spirit of the Lord fell on him and he couldn't preach. He fell down under the power of God and he laughed and he laughed and we put it on our Sunday morning ...television program two Sundays in a row. And there's been more talk over those two half hours than we've had in months and months. People have been laughing all over America through those two programs that Richard made while he was there ...and my wife and I sat there and we watched and we laughed and we cried. I guess I'm the most moved tonight because God is in the now.... And the stream is always flowing. It ebbs and it tides. And every so often He says, 'It's time for another level of my move.' And He lays His hand on someone that nobody thought about. None of us were ever known by people. Nobody would have selected us. But the King of kings and Lord of lords knows something we don't know.... And my brother, the Lord brought me here tonight. I've never met you in the flesh. I was in South Africa twice in Wembley Stadium, when 30,000 came a night and your family was there but you weren't born at that time. I believe you said your brother was saved in that meeting but I just want you to know that I know who you are. [He lays a hand on his shoulder and begins to speak in tongues.] Raised up from a new kind of seed. With a new kind of revelation that those in the Spirit will know what it is. Those who are not in the Spirit and will never get in it will not know, so we cannot blame them. Yet a fresh wave. It's not something you're doing." Oral Roberts then fell out under the power of the Holy Spirit.
Richard Roberts, Oral's son, then said, "Brother Rodney, this has been the hardest summer of my life.... It was several weeks before I was to go [to Lakeland]. And brother Strader had said, 'Richard when you come, everyone who has preached in my church since brother Rodney was here has been filled with a fresh baptism of joy.' [I said,] 'Well, let it happen to me.' Because, having taken on forty million dollars of debt [Richard Roberts begins to laugh. Everybody laughs.] ... That fresh baptism hit me at Lakeland. I was not prepared. But it has stayed on me. I was flying home, reading a book on an airplane and just began to laugh uncontrollably. The flight attendant thought there was something wrong. The people around me thought there was something wrong. [Laughter.] And I've been in business meetings and someone would come and say, 'here's something and we don't have the money to pay for it,' and I would just fall and laugh. [Laughter.] ... God by His Spirit spoke to me and said, 'the same way that you're laughing here you're going to laugh while I pay off the forty million dollar debt.'"
ORU then canceled classes for two days in favor of Rodney Howard-Browne's meetings. At the close of the first meeting, 4,000 students and faculty lined up throughout the hallways and out onto the school's lawn. "Most of them ended up on the ground after Howard-Browne touched them," Charisma reported.