Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

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This Week in AG History–January 31, 1954
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 29 January 2015

Church planting has always been part of the DNA of the Assemblies of God. While specific programs and personnel come and go, each new generation of leaders has emphasized the importance of starting new churches. In the 1950s, the National Home Missions Department (now U.S. Missions) promoted the “Mother Church Plan.” This program encouraged each Assembly of God congregation to start a “daughter church.”

The January 31, 1954, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel highlighted how one historic congregation, Central Assembly of God in Cumberland, Maryland, had started four churches in neighboring communities in the previous five years. Central Assembly of God, established in 1915, experienced a revival in 1939. As a result of this revival, young people in the church felt stirred to action and began holding prayer meetings in small towns without Assemblies of God churches. The prayer meetings developed into “outstations,” where small groups gathered for services in rented buildings, schoolhouses, or homes. Each outstation had a superintendent and was under the oversight of the “mother church.” A carload of people from Central Assembly of God, including speakers and musicians, would travel to the outstations to help with the services. The mother church financially and spiritually assisted its daughter churches in this manner until the new congregations grew and could become self-sustaining.

Central Assembly of God’s first daughter church to become self-sustaining was in Bedford Valley, Pennsylvania. By 1954 the Bedford Valley Assembly had an average attendance of 140 people. The Bedford Valley congregation soon mothered its own church in Rainesburg, Pennsylvania. The mother church, according to the Pentecostal Evangel article, had become a grandparent! Central Assembly of God planted two additional churches, in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, and Carpenter’s Addition, West Virginia.

Initially, some members of the Cumberland church were concerned that sending some of its best members to other communities to plant churches would weaken the mother church. However, the opposite proved true. The daughter churches broadened the mother church’s sphere of influence, and new leaders stepped up to fill the open ministry positions. The mother church became a ministry hub for a broader geographic region. In 1940, approximately 100 people attended Central Assembly of God’s Sunday School. By 1953, this number had risen to 342. The combined Sunday School attendance of the mother church and the daughter churches was about 700 people.

While the National Home Missions Department began promoting the “Mother Church Plan” in the 1950s, the concept had already been tried and found successful across the Fellowship. The 2009 General Council approved a similar program, whereby a church would be able to register its outreaches, which are distinct from the parent church, as “Parent Affiliated Churches.”

Read the article, “They Exist to Evangelize!” on pages 10-11 of the January 31, 1954, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “A Marvelous Healing,” by Mrs. Lee Jones

• “Miraculous Healing and Conversion,” by John C. Jackson

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangelarchived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Do you have Pentecostal historical materials that should be preserved? Please consider depositing these materials at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (FPHC). The FPHC, located in the Assemblies of God national offices, is the largest Pentecostal archive in the world. We would like to preserve and make your treasures accessible to those who write the history books.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–February 8, 1930
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 5 February 2015

Aunt Fanny, a 100-year old Hoopa Indian woman, accepted Christ in about 1920 when a Mexican-American Pentecostal evangelist, A. C. Valdez, visited the Hoopa Indian Reservation in northern California. She was among the earliest Native American Pentecostals, and was almost certainly the oldest.

Aunt Fanny had long been revered in Native American circles. Born in about 1820, she recounted the sacred stories of her ancestors. She herself had lived longer than most everyone else. She remembered, as a girl, seeing the first white men come to her small village. She initially thought they were creatures sent from the Thunder Sky by the Great Spirit. Afterward, she witnessed white soldiers massacre many Native Americans in her village. She survived the massacre and forgave the white men who killed her people.

Sometime later, Aunt Fanny’s husband was hunting with a white man and saved him from being killed by a bear. He shot the bear through its heart with a flint-pointed arrow. The man, grateful for his life, gave a gun to Aunt Fanny’s husband. The gun made him the envy of others in the tribe. Aunt Fanny also learned to chew and smoke “pedro” tobacco from the white men. She became an addict.

When Aunt Fanny accepted Christ at her advanced age, others in the tribe took notice. Before her conversion, she was badly stooped over and was partly paralyzed in her mouth and an arm. After she accepted Christ, she was healed and could stand straight and would regularly walk 8 to 10 miles each day. She received widespread attention in the secular press because of her age. Numerous articles about Aunt Fanny appeared in newspapers across the United States throughout the 1920s. She shared her Christian testimony wherever she went, according to these press reports.

According to a lengthy 1925 article in the Times Standard newspaper published in Eureka, California, Aunt Fanny walked between five and eight miles to attend services at the Hoopa Pentecostal mission. The mission (now known as Hoopa Assembly of God) affiliated with the Assemblies of God in 1927. The article also noted that Aunt Fanny was able to overcome her tobacco addiction shortly after converting to Christ. The article reported: “Aunt Fanny . . . believes devoutly in healing, and attributes the fact that she is now able to stand straighter than in former years to Divine healing.”

J. D. Wells, an early Assemblies of God missionary to Native Americans, shared Aunt Fanny’s story with readers of the February 8, 1930, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel. At the time, she was 109 years old and continued to present a strong Christian witness. He wrote, “Every one on the reservation welcomes Fanny for a stay at the home, as they feel that God will bless their household while she is present, and this seems to be the truth.”

Read the article, “A Veteran Enters the Lord’s Army,” by J. D. Wells, on pages 10-11 of the February 8, 1930, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “The Need of the Hour,” by Flem Van Meter

• “Divine Healing,” by J. N. Hoover

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangelarchived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–February 12, 1932
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 12 February 2015

While the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) affected everyone in the United States, it was particularly devastating to refugees who had fled the Mexican Revolution. Over one million people left the violence and poverty of Mexico and moved to the United States between 1910 and 1920. By 1932, about 200,000 of those refugees had returned to Mexico because they were unable to find shelter or food in the United States.

It was during this economic downturn that great growth occurred in the Assemblies of God among Mexicans in the United States and in Mexico. H. C. Ball, the legendary Assemblies of God missionary to Hispanics, wrote about these struggles and growth in an article published in the February 13, 1932, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Ball noted that most Mexican-American Pentecostals were poor laborers who had experienced significant hardship. Even the children of refugees who had been born in America “have been discriminated against most unjustly,” Ball noted. But in the midst of this cultural and economic chaos, he reported that “[t]he poor, hungry, perplexed Mexican people are turning to God.”

Assemblies of God Mexican missions in San Antonio and El Paso had capacity crowds. Students from Latin America Bible Institute were fanning out among the Mexican communities, witnessing of Christ’s saving and healing power. “While material blessings seem to be taken from [Mexican-Americans]”, Ball recounted, “spiritual blessings have surely taken their place.”

New converts spread the Pentecostal message in their homeland when they returned to Mexico. They led family members to Christ and started churches, despite laws that restricted the number of religious workers and buildings. Ball wrote, “The gospel must be preached in Mexico, it may mean martyrdom and prison, but it must be preached.”

The odds were stacked against the Mexican-American Pentecostals. They were a marginalized ethnic minority in the United States and a persecuted religious minority in Mexico. But they displayed uncommon strength, which they drew from their close relationship with God. “We don’t feel like getting discouraged because of the hard times,” Ball wrote, “for we feel that the Lord is near.”

Read the article, “Great Blessing at Latin American Council,” by H. C. Ball, on page 11 of the February 13, 1932, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “A Vital Need: A Forward Movement in Pentecost,” by W. E. Moody

• “What the Pentecostal People Believe and Teach,” by R. E. McAlister

• “Faith for Desperate Days,” by S. Chadwick

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–February 20, 1932
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 19 February 2015

Marion Eason Wakeman, an English nurse, did not intend to become a Pentecostal missionary to the Kentucky mountains. However, she followed her heart and God’s call and ultimately helped to pioneer Assemblies of God churches in the 1930s among some of the most impoverished people in America. Wakeman’s compelling story, which has now largely been forgotten, was published in the February 20, 1932, issue of the “Pentecostal Evangel.”

Wakeman expected to live in England, where she was born, for the rest of her life. In England, she was a nurse and administrator with the “District Nursing Work,” a healthcare system that worked primarily with poor and immigrant patients.

At the turn of the twentieth century, New England was experimenting with this healthcare model, in an attempt to meet the needs of the many recent immigrants. Wakeman was asked to move temporarily to Bristol, Rhode Island, to establish a new “District Nursing Work,” patterned after the English model.

After living in Bristol for three years, Wakeman read a book about the extreme poverty in the mountains of Kentucky. She was particularly disturbed by the unhealthy conditions endured by mothers at childbirth. She wrote, “God laid that work right on my heart, I could not get away from it.” She struggled with whether to stay in her well-funded position in Bristol, or to follow God’s call to work with neglected mothers and children in Kentucky. In the end, she headed for the mountains and cast her lot with those whose future was bleakest.

She began her missionary work in Guerrant, Kentucky. Conditions were worse than she had imagined. Ten to 12 people lived in windowless one-room huts. Children were dressed in rags, and chickens wandered freely through the huts. The men, women, and children were addicted to alcohol and tobacco. Violence was common and education was uncommon.

Wakeman provided health services to people in the community. She also began teaching young people how to read. When she arrived, she was shocked that the children could not read and that their spoken English was very poor. She gathered children for regular English lessons, which she would give by reading from the Bible. She recounted that many adults had never heard about Jesus, never prayed, and had never attended church.

The physical, social, and spiritual needs in the Kentucky mountains were overwhelming to Wakeman. On one occasion she admitted, “My throat ached and I felt like breaking down and crying.” But she endured. She saved money and built a house in the mountains near Oakdale, Kentucky, which became her living quarters and ministry outpost. She later moved to another house near Holly Creek, Kentucky. From those houses, she nursed people to health, she taught Sunday School classes for children, and she led to people to Jesus.

Wakeman understood that spiritual poverty was the root of destructive cultural patterns. She preached against the consumption of drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, because they contributed to disease, addiction, and violence in the community. She encouraged people to turn from sin and to find new life in Christ.

Certain local residents regarded Wakeman’s presence as a threat. She was awakened night after night by hostile neighbors who tried to frighten her away. Guns were fired at her house, and one time dynamite was even exploded near her house. She recalled, “my nerves began to frail,” and that she was afraid to walk across the room when she entered her house, for fear of violence.

One night, Wakeman got on her knees and cried out to God. If He wanted her to stay in Kentucky, she prayed, He would have to remove her fear. God took away her fear that night. The fear “fell from me like an old garment,” she recalled. “I went through the little house singing at the top of my voice,” she wrote. “I haven’t felt any fear from that day to this.”

Wakeman’s early missions work was supported by the Presbyterian Mission Board and the Free Methodist Missionary Board. Wakeman’s study of the Bible ultimately led her to identify with the Pentecostal movement. She came to believe that God still heals, and prayer for healing became a prominent aspect of her ministry. As a Pentecostal, Wakeman worked in conjunction with the Kentucky mountain missions work supported by Christian Assembly (Cincinnati, Ohio), which was pastored by O. E. Nash. Wakeman wrote that the Cincinnati church had five outstations (small missions churches) located in her part of the Kentucky mountains.

Wakeman’s testimony illustrates the consecration of early Pentecostals. She spent her life spent working with the impoverished, at great personal cost, and helped to lay the foundation for the Assemblies of God in the mountains of Kentucky. Her story also demonstrates that early Pentecostalism did not emerge in a vacuum; it benefited from veteran ministers from mainline Protestant denominations who brought their wisdom, experiences, and connections into their new churches.

“Our hearts are burning with the zeal of the work,” Wakeman wrote in the conclusion of her article, “and we see great possibilities and responsibilities.” Early Pentecostal pioneers, such as Wakeman, were passionate, committed and visionary. Together, these often unheralded men and women helped to form the identity of the Assemblies of God.

Read the article, “Pentecostal Work in the Kentucky Mountains,” on pages 1, 8 and 9 of the February 20, 1932, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “The Godhead,” by Ernest S. Williams

• “Pentecost Today,” by R. E. McAlister

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

Cartoon published in the Pentecostal Evangel, June 29, 1940.

By Darrin J. Rodgers

Christians have an obligation to oppose statism. An article in the May 1933 issue of the Latter Rain Evangel, a magazine published by the Stone Church (a prominent Assemblies of God congregation in Chicago), warned against fascism. The article defined fascism as “a State organization so absolute, [where] every interest is subordinated to the overriding authority of the organized State.”

This fascism, or statism, left little room for freedom of conscience. Under fascism the dictates of the State, according to the article, “overrides all considerations of religion, prejudice and inherited doctrine.” The State defined right and wrong: “All morality, as all religion, is thus lodged in purely civic virtues.”

The article noted that the Fascist and Nazi parties arose in a mere eight years in Italy and Germany due to economic distress. How did this happen? People who called themselves Christians accepted an “idolatrous nationalism” in which faith in human progress replaced the idea that truth resided in scripture and natural law.

What should Christians do when the state forces them to choose between loyalty to Christ or country? The article answered this query forthrightly: “Should such a dilemma arise, we follow Christ.”

Read the article on the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center website: “State Religions,” Latter Rain Evangel, May 1933, pp. 17-18.

____________________________

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

This Week in AG History–February 25, 1928
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 25 February 2015

This Week in AG History February 251928 | PE News// //

Paul Bettex (1864-1916) possessed one of the most impressive academic and social pedigrees of any early Pentecostal. Yet when Bettex accepted Christ and felt a definite call to be a missionary, he gave up all his advantages and set sail for lands afar, where he suffered war, famine, and persecution.

The Swiss-born Bettex was the son of a distinguished Christian educator and theologian, Jean Frederick Bettex. The elder Bettex, an evangelical Huguenot, contributed a chapter to the noted series of books, The Fundamentals (1910-1915), which affirmed orthodox Protestant beliefs against the emergence of theological liberalism. Despite his evangelical heritage, Paul Bettex did not make a personal commitment to Christ in his youth. Bettex studied at the University of Geneva, various Italian schools, and the Sarbonne. He studied ancient languages and political science, purposing to enter the French diplomatic corps.

While at the Sorbonne, Bettex was struck by the courage displayed by young women associated with the Salvation Army in Paris. He began attending Salvation Army meetings and yielded his heart to God. Following in his father’s footsteps, Bettex felt drawn to ministry. He moved to America, where he attended Princeton Theological Seminary and pastored several churches. He also served as a missionary in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil in the 1890s. While Bettex originally planned to be a French ambassador, he ultimately served a much higher king and became an ambassador for Christ.

Bettex’s linguistic training served him well on the mission field; he was proficient in 13 languages. He put his scholarly and theological abilities into practice by living amongst the people to whom he ministered. Stories of the hardships he faced in South America circulated among American Christians, and he returned in 1903 as a missionary hero.

Upon his return to America, Bettex taught at Central Holiness University (Oskaloosa, Iowa). He attended meetings at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, joined the ranks of the Pentecostals, and in 1910 headed for China as a missionary. Bettex published a periodical, Canton Pentecost, of which there are no known surviving copies. His wife, Nellie, died in China in 1912. In 1916, Bettex disappeared and was never again seen alive. Chinese Christians expended great energies in searching for Bettex and finally found his body, buried six feet under the ground with three bullet holes in his chest.

During his missionary work in South America, Bettex wrote, “And the more truly a Christian is a Christian the hotter rages the battle about him. All heaven and hell take part in his fate. Here there is no place for amateur Christians. It is a fight for life and death … Few are the martyrs on whose heads crowns have been lighted while they were asleep. Their preparatory school has ever been sorrow, suffering, poverty, year-long fulfillment of duty.” For Bettex, these were not mere words. He lived and died in absolute surrender to Jesus Christ.

Stanley Frodsham, long-time editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, took it upon himself to document the life story of Bettex, the fallen Pentecostal missionary hero. Frodsham wrote a tribute to Bettex in the February 25, 1928, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel and later wrote a book, Wholly for God: A Call to Complete Consecration, Illustrated by the Story of Paul Bettex, a Truly Consecrated Soul (Gospel Publishing House, 1934).

Read the tribute by Stanley Frodsham, “A Remarkable Pentecostal Missionary,” on pages 4 to 5 of the February 25, 1928, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “How the Dog Trainer Was Won,” by Mrs. Walter Searle

• “Starlight: A True Story of a Chinese Girl,” by A. O. Stott

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

The HOLINESS EVOLUTION SUMMIT will convene on Friday, April 17, 2015 touring the Holy Sites in Lexington/Holmes County, MS and concluding on Saturday, April 18, 2015 in Memphis, TN at the historical Peabody Hotel for a Continental breakfast affording each of us the opportunity to hear the teachings of Apostle Charles H. Mason (Holiness) by two anointed speakers: Dr. David D. Daniels III, Professor- McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL and Dr. Byron D. Klaus, Retired President- Professor of Intercultural Leadership Studies, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO.

We will at gather Mason Temple for our pilgrimage to Lexington, MS to witness a life-changing experience.
Registration: $130.00 includes:
Deluxe R/T Transportation
Continental Breakfast
Delicious Hot Lunch
Commemorative Summit Bag
Summit Program Booklet
Tour Holy Sites (The Church of God in Christ, Inc.)

Registration & deposits are due by March 16, 2015
Registration & deposits are NON-REFUNDABLE

To submit your registration or for more information, contact:
Mrs. Mary P. Patterson
Pentecostal Heritage Connection
1389 Farrow Road
Memphis, TN 38116

Holiness Evolution Summit Schedule:
Friday, April 17, 2015
8:00am- Departure from Mason Temple Parking lot Memphis TN
10:30am- Arrive Lexington/Holmes County, MS
-Visit the jail cell where Bishop C.H. Mason was jailed
-Asia Baptist Church
-Site of the first church (where the Gin House once stood)
-St Paul Church of God In Christ (The Mother Church)
-Saint Industrial College/Saints Academy
-Little Red School House
12:30pm- Lunch & Summit (Speakers Dr. Percy Washington & Elder Jerry Ramsey)
3:30pm- Depart to tour Sweet Canaan Church of God in Christ
5:00pm- Depart for Memphis, TN

Saturday, April 18, 2015
9:00am – 11:30am Continental Breakfast & closing colloquy by
Dr. David D. Daniels III and Dr. Byron D. Klaus at Peabody Hotel, Memphis, TN

Additional information is available on the Facebook page for the event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1632494036979873/

The city of Lexington, Miss. turned COGIC founder Charles Harrison Mason’s old jail cell into a tourist attraction. Bishop Mason was jailed for allegedly violating the Espionage and Seditious Acts during World War I. The art work is on the wall of the cell where Mason was incarcerated.

This Week in AG History–March 6, 1948
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 5 March 2015

Robert A. Brown (1872-1948), with his wife Marie, founded Glad Tidings Tabernacle in New York City, which for many years was the largest congregation in the Assemblies of God. However, Robert began his life on the other side of the world and spent his youth far away from God. The March 6, 1948, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel published Robert’s life story.

Robert was born in a small town in Northern Ireland and grew into a tall, athletic, and popular young man. Seeking adventure, he moved to England and became a police officer. Robert went to the pubs, drank alcohol, and participated in the destructive habits of the world. He was an unlikely candidate to become a minister of the gospel.

One of Robert’s cousins in Ireland accepted Christ, became a zealous preacher, and began to pray for Robert. When Robert traveled back to Ireland to see his family, he decided to go hear his cousin preach. He thought he could make fun of his cousin’s newfound faith. But Robert was deeply impressed by his cousin’s earnest preaching and changed life. At the end of the service, his cousin came over to Robert and pleaded with him to turn his life over to God. Robert refused, but the Holy Spirit grabbed hold of his heart. The young policeman felt conviction for his sins and could not shake the sense that he needed to submit his life to God. For three days he experienced heavy conviction until, at last, Robert surrendered his life to the Lord in his family’s old Irish farm house.

Two of Robert’s close friends were also converted, and together the three young men decided to immigrate to America. They arrived in New York City in 1898. Robert studied for the ministry and was ordained by the Wesleyan Methodist Church. He displayed genuine faith and he lived out the gospel story in his lifestyle. He was a bivocational minister, working as chief engineer at a government building while also engaging in church work.

One day, in 1907, he decided to attend a service held a small Holiness mission in New York City. Two young women ministers, Marie Burgess and Jessie Brown (not related to Robert), led the service and were fearlessly preaching the Pentecostal message. Robert was moved by their preaching, but he refused to accept their contention that biblical spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues, were still available for Christians today. Yet he continued to attend their services, perhaps because of the spiritual power he sensed.

The meetings led by Marie Burgess and Jessie Brown grew in attendance. The growing congregation relocated to larger quarters, and the female preachers asked Robert to give the dedication sermon. He did, and two drunken bums accepted Christ that night. Robert still did not fully accept the Pentecostal message. He could not deny that God was present in the meetings. The gospel was being preached with miraculous results. Souls were being saved and bodies were healed.

Robert was asked to preach again, and he decided to preach on Acts 2:4 and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As Robert preached, he grew under great conviction that he needed to experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He received the experience a little while later, on January 11, 1908.

Love blossomed, and Robert’s ministry colleague became his wife. He married Marie Burgess in 1909, and they established what became Glad Tidings Tabernacle. Robert had significant ministry and personality giftings. But, according to the Pentecostal Evangel article, he continually “expressed contempt” for the thought that he should rely on his gifts rather than on the Holy Spirit. He considered his gifts “unworthy substitutes for the power from on High.”

Robert loved the character “Valiant-for-Truth” in John Bunyan’s classic book, The Pilgrim’s Progress. He would often quote Valiant-for-Truth’s famous line, “I am a pilgrim, and am going to the Celestial City.” Similarly, Robert viewed himself as a pilgrim in a strange land, destined for heaven where his true citizenship lay.

Robert Brown became an Assemblies of God executive presbyter in 1915 and served numerous leadership roles, in addition to pastoring one of the most influential churches. But the Pentecostal Evangel article recalled his spiritual influence as his greatest trait. Robert Brown, the article extolled, “always stood for the highest standards of righteousness and holiness.”

Read the article, “Called Home,” on pages 3 and 11 of the March 6, 1948, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “A Pentecostal Revival in the Congo,” by Edmund Hodgson

• “The Test of True Discipleship,” by Robert A. Brown

• “A Mighty Revival at C.B.I.,” by Kathleen Belknap

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now .

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–March 12, 1927
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 12 March 2015

When Sven Lidman (1882-1960), one of Sweden’s most prominent authors, accepted Christ as Savior and was baptized at the leading Pentecostal church in Stockholm in 1921, it seemed as though the entire nation took notice.

Lidman was born into great privilege. He received a classical education and he earned a law degree from the University of Uppsala. He spent several years in the military and then studied the Italian language and literature. By 1920, he was an acclaimed author and had published 13 books and collections of poetry.

In fact, Lidman could have been considered a renaissance man. His writing explored family issues and sexuality, philosophy and ethics, and religion and politics. He cultivated relationships with the leaders of his day, and his early life was steeped in worldly pleasures.

Despite Lidman’s background, his conversion to Christ was not entirely unexpected. For years, he had experienced a deep spiritual struggle. He felt deep inner longings that could not be satisfied with brandy, tobacco, and women. He openly shared this struggle through his pen, most notably by authoring in 1920 an annotated translation of St. Augustine’s Confessions . Lidman closely identified with this fifth century Christian theologian who abandoned a life of youthful sin and who used his testimony to proclaim the transformative power of the Gospel. Lidman would soon follow in Augustine’s footsteps.

However, it came as a shock to many that Lidman cast his lot with the Pentecostals. Lidman could have easily joined a respectable Lutheran congregation of the State Church of Sweden. Instead, Swedish Pentecostal leader Lewi Pethrus baptized him at the Filadelfia Church.

Lidman’s conversion was widely covered by the nation’s press and became an ongoing topic of conversation at dinner tables across Scandinavia. The Christian press in other corners of the world also trumpeted this news.

Why did Lidman join the Pentecostals? Lidman’s conversion to Pentecostalism, according to a March 12, 1927, Pentecostal Evangel article, occurred because “Lidman is no half-way man.” Lidman would not settle for anything less than genuine, historic, biblical Christianity. “He believes in the power of Christ’s blood and redeeming death to save from sin,” the article continued. “He believes in a whole dedication to the Christian witness.”

Lidman rejected the notion that his conversion consisted merely of “a series of processes in the subconscious.” Rather, he maintained that “real conversion” to Christ was “the consequence of meeting with a supernatural power.” True Christians who have encountered and submitted to God’s power, Lidman wrote, are living sacrifices. “It is only upon the whole offering on the Lord’s altar that His fire falls,” he declared.

Lidman illustrated this theology of full consecration with his own testimony. At first, Lidman was not willing to surrender all of his ways to God. Early in his Christian life he defended his use of brandy and tobacco. But he recounted how his mind changed after an encounter with a man who had suffered the ravages of alcoholism. He realized he could not calmly stand before an alcoholic and say, “Drinking is an adiaphoron, a matter of indifference, and not a sin per se.” He could no longer in good conscience say, “There are many splendid and real Christians who are not abstainers.” Lidman came to believe that saving faith should permeate every aspect of a Christian’s life. Lidman submitted his destructive habits to God, and God took away his desire for alcohol and tobacco.

Although Lidman was an intellectual, he grew disenchanted with certain intellectual fads of his day. He had the independence of mind to challenge prevailing cultural assumptions and instead wanted something real. And reality, for Lidman, was the living Christian faith that he found in the Pentecostal church. The Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit, he wrote, “is a full-blooded reality and no pale intellectual ideal.”

Lewi Pethrus asked Lidman to become editor of the leading Pentecostal magazine, Evangelii Härold . Lidman accepted and served in that position from 1922 until 1948. Lidman became a popular Pentecostal preacher, and countless people accepted Christ through his voluminous writings. Lidman became the second best-known Pentecostal in Sweden, after Lewi Pethrus.

The article concluded by noting that Lidman encouraged both education and heartfelt faith. While some “rationalists” and “revivalists” seemed to believe that faith and understanding are mutually exclusive, Lidman asserted that Christians need both. “I know not how the forces of cold and darkness can ever be driven from the heart save through revival Christianity. They can never be cultivated away,” he wrote. “But after revival has gone ahead with its spring break-up of ice and frost the work of education begins.” According to Lidman, education is a work of the Spirit.

Sven Lidman’s profound influence on Swedish Pentecostalism may have faded from the memory of many American Pentecostals, but his testimony and writings continue to challenge readers to seek the fullness of God. Lidman had the world but found it wanting. Like Augustine before him, the Swedish novelist and intellectual found that only Jesus could satisfy his deepest longings.

Read the article, “The Witness of a Swedish Novelist,” on pages 4 and 5 of the March 12, 1927, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

* “Reminiscences of a Faith Life,” by Marie Burgess Brown

* “African or Scriptural Brick,” by Arthur S. Berg

* “The Blood,” by J. Narver Gortner

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions are courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

This Week in AG History–March 19, 1921
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 19 March 2015

Methodist and United Brethren congregations in Baltimore, Maryland, embraced a revival sparked by Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1919. McPherson, the most widely-known Pentecostal evangelist of her era in the United States, was a gifted orator who built bridges between Pentecostals and evangelicals. Her messages, focusing primarily on salvation, healing, and the spiritual life, garnered the cooperation of churches of various denominations. She was a credentialed minister with the Assemblies of God for several years (1919-1922) prior to forming the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

McPherson’s evangelistic efforts in Baltimore began with three weeks of daily services in the Lyric Theatre, December 4-21, 1919. Numerous healings attracted the attention of the secular press. She was invited to hold services in two Methodist and one United Brethren churches, where large audiences gathered to hear the female evangelist who preached that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”

McPherson returned to Baltimore in January 1920, where she held meetings for several weeks at the Franklin Street Memorial United Brethren Church (pastored by Edward Leech). After she left, Leech and another staff pastor at the church continued to hold special prayer meetings and revival services. The Pentecostal Evangel reprinted a 1921 report of the ongoing revival, authored by Leech and originally published in the United Brethren Church’s denominational periodical.

According to Leech, hundreds of people had accepted Christ and “a large number were instantaneously healed” in his church. In an era of religious skepticism, the healings provided proof of God’s power. “Surely no one will be so skeptical,” wrote Leech, “as to doubt the power of God to touch the sick with healing now as in that first century.”

Leech was initially cautious about telling others in his denomination that he had embraced the Pentecostal revival. He remained quiet about it for about a year, he wrote, “to test out my own church and people.” But in his 1921 article he proclaimed, “today I am fully persuaded as to the genuineness of the full gospel program.” He spoke favorably of McPherson’s ministry: “She preaches the whole truth, attracts the crowds, fills the altar with sinners and backsliders, prays down healing for the sick, and seeks to deepen the spiritual life of believers.”

McPherson, like many other early Pentecostals, aimed to build the kingdom of God and not merely a denomination. Leech warmly embraced this aim, writing that he had never before seen such levels of “cooperation” and “Christian love and fellowship.”

Read the article, “Big Revival in Baltimore,” on page 6 of the March 19, 1921, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel .

Also featured in this issue:

• “Is the Holy Spirit in All Believers?” by J. T. Boddy

• “The Modern Church in Effigy,” by W. V. Kneisley

• “The Coming Chinese Church”

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

Wogu
This Week in AG History–March 29, 1959
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 26 March 2015

A great revival in Nigeria that led to the formation of the Assemblies of God in that nation can be traced back to a single issue of the Pentecostal Evangel, which somehow found its way from America to Africa in the early 1930s. Histories of the Assemblies of God of Nigeria credit the periodical for sparking a hunger for the baptism in the Holy Spirit among Nigerians.

The March 29, 1959, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel recounted this story of the origins of the Nigerian Assemblies of God. “It is not known how the magazine came into their possession,” according to the article, “but it is known that they were deeply stirred by the accounts of healing and of believers being baptized in the Holy Spirit.”

The Nigerians who first read this “missionary” issue of the Pentecostal Evangel were members of a small Holiness denomination, Faith Tabernacle, which had headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Faith Tabernacle leaders in America told the Nigerians to stay away from the Pentecostals. But as the Nigerians searched scriptures, they saw that the Pentecostal message was biblical. They started praying, and many were healed and filled with the Holy Spirit. “Overjoyed, these newly baptized believers went from place to place testifying and preaching to all who would hear,” the article reported, “with the result that converts were won and small church groups were formed in various places.”

Augustus Ehurie Wogu, a prominent civil servant with the Nigerian Marine Department, was one of the early converts. Wogu, along with Augustus Asonye, G. M. Alioha and others, helped to lay the foundation for the young Pentecostal movement in Nigeria.

Nigerian Pentecostals made contact with the American Assemblies of God, which published the Pentecostal Evangel. American church leaders put them in contact a missionary laboring in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), W. Lloyd Shirer. Shirer helped to organize the Assemblies of God in Nigeria in 1939.

The Assemblies of God in Nigeria has experienced phenomenal growth. In 1959, the fellowship had 293 churches with 14,794 adherents. By 2013, this tally increased to 11,993 churches and outstations with 3,095,144 members and adherents. And all of this happened because someone whose name is now forgotten sent an issue of the Pentecostal Evangel to a place which had no Assemblies of God missionaries.

Read “Pentecostal Progress in Nigeria,” on pages 22 and 23 of the March 29, 1959, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “Resurrection and Missions,” by Robert L. Brandt

• “Ministry on the Danish Islands,” by Victor G. Greisen

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–April 5, 1919
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 2 April 2015

Clarence H. Waldron (1885-1926), an early Baptist-turned-Pentecostal minister, became the central figure in the first important criminal court case involving religious opposition to World War I. Newspapers across America carried reports of Waldron’s trial in 1918 for violations of the Federal Espionage Act. Later historians dissected the case, determining that the pastor was likely unjustly convicted based on suspect allegations made by members of his Vermont Baptist church who did not like their pastor’s embrace of the Pentecostal revival.

The pages of the Pentecostal Evangel remained silent about the Waldron case until April 5, 1919, when Samuel R. Waldron, an Assemblies of God minister, reported on the status of his son. The Pentecostal Evangel editor prefaced the elder Waldron’s letter by noting, “Many of our readers have been interested in what is known as the ‘Waldron Case.'” Undoubtedly many Pentecostals were apprehensive about the case’s outcome. Waldron’s case carried weighty implications regarding religious liberty for Americans.

Waldron had been accused of attempting to undermine the U.S. government in a time of war. Early Pentecostals, like most other premillennialists of that era, preached that believers should be fully committed to Christ and His kingdom. They admonished avoidance of worldly entanglements that would conflict with their heavenly allegiance. Accordingly, most Pentecostals avoided politics. Many likewise believed that killing in war was moral compromise. When America entered World War I, it became increasingly difficult for Pentecostals to maintain their pacifist stance in the face of intense societal pressure to support the war effort.

Waldron had a respectable, successful background in Baptist ministry. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1907. When he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist church in Windsor, Vermont, in 1915, the church’s prospects seemed bleak. But Waldron’s energetic and winsome ministry won hearts and converts, and by 1917 attendance had tripled. In that year, a Pentecostal evangelist began holding revival services in Windsor. Waldron and about half of his growing congregation attended the services and embraced the Pentecostal movement. A segment of the church that opposed the revival decided to force the resignation of Waldron. They did this by accusing him of violating the Federal Espionage Act.

Did Waldron “willfully attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal of duty in the United States military forces”? This was the question that the courts tried to resolve. Waldron’s accusers identified at least two events they believed constituted offenses. First, Waldron refused to allow his church to participate in a patriotic-themed “Liberty Loan Sunday” event. He told his congregation that he believed that Sunday morning services should be reserved for preaching the gospel and not for politics or nationalism. Second, they accused Waldron of advising his church members, through preaching and the distribution of literature, that Christians should not bear arms in war.

A trial in January 1918 ended with a hung jury. Jury members could not reach a verdict, in part because they identified significant bias by witnesses on both sides. Cross-examination seemed to reveal that a church squabble was at the heart of the case, and Waldron’s accusers seemed to be using the law to force the pastor to resign.

At a second trial, in March 1918, the judge did not allow testimony regarding the anti-Pentecostal religious prejudice of Waldron’s accusers. The jury returned a guilty verdict and the judge sentenced Waldron to 15 years in federal prison.

The 1919 letter from Waldron’s father, published in the Pentecostal Evangel, reported that President Woodrow Wilson had commuted his sentence following the conclusion of the war. Waldron, according to his father, almost died from influenza and pneumonia during his year-long incarceration.

Shortly after his release from prison, Clarence Waldron received ordination with the Assemblies of God and moved to California. He spent the remaining years of his life in bivocational ministry, working in secular employment and occasionally ministering alongside Aimee Semple McPherson in San Diego and Los Angeles. Waldron’s trial and imprisonment had broken his health. He died in 1926 at the age of 41.

The trial of Clarence H. Waldron was widely reported in the press in 1917 and 1918, and historians have studied it ever since. The Waldron case highlights the fragility of religious liberty. Historian Gene Sessions, in his definitive 1993 article on the Waldron case published in “Vermont History,” concluded the following:

“In Windsor that national legislation, ostensibly directed against spies, provided a way to remove from town an individual whose religious views had split his congregation and embarrassed his denomination’s state hierarchy and whose pacifism, rooted in those same views, had confused and infuriated local patriots … the Espionage Act became in the hands of Windsor citizens a potent instrument for disciplining, harassing, and punishing a neighbor no longer welcome.”

While Clarence Waldron was tried for his advocacy of pacifism, the Waldron case stands for a broader proposition — that religious liberty needs to be carefully guarded.

Read “A Note of Praise,” by Samuel R. Waldron, on page 14 of the April 5, 1919, issue of the Christian Evangel [the predecessor of the Pentecostal Evangel].

Other articles also featured in this issue of the Evangel include:
• “The Pentecostal Baptism: Its Foundation,” by David H. McDowell
• “Healed and Filled with the Spirit,” by Mrs. E. M. Whittemore
And many more! Click here to read this issue now.

The fascinating account of Waldron’s trial, “Espionage in Windsor: Clarence H. Waldron and Patriotism in World War I,” published in the Summer 1993 issue of Vermont History, is accessible by clicking here.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

PenEva19320611_0952_12
This Week in AG History–April 11, 1931
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 9 April 2015

Elsie Peters (1898-1965) was the earliest known Assemblies of God minister to the deaf. Peters’ call to deaf ministry came in 1919, when she befriended a deaf couple in Springfield, Missouri. At the time, Peters was a housewife with three children. One day, when stopping to catch her breath from the busyness of daily life, she uttered a little prayer, “Lord, what can I do for You today?” To her surprise, she felt the Lord answer her with the following instruction: “Go and visit a deaf mute.”

Peters visited a local deaf couple, Sullivan and Addie Chainey, who gladly welcomed her into their home. They told her that they often felt overlooked. It was difficult for them to make friends. Through their friendship with Peters, the Chaineys eventually accepted Christ and also entered into deaf ministry.

Elsie’s husband, Grover, worked for the railroad. His job meant they had to relocate to a new city every few years. In each new city, Elsie immersed herself in ministry. When they moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1920, Elsie brought with her a passion for working with deaf people. She could not keep quiet about the calling God had placed in her heart.

Assemblies of God leaders in Texas confirmed Elsie’s calling and, in 1924, ordained her to the ministry. In 1926, she secured the use of the Y.M.C.A. building in Fort Worth and held what she deemed to be the first Pentecostal revival services for the deaf. Deaf came from across the Midwest to attend the services. She later held similar revival campaigns across America, helping to meet the spiritual needs of the deaf and raising the profile of the deaf community within the church.

In the late 1920s, Elsie and Grover moved to Los Angeles. Elsie saw the move as an opportunity to reach the city’s large deaf community, which had been largely ignored by other churches. They launched the first Assemblies of God church started specifically for the deaf — First Full Gospel Church for the Deaf. The first service was held in a small mission on Hoover Street on Tuesday, October 29, 1929. That same day the stock markets crashed, which resulted in the Great Depression. But the small mission flourished and soon relocated to a 300-seat stucco church with parsonage. The April 11, 1931, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel included a report of this first Assemblies of God deaf congregation.

From this inauspicious beginning, the Assemblies of God ministry to the deaf emerged. Lottie Riekehof began teaching sign language at Central Bible Institute in 1948, and Home Missions (now U.S. Missions) created a division for Deaf Ministries in 1953. In 2014, the Assemblies of God included 33 deaf culture churches and 538 churches with some type of ministry in working with deaf people in the United States.

See the report and photograph of the First Full Gospel Church for the Deaf on page 13 of the April 11, 1931, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “An Open Door in Africa,” by W. Lloyd Shirer

• “A Visit to Central America and Mexico,” by Sunshine (Mrs. H. C.) Ball

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

– See more at: http://penews.org/Article/This-Week-in-AG-History-April-11-1931/#sthash.hQubSM28.dpuf

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

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This Week in AG History–April 18, 1925
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 15 April 2015

When veteran missionary Mary Weems Chapman (1857-1927) felt God’s call to return to India, her family told her she was too old. But she persevered and became the first Assemblies of God missionary to South India. A veteran Free Methodist missionary before identifying with the Pentecostal movement, Mary was well-known in Holiness circles for her preaching, teaching, and writing. But she was perhaps best known for her advocacy of ministry to girl prostitutes and the “untouchables” – members of India’s lowest social caste.

Mary and her husband, George, were pioneer leaders in the Pentecost Bands, a Free Methodist missions organization known for promoting both holiness and social ministry. They founded the Free Methodist work in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1889.

Mary was a prolific author. She edited a volume of writings by Holiness advocate Eunice Parsons Cobb, “Mother Cobb, or Sixty Years with God” (1896). She also served a one year stint (1898) as founding editor of “Missionary Tidings,” published by the General Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Free Methodist Church.

George seemingly disappeared from Mary’s writings and missionary reports in the 1890s and 1900s. Whether he died or something else happened is unknown. But she continued in ministry as a single woman. She spent time in India, where she worked at a “Pentecostal Rescue Home” that plucked young girls out of prostitution and provided education and spiritual help.

Single and aging, she returned to America. But she could not shake the sense that God wanted her to help the suffering girls of India. By 1911 she surfaced in Pentecostal periodicals, writing gut-wrenching articles about the great need to rescue girls in India who had been sold into sexual slavery.

Feeling a holy restlessness, Mary decided to return to India. She was approaching 60 years old. Her family tried to dissuade her, telling her she was too old to endure the rigors of missionary work. But her mind was made up. She told her family, “If young people are not able to go, old people must go.”

Mary arrived in India one hundred years ago, in 1915, and established her first missionary base in Doddaballapur, near Bangalore. She conducted evangelistic meeting in numerous parts of South India. In 1917, she affiliated with the Assemblies of God and became that Fellowship’s first missionary in South India.

Mary’s extensive writing and editing skills proved useful in her missions work. She was concerned by the poor discipleship of new converts and by the vast amount of anti-Christian and anti-Pentecostal literature that was causing confusion. To help remedy these problems, in 1925 she co-founded a magazine called Penthecosthu Kahalam (Pentecostal Trumpet) in the Malayalam language. She also wrote over 50 articles and letters published in the Pentecostal Evangel from 1913 to 1927.

In one of those letters, published in the April 18, 1925, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel, Mary described the plight of the Dalits, also called the “untouchables” because of their low social position. She described the joy of the Dalits who accepted Christ and were “adopted in the family of heaven.” She noted that her missionary colleagues started a school to educate young converts, because Dalits were not permitted to attend school with people from other classes in Indian society.

After 10 years of ministry under the Assemblies of God banner, Mary Weems Chapman died on November 27, 1927. She was 70 years old.

Samuel Jabarethnan, Chapman’s interpreter for the last eight years of her life, wrote the following tribute: “I found Sister Chapman to be a most devoted and spiritual missionary. She stood not just for the Pentecostal experience, but emphasized the need for a deep spiritual, sanctified life…Sister Chapman was never satisfied with shallow, superficial things, either in a worker, a Christian or an assembly. She demanded reality and set the example in her own life…Sister Chapman loved to spend much of her time in prayer. She never allowed the duties or responsibilities of her work to interfere with her prayer life. She labored and groaned in deep intercessory prayer for the souls of men to be saved, and as a result the Lord richly blessed her ministry.”

Read Mary Chapman’s article, “Ministering to the Untouchables,” on page 11 of the April 18, 1925, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “Faith in the Invisible,” by Ernest S. Williams

• “Gleanings from the Book of Ruth,” by A. G. Ward

• “Denying Self,” by Alice Rowlands Frodsham

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

Elmer F. Muir

This Week in AG History–April 25, 1925

By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 23 April 2015

A Pentecostal revival in the 1920s touched numerous Baptist ministers and churches, resulting in the cross-pollination of the two traditions. High-profile Baptists who became Pentecostal included Mae Eleanor Frey, an evangelist and author ordained by the National Baptist Convention in 1905, and William Keeney Towner, pastor of First Baptist Church in San Jose, California.

Many lesser-known Baptist ministers also embraced the Pentecostal movement, but their stories have been largely forgotten. Among these was Elmer F. Muir, a pastor who had experienced great discouragement in his ministry. He was spiritually refreshed by the winds of Pentecostal revival. He received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and testified that he experienced “the deep things of God.” Muir’s testimony was published in the April 25, 1925, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Elmer Ferguson Muir (1890-1947), the son of Scottish immigrants, was born in Dubuque, Iowa. He received a call to the ministry at age 21 while attending a revival campaign held by legendary evangelist Billy Sunday. Muir quickly discovered that the road to the ministry would be challenging. Muir had dropped out of high school, but his Presbyterian denomination required that ministers have a college degree. He enrolled at Coe College, a Presbyterian school in Iowa, where he recalled “burning the candle at both ends” both day and night for five years. He graduated from Coe College in 1917 and became a Baptist pastor.

Muir served as pastor of the Baptist church in Arkansas City, Kansas, in the early 1920s. He sometimes found the work of the ministry overwhelming. He described a revival campaign at his church: “It was one that was worked up instead of prayed down.” The experience wore him out. He wrote, “I never want to go through one again, it was dental work from beginning to end.”

Muir received a fine theological education. However, he came to realize that he needed more than mere knowledge “to bring about this great, wonderful program of God.” What did he need? He was uncertain. He recalled, “But how [the program of God] was to be brought about I had no conception.”

To add to his problems, a lady in Muir’s congregation kept asking him if he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. He was not sure how to answer. At first, he responded that the experience was only for the early church. She kept pestering Muir for over two years until he relented. Finally, he agreed to preach one Wednesday night on the subject of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He titled the sermon, “Has the Church Lost Its Power?” But as Muir studied the Word of God, he came to realize that the lady in his congregation had been right – the baptism in the Holy Spirit was for him, and it could empower him in ministry.

Muir and his wife both sought and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. At first, Muir was hesitant to tell his congregation. What would people say? Ultimately, he shared his Pentecostal testimony and was forced to resign from the church. He transferred his ministerial credentials to the Assemblies of God in 1925 and started a small congregation (now known as First Assembly of God, Arkansas City, Kansas). In 1927 he moved to San Diego, California, where he pastored Full Gospel Tabernacle. He also edited a book of articles by Pentecostal missionary Cornelia Nuzum, The Life of Faith. The book, originally published by Gospel Published House in 1928, remains in print 87 years later.

Elmer F. Muir decided to transfer his credentials back to the Baptist church in 1929. He resigned from the Assemblies of God in good standing and spent the rest of his ministry in Baptist churches. Muir’s ministry in the Assemblies of God lasted only four years, but it demonstrates the porous borders between the Assemblies of God and other evangelical denominations. The Pentecostal movement has helped to refresh many ministers and laypersons from other denominations, some of whom ultimately returned to their former churches. This cross-pollination between the Assemblies of God and other churches helped to build bridges across the denominational divides, laying the foundation for future generations who would be more concerned with building the kingdom of God rather than a particular denomination.

Read Elmer F. Muir’s powerful testimony, “Why I Am No Longer a Baptist Preacher,” on pages 2 and 3 of the April 25, 1925, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “Our Great Equipment,” by A. H. Argue

• “A Notable Miracle,” by Amelia De Franchi

• “Healed of Paralysis,” by G. E. Wolfe

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Click here to order a copy of Cornelia Nuzum’s classic book, The Life of Faith, which was edited by Elmer F. Muir.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

Dr. Wang Yun-Wu, Vice Premier of the Republic of China (1958-1963)

This Week in AG History–May 2, 1931
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 30 April 2015

A prominent Chinese scholar, Dr. Wang Yun Wu (1888-1979), abandoned his atheism in 1924 after he witnessed the miraculous healing of his sister’s eyesight. Dr. Wang later became Vice Premier of the Republic of China (Taiwan). His story was recounted by W. W. Simpson (1869-1961), pioneer Assemblies of God missionary to China, in the May 2, 1931, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Wang’s sister was healed in an unplanned revival. Simpson and fellow Assemblies of God missionary Florence Hanson were in Shanghai for the purpose of printing a Chinese-language hymnal. Their business trip quickly turned into a spiritual awakening. Hanson prayed for someone whose name is now lost to history, that person was healed, and residents clamored to find out what happened.

Local Christians organized services and invited Hanson to share the Pentecostal message. Numerous residents, including community leaders, flocked to the meetings. Many were healed or baptized in the Holy Spirit. One of the first people swept up in this move of God was Wang’s sister, Mrs. Ching. Not only was she baptized in the Holy Spirit, but God also corrected her eyesight! For 10 years she had been dependent upon her eyeglasses for daily life and for her writing duties at work. She was employed at the Commercial Press, a large publishing house where her brother, Dr. Wang, served as editor-in-chief.

Mrs. Ching’s healing astounded her family. Wang asked to speak to Simpson, who had prayed for his sister. Simpson gladly consented to this invitation. Simpson recalled how Wang ushered him into a rich library stocked with books in many languages and espousing many religions and philosophies.

Wang explained that he was reared “a strict Confucianist, believing in no God and worshipping his ancestors not as gods but simply to show his respect for them.” He had also studied western philosophies extensively and had accepted the modern theory of evolution. He had not discovered anything that “could not be explained by evolution” or which “required a God in order to exist.” But all that changed once he witnessed his sister’s healing.

Simpson wrote, “I shall never forget that afternoon in the library with one of China’s greatest scholars, and that moment when he said he was forced by the reception of the Spirit by his sister to admit there must be a living and a true God.”

Wang began the day a Confucian atheist and ended the day convinced of the deity of Christ. Wang went on to become a noted scholar of history and political science and also invented Shih Chiao Hao Ma, a form of Chinese lexicography. He opposed the communists during the Chinese revolution, entered politics, and served as Vice Premier of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 1958 to 1963.

According to Simpson, Wang’s story demonstrates how the “baptism in the Spirit is more effective in combating atheism than all the learned disquisitions of the Fundamentalists, for it is God giving a sign to this unbelieving modern world.”

Read W. W. Simpson’s entire article, “A Confucian Atheist Convinced of the Deity of Christ,” on pages 1 and 7 of the May 2, 1931, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:

• “See and Hear,” by P. C. Nelson

• “To Seekers after the Baptism in the Holy Ghost,” by Donald Gee

• “My Pentecostal Experience,” by E. S. Williams

And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

Hilton Griswold playing the piano in the E. N. Bell Chapel at the dedication of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

By Glenn Gohr

The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center is saddened to announce the passing of a dear friend and saint of God. Rev. R. Hilton Griswold was born on November 12, 1921, and he passed away on May 5, 2015 in Springfield, Missouri, at the age of 93.

Hilton Griswold passionately loved Gospel music. He is remembered for playing the piano and singing baritone for the Blackwood Brothers Quartet from 1940-1950. He was credentialed as an Assemblies of God minister on July 10, 1948, and pastored churches in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois.

Hilton has been a friend of the Heritage Center for many years. In addition to singing and playing in the Assemblies of God National Leadership and Resource Center chapel on various occasions, he played gospel hymns and choruses for the opening of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center and museum on January 19, 1999.

In recent years he ministered in nursing homes and senior adult gatherings. He also hosted his own program called “Inspiration Time,” which was released on television, radio and internet releases nationwide. He not only personally knew many of the gospel singing groups and composers, but he often knew the stories behind the songs, which he often shared on his weekly television programs.

For a wonderful example of Griswold’s inspirational music, watch this segment of him playing the piano, bass, and harmonica, and also singing 4 different parts for the song “We Shall Rise” as well as some other selections: https://vimeo.com/3599197

Additional selections of Griswold’s music are found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/HiltonsFriends

Hilton Griswold was preceded in death by his wife, Marie, and his daughter, Barbara Chapman. He is survived by his son, Rev. Larry Griswold of Plainfield, Illinois and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He leaves a wonderful legacy of gospel music and singing which will continue to inspire future generations.

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Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: Archives@ag.org

This Week in AG History–May 10, 1947
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 7 May 2015

Pentecostals were relatively isolated from mainstream Protestantism in the early twentieth century. When the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal churches were invited to become founding members of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942, it was a watershed event that paved the way for increased cooperation between Pentecostals and other theologically conservative evangelical churches.

In 1947, Pentecostal Evangel Editor Stanley H. Frodsham recounted how participation in the NAE seemed to be a fulfillment of prophecy. Frodsham recalled that, years earlier, “a mature Pentecostal saint” made the following prediction: “The time will assuredly come when God will unite all true children of God in real heart fellowship, and will break down all the barriers that are now separating us from one another.”

The early Pentecostals who heard this prediction, according to Frodsham, discerned that it was in accordance with Scripture: “In our hearts we were convinced that this was a true prophecy, for did not our Lord Jesus pray that they (all His children) may be one?”

While the Bible admonished believers to exhibit unity, such unity was elusive. Frodsham lamented that “the saints have been busy through the centuries building denominational and sectarian walls of partition between themselves and other saints.”

Tearing down these walls of division among believers was one of the reasons why the Assemblies of God formed, Frodsham reminded readers. He wrote, “At the first Council of the Assemblies of God, held at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914, the ministers who attended all came with one mind, determined to oppose the raising of walls that would separate us as a Pentecostal people from other children of God.”

Frodsham believed the formation of the NAE helped to achieve the vision of unity promoted in the Bible and by early Pentecostals. He noted that the NAE brought together different strands within the broader evangelical family: “When the National Association of Evangelicals came into being five years ago, those who called for the convention did what no other group of Fundamentalist believers had done before – they invited the brethren of both the Holiness and the Pentecostal groups.”

Moreover, the NAE helped usher Pentecostals into the evangelical mainstream and also provided opportunities for interaction between the churches: “They recognized us as a people outstandingly aggressive in evangelism and missionary vision, and acknowledged that our coming together with others who are true to the fundamentals of the faith could mean mutual blessing,” Frodsham stated.

Today the Assemblies of God is the largest of the 39 denominations that are members of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Read Stanley Frodsham’s entire article, “Fifth Annual Convention of the NAE,” on pages 6 and 7 of the May 10, 1947, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:
• “When Mother Looked!” by John Wright Follette
• “Divine Rules for Parents,” by S. M. Padgett
And many more!

Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200

Peggy Musgrove (left) and Leota Morar (right) donated materials to the FPHC and the AG Used Book Clearinghouse.

Peggy Musgrove, former national director of Women’s Ministries and widow of Kansas District Superintendent J. Derald Musgrove (1929-2012), recently donated materials from her husband’s collection of sermon notes, district newsletters, photographs, memorabilia, and miscellaneous items to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. She also donated her husband’s collection of books to the Assemblies of God Used Book Clearinghouse.

Derald Musgrove’s sister, Leota Morar (a former Assemblies of God missionary to the Philippines), also donated newsletters, obituaries, magazines, tracts, and other materials to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage.

One item of interest donated by Peggy is a travel journal from 1963. The entry from February 12, 1963, written during a trip to San Salvador, El Salvador, mentioned a visit to the church pastored by Assemblies of God missionaries John and Lois Bueno. Musgrove wrote that she witnessed an indigenous man who could not read or write (and who did not know English) give a message in tongues in the English language. She documented the message he gave in the journal: “Thank you Jesus Christ. I want to be filled more and more with Thee and become more like Thee every day, every week, every month. Thank you my Lord.” John Bueno, who later served as the executive director of Assemblies of God World Missions (1997-2011), verified this account.

The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, located in the Assemblies of God national office in Springfield, Missouri, is the largest Pentecostal archive and research center in the world. In 2006, the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, 4WRD Resource Distributors, and the libraries of the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Evangel University formed the Assemblies of God Used Book Clearinghouse, which helps direct used books back into ministry. Books from the Musgrove and Morar collections that were not kept for the Heritage Center collection were given to 4WRD Resource Distributors, which makes books accessible to missionaries, overseas Bible schools, individuals outside the U.S., and stateside non-profit organizations.

Do you have Pentecostal materials and other Christian academic books that need a good home? Please consider giving them to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center and the Assemblies of God Used Book Clearinghouse. While all materials are accepted (even books outside of the FPHC’s collecting interests), the following are of particular interest: 1) Anything related to the Assemblies of God or the broader Pentecostal and charismatic movements, including books, tracts, pamphlets, magazines, unpublished manuscripts, audio recordings, video recordings, correspondence, scrapbooks, local church histories, and artifacts. 2) Any books religious in nature (including theology, church history, missions, biographies, commentaries, etc.). 3) Any academic books (in general, books with numerous footnotes or endnotes, or those published by university presses).

Please contact the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center if you have materials to donate: 1-877-840-5200 / archives@ag.org / http://www.iFPHC.org

This Week in AG History–May 18, 1946
By Darrin Rodgers

Also published in PE News, 14 May 2015

What is the distinctive feature in a Pentecostal worship service? The answer, according to a 1946 Pentecostal Evangel article by P. S. Jones, is “the prominence given to the prayer room.”

Early Pentecostal churches usually dedicated a room to prayer, where earnest believers would intercede during the preaching service and where prayer would continue long after the benediction had been pronounced. Jones asserted, “Pentecostal prayer rooms are truly the power-houses of the assemblies. Everything else can be counted of secondary importance in the church’s program.”

According to Jones, the success of a ministry is proportionate to the prayer life of those involved in the ministry. The “urgent necessity” of every pastor, he wrote, “is to see that the prayer life of his people is maintained at white heat.”

Jones described how an active private prayer life is essential if Christians are to effectively engage in spiritual warfare. The “treasures of heaven,” he wrote, are often only gained by spending hours in “hot, animated, boiling-over prayer.”

What happens when a church neglects prayer? Jones warned, “When the thrill and throb of the Holy Ghost are lost through prayerlessness, all kinds of substitutes will be tried,” including social functions, entertaining preaching, and other amusements. He described these as mere “camouflages” that attempt to hide “the fact that the real thing has been lost.”

According to Jones, “Pentecost can very well do without the carnal decorations and the tinsel of this pleasure-crazed world, but it can never do without its prayer room, its prayer-loving pastor, and its prayer warriors.”

Read Jones’ article, “A Unique Pentecostal Feature,” in the May 18, 1946, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.

Also featured in this issue:
• “A Hidden Power Now Revealed: Lessons from the Discovery of the Atomic Bomb,” by Leslie Barrowcliff
• “The Pentecostal Movement,” by Howard Carter
• “A Russian Jew’s Testimony,” by Moses Prostchansky

And many more! Click here to read this issue now.

Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.

Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
Phone: 417.862.1447 ext. 4400
Toll Free: 877.840.5200
Email: archives@ag.org

Successful Church Planting in the Assemblies of God: Cumberland, Maryland in the 1940s and 1950s

100-Year-Old Hoopa Indian Woman Accepted Christ, Healed, Cured of Addiction; Still Testifying at 109

Mexican Americans and Pentecostal Growth During the Great Depression

English Nurse Survives Gunfire and Dynamite to Become Pentecostal Pioneer in Kentucky Mountains in 1930s

Christians have Obligation to Oppose Statism, According to 1933 Assemblies of God Publication

Paul Bettex: Early Pentecostal Linguist, Missionary, Martyr

Tour of COGIC Holy Sites to be Hosted by Mother Mary P. Patterson, April 17-18

Robert Brown: The Irish Immigrant Who Became a Pentecostal Pioneer in New York City

Prominent Novelist Sven Lidman Shocked Sweden by 1921 Conversion to Pentecostalism

Methodist and United Brethren Churches Embrace 1919 Pentecostal Revival in Baltimore

Pentecostal Evangel Sparked Great Revival in Nigeria in 1930s

Pentecostals, Pacifism, and Religious Liberty in World War I: The Waldron Case

Elsie Peters, Pioneer of Assemblies of God Deaf Ministries

Mary Weems Chapman: Called to the Prostitutes and Untouchables of South India

Elmer F. Muir: A Baptist Pastor Discovers the Power of the Holy Spirit

Leading Chinese Atheist: I Now Believe in God after Witnessing a Miracle

R. Hilton Griswold, Longtime AG Minister and Gospel Musician, with the Lord at Age 93

Frodsham: Prophecy Fulfilled by Pentecostal Participation in National Association of Evangelicals

Former Kansans Peggy Musgrove and Leota Morar Donate Pentecostal Materials and Books

What is the Secret to a Successful Pentecostal Church? Read this Pastor’s Answer from 1946!