GOD’S

GENERALS

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 “The Apostle of Faith”
I saw that God wants us so badly that He has made the condition as simple as He
possibly could—“Only Believe.”
It is arguable that there is no more significant patriarch of the Pentecostal
Movement than Smith Wigglesworth. While he was not the catalyst for
breakthrough revivals such as the one in Wales led by Evan Roberts in 1904 or that
of the Azusa Street Mission in 1906 that was led by William Seymour, it was
Smith Wigglesworth’s steady faith and staying power that made the Pentecostal
revival the most significant Christian movement of the twentieth century.
Where other Pentecostal ministers would emerge overnight and then disappear
from the public scene almost as quickly, Smith Wigglesworth traveled widely from
after the death of his wife in 1913 until not long before his death in 1947. During
these decades his ministry of faith and miracles changed the face of Christianity
and set the stage for the Charismatic Renewal that would restore the ministry of the
Holy Spirit to the modern church.
An Early Call To Evangelism
Smith was born in a small village near Menston, Yorkshire in England on June 8,
1859. Smith’s younger years were marked by a hunger for God, even though his
parents were not Christians at the time. His grandmother was an old-time
Wesleyan, and she always made sure that Smith attended meetings with her when
she could. When he was eight, he joined in with the singing at one of these
meetings, and as he began, “a clear knowledge of the new birth” came to him. He
realized in that moment just what the death and resurrection of Jesus meant for
him, and he embraced it with his whole heart. From that day forth, he never
doubted that he was saved.
Soon he began operating as the evangelist, which would be most of his life’s focus.
His first convert was his own mother. When his father realized what was
happening, he started taking the family to an Episcopal church. Although his father
was never born again, he enjoyed the parson, who just happened to frequent the
same pub as he did, and remained a faithful church-goer through Smith’s youth.
When he was thirteen, his family moved from Menston to Bradford, where Smith
became deeply involved with the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Even though he
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couldn’t read, it was at this time that Smith began the habit of always having a
copy of the New Testament with him wherever he went. Then in 1875 when Smith
was about sixteen, the Salvation Army opened a mission in Bradford, and Smith
found a powerful ally in his desire to see people come to a saving knowledge of
Jesus Christ. In the meetings he attended with the Salvationists, he soon learned
there was great power behind prayer and fasting.
At seventeen, Smith met a Godly man at a mill who took him in as an apprentice
and taught him the plumbing trade. He also told Smith about what the Bible taught
on water baptism, and soon afterwards Smith gladly obeyed and was baptized in
water. During this time, he also learned more about the second coming of Christ
and strongly believed that Jesus would come at the turn of the century. This made
him ever more vigilant to “change the course” of everyone he met.

The Favor of God

In 1877 at the age of nearly eighteen, Smith decided it was time to set out on his
own. He went to the home of a plumber and asked for a job. When the plumber
told him he had no need for any help, Smith thanked him, apologized for using his
time, and turned to walk away. Immediately, the man called him back. He said,
“There is something about you that is different. I just cannot let you go.”† At that,
the man hired him on the spot.
By the time Smith was about twenty, the man he worked for could not keep him
busy anymore—he just worked too efficiently! So Smith moved to Liverpool to
find more work. There he began to minister to the children of the city. Ragged and
hungry children came to the dock shed, where he preached the Gospel to them and
did his best to feed and clothe them from what he made as a plumber in the area.
He also visited the hospitals and ships, praying and fasting all day on Sunday,
asking God for converts. As a result, he never saw fewer than fifty people saved
each time he ministered. He was also frequently invited by the Salvation Army to
speak at their meetings, but though he saw great results, he was never eloquent. He
often broke down and cried before the people because of his burden for souls, and
it was this brokenness that brought people to the altar by the hundreds.

Smith Meets Polly

It was also around this time that Smith watched with great interest as a young,
socially affluent woman came forward in one of the Salvation Army meetings and
fell to her knees. She refused to pray with any of the workers until the speaker
known as “Gypsy” Tillie Smith came and prayed with her. When they were done,
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the young woman jumped to her feet, threw her gloves in the air, and shouted,
“Hallelujah! It is done!”
The next night as she gave her testimony, Smith felt as if she belonged to him. As
Smith later said, “It seemed as if the inspiration of God was upon her from the very
first.” The young woman’s name was Mary Jane Featherstone, but everyone called
her “Polly.” She eventually received a commission as an officer in the Salvation
Army from General William Booth. Smith did what he could to work near her, and
in the coming years a romance bloomed between them.
As Smith and Polly grew closer, Polly eventually faced the difficult decision of
choosing either to continue with the Salvation Army or her love for Smith. Even
though Smith never officially joined the Salvation Army, he was considered a
private in their ranks, and Polly was an officer. There were strict regulations
against officers and lower ranks having romantic relationships, so even though
they always remained true friends of the Salvationists, Polly retired from their
ranks and took up mission work with the Blue Ribbon Army. Those in her
Methodist church also recognized her calling and asked her to help evangelize their
churches. Hundreds were converted as a result.

A Divine Partnership
Polly had from the beginning the eloquence Smith longed for but couldn’t learn.
When in 1882, Smith returned to Bradford, he and Polly wed. Polly was twenty-
two years old and Smith was twenty-three. In their thirty years of marriage, the
Wigglesworths had five children: Alice, Seth, Harold, Ernest, and George. Before
each child was born, Smith and Polly prayed over them that they would faithfully
serve God throughout their lives.
Smith and Polly had a burden for a part of Bradford that had no church, so they
soon opened the Bradford Street Mission and began ministering together. Polly did
most of the speaking, because she was the stronger and more accomplished of the
two as an orator, and Smith oversaw the needs of the rest of the work. While she
preached, he was at the altar praying for more to come to Christ. Of this
relationship, Smith later said, “Her work was to put down the net; mine was to land
the fish. This latter is just as important as the former.Ӥ

A Cold Winter
The winter of 1884 was very severe in Bradford, and plumbers were in high
demand. As a result, a time of intense work began for Smith that would last for the
next two years, and he became literally consumed by his natural occupation. His

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church attendance declined and slowly but surely his fire for God began to grow
cold. In the light of Polly’s increasing faithfulness, Smith’s backsliding seemed all
the more pronounced to the point that her diligence began to wear on him.
Then one night, this came to a head when she came home from church a little later
than usual. Smith confronted her: “I am master of this house, and I am not going to
have you coming home at so late an hour as this!” Polly quietly replied, “I know
that you are my husband, but Christ is my Master.”** At this, Smith forced her out
the back door, then closed and locked it. However, in his annoyance, he had
forgotten to lock the front door, so Polly simply walked around the house and came
in through the main entrance, laughing.
When Smith finally saw what he had done, he caught her laughter and realized
how silly he had been. Together they laughed about the matter, but to Smith it was
also a revelation of how cold he had grown in the things of God. Shortly afterward,
he spent ten days praying and fasting in repentance, and God gloriously restored
him.

Smith Meets “The Lord that Healeth Thee”

On a trip to Leeds for plumbing supplies, Smith heard of a meeting where divine
healing was to be ministered. He attended and was amazed at what he saw. What
others saw as fanaticism, Smith recognized as sincere and of God. On his return to
Bradford, he would search out the sick and pay for their way to attend the Leeds
healing meetings. When his wife grew ill once, he told her about the meetings,
somewhat afraid that she would think he had finally gone off the deep end. Instead,
she accepted it and agreed to go to the meetings with him. When the prayer of faith
was offered for her in Leeds, she received an instant manifestation of healing.
They both became passionate about the message of divine healing and their
meetings began to grow, causing them to need a larger mission space. Soon they
obtained a building on Bowland Street and opened the Bowland Street Mission.
Across the wall behind the pulpit they hung a large scroll which read: “I Am the
Lord That Healeth Thee.”†† Not many years after this, in the first years of the
1900s, Smith received prayer for healing a hemorrhoid condition he had battled
since childhood. He was soon fully healed and never had a problem with this
condition for the rest of his life.

Embracing Divine Healing

Over the years that followed, the healing available through God increasingly
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became a part of Smith’s sermons and ministry, though healings were not frequent
nor truly spectacular at first. Then those in the Leeds Healing Home recognized
Smith’s faith and asked him to speak while they were away at a convention. Smith
accepted only because he felt he could get someone else to do it once he was in
charge of the meeting, but all others refused, insisting they felt God wanted him to
speak. Smith ministered his sermon hesitantly, but at the close of the service fifteen
people came forward for prayer, and all of them were healed! One of them had
hobbled forward on crutches and began dancing around the room without them
after Smith prayed for him. He had been instantly healed! No one was more
surprised by the results of his prayers than Smith himself.

Desiring More of the Spirit

In 1907, Pentecost had reached Sunderland, and Smith heard that people there
were being baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in other tongues. Smith felt he
had to see this for himself. Smith was among those who believed that sanctification
and the baptism in the Holy Spirit were the same, so he felt he already had this
baptism. Others warned him that these people in Sunderland were not receiving the
Holy Spirit, but demons instead. Other friends with whom he prayed urged him to
follow his own leadings.
When he arrived at the meeting in Sunderland, which was being led by Vicar
Alexander Boddy (who had attended some of Evan Roberts’ meetings in Wales
during the Welsh Revival), he was surprised at the dryness of it in contrast to the
moves of the Spirit he had experienced elsewhere, especially among the
Salvationists. In fact, he grew so frustrated at this, he interrupted the meeting,
saying, “I have come from Bradford, and I want this experience of speaking in
tongues like they had on the day of Pentecost. But I do not understand why our
meetings seem to be on fire, but yours do not seem to be so.”‡‡ Smith was so
disruptive that they disciplined him outside of the building.

Smith Receives the Baptism

He soon decided he needed to return to Bradford, but before doing so decided to go
to Vicar’s home and say, “Goodbye.” There he met Mrs. Boddy and told her he
was returning home without speaking in tongues. She told him, “It is not tongues
you need, but the baptism.”§§ Smith asked her to lay hands on him before he left.
She agreed, praying a simple but powerful prayer, and walked out of the room. It
was then that the fire fell, and Smith had a vision of the empty cross with Jesus
exalted at the right hand of the Father. Smith opened his mouth to praise God and
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began instantly speaking in tongues. He knew immediately that what he had
received of God now was much fuller than what he had received when praying and
fasting and asking God to sanctify him.
Instead of going home, Smith went to the church where Vicar Boddy was
conducting the service and asked to speak. Vicar Boddy agreed. Smith then spoke
as he never had before, and at the end of his “sermon” fifty people were baptized in
the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues. Even the local paper, the Sunderland
Daily Echo, picked up the story and headlined the meeting and what Smith had
experienced. Smith telegraphed home about what had happened.

“That’s Not My Smith!”

Upon arriving home in Bradford, Smith found a new challenge to what he had
experienced. Polly met him at the door and firmly stated, “I want you to know that
I am just as baptized in the Holy Spirit as you are and I don’t speak in tongues. . . .
Sunday, you will preach for yourself, and I will see what there is in it.”*** When
Sunday came, Polly did see what there was in it, as Smith preached with a power
and assurance she had never heard in him before. She squirmed in her seat
thinking, “That’s not my Smith, Lord. That’s not my Smith!” At the end of the
sermon a worker stood to say he wanted the same experience Smith had received,
and when he sat back down, he missed his chair and fell to the floor!
Smith’s eldest son had the same experience. In a very short while there were
eleven people on the floor, laughing in the Spirit. Then the entire congregation was
absorbed in holy laughter, as God poured even more of His Spirit out upon them.
In the coming weeks, hundreds in Bradford would receive the baptism in the Holy
Spirit and speak with other tongues—one of whom was Polly. The couple soon
began traveling throughout the country, answering calls to speak and minister.
This experience also caused Smith to pursue God more than ever through prayer
and fasting. He answered every request he could of those asking for divine healing.
Sometimes he took a train to the nearest city and then borrowed a bicycle to ride
another ten miles to reach the person. Soon he had no more time for his plumbing
work, so he vowed before the Lord that if he were ever in severe need again in his
life, he would return to plumbing; otherwise, he would serve as a minister for the
rest of his days. The Lord made sure Smith never returned to plumbing.

Polly Goes Home to Be with the Lord

Not long after this, while waiting at a train station to leave for Scotland, Smith
received word that his beloved wife, Polly, had collapsed at the Bowland Street

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Mission from a heart attack. He rushed to her bedside only to discover her spirit
had already departed. But Smith rebuked death, and she came back. Smith had just
a short time to visit with his wife again, and then he was impressed that it was time
for her to go home to be with her Lord and Savior, so he released her again. Polly
passed away on January 1, 1913, and it was as if her dedication and spiritual power
went with her husband after that and multiplied the effects of his ministry.
Immediately, Smith started to minister again throughout the country, traveling with
his daughter, Alice, and her husband, James “Jimmy” Salter. Smith continued to
preach a simple Gospel of “only believe.” In a time when other ministers seemed
frail and failing despite the enormous revivals that had come through their
ministries, Smith soon rose to prominence in Pentecostal circles because of the
undeniable power in his ministry and the uncompromising stability with which he
operated. His convictions would never change in the next four decades, and Smith
remained a growing force for God and Pentecostalism right up until his death in
1947.

The Apostle of Faith and His Worldwide Ministry

In the months following Polly’s passing, Smith’s fame in England grew, and in
1914 he began traveling abroad to minister. By the 1920s and 1930s there was no
more sought-after speaker in Pentecostalism. Although he never accepted the
cloak, his acknowledgement as the “Apostle of Faith” made the Pentecostal world
look to him as one of its greatest patriarchs, even though he had never been
involved in any of the revivals that started the movement. Miracles, healings, the
dead being raised, and other signs and wonders followed his ministry as he
continued in the uncompromising and blunt style that no one could ever emulate.
Truth be told, Smith just never seemed to feel the need to be polite when chasing
out sickness, disease, and other works of the devil. His sentiment was also that if
the Spirit were not moving, then he would move the Spirit. This was not arrogance,
but confidence in the work God wanted done on the earth. Smith would create an
atmosphere of uncompromising faith in the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit
would never fail to show up.
In 1922 Smith traveled to New Zealand and Australia, among other places, and in a
few short months saw thousands saved and several Pentecostal churches birthed in
the greatest spiritual renewals either nation had ever seen. In 1936 he traveled to
South Africa and delivered to David du Plessis a profound prophecy of the
upcoming revival of the Charismatic Renewal that would not even start until after
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Wigglesworth’s death. By this time Smith was in his seventies and probably the
most well-known Pentecostal in the world.

Going Home
Then on March 12, 1947, while attending the funeral of a fellow minister, Smith
bowed his head in the midst of a conversation and went home to be with the Lord
without any pain or struggle at the age of 87.
While Smith would never form his own denomination or write a book, let alone a
systematic set of doctrines and theology, his simple faith still impacts believers
today. His relationship with God produced power that had not been seen on the
earth for many centuries. For this reason, God also showed him things that others
only dreamed of seeing. He never wanted to be put on a pedestal and worshipped,
but be instead, an example of what every Christian can experience if they would
“only believe.”

“The Catalyst of Pentecost”

When people run out of the love of God, they get to preaching dress, and meats,
and doctrines of men and preaching against churches. All these denominations are
our brethren... So let us seek peace and not confusion... The moment we feel we
have all the truth or more than anyone else, we will drop.
William J.Seymour is best known for ushering in the Pentecostal Movement that
began with the Azusa Street mission in 1906. He was one of the first to preach and
minister around the importance of being baptized in the Holy Spirit with the
evidence of speaking in tongues. As hungry believers sought this experience, as
they prayed and pressed God to baptize them with fire, revival broke out in
Southern California that gained momentum and sparked a Pentecostal “wave of the
Spirit” that revolutionized evangelism and worship across the nation. Seymour’s
“Azusa Street Revival” gave rise to several charismatic denominations, as well as
introducing the “nondenominational” Christianity so common today.

The Journey to Self-Discovery

Born in Centerville, Louisiana on May 2, 1870, to newly freed slaves, William J.
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Seymour grew up during a time of racial unrest and injustice. Although they were
free, his family continued to work the plantation afraid to go elsewhere. Seymour
taught himself to read primarily through studying the Bible. It was there he learned
his freedom lay in Jesus Christ. His hunger for the truth of God’s Word increased
throughout his youth, and from early in life he experienced divine visions and
looked fervently for the return of Christ.
It wasn’t until William was twenty-five years old that he broke through a self-
imposed bondage that he was inferior because of his race, and finally ventured
away from the mentality of the plantation to seek a livelihood in the North. He
settled in Indianapolis, Indiana where he joined a Methodist Episcopal Church that
had a strong evangelistic outreach to all classes and races. However, it wasn’t long
before racial lines began to harden in Indianapolis and Seymour was forced to
move to Cincinnati, Ohio to pursue his dream of cross-racial ministry. As a
follower of John Wesley, Seymour aligned with his doctrine that there should be
no discrimination in Jesus Christ, but the Methodist church in general was moving
away from her original roots. Eventually Seymour joined the “Evening Light
Saints” which would later become known as the Church of God Reformation
Movement.
These believers were strict in their beliefs about purity and holiness. They did not
use musical instruments, wear rings or make-up, dance or play cards, but they were
joyful in their faith and warmly accepting of William. It was among this group that
Seymour received his call to ministry. He did not immediately yield to the call with
his whole heart, and felt that a serious bout of smallpox, which left him blind in
one eye and permanently scarred on one side of his face, was retribution for not
more expediently obeying the call of God.

Heeding the Call

And so when he recovered after three weeks of horrible suffering, William
Seymour left Cincinnati and traveled to Texas, evangelizing along the way. He
found family in Houston so settled down there, and in the summer of 1905, came
upon Charles Parham’s evangelistic crusade in full swing. Parham had established
a school of ministry in Houston where Seymour enrolled. After completing his
studies there, the events that led Seymour to Los Angeles quickly transpired.
It was early 1906 when William Seymour, in the midst of making plants to start a
Pentecostal church, received a letter from a woman who had sat under his
leadership during the short period of time he was substitute pastoring in Houston.
She invited him to Los Angeles to lead a small congregation that had just broken
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away from a Nazarene church. Convinced the letter revealed his destiny, Seymour
left for California late in January.
When he arrived in Los Angeles, there was already evidence of a growing spiritual
hunger. Turn of the century evangelists had sown the seeds of revival through
Southern California and many groups of people were praying and witnessing
throughout the city. The entire city was on the verge of a great spiritual happening
as many local congregations were earnestly seeking God. One such congregation
eagerly waited the return of their pastor who had been on a three-week trip to
Wales. He had gone to sit under the great Welsh evangelist, Evan Roberts. This
pastor hoped to bring the same revival that swept Wales home to Los Angeles.
The congregation that sought Seymour as their pastor was meeting in the home of
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Asbery when they grew so large that they had to rent a small
mission hall on Sante Fe Street. Believing a stranger to the Los Angeles area could
be more effective at commanding respect among them, a cousin of Mr. Asbery
remembered Seymour from her visit to Houston. After hearing her testimony and
praying at length, they all agreed to extend Seymour the invitation.
Delivering the Message
Because there was already a revival climate city-wide, Seymour felt he had stepped
into divine destiny as he began to deliver his message to the group assembled at the
mission hall on Sante Fe Street. He did not hesitate to make the most of this
opportunity to expound on the gospel of divine healing and the soon return of
Christ. He made no hesitation in setting forth his belief, based on Acts 2:4, that a
person is not baptized in the Holy Spirit unless they speak with other tongues. He
admitted that he had not yet received this manifestation, but nevertheless,
proclaimed it as God’s Word.
His message was received with mixed reactions. He was invited home to dinner by
a couple in the congregation, and found upon returning, that he had been locked
out of the mission where he was staying. Having no place to go, and little money,
the couple who hosted him for dinner felt obligated to invite him to stay overnight
in their home. Seymour remained in his room behind closed doors fasting and
praying for several days. He then invited his hosts to join him in prayer, and soon
other members of the mission gathered with them upon hearing of the prayer
meetings. Seymour gained new respect as his reputation grew as being a man of
prayer.
Not long after he was invited before the Holiness clergy in the area to discuss his
doctrinal beliefs. He clung to his interpretation of Acts 2:4, and told the Holiness
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preachers that unless they had the same experience as those who had gathered in
the Upper Room, they could not claim to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. He
declared that their dispute was with the Word of God and not him.
One minister who had been against Seymour would later say, “The contention was
all on our part. I have never met a man who had such control over his spirit. No
amount of confusion and accusation seemed to disturb him. He would sit behind
that packing case and smile at us until we were all condemned by our own
activities.”

The Mantle of Leadership

The calming leadership of William Seymour was noticed by all. Following his
investigation, in February 1906, the Asbery’s asked him to move into their home
where he began holding regular meetings. The meetings grew in attendance and
hunger for the Holy Spirit, and soon Seymour announced they would hold a ten-
day fast until they received the blessing of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The
group fasted and prayed through the weekend and by Monday one of the members
called Seymour to his home to pray for his healing. He was healed instantly and
when Seymour was asked to lay hands on him to pray for the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, Seymour did and the man began shouting in other tongues. The two walked
together back to the Asbery house for the evening prayer meeting.
When they arrived, every room was packed with people already praying. Seymour
took charge of the meeting, leading the group in songs, testimonies, and more
prayer. When Seymour told the story of this man’s healing and subsequent
baptism, the man raised his hands and began to speak in other tongues. The entire
group fell to their knees worshipping God and crying out for the baptism. Then, six
or seven people lifted their voices and began to speak in another tongue.
People rushed outside prophesying and preaching. It was said that the front porch
became the pulpit and the street the pews. For three days they celebrated what they
declared “early Pentecost restored.” It was during the third night of these meetings,
on April 12, 1906, after everyone had left, that Seymour himself was finally filled
and began speaking in other tongues.

312 Azusa Street

Everyone knew another meeting place had to be found quickly as so many were
flocking to the Asbery house to see and experience what was happening in the
Spirit. On April 14, 1906, Seymour and his elders set out find the perfect place.
They wandered the local area until they came upon a dead-end street where an

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industrial business section once flourished. It was in a former Methodist Church
that had been remodeled for other purposes. When a fire destroyed the second
floor, the cathedral-shaped roof was flattened and covered with the tar. Now the
building was being used for storage upstairs and a stable below. Seymour was
offered the building for eight dollars a month.
People came from all over to help restore the property. They did a quick job of
renovating the building, and it was just in time to receive the swell of crowds who
would come seeking hope and restoration after the great San Francisco earthquake
of April 18, 1906. The next day shocks were felt throughout Los Angeles, and even
the wealthy fled to Azusa to seek refuge in God’s Word and the infilling of the
Holy Spirit.
Sometimes the services ran continuously for ten to twelve hours; sometimes they
ran for several days and nights. Some said the congregation never tired because
they were so energized by the Holy Spirit. Many gathered after the services in the
early morning hours talking about the Lord under the streetlights. Azusa began
operating day and night. The entire building had been organized for full use.
Great emphasis was placed on the blood of Jesus, inspiring the group to a higher
standard of living. Divine love began to manifest, allowing no unkind words to be
spoken of another. The people were careful to make sure that the Spirit of God
wouldn’t be grieved. Both rich and poor, unlearned and educated, sat together on
the makeshift pews.
Gathering Spiritual Momentum
It was said that the power of God could be felt at Azusa, even outside of the
building. Scores of people were seen dropping into a prostrate position in the
streets before they ever reached the missions. Then many would rise, speaking in
tongues without any assistance from those inside.
By summer, crowds had reached staggering numbers, often into the thousands. The
scene had become an international gathering—one witness described it as follows:
“Every day trains unloaded numbers of visitors who came from all over the
continent. New accounts of the meeting had spread over the nation in both the
secular and religious press.”
Many newly baptized in the Holy Spirit, would feel called to a certain nation. Men
and women were now departing for Scandinavia, China, India, Africa, Egypt,
Ireland, and other nations. Robert Semple had a friend tell him about the
miraculous events he had experienced at the meetings. Semple excitedly told his
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new bride, Aimee Semple McPherson, all he had heard before they left for China.
When Robert later died there, Aimee returned to America and settled in Los
Angeles from where her phenomenal ministry would rise.
When John G. Lake visited the Azusa Street meetings, he was deeply touched by
Seymour. He would later recount in his book Adventures With God, “It was not
what he said in words, it was what he said from his spirit to my heart that showed
me he had more of God in his life than any man I had ever met up to that time. It
was God in him that attracted the people.”
In September of 1906, due to popular demand, Seymour began a publication
entitled, The Apostolic Faith, which grew to twenty thousand subscribers within a
few months. This number had more than doubled by the following year.

The Rising Tide of Persecution

When some members arrived at the mission early one morning to find the words
“Apostolic Faith Mission,” they felt betrayed by Seymour’s willingness to align
himself with the denominational influence of his former mentor Charles Parham.
They did not want to become just another in Parham’s large network of churches
and Bible schools. One observer wrote, “From that time, the trouble and division
began. It was no longer a free Spirit for all as it had been. The work had become
one more rival party and body, along with the other churches and sects of the city.”
Division continued to plague the Azusa mission. Seymour’s trusted secretary left
with the mailing list of fifty thousand names to rally the support of the centers that
had earlier been established in Seattle and Portland. She mailed the May, 1908
edition of Seymour’s popular publication from Portland requesting that all
contributions be sent to the offices in Oregon from now on. No article written by
Seymour appeared by the June issue and by midsummer 1908, all references to Los
Angeles were omitted entirely. The lists were never returned so that Seymour was
unable re-establish his subscription base and thus ended the dramatic era of Azusa.

The Sun Sets on Azusa Street

Throughout 1909 and 1910, Seymour continued his ministry at Azusa, though the
number of people decreased dramatically. He was forced to leave two young men
in charge of the mission and take to the road in order to raise the needed funds to
maintain the mission. While he was on his cross-country preaching tour in early
1911, a man by the name William Durham was invited to hold meetings at Azusa
in Seymour’s place. Hundreds once again flocked to the mission to hear Durham’s
dramatic preaching. Many of the old Azusa workers, from various parts of the

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world, returned to the mission for what they called “the second shower of the
Latter Rain.” At one service, over five hundred people had to be turned away.
The last conflict at Azusa took place between Seymour and Durham. The two
differed greatly in their theology. Durham preached that people could not lose their
salvation if they sinned, but were saved by faith. Seymour, believing that sins of
the flesh would indeed cause a believer to lose their eternal reward, quickly
returned to Los Angeles to confront Durham.
Unable to come to an agreement in their doctrine, Seymour locked Durham out of
the mission. Durham, unshaken, secured a nearby two-story building that seated
more than one thousand people, and continued to hold his increasingly popular
meetings. The second story of his building served as a widely sought prayer center
that was open day and night. Thousands were saved, baptized, and healed there
while the old Azusa Mission became virtually deserted.

Finishing the Race

In 1921, William Seymour made his last ministry campaign across America. When
he returned to Los Angeles in 1922, people began to notice he looked very weary.
He attended many ministry conventions, but was never publicly recognized from
the platform. Finally, on September 28, 1922, while at the mission, Seymour
suffered a heart attack. Later that day his heart failed him completely and he went
home to be with the Lord.
Though the legacy and ministry of William J. Seymour seems heartbreaking, the
results of his efforts between 1906 and 1909 produced and exploded the
Pentecostal Movement around the world. Today, many denominations attribute
their founding to the participants of Azusa. Most of the early Assembly of God
leaders came out of Azusa—and probably everyone in the Pentecostal Movement
today can attribute his or her roots in some way to Azusa. Regardless of doctrinal
disputes, William Seym

Maria Woodworth-Etter
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be shot down,
either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I said I would never run,
nor compromise. The Lord would always put His mighty power on me, so that He
took all fear away, and made me like a giant…If in any way they had tried to
shoot, or kill me, He would have struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.¹
15
Within a short time after Maria Woodworth-Etter responded to God’s call to “go
out in the highways and hedges and gather in the lost sheep,”² and people were
thronging to hear her speak with signs and wonders following. By 1885, without a
public address system, crowds of over twenty-five thousand pressed in to hear her
minister while hundreds fell to the ground under the power of God.³ Woodworth-
Etter not only shook up denominational religion, she rocked the secular world with
life-altering displays of God’s power.
Those who came to investigate, condemn, or harass her seemed most at risk of
“falling out” in what was described as a trance-like state. Maria preached that these
strong manifestations of the Spirit were “nothing new; they were just something
the Church had lost.” 4 She was unwavering in her determination to break the
strongholds that held people, communities, and whole cities in bondage. It seemed
the more opposition she faced, the more she dug in her heels. Maria produced
invincible strength through tenacious prayer that enabled her to take authority and
minister with grace and power. She was known as a revivalist who could break
towns open.
Maria Woodworth-Etter did not immediately heed the Lord’s call to evangelistic
ministry in her life. As a single woman in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
she felt the need to position herself by first obtaining an education and then
marrying a missionary. Her well thought-out plans were interrupted when her
father suddenly died in a farming accident and she was left with the burden of
helping support her family. She met P.H. Woodworth upon his return from the
Civil War, and after a brief courtship, they married and took up farming.
Over the course of time, P.H. and Maria became the parents of six children.
Farming life proved difficult and they struggled with the demands of making a
living and raising a family. Maria was frustrated that she couldn’t answer the call
to ministry due to the demands of her life on the farm as a wife and mother of a
growing family. She battled illness and disappointment that her husband did not
share her desire for ministry. Then overwhelming tragedy struck as the
Woodworth’s lost five of their six children to illness. P.H. never recovered from
this loss and Maria did her best to support him while raising their only surviving
daughter. Instead of growing bitter, Maria applied the Word of God to her heart.
She came to understand through her study of the Bible that God had used women
as ministers, prophets, and leaders. From the prophecy of Joel she read that God
would pour out his Spirit on both men and women. Still, she felt inadequate and ill-
equipped to be of useful service to the Lord. She continued to study and later
16
wrote, “The more I investigated, the more I found to condemn me.”5
Then Maria had a vision. Angels came into her room and took her to the West,
over prairies, lakes, forests, and rivers where she saw a long, wide field of waving
grain. As the view unfolded she began to preach and saw the grains begin to fall
like sheaves. Then Jesus told her that, “just as the grain fell, so people would fall”
as she preached.6 Finally, Maria yielded to the increasingly clear call and asked the
Lord to anoint her for ministry.
And the Lord did. Shortly after she began ministering to small groups in her
community, churches began inviting her to speak to their congregations. The result
was always a deep conviction among the hearers as they fell to the floor weeping.
Soon she was invited westward and began traveling extensively. It wasn’t long
before she had held nine revivals, preached two hundred sermons, and started two
churches with Sunday school memberships of over one hundred people. God
honored Maria’s dedication and faithfulness restoring her heart and the years she
had lost.
But it was not until she preached at a church in western Ohio that the meaning of
her vision about the sheaves of wheat became clear. Here the people fell into what
seemed like “trances”—an altered state which would come to profoundly mark her
ministry and confound the wise of her day. “Fifteen came to the altar screaming for
mercy. Men and women fell and lay like dead,” Maria recounted. “After laying on
the floor for some time, they sprang to their feet shouting praises to God. The
ministers and elder saints wept and praised the Lord for His ‘Pentecost Power’”7—
and from that meeting on, her ministry would be marked by this particular
manifestation with hundreds miraculously healed, and hundreds more coming to
Christ.
At every meeting she held, there was a demonstration of the power of the Spirit.
One reporter wrote, “Vehicles of all sorts began pouring into the city at an early
hour—nothing short of a circus or a political rally ever before brought in so large a
crowd.”8 Maria couldn’t answer all the invitations she received to minister, but the
ones she did accept created a national stir that has never been silenced. The
writings of then young F.F. Bosworth described the spectacular meetings that took
place in Dallas, Texas, from July through December. As a result, Dallas became a
hub of the Pentecostal revival.
Along with Maria’s ministry success came great pressures and severe persecution.
It was during a controversial crusade in Oakland, California—where she had met
with unusually challenging opposition—she decided to leave her unfaithful
17
husband after his infidelity had been exposed. After twenty-six stormy years of
marriage, they were divorced in January of 1891. In less than a year, P.H.
remarried and publicly slandered Maria’s character. He died not long after on June
21, 1892, of Typhoid Fever.
God, however, continued to honor Maria. As she persistently sowed, labored, and
reaped a momentous harvest for the Lord, God sent her a true friend and partner in
Samuel Etter. Again her sorrow was turned to joy as the two were married in 1902.
Samuel became a vital part of Maria’s ministry in every capacity and the two co-
labored for Christ until his death twelve years later. Maria never wavered in her
dedication to the healing and evangelistic ministry she was so powerfully called to.
She seemed invincible in her ability to carry on in the face of tragedy and
opposition. Her fame for miraculous healings and revival services grew, as did her
critics. But God silenced them all.
She has been called the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement. None has done
more than Maria Woodworth-Etter to shed light on the convicting power of the
Holy Spirit, the role of women in ministry, and the power of miracle crusades to
revive a nation. In addition, she brought insight on how to effectively administrate
massive miracle crusades, build sustainable ministry centers and manage
opposition in the public arena. Her commitment and dedication personally
influenced such great heroes of the faith as Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple
McPherson, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, F.F. Bosworth,
and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Her legacy is evidenced by the ongoing ministry work of healing evangelists
around the world. Though, for the last six years of her life, she confined herself to
ministering from the Tabernacle she had erected in Indianapolis, ID, her healing
anointing remained as powerful as ever. She continued to speak with power from
the Word of God until her very last days. As she became weaker, she was carried
in a chair to the pulpit, and finally ministered a touch of healing or a word of hope
from her bed.
In 1924, at the age of eighty, Maria B. Woodworth-Etter fell into a deep sleep and
went home to be with the Lord. Her passing was mourned by all whose lives she
touched and was felt by the entire nation. She ministered God’s healing power with
the last ounce of her strength, proclaiming God’s love with the last of her breath.

18
 “The Father of Pentecost”
I returned fully convinced that while many had obtained real experience in
sanctification and the anointing that abideth, there still remained a great outpouring
of power for the Christians who were to close this age.
In a time when divine healing and moves of the Spirit had scarcely been heard of,
Charles Parham introduced the American church to the power available through
pursuing a Spirit-filled life. He revealed to the church the life-giving power found
in the baptism of the Holy Spirit that was evidenced by speaking in other tongues.
He sought to bring a balance of both the intellectual and experiential to the Body of
Christ at the turn of the last century as a teacher, rooted and grounded in the Word
of Truth, as well as a healing evangelist moved by compassion, commitment, and
an amazing faith.
From envisioning and founding a Healing Home to establishing Bible Schools,
Parham studied to show himself approved with a rare diligence while fervently
working to prove the truth of God’s Word through the demonstration of faith. He
gathered crowds exceeding seven thousand people while his ministry contributed
to over two million conversions.

Trial by Fire
As with many of our heroes of faith, Charles suffered greatly as a child. He battled
serious illness from infancy and then at the age of seven he lost his mother to a
terminal sickness. Her parting words to him were, “Charlie, be good.” Though he
had four brothers, he was overwhelmed by grief and loneliness. But the words of
his mother rang in his ears and two years later, at the age of nine, Charles felt the
call to ministry.
Though he continued to battle debilitating physical ailments throughout his
childhood, Charles became increasingly hungry for God. Due to a lack of libraries
and formal instruction, he read history books along with his Bible to educate and
prepare himself for ministry. He practiced a life of service by helping his brothers
do chores and preached rousing sermons to the farm animals.

19
Answering and Re-answering the Call
Up until the age of thirteen, Parham had only heard the sermons of two preachers,
and it was after one of these meetings that Parham experienced a powerful
conversion. He was walking home heavy-hearted humming “I Am Coming to The
Cross,” pondering how he could be certain of his salvation, when he recalled
experiencing a “flash from the heavens, a light above the brightness of the sun, like
a stroke of lightning it penetrated, thrilling every fiber of my being.”
He soon began teaching Sunday school and held his first public meeting at the age
of fifteen. He continued to preach before entering Southwestern Kansas College at
the age of sixteen. It was there he became aware of the public’s disrespect for and
the general poverty of ministers. Discouraged, he began to look for other
professions. In light of his traumatic childhood illnesses he decided that the
medical field would suit him well. Not long after changing his educational goals,
he contracted rheumatic fever.
He suffered for months from fever and the guilt of leaving his first call. He cried
out to God that if he would not have to beg for a living he would preach. Heavily
sedated with morphine, and with nearly his last breathe, he prayed the Lord’s
Prayer. When he arrived at the phrase “Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven” his mind cleared and he realized it was God’s will to heal. So he cried out
to God, “If Thy will is done in me, I shall be whole!” As he did, his lungs cleared
and he was completely healed. In that moment, Parham renewed his commitment
to give himself fully to ministry.

Following Christ Alone, With Sarah

Not long after, at the age of eighteen, Charles held his first evangelistic meeting in
the Pleasant Valley School House near Toganoxie, Kansas. It was there he met
Sarah Thistlewaite who he would marry five years later. In the meantime, when
Charles was only nineteen, he was asked to pastor the Methodist church in Eudora,
Kansas. He fulfilled this position faithfully while continuing to pastor in Linwood
on Sunday afternoons where Sarah and her family regularly attended services.
His congregation steadily grew in Eudora, but Parham did not feel bound to
promote the Methodist denomination. He exhorted new converts to find any church
home even if wasn’t Methodist. He proclaimed that being a member of a
denomination was not a prerequisite for heaven and that denominations focused
too much on promoting themselves rather than Jesus Christ. Parham’s primary aim
was to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit regardless if it was contrary to any
denominational objective.
20
Parham began to pray for direction. He felt the Lord leading him into the
evangelistic field and decided to hold meetings in schools, halls, or any church
willing to have him and believe for the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself in a mighty
way. It was at this time that Parham proposed to Sarah. In a letter he explained that
his life was totally dedicated to the Lord and that his future was unclear, but if she
could trust God with him, they should marry. Six months later, on December 31,
1896, they wed.

A Revelation of Healing
The young couple was well received as they traveled and ministered across the
plains of Kansas. Soon after the birth of their first son, Charles fell ill and began to
weaken from heart disease. As he battled physical weakness, their tiny son was
stricken with a mysterious fever. Doctors or medications could help neither father
nor son. In his weakened state, Charles was called upon to pray for another ailing
man. While praying for him he heard the words “Physician, heal thyself” ring out
of his spirit and the power of God touched Parham who was healed instantly.
He rushed home to tell Sarah and pray for his baby. He immediately threw away
all of his medications vowing never to again trust in anything but the Word of God.
The fever miraculously left his son who grew to be a healthy child.
The joy of victory was soon turned to mourning as Parham received news that two
of his closest friends had died. Despairing, he determined to proclaim the gospel of
divine healing. From this time forward Parham’s ministry was marked by his
dedication to preach the power of Christ to heal.

Signs Following
The Parhams moved to Ottawa, Kansas, where Charles held his first diving healing
meeting. He boldly proclaimed the Word of God regarding His will and provision
regarding healing. As Parham inspired the faith of his listeners, miraculous
healings began to take place. A woman who had been given three days to live was
instantly healed. Another woman who was blind received her sight.
Although healing crusades were taking place in other parts of the country through
the ministries of John Alexander Dowie and Maria Woodworth Etter, the people of
rural Kansas had not been exposed to such manifestations of the Spirit. Word
quickly spread and many in fear and ignorance accused Parham of witchcraft.
Accusations such as this drove him to withdraw and search the scriptures.
Everywhere he looked in the Bible, healing was present. Parham realized that
healing, just as salvation, came through the atoning work of the blood of Jesus, and

21
from that point on, persecution and slander never offended him.

The Spirit in Action

By early 1899, the Parhams opened a home for divine healing. Sarah named it
“Bethel.” The purpose was to minister to the sick around the clock. Powerful
teaching services were held daily while individual prayer was offered several times
throughout the day and night. On the ground floor was a chapel, reading room, and
printing office. Upstairs were fourteen rooms with large windows. The Parhams
kept the windows filled with fresh flowers and the atmosphere charged with peace
and beauty. This refuge also placed orphans in Christian homes and found jobs for
the unemployed. In addition, Bethel offered special classes for ministers and
evangelists to train and equip them for the ministry field.
Such an undertaking should have been more than enough to keep the Parhams
busy! But because of Bethel’s success, many began to urge Parham to open a Bible
School. After much prayer and fasting, Parham secured a large, beautiful building
in Topeka, Kansas, in October of 1900. The Bible school was open to anyone
willing to “forsake all” to follow the teachings of Christ. They were to come
willing to study the Word deeply and believe God for all their personal needs.

Tongues of Fire
It was here that eager students were instructed to study the book of Acts over a
period of three days and report back to Parham what they found. Every one of
Parham’s forty students reported finding that all who received the baptism of the
Holy Spirit in the book of Acts spoke in other tongues. Now there was a great
excitement at the school surrounding the book of Acts.
Anticipation filled the atmosphere as people gathered for the evening Watch Night
Service. A spiritual freshness seemed to blanket the meeting. A student named
Agnes Ozman approached Parham and asked him to lay his hands on her so she
would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Parham hesitated not having received
himself, but after she persisted, he humbly laid his hands on her head and she
began speaking Chinese. She was unable to speak English for three days!
After witnessing this outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the students moved their beds
from the upper dormitory and turned it into a prayer room. There they waited for
two night and three days upon the Lord. Upon returning home from a meeting,
Parham was led up to the room where he found twelve denominational ministers
all speaking in other tongues. Overcome by what he saw, Parham fell to his knees
praising God. He asked God for the same blessing, and after the Lord spoke to him

22
about revealing the truth of this mighty outpouring everywhere he went—and that
he would face severe persecution as a result—he was filled and spoke with other
tongues.

The Birth of a Movement

Soon news of what God was doing had the Bible school besieged with newspaper
reporters, language professors, and government interpreters. They sat in on the
services to tell the whole world of this incredible phenomenon. They had come to
the consensus that these students were speaking in the world’s diverse languages
and their newspapers were headlined, “Pentecost! Pentecost!” Newsboys shouted,
“Read about the Pentecost!”
On January 21, 1901, Parham preached the first sermon dedicated to the sole
experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other
tongues. Parham went through the country preaching the truths of the baptism of
the Holy Spirit in wonderful demonstration. Once when Parham began to speak in
a tongue unknown to him, a man in the audience jumped to his feet and declared he
had been delivered of infidelity having heard Psalm 23 in his mother tongue.
Parham’s ministry was not limited to preaching divine healing. Now untold
numbers were being delivered from all types of bondages as Parham revealed the
freedom and power available to all believers through the baptism of the Holy
Spirit.

The Price of Victory

Along with fame and victory came persecution and sorrow. Not only did this
mighty outpouring of the Spirit give rise to slanderous persecution, tragedy struck
the Parham household when their youngest child died on March 16, 1901. The
family was grief-stricken. Their sorrow was further compounded when those who
did not believe in divine healing blamed them for the death of their son. But
through it all, the Parhams showed tremendous character. They kept their hearts
tender toward God and continued to preach with even greater fervency.
In the fall of 1901, the Bible school was unexpectedly sold out from under them.
They moved into a rented home in Kansas City and Parham began to hold
meetings around the country. Hundreds from every denomination received the
baptism of the Holy Spirit and divine healing. A Kansas newspaper wrote:
23
“Whatever may be said about him, he has attracted more attention to religion than
any other religious worker in years.”

Regaining Momentum
Despite persecution, loss, and disappointment, Parham published his first book, A
Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness, in 1901. The book was filled with sermons
on salvation, healing, and sanctification. Then in June of 1902, another son was
born to the Parhams. In 1903, Charles had his first experience with fanaticism and
dedicated himself to studying the nature of the Holy Spirit and teaching how to
discern what is truly of the Spirit and what is not.
By the fall of that year, the Parhams moved to Galena, Kansas, where they erected
a large tent. The tent could hold two thousand people, but it was still too small to
accommodate the crowds. As winter set in they managed to secure a building
although they were forced to leave the doors opened so that those remaining
outside could participate. Huge number poured into Galena from surrounding
towns when strong manifestations of the Spirit occurred, and hundreds were
miraculously healed and saved.
Two national newspapers declared Parham’s Galena meetings to be the greatest
demonstration of power and miracles since the time of the Apostles, writing,
“Many come to scoff but remain to pray.”

Days of Glory
On March 16, 1904 another son was born into the Parham family. One month later
Charles moved the family to Baxter Springs, Kansas, and continued to hold
tremendous meetings around the state. In 1905, Parham was invited to Orchard,
Texas. While he ministered there, the outpouring of the Spirit was so great that he
was inspired to begin holding “Rally Days” throughout the country. Many from
Kansas volunteered to assist in the outreach, which was successfully launched in
Houston, Texas, just a few short weeks later.
The team returned to Houston once more due to high public demand, only this time
they suffered severe persecution. Several of Parham’s workers were poisoned
during one meeting making them very ill. They suffered with severe pain. Parham
immediately prayed for each of them, and they all recovered completely. Parham’s
own life was threatened several times. But not even poison enough to kill a dozen
men could keep him down.
Undaunted by the persecution, Parham announced the opening of a new Bible
school in Houston and moved his headquarters there in the winter of 1905. It was
24
here that William Seymour was introduced to the baptism of the Holy Spirit and
attended Parham’s school.
When the historic school came to a close, Parham moved his family back to
Kansas where his last child was born on June 1, 1906.

The Beginning of the End

Around this time, Parham received letters from William Seymour asking him to
come to the Mission on Azusa Street to help him discern the moves of the Spirit
there. He was concerned that not all the manifestations being experienced were
genuinely of the Holy Spirit. At the same time Parham felt led to hold a rally in
Zion, Illinois in the wake of Alexander Dowie’s decline there. The people of Zion
were disillusioned and losing hope making them vulnerable to corrupt forces
attempting to take control of the city.
Parham decided to bring the blessing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to the
discouraged people of Zion. He met with great opposition but eventually managed
to secure a private meeting room in a hotel. After just one night he required two
rooms and the hallway and then the meetings grew from there. Soon Parham was
invited to hold meetings in the largest homes of the city—one of which belonged
to renowned author F. F. Bosworth. The meetings were tremendously successful
and prompted the most ardent persecution. Not only were the newspapers critical,
but Dowie himself spoke out against Parham. The overseer of the city asked him to
leave.
In October of 1906 Parham felt released to leave Zion and hurried to Los Angeles
to answer Seymour’s call. Parham and Seymour were unable to come to see eye-
to-eye regarding the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and after holding only a few
meetings there, Seymour locked Parham out of the mission.
Parham returned to Zion in December of 1906, again unable to obtain a building.
He set up a large tent capable of seating two thousand people and again had such
powerful meetings that opposition soon arose. When he closed the meetings, he
traveled alone to preach in Canada and New England leaving his family in Zion.
The entire family suffered from harassment there. Finally one day Mrs. Parham
received a devastating letter accusing her husband of scandalous acts. She was
forced to move her children back to Kansas.

A Legacy of Faith
25
The Parhams suffered greatly at the maligning of Charles’ character. His enemies
were using any means possible to destroy his reputation. National headlines read
that he had been arrested for sodomy with his supposed companion. All of this was
proven false and later recanted by the newspapers. Parham later wrote about the
ordeal: “The greatest sorrow of my life is the thought that my enemies in seeking
my destruction have ruined and destroyed so many precious souls.”
For the remainder of his life, Parham suffered as a result of the scandal. His
ministry was threatened, as was his life on occasion. But he was steadfast in his
commitment to continue traveling and preaching. He held tremendous meetings in
the Pacific Northwest where thousands were healed and baptized in the Holy
Spirit. It was in one of these meetings in the winter of 1924 that Gordon Lindsay
found salvation and would later establish the international Bible college, Christ for
the Nations.
In 1927, Charles Parham realized his lifetime dream of traveling to the Holy Land.
He returned in April, 1928 with slides of his visits to Jerusalem, Galilee, Samaria,
and Nazereth and spent the next year and a half showing them at his meetings.
After spending Christmas of 1928, with his family, he was scheduled to preach and
show his slides in Temple, Texas, and it was there while making his presentation
he collapsed from heart failure. In a weakened condition he returned to his home in
Kansas. He waited for his son Wilfred to return from ministry in California, while
his youngest son, Robert, quit his job to be at his side. After many days fasting and
praying, Robert came to Parham’s bedside to tell him he had dedicated his life to
the ministry. Parham was filled with joy and a great peace overcame him. He died
quietly on January 29, 1929, at the age of fifty-six.

“A Woman of Destiny”
Show me a better way to persuade willing people to come to church and I’ll be
happy to try your method. But please . . . don’t ask me to preach to empty seats.
Let’s not waste our time quarreling over methods. God has use for all of us.
Remember the recipe in the old adage for rabbit stew? It began, “first catch your
rabbit.” 1
Perhaps what Aimee Semple McPherson is most remembered for today is founding
the Foursquare denomination that is still growing today. However, her life was
26
marked by an unprecedented boldness in speaking and ministry from early
childhood. She accomplished what no man had yet been able to do in ministry
when in 1922 she built a five thousand-seat auditorium in a prestigious area of Los
Angeles, which became the envy of Hollywood theater owners. On opening day,
January 1, 1923, the new Angelus Temple was featured on a float in Pasadena’s
Tournament of Roses parade—while the extravagant dedication service was given
full coverage in the New York Times. What became the home of “The Church of
the Foursquare Gospel” filled four times each Sunday and twice weekly. Aimee
also ministered at highly sought after healing services during the week.
Movie stars such as Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow, Charlie Chapman, and Anthony
Quinn were known to attend Sunday services at the famous Angelus Temple. As a
dramatic, theatrical person herself, Aimee used drama, music, opera, and
extravagant stage sets to convey the gospel. Over the course of her life, she
composed 175 songs and hymns, several operas, and thirteen drama-oratories.1
In the same year she opened Angelus Temple, she founded the world-renown
L.I.F.E. (Lighthouse of International Foursquare Evangelism) Bible college where
Aimee was an avid instructor and took part in graduating over 8,000 ministers who
gave rise to the countless churches currently associated with the Foursquare
denomination. By the following year, in February 1924, she opened the first
Christian radio station KFSG (Kall Four Square Gospel), and was the first woman
to obtain an FCC license.
Her tenacity, creativity, and courage have left a far-reaching legacy both in
Christian broadcasting and entertainment, as well as crusade evangelism and
denominational practices. She reached the unreachable, and opened territory for
Christ where literally no man had gone before. She set the stage for greats like
Kathryn Kuhlman, who was just giving her life to the Lord in 1922, and who
would later host the first televised evangelistic healing program. It is interesting to
note that in the same year the world famous Aimee Semple McPherson was
launching her radio station, Kathryn had just started preaching as a teenager, and
Maria Woodworth Etter had breathed her last breath at eighty years of age.

The Birth of a Legend

Aimee Elizabeth was born to James Morgan and Minnie Kennedy on October 9,
1890, in Ontario, Canada, the only daughter of a wealthy farmer. Her mother was a
Salvationist and prayed that if the Lord would give her a daughter she would
dedicate her to the ministry to fulfill the calling that she had neglected to fill
herself. And so the Lord gave her Aimee, and Minnie supported her in the work of
27
the ministry throughout her life. Both her mother and father treasured their
daughter and she grew up with all the benefits that doting, wealthy, Christian
parents could offer.
Aimee was beautiful and precocious, and as a pre-teen demonstrated her gift for
public speaking and debate. She became well known in village theater productions
and won the silver medal for speech at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
at the age of twelve. She went on to compete for the gold in London, Ontario. By
the time she was thirteen, Aimee was a celebrated public speaker in high demand
at church functions and social events. She was headstrong and outspoken, often
challenging teachers and church leaders. By the time she was seventeen, she had
become disillusioned by the strict, religious doctrines of her Methodist church,
being witness to hypocrisy, and struggled internally to reconcile her understanding
of religion versus truth.

The Dawn of Destiny

The day after crying out to God to show her His true Self, she happened upon a
revival meeting being held by Irish evangelist, Robert Semple. Being curious about
the Pentecostal experiences she had heard of, her father took her to the meeting
where her life would be forever changed. Robert had come to the experience of
speaking in other tongues when it spread from Parham’s ministry in Topeka,
Kansas to Chicago. It was there God filled him and called him to full-time
ministry. He became a very successful evangelist well known throughout Canada
and the northern U.S. and was now speaking in Aimee’s hometown.
When Robert Semple spoke, his words pierced Aimee’s heart like an arrow and
when he began to minister in other tongues, she understood every word. Three
days later, Aimee stopped her carriage in the middle of a lonely road, lifted her
hands toward heaven and cried out for God’s mercy. It was there she was
powerfully born again. Shortly after committing her life to the Lord, she was given
a vision of a black river rushing past with millions of people being swept into it.
They were helplessly pushed along by the current and falling over a waterfall. It
was then she heard the Lord say, “Become a winner of souls.”
She became hungry for more of God and the power to fulfill her calling. She began
to attend “tarrying” meetings where believers sought the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, even skipping school to “tarry,” causing great alarm to her parents. One day,
as she passed by the house where the tarrying meetings took place, she couldn’t
resist going inside. She went in and explained how she longed to stay and receive
the baptism. As they began to pray, Aimee asked God to delay school, and
28
moments later an icy blizzard hit preventing her from traveling further. She was
snowed in for the entire weekend. By the following morning, she began loudly
speaking forth in other tongues waking the entire household. Among them was
Robert Semple.

Robert traveled extensively but corresponded regularly with Aimee and by the
spring of that year he proposed marriage to her in the same house she received the
baptism a few months earlier. Six months later, on August 12, 1908 they were
married in her family’s farmhouse.

Stepping Out In Ministry

The Semples moved to Chicago in January 1909 where they ministered with
William Durham. Later in the year they traveled with Durham to Ohio to work in
another mission. It was here that Aimee had her first experience with divine
healing. After breaking her ankle, she was told she would never have use of four
ligaments again and to stay off her feet for a month. As she sat in frustration and
pain staring at her black and swollen toes, she heard the Lord say, “If you will go
over to the (mission) and ask Brother Durham to lay hands on your foot, I will heal
it.” She obeyed, and after Durham prayed for her foot she felt the bones and
ligaments mend. Excitedly she asked someone to cut the cast off and as soon as
they did she sprung up and danced around the church. 3
Not long after, early in 1910, when the Semples were expecting a child, they set
sail for China. On the way they traveled to Ireland to visit Robert’s parents and
then went on to London where Robert preached several meetings. While in
London, Aimee was asked to preach for the first time in public. Although she was
only nineteen, she wanted to be obedient to God’s call. She ministered to the
people from Joel 1:4 and got so caught up in the anointing that she couldn’t
remember anything she said, only the power of the anointing and the clapping and
wiping of eyes when she had finished.

Trial by Fire
In June of 1910, the Semples arrived in Hong Kong where they were unprepared
for the culture and living circumstances they found themselves in. The poverty and
filth were alarming. Aimee was revolted by the Chinese diet of caterpillars, bugs,
and rats. They got little rest in their tiny, noisy apartment, which they discerned
was “haunted” by demon spirits. One day the Hindus burned a man alive outside
29
their kitchen window. Aimee was beside herself trying not to give into hysteria.
Because of their poor living conditions, they both contracted malaria and not two
months after they arrived, on August 17, 1910, Robert was pronounced dead.
One month later, on September 17, 1910, Aimee gave birth to a four-pound baby
girl, Roberta Star. As she lay exhausted and mourning in the Hong Kong hospital,
she was overcome by grief at the loss of her husband and overcome by the thought
of carrying on alone. She was inconsolable. Finally, she received word that her
mother was sending money enough for her to return home. As this young, grief-
stricken missionary steamed back across the ocean, the tiny baby she held in her
arms brought her comfort and hope.

The Turning Point

After mourning the loss of Robert for a year in her childhood home, Aimee became
restless for the ministry and returned to Chicago and New York seeking to minister
in the churches that Robert left behind. In New York she met Harold McPherson
who was a solid and kind Christian man who offered Aimee a proposal of
marriage. She accepted and they were married on February 28, 1912. By July
Aimee was expecting her second child. A boy she named Rolf was born on March
23, 1913. As a mother, Aimee began to realize that an emotional maturity and
stability were being built within her that would benefit her future ministry.
God continued to call Aimee into the evangelistic ministry. She worked around the
community, teaching and preaching, but this did not satisfy the deep yearning God
birthed in her to reach the multitudes. In 1914, she became gravely ill. After a
series of surgeries there was no improvement. She became so despondent she even
begged God to let her die. The physicians called for her mother and Harold’s
mother to inform them of Aimee’s approaching death. As she lay in a lifeless
coma, Aimee heard God’s voice asking her, “Will you go?” From somewhere deep
within her, she managed to whisper that she would. When she opened her eyes all
the pain was gone and within two weeks she was up and well.

Answering the Call

From that point on, Aimee was determined to follow the call of God no matter
what the cost. When Harold did not want to follow with her, she took her children
and left for a camp meeting in Toronto, Canada. Soon she began preaching on her
own, using any method to draw a crowd. In 1915, one of her meetings drew more
than five hundred people. Her mother agreed to care for the children while she
built her ministry. Besides her dramatics and anointing, she was a woman preacher,
so everyone was curious to see and hear her.
30
The first $65 Aimee earned went towards buying a much needed tent which was
worth over $500 dollars. When she unrolled the seasoned canvas she found that it
wasn’t such a bargain after all. It had been ripped to shreds in some places so she
and her volunteers sewed until their fingers were sore managing to erect the
patchwork tent by sunset. She continued to draw large crowds, and once saw
Harold in attendance, who, before the night was over, was filled with the Holy
Spirit. He joined her briefly in the meetings but could never reconcile himself to
her vagabond lifestyle and eventually returned home and filed for divorce.
For the next seven years, Aimee traveled across the United States preaching and
ministering divine healing in more than 100 cities, holding meetings that lasted
from two nights to a month. By 1919, her message of healing and restoration was
in such high demand that she realized a permanent place to minister would be of
great benefit. The Lord led her to settle in Los Angeles in the wake of the Azusa
Street revivals where the people were ready to receive her ministry; her supporters
there even donated land and built her a home. Between 1919 and 1923 she traveled
the country nine more times raising money for the building of Angelus Temple.

Momentous Times and Mysterious Headlines

After a meeting in Denver in June of 1922, when Aimee was interviewing with a
reporter, someone asked her to pray for an invalid outside. She invited the reporter
to accompany her and when they walked out a side door they were abducted by the
Ku Klux Klan. Blindfolded they were taken to a secret meeting where the Kathryn
Kuhlman requested Aimee to deliver a special word meant for them alone. She
delivered a message out of Matthew 27 on “Barabbas, the man who thought he
would never be found out.” Afterward they pledged their national and “silent”
support. Then the two were returned blindfolded to the hall in Denver.
The reporter published a great story about the kidnapping which brought Aimee
even more publicity and garnered more funds for the building of the Temple. The
Temple was completed in December 1922 and dedicated on January 1, 1923.
While continuing to lead multiple services each Sunday, and conducting healing
services throughout the week, Aimee launched the Bible college later that same
year adding bible instruction to an already demanding schedule. Early in the
following year, February 1924, she opened her radio station delivering messages
across the radio waves.

The Kidnapping
By 1926, Aimee was in need of a vacation. Early in the year she traveled to Europe
and the Holy Land although she ended up preaching and ministering throughout
31
most of her visit abroad. On May 18, she and her secretary enjoyed an afternoon at
the beach. There she made some final notes on a sermon to be given that night and
asked her secretary to call the information back to the Temple. When her secretary
returned, Aimee was gone.
Over the next thirty-two days, Aimee’s disappearance became the hottest news
story in the world. The beaches were combed and the outlying waters searched for
any trace of her. When a ransom letter for $500,000 was received, the press went
wild. “Aimee sightings” were reported from coast to coast. A memorial service
was finally held on June 20. Then three days later Aimee walked into Douglas,
Arizona, from the desert at Agua Prieta, Mexico. 4
Aimee reported that a man and a woman approached her on the beach asking her to
please come pray for their baby. She went with them and was forced into a car
where another man was at the wheel. They used chloroform to subdue her and
when she awoke she found herself in a shack with the same woman and two men.
At one point, the two men left her with the woman who tied her up with bed cloths
before going to the store. She managed to cut through the cloth with the jagged
edge of a tin can. Once free she crawled through a window and walked through the
desert for hours until she came upon a cabin in Douglas, Arizona.
Following a night in the hospital, some fifty thousand people welcomed Aimee
back to Angelus Temple. But the Los Angeles District Attorney accused Aimee of
lying and went to great lengths to discredit her. He produced witnesses who said
they had seen her at a Carmel Bungalow with her radio producer. The witnesses’
stories were never the same, while Aimee’s story was always consistent.
Eventually no malice was proven, nor were any kidnappers prosecuted. Oddly, the
District Attorney was eventually sentenced to San Quentin and sadly Aimee’s
attorney was later found dead. It has been suggested and believed highly probable
that the mob was behind the ordeal.

In Search of Refuge
As her popularity increased, so did the misguided investments of her promoters
who involved her in all kinds of business ventures. When they failed, the blame
and unpaid bills fell on her. Lawsuits, settlements, and the depression weighed
heavily on Aimee and it took the next ten years to pay off all her debtors. The
strain turned out to be more than she could handle and in 1930 she suffered a
complete emotional and physical breakdown.
Aimee was confined to a Malibu cottage for ten months under a physician’s
constant care. When she returned to Angelus Temple she had recovered to some
32
extent but never regained her former vigor. By 1931, the price of fame had caused
great loneliness. In desperate need of companionship, love, and protection, she
married David Hutton. He was not the virtuous man she believed him to be, and
not long after they were married, another woman sued him for breaking his
engagement to her. After a year of proceedings, the court ruled against him.
While Aimee was away in Europe, in accordance with her doctor’s advice, Hutton
filed for divorce. The years between 1938 and 1944 were very quiet years. There
was very little said about her in the press. Much of Aimee’s efforts during these
years were given to pastoring and training future ministers, as well as establishing
hundreds of churches.
In 1942 she led a brass band and color guard into downtown Los Angeles to sell
war bonds and sold $150,000 worth of bonds in one hour. The U.S. Treasury
awarded her a special citation for her patriotic endeavor. She also organized
regular Friday night prayer meetings at Angelus Temple for the duration of World
War II, gaining the expressed appreciation of President Roosevelt and California’s
governor.

An Unexpected End
By 1944, Aimee’s health was very poor. In September, she and her son flew to
Oakland to dedicate a new church. Due to a blackout in the city, she and Rolf spent
the evening together in her room for some ministry and family talk. When the
evening drew to a close, Rolf kissed his mother goodnight and left the room.
Plagued with insomnia, Aimee was taking sedatives prescribed by her physician to
help her sleep. As she continued to battle sleep, she took another dose and by dawn
she knew something was wrong. She called her doctor in Los Angeles who was in
surgery so she called another doctor who referred her to Dr. Palmer in Oakland.
Before she could make the third call, Aimee fell unconscious. At 10:00 a.m. Rolf
found her in bed, breathing hoarsely, and tried to wake her. He called for medical
assistance, but it was too late. On September 27, 1944, Aimee Semple McPherson
went home to be with the Lord at the age of fifty-three.
Sixty thousand people came to pay their respects over the course of three days as
Aimee’s body lay in state at Angelus Temple. The stage, orchestra pit and aisles
were filled with flowers. Then on Aimee’s birthday, October 9, 1944, a motorcade
of six hundred cars drove to Forest Lawn Memorial Park; two thousand mourners
along with seventeen hundred Foursquare ministers whom she had ordained looked
on as she was laid to rest.5

33
A True Hero of the Faith
Not only did Aimee Semple McPherson break the barrier for woman evangelists
during a time when women were not accepted in the pulpit, but she also built the
largest church auditorium of her day, launched the first Christian radio station,
established a Bible college, and birthed an entire denomination that is still growing
today. She did all of this in the midst of the Great Depression during which one
and a half million people received aid from her ministry.6 She was acknowledged
by the President of the United States and U.S. Treasury for her war efforts—and by
the media for her enterprising theatrics and daring in reaching the lost. She was and
remains a true hero of the faith.

“A Man of Notable Signs and Wonders”

God didn’t put His endorsement upon one particular church, but He revealed that
the pure in heart would see God . . . Let the fellow believe whatever he wants to
about it. These things don’t amount to very much anyhow. Be brothers, have
fellowship with one another.1
William Branham was beyond doubt a man of notable signs and wonders. From
birth, supernatural manifestations marked his life. He truly walked with God for a
time, but in the latter years of his life, began to err in doctrine and veer from his
true calling. He did indeed have a divine impartation to minister healing and
deliverance. A modern day prophet of biblical proportion, he healed the multitudes
and delivered the afflicted from all kinds of demonic bondages and strongholds. He
walked in the Spirit, guided by visions and angels: For a period of time the
supernatural seemed to permeate his life and all he set his hand to.
During the height of Branham’s ministry, from 1946-1954, great men came
alongside him to promote and partner with him; men such as Gordon Lindsey, F.F.
Bosworth, and Jack Moore. Branham’s healing team launched what became known
as the Voice of Healing magazine, which gave rise to the great healing revival of
the early 1950s. This movement directly impacted T.L. Osborn, Kenneth Hagin,
Oral Roberts, and others so that today the wider church has a firmer grasp on the
truths regarding faith and healing.

34
Meager Beginnings
William Marrion Branham was born to a fifteen-year-old mother, and an eighteen-
year-old father, in a tiny, dirt floor shack up in the hills of Kentucky. They were
poor and illiterate, and had no interest in spiritual matters. William grew up
without any knowledge of God, the Bible, or prayer. Yet God had a special call on
his life and would go to great lengths throughout William’s childhood to get his
attention. From a young age, William heard God’s voice, and knew that he was
being called to a different kind of life than those around him.
He didn’t understand the calling or how to quiet the longing he felt in his heart. At
the age of nineteen he decided to move away hoping that he would find solace in a
new location. He moved to Phoenix, Arizona where he worked on a ranch, but he
still couldn’t escape the sense that God was calling him. When he received news
that his brother had died, he returned home to his grief-stricken family. It was at
the funeral that he heard his first prayer and knew then that he needed to learn to
pray.

Answering the Call

He stayed close to home to be near his grieving family, taking a job at a nearby gas
works company. After two years on the job, William was overcome with gas fumes
when testing a meter and ended up in the hospital where he underwent surgery for
appendicitis. As he lay in the recovery room, he felt his life ebbing away. His body
grew weaker and his mind grew dark; and then he heard the familiar voice saying,
“I called you and you would not go.” The words were repeated again and again.
William’s inner voice answered back, “Lord, if that is You, let me go back again to
earth and I will preach our Gospel from the housetops and street corners.”2
He was released from the hospital a few days later and began immediately to seek
the Lord. He found a small, independent Baptist church that nurtured and prayed
for him and then six months later ordained him an independent Baptist minister.
William obtained a small tent and began to minister with great results. It was in
June of 1933 at the age of twenty-four, that Branham held his first major tent
revival. Three thousand people attended in one night. It was during this time that a
supernatural manifestation occurred.

Branham Tabernacle
William was holding a special baptism service where he baptized 130 believers in
the Ohio River. When he had baptized the seventieth person, this is what William
described happened: “A whirl came down from the heavens above, here come that
light, shining down . . . it hung right over where I was at . . . and it like to a-scared
35
me to death.” Many of the four thousand that saw the light ran in fear, some
remained and fell in worship, others claimed to have heard an actual voice.3
Several months later, in the fall of that year, the people who attended those
powerful meetings built a headquarters for William’s anointed ministry calling it
“Branham Tabernacle.” From 1933 to 1946, Branham ministered at the Tabernacle
while working at a secular job. During this time he also met his future wife, Hope
Brumback, with whom he had two children before tragedy struck in 1937.

The Price of Disobedience

While Branham was on a fishing trip, he came across a camp meeting of the
“Oneness Pentecostals” (a denomination often referred to today as “Jesus Only”)
and was asked to minister there. Shortly after he started to speak, the power of God
engulfed him and he ministered for the next two hours. Pastors from all over the
country invited Branham to speak at their churches so that he completely filled his
calendar for the following year.
When he had excitedly returned home to share the news with his wife, her mother
was there and scorned him for associating with the Oneness Pentecostals. Branham
capitulated to her rebuke and cancelled all his meetings. He would later regret this
as the biggest mistake of his life. If he had gone on to hold those meetings, his
family would not have been caught in the great Ohio flood of 1937.
As it turned out, in the winter of 1937, Hope had just given birth to their second
child. Because her immune system had not been completely restored, she had
succumbed to a serious lung disease. It was during this period of recovery that the
levee broke on the Ohio River and the floodwaters rose. She and her two young
children were transported to several locations during which time both became
seriously ill with pneumonia. Hope’s lung condition turned to tuberculosis and she
died only weeks later. Although the older child eventually recovered, the younger
infant’s pneumonia turned to a fatal spinal meningitis and the baby died the same
night as her mother.

The Rushing Wind

The next five years were difficult for William as he reeled from the loss. He
continued to preach at the Branham Tabernacle and have prophetic visions. No one
seemed to understand him or the nature of his visions and he grew more restless.
He did remarry during this time for his oldest child’s sake and worked to provide
for the family as a game warden in addition to preaching at the Tabernacle.
One spring day, in 1946, he came home for lunch and sat with a friend under a
36
large maple tree. All of a sudden, according to Branham, “It seemed that the whole
top of the tree let loose . . . it seemed like something came down from that tree like
a great rushing wind.” His wife came running out to see what the commotion was
all about, and after getting a hold of his emotions, Branham shared all the past
experiences he’d had with the wind rushing above him in the trees. Since he was a
young child, a “mighty rushing wind” haunted him, spoke to him, and compelled
him to seek God for answers.
He then told her that he was going to find out once and for all what was behind this
“wind” and recalled that he had said, “I told her and my child good-bye and
warned her that if I didn’t come back in a few days, perhaps I might never return.”

A Visit from an Angel

Branham left for a secluded place to pray and read the Bible. He cried out to the
Lord to speak to him in some way. That night he noticed a light flickering in the
room that began to spread across the floor and then grew into a ball of fire shining
on the floor. Footsteps approached and he saw a large man dressed in a white robe
coming toward him. The man spoke,
“Fear not, I am sent from the presence of Almighty God to tell you that your
peculiar life and your misunderstood ways have been to indicate that God has sent
you to take a gift of divine healing to the people of the world. If you will be
sincere, and can get the people to believe you, nothing shall stand before your
prayer, not even cancer.”
William humbly replied that he was so poor and uneducated no one would listen to
him. The Angel gave him two gifts that he would use as signs to help the people
believe. The first would be his ability to detect disease by a vibration in his left
hand; and the other would be the word of knowledge revealing the secret sin
hidden in a person’s heart.

Walking Out The Calling

The following Sunday after returning home, Branham shared with his congregation
what he had experienced. While he was speaking, someone handed him a telegram
requesting that he come to St. Louis to pray for a gravely sick daughter. He quickly
took up an offering for the train-fare and borrowed a suit of clothes. At midnight
he boarded the train for St. Louis.
He arrived to find the girl dying from an unknown sickness. She was weak and
wasting away, hoarse from crying out in pain. William was moved to tears and
pulled away to seek the Lord privately about what to do. He saw the answer in a
37
vision and waited until the conditions were just as he had seen them in the spirit.
He asked the people present if they believed he was God’s servant and directed
them to do just he told them, nothing doubting. He proceeded to ask for several
things and prayed according the vision the Lord had given him. Immediately the
child was healed.
News spread quickly and the people of St. Louis asked Branham to return. In June
of 1946 he conducted a twelve-day healing revival there where tremendous
manifestations took place. The lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard, and the
dead were raised. A woman who stood mocking outside dropped dead from a heart
attack. Branham went out to pray for her and she revived praising God. The
healings that took place were beyond count as Branham often stayed until 2:00
a.m. to pray for the sick.
From St. Louis he went on to Jonesboro, Arkansas, were 25,000 people attended
the meetings.5 On one occasion, Branham went out to pray for a woman who had
died in an ambulance outside the meeting hall. She sat up healed and Branham had
to sneak out of the front of the ambulance under cover of disguise to return to the
meeting.

Relentless Revival
1947 was a high profile year for Branham. In Arkansas he acquired his first
campaign manager. Time published news of his campaigns as his ministry toured
the western states. While in Portland, Oregon, T.L. and Daisy Osborn attended his
meetings and were greatly influenced by what they witnessed. It has been said that
this was the refreshing and refocus they needed to launch their world-changing
international ministry.
This was also the year that Gordon Lindsey joined forces with Branham. Lindsey
became his administrator and organized and promoted one of the greatest healing
revivals to this day. Accompanied by Jack Moore, the “Union Campaign” joined
the forces of the Oneness Pentecostals and the Full Gospel circles for a series of
revival campaigns held throughout the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Branham
was successful at avoiding doctrinal differences and leading thousands to salvation
and healing. Reports stated that 1,500 souls were born again in a single service and
as many as 35,000 healings were manifested during that stretch of ministry.

The Voice of Healing

The Branham team wanted to give a greater voice to the message of healing that
could reach beyond the confine of their meetings so decided to distribute a monthly

38
publication they called The Voice of Healing magazine. Not long after his quick
rise to national success, Branham suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1948, it was
thought he might die when another rising healing evangelist, Oral Roberts, rallied
believers everywhere to pray for Branham’s restoration. Six months later, Branham
was back on the scene.
In 1950, F.F. Bosworth joined the Branham team and together they conducted
another major healing crusade gathering crowds of over 8,000 at a single service.
During the same year, Branham traveled to Scandinavia making him the first Voice
of Healing evangelist to travel to Europe. In the fall of 1951, the Voice of Healing
ministry team traveled to Africa and held healing campaigns there through
December. It is reported that the meetings were the greatest ever in South Africa
with crowds exceeding 50,000 in number.6

Deviating from the Call

Branham remained very influential in the ministry of divine healing for nine years.
During this time healing evangelists began to surface all over the country. In 1952,
at the height of the Voice of Healing revival, forty-nine prominent healing
evangelists were featured in The Voice of Healing magazine. The revelation of
divine healing had reached an all-time peak across the world. But from that year
on, the healing revival fires began to dwindle. By 1955, Branham began to
experience difficulties, and his ministry took a radical change.
Branham had a falling out with Gordon Lindsey, who was forced to leave the
ministry. Without Lindsey, his organization was mismanaged and fell into
financial ruin. He also began to err in doctrine without the balanced voice of
Lindsey who brought stability not only to his administrative affairs, but also kept
his teaching sound and bible-based.
As the glory days of the Voice of Healing revival began to wind down toward
1958, Branham searched for other ways to make his mark. He began teaching from
his visions rather than from the Word of God. Not called to be a teacher, Branham
began to veer off in extreme directions regarding his interpretation of truth.
Disturbing doctrines were taught and emphasized throughout the remainder of his
ministry.

God Removes a Prophet

On December 18, 1965, Branham and his family were traveling home to Indiana
from Texas where William had preached for the last time at Jack Moore’s church.
His son was in the car ahead of theirs when a drunk driver swerved and missed the

39
son’s car but hit William’s car head on. Mrs. Branham was immediately killed.
William was still alive when his son found him. He asked about his wife and when
he was told she was dead, he instructed his son to place his hand upon her. His son
picked up Branham’s bloodied hand and placed it on Mrs. Branham. Instantly a
pulse returned and she revived.
Branham remained in a coma for six days before he went to be with the Lord on
December 24, 1965. Though saddened by his death, his ministry colleagues were
not surprised. Gordon Lindsey wrote in his eulogy, “God may see that a man’s
special ministry has reached its fruition and it is time to take him home.” 7
Lindsey also accepted the interpretation of Kenneth E. Hagin—father of the Word
of Faith movement—who had prophesied two years before that the Lord was
“removing the prophet” from the scene. Branham died exactly when the Lord told
Hagin he would. According to Hagin’s prophecy, William Marrion Branham, the
“father of the healing revival” had to be removed from the earth because of his
disobedience to his call and the creation of doctrinal confusion.

“Generals in God’s Army”

The chief danger of the 20th century will be religion without the Holy Ghost,
Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without
regeneration, politics without God, and Heaven without Hell.1
William and Catherine Booth grew up in a dark England at the dawn of the
industrial revolution. Unemployment, homelessness, labor abuses, and child
prostitution were rampant in the British Isles. Both William and Catherine, from a
young age, were moved by the plight of the poor and the devastating social
injustice of their time—and both longed to serve the Lord in a mighty way. Neither
separately might have changed the world for Christ, but together they were an
unstoppable force for spiritual revival and social reform that would change history.
Best known for founding the Salvation Army, which evangelized the poorest areas
and provided food and shelter for the homeless, the Booths were also tireless
advocates for the rights of factory laborers, working women, and homeless
children.
40
William’s & Catherine’s Childhood
William was born in Sneinton, Nottingham, England in January of 1829, the only
son of his three surviving siblings. By the time he was thirteen, his family was too
poor to continue sending him to school so they apprenticed him to a pawnbroker.
The next year his father died leaving his family in poverty. During the next six
years of his apprenticeship, he started attending church and came to a personal
revelation of Christ. He read the Bible hungrily and taught himself how to write
and speak articulately in order to become a Methodist New Connexion minister (or
lay preacher). He disliked the pawn broking business, and as soon as he was
released from his apprenticeship in 1849, he headed for London to find more
suitable work and opportunities to preach. Unfortunately, all he found were few
chances to preach and only another pawn broking position offering much needed
room and board that he reluctantly accepted.
Catherine was born in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England in January of 1829, and
suffered from several debilitating illnesses growing up rendering her housebound
for most of her childhood. During her times of convalescence she studied the
writings of John Wesley and Charles Finney among others, and by the age of
twelve had read through the Bible eight times. Even as a youth, she was concerned
about society’s ills and wrote articles for magazines about the dangers of drinking
alcohol. She was an avid supporter of the national Temperance Society and from
an early age, felt called to preach. She also looked to reform the church’s view of
female ministers. At the time Catherine met William, he was an aspiring evangelist
looking to make the ministry his sole vocation.

Divine Appointments
In 1851, William joined the Wesleyan Reform Union. It was about a year later, on
his twenty-third birthday in April of 1852, that he left pawn broking to work full-
time for the Reformers at their headquarters. It was during several meetings of this
group that a mutual friend, Mr. Rabbits, introduced Catherine and William. The
attraction between them was immediate, and after a long carriage ride home after
the third time they met, they knew their lives would ever be connected.
William struggled between his affections for Catherine and his longing to become
a traveling evangelist. After many sleepless, prayerful nights, barely one-month
after that carriage ride, they became engaged on May 15, 1852. However, the two
weren’t married until three years later. In the interim, William was sent to Spalding
in Lincolnshire, some one hundred miles away, to oversee several churches there.
Throughout this period of separation, William and Catherine grew ever closer
41
through daily correspondence by letter. They shared their deep affection for one
another, as well as their political, social, and religious views. In addition, Catherine
penned several well-articulated discourses on the biblical foundation regarding the
equality of men and women in ministry. Most importantly, however, they
encouraged each other in their faith and trust in the Lord.

Reunited At Last
William and Catherine were finally wed on June 16, 1855. William was so
successful in his preaching duties on the Spalding circuit that he began to receive
invitations from other areas. Booth was accepted as the Connexion’s traveling
campaigner but was given only a small stipend. It was a hard way to start life for
the newlyweds, especially with a baby on the way, but they continued strong in
their passionate pursuit of winning souls for Christ. In 1857, William was given
charge of another pastorate. And a year later, he became a fully ordained minister
and was transferred to yet another church. Frustrated at being “pinned down” by
pastoral duties, William made the decision to follow his heart and give up his
position with the Methodist New Connexion.
In 1861, William launched out as an independent preacher, and without any
guarantee of income, the Booths traveled the country with a renewed evangelistic
fervor. By now they had four children and had to rely completely on the goodwill
of the churches where William preached. On Catherine’s urging, William began
holding tent meetings in London in 1865. It was during this time that William
would come home bruised and bloody from the persecution he received on the
streets. Evangelistic outreach to the roughest parts of London would be a turning
point for the Booths and provide the framework for the remainder of their ministry
efforts together. By the close of 1865, the Booths were the parents of seven
thriving children, three boys and four girls. Their youngest, and eighth child, Lucy,
was born in the spring of 1868.

The Rise of the Christian Mission

It was later that same year the Booth’s founded the Christian Revival Association,
which soon became known as the East London Christian Mission. Before long
stations were opened in other parts of town so the work became known simply as
the “Christian Mission.” For the next decade, the Booth’s labored under the banner
of the Christian Mission all throughout London establishing what became twenty-
six mission stations training and launching hundreds of voluntary speakers holding
thousands of meetings in all sorts of places, increasing their numbers with every
42
passing year.
The Booths outreach efforts focused on the poorest areas, the slums and red light
districts—they taught repentance, salvation, and Christian ethics to the most
destitute including alcoholics, criminals, and prostitutes. They preached outside
pubs and dancehalls, so often taking business away from the bars and public
houses that a “Skeleton Army” was formed to harass and assault them as they
ministered. It was dangerous work and many of the workers were severely injured
and bloodied. The Booths and their volunteers, however, wore their wounds like
badges of honor.
It was also during this time that the Christian Mission took on a social service
aspect opening their “Food for the Million” soup kitchens and offering shelter to
the homeless for a small price, or payment in labor hours. The Booths believed that
to preserve a person’s dignity and sense of self-worth that they should be required
to pay something for the assistance they received, even if all they had was time and
two hands. Many of the mission beneficiaries became full-time volunteers, some
speaking at meetings, others working as skilled laborers, to promote the growing
cause.

The Volunteer Army Becomes The Salvation Army

In 1878, fifty-one new mission stations were opened. In May of that year, the
“Volunteer Army” that the Booths were equipping to battle evil, officially became
known as the “Salvation Army.” By early 1879, Booth was in command of 81
mission stations staffed by 127 full-time evangelists with over 1,900 voluntary
speakers holding 75,000 meetings a year. In March of 1880, the Army opened
work in the U.S. soon to be followed by missions being established in France,
Australia, and India.2 In the next ten years stations would be opened in
Switzerland, Sweden, and most of the countries in the British Empire including
Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Jamaica.
Booth was referred to as the General, he and all the Salvationist wore a uniform,
and they carried a banner of red, blue, and gold with a sun symbol and the motto
“Blood and Fire”—for the blood of Christ and the fire of the Holy Sprit—and were
accompanied by bands marching military style playing military songs that were
given Christian lyrics. The bands also played traditional drinking songs that they
substituted Christian lyrics to, and of course an occasional hymn. The Army was a
sight to behold and hear as they marched down the street waving their banner in
full military regalia, drawing crowds as they played loud, victorious songs with a
full array of instruments. Soon, because of their good works and persevering love,
43
they became more welcomed and supported by both the local citizenry and public
officials who offered donations and police protection during their open-air
crusades.

The Dangers of Match Making

During the 1880’s, the Booths, Catherine in particular, were concerned by
“sweated labor” where women and children worked long hours for low wages in
very poor conditions. One particularly unfortunate circumstance was found in the
cities’ match making factories. The chemicals used for dipping the end of the
matches were so toxic that the workers teeth would corrode before they were
eventually poisoned to death. It was not uncommon for the entire side of the face
to give way to decay, turning green and then black, leading to a certain death.
The Booths began campaigning to force the company to use safer chemicals. They
publicized the affects of the toxic gases on the workers, and inquired about
compounds used in other countries that were safer. The company insisted the
matches would be prohibitively expensive and refused to change their methods.
In a bold move, the Booths set up their own match making factory that was well
ventilated and used safer chemicals. They began selling their matches advertising
that no workers were harmed in their manufacture and scolding shop owners who
continued to carry the harmful matches. Although the Booths couldn’t ultimately
keep the factory open, combined with the bad press and competition, the old
factories did make the necessary changes and provided working environments
equal to what the Booth factory boasted.

Exposing the White Slave Trade

In one of the boldest moves, and certainly one of the most widely publicized in the
late nineteenth century, the Booths, with the help of a journalist named W.T. Stead,
set out to expose the white slave trade. This was a child prostitution ring that took
advantage of poor, struggling families by buying their young girls to be placed in
homes with false promises of a better future. The girls were put to work in brothels
and sold to other prostitution rings throughout Europe.
Mr. Stead posed as a buyer and “purchased” a young girl from her mother with the
help of a Salvationist who had been saved out of the prostitution. Stead
documented the girl’s travels right up to the point she was to be shipped off to the
European mainland. When the story was printed in the paper and there was such a
public outcry that Parliament was forced to change the legal age of consent for
44
young women from thirteen to sixteen. This public exposure also brought the force
of the law down on the brothels. But this wasn’t the end of the story.
Those who were profiting from the prostitution ring found the girl’s father and
charged Stead with kidnapping. By now the girl was saved and working at a
Salvation Army mission in France. After a long and much publicized trial, the
Booths were finally absolved any charges brought against them as a result of their
association with Mr. Stead, and the journalist spent three, short months in prison.
In the end, the Booths were recognized for all the good work they were doing and
the Salvation Army received a boon of public support and publicity.

The Darkest Days

In 1888, Catherine was diagnosed with cancer. During her last years, the Booths,
with the help of Mr. Stead, wrote a book exposing the tribulations of the poor and
proposed solutions for widespread social reform. The Darkest England and the
Way Out outlined the formation of employment offices, small loan bureaus,
immigration and missing person services, and other social welfare strategies that
seem the norm today.
The book was published in 1890, the same year that Catherine entered paradise.
The book was revolutionary and became a bestseller for that time period selling
two hundred thousand copies its first year. It has been reprinted several times, most
recently in 1970. Widely read and considered a forerunner to textbooks on social
change, The Darkest England and the Way Out left a legacy of social awareness
that seems commonplace today.

Brought Before Kings

After Catherine’s death and the success of The Darkest England, the Salvationist
Army exploded onto the world scene. In that decade, the Salvationist Army
continued to gain momentum under William’s leadership and its presence was felt
in all spheres the world over. By 1900, the Army was in twenty-five countries and
had become a commonly known and widely accepted Christian service
organization. Booth was highly respected by the general public, heads of state, and
the mass media, all of who used the title of “General” with great reverence. He was
granted audiences by the world’s great leaders. In 1904, William was invited to
visit with King Edward VII at Buckingham palace, and the following year was
awarded a prestigious badge of honor on behalf of the city of London.
Throughout the last ten years of William’s life, he tirelessly worked on behalf of
the poor and continued to oversee the growing work of the now worldwide

45
Salvation Army. In 1907, General Booth made his last visit to the United States.
Yet in 1909, at eighty years old, he set out on a six-month tour of England by
motorcar, a novelty of that day. And then in 1910, he traveled throughout northern
Europe and Italy encouraging the troupes only to return to England for yet another
motor tour around the country.
He made his last public appearance on May 9, 1912, addressing seven thousand
Salvationists at Albert Hall in London. He was now blind and his health had begun
to deteriorate rapidly. He lost consciousness on August 18, and went home to
Glory on August 20, 1912.
What are you living for? What is the deep secret purpose that controls and fashions
your existence? What do you eat and drink for? What is the end of your marrying
and giving in marriage—your money-making and toilings and plannings? Is it the
salvation of souls, the overthrow of the kingdom of evil, and the setting up of the
Kingdom of God? If not, you may be religious . . . but I don’t see how you can be a
Christian."3

“The Man of Reckless Faith”

God’s going to open the eyes of the blind and cause the lame to walk, and the deaf
to hear. He’s going to do it right here in this church tomorrow night.1
Jack Coe was an independent and determined force for Christ. He had an
unreserved faith in the Word of God that he combined with a frank audacity which
made him both controversial and effective as a healing evangelist. During the
height of the Voice of Healing revivals, from 1945-1956, Coe ministered
throughout the nation to multitudes of lost, sick, and dying. His crusades were
unprecedented as his tent revivals grew to become the largest in history. He
boasted of a tent larger than even Oral Roberts or the Ringling Brothers big top,
and still turned away thousands every night.
But perhaps most memorable was his compassion for orphans. He built a home for
children called the Herald of Healing Children’s Home, as well as a Christian day
school at the Dallas Revival Center he established. Among his other notable
accomplishments were the construction of a live-in faith home for the sick where
healing was ministered through teaching as well as prayer; the Revival Center
46
Church where people could attend services every night of the week; and the Herald
of Healing publication that reached 300,000 subscribers by the time of his death in
1957 at only the age of 38.

A Long Road to Zion

Jack’s youth was not a happy time. His father was a gambler and alcoholic leaving
his mother to single-handedly raise their seven children. When Jack was nine years
old it proved too much for her and she left Jack and his older brother at an
orphanage. To make things worse, Jack’s brother was hit by a car and killed when
he tried to run away. When Jack was seventeen, feeling aimless and alone, he left
the orphanage and took up a life of drinking and carousing. His health soon began
to suffer and his doctor told him that his next drink could kill him.
Desperate for help, Jack moved to California where his mother lived hoping she
might provide the accountability he needed to stay sober. As soon as he arrived, his
sister invited him to a dance from where he was soon brought home in a drunken
stupor. The next evening he grew very weak and thought he was dying. An
ambulance brought him to a hospital where he was examined, and while there, he
cried out to God for just one more chance. Suddenly, his symptoms disappeared
and he went home fully recovered.

Getting Right with God

Jack took his mother with him to Fort Worth, Texas, where he was offered a good
job as a manager for the Singer Sewing Machine Agency. He soon forgot about his
promises to God and began to drink again. One night when he couldn’t sleep after
a night of drinking, he noticed his heart was bothering him. It would stop and start
causing Jack to panic. Again, he cried out to God and heard Him say, “This is your
last chance, I’ve called you several times, and I’m calling you now for the last
time.”2 At this, Jack fell to his knees and pleaded with the Lord to give him until
the following Sunday to set things straight.
When the next Sunday came, Jack arbitrarily chose a church out of the phonebook.
His finger landed on a Nazarene church so that’s where he decided to go. When the
pastor made the altar call, Jack ran up to the front without hesitation. After he was
prayed for, he knew his heart had changed and shouted, “Hot dog, I’ve got it!”
Over the next six months, his hunger grew for God. His mother was so curious
about what had caused such a change in her son, that she went to church to check it
out for herself and got powerfully saved.
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A year and a half later, Jack came across a “Holy Roller” meeting that intrigued
him greatly. When he attended a service out of curiosity, the pastor pointed him
out in the crowd and asked him if he had ever been baptized in the Holy Ghost and
spoken in other tongues. Jack said he hadn’t nor did he want to. The preacher
challenged him to go home and read everything the Bible says about it and so Jack
did. Undeniably, the baptism and tongues were spoken of all throughout the book
of Acts. Initially, Jack was reluctant to return to the meetings, but so eager was he
to learn more, he couldn’t stay away. Ultimately, he yielded, and so powerful was
his infilling that he spoke in tongues for three days, having to write English words
on paper in order to communicate.

They Thought He Was Crazy

Not long after that, Jack attended an Assemblies of God Bible college for about a
year. Then in 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, he joined the army. Still on
fire for God, he prayed and witnessed to his fellow privates and soon found himself
in the psychiatric ward. He was moved to seven different companies over the
course of fifteen months, each time spending a season in the psyche ward.
After his army service, Jack longed to preach. He approached a local Church of
God pastor and asked for an opportunity. The pastor invited him to do altar work
but Jack was insulted and turned to walk away. The Lord prompted him to return
and tell the pastor he would be willing to do whatever the pastor needed. The
pastor promptly put him to work as the janitor. To this he turned and walked out
again, and after a sleepless night, once again returned to the church to be their new
janitor.
His faithfulness soon paid off as he was promoted to Sunday school teacher, then
song leader, youth minister, and finally associate pastor. At last, when the pastor
was called to another church, Jack was asked to fill in as the interim pastor. When
they hired a new pastor, Jack was ready to start his own church. During this time
he met Juanita Scott who would soon become Mrs. Jack Coe. They set up house
and slowly but surely began to prosper. They were blessed with gifts of
furnishings, a car, and were even able to put a thousand dollars in savings.

Called to Divine Healing

Jack began to pray for an understanding of divine healing. He studied and sought
the Lord until one night he had a dream. His sister was lying in a hospital dying,
given up for lost, when suddenly a bright light entered the room and she was
instantly healed. She jumped up shouting and praising God. The next day, Jack
found out that his dream was true. His sister had suffered double pneumonia and
48
was given up to die. He went immediately to go visit her in the hospital and heard
of the series of events that had transpired exactly matching his dream. This
experience was a turning point for him.

However, in 1944, when Juanita was expecting their first child, Jack Coe became
gravely ill himself. He suffered from tropical malaria and lost ninety-five pounds.
He was now twenty-six years old and nothing but skin and bones. His fevers were
high and recurring, and his spleen and liver had become painfully swollen. Jack
was in agony and prayed that God would let him die. After crying out to God and
repenting of all that God showed him, he told the Lord he was ready to go. It was
then God said he didn’t have to, his heart was now right, and he was miraculously
healed. He would never suffer another attack of malaria.
The next night Coe went out to preach on the street. Three people were saved.
Later that same year, the Assemblies of God ordained him into the ministry. In
1945, Coe went to Longview, Texas, where he continually studied and prayed on
the subject of divine healing. He asked God for a special manifestation of His
power, and then decided to announce a healing meeting.

Restoring Sight to the Blind

Coe boldly proclaimed that at his healing meeting the blind would see, the deaf
would hear, and the lame would walk. When the next evening arrived, the church
was full. People lined up for prayer after he finished preaching and then came the
blind woman. Coe hesitated, asking the Lord what he was supposed to do. The
Lord said, “Son, whatever made you think that you could open the eyes of the
blind? Do what you are supposed to do, and I will do what I am supposed to do.”3
Coe repented and then prayed and anointed the blind woman with oil. Her sight
slowly came as vague impressions, so Jack prayed for her again, and then she
suddenly cried out, “I can see! I can see!”4 From that point on, Jack Coe’s healing
ministry was launched.
His ministry was soon in such high demand that he would often stay until dawn
praying for the sick. He traveled throughout the area staying in people’s homes
wherever he ministered, but those seeking prayer would come to the home where
he was staying at all hours of the day and night and ask for prayer so that Jack
couldn’t get any rest. Finally, the Lord told him he needed to get proper rest and so
he reworked his ministry strategy.
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The Revival Years
In 1946, Coe joined forces with Lindsey in co-editing The Voice of Healing. It was
in 1947 that the Coes sold their beautiful home and invested in a tent, a truck, and a
trailer in order to travel the road full-time, but still have a place where he could get
the rest he needed. By 1948, Jack felt the Lord calling him to Redding, California.
It was here that a lame woman about to have her leg amputated was miraculously
healed. Her testimony stirred the entire city when Coe aired it on the radio. Even
the station manager was saved. That night a wealthy woman arrived in a chauffeur-
driven Cadillac and was also saved.
Until this time, the offerings had been small and creditors threatened to take the
Coe’s truck. So Jack stood up and told the people he needed $740 badly. When he
did, a woman walked up to him and wrote a check for the entire amount. Two
nights later he announced he would sure like an organ or some kind of music for
the tent, and the same lady bought him an organ. The revival team would stay in
Redding for seven weeks, receiving money enough to pay for the next crusade.
In 1950, Coe started publishing the Herald of Healing and by 1951 it had reached a
circulation of 35,000. As the self-proclaimed fastest growing magazine, by 1956
the circulation had reached 250,000. During this same time Coe was determined to
have the largest tent in America. In 1951, when he visited an Oral Roberts meeting,
he measured Oral’s tent and ordered one slightly larger. He boasted in The Voice
of Healing that both tents were larger than the Ringling Brother’s big top.
In 1952, Coe went on the radio. His broadcasts eventually grew to one hundred
different stations per week. It was around this time that creative miracles—the
miraculous recreation of missing body parts—began taking place in his meetings.
Sadly, during the same year, the Assemblies of God felt Coe was too radical and
independent, and expelled him from their circles. This caused Coe to envision
establishing his own independent churches he would call Revival Centers to be
duplicated throughout the country. In 1953, he launched the Dallas Revival Center,
and by 1954 he had built the Dallas Revival Center Church.

Homes for the Hurting

During this time the Coes were also dedicated to building a home for orphans
outside of Dallas. They built the Herald of Healing Children’s Home complete
with four dormitories and a self-sustaining farm. Jack’s goal was to provide a
home for two hundred children. He succeeded in playing the role of father to
hundreds of children whenever he wasn’t traveling—caring, clothing, and
instructing each one as if they were his own. He made sure their clothes, manners,
50
and schooling was as fine as any child raised anywhere.
Nearby he built Jack Coe’s Faith Home where those seeking healing could learn
about faith as well as receive prayer. And not far from these homes was the Dallas
Revival Center complete with a ministry training center and Christian school.
When the Dallas Revival Center Church was built in 1954, bus service was
provided for those who didn’t have transportation, and free ambulance service was
offered for those in the hospital who wished to attend the healing services.

An Early End
Jack Coe continued to hold healing crusades around the country, facing all sorts of
persecution, including being arrested. By 1956, however, he was physically worn
out. Doctors reported that he had the body of a ninety-five year old man even
though he was only thirty-eight. It is believed that the Lord had told Coe about his
early death a year earlier causing him to work that much more relentlessly to
spread the Gospel.
Coe was diagnosed with Polio late in 1956 and was admitted to the hospital where
he was unconscious most of the time. On a few occasions, he was able to speak to
his wife to make his desires known, and relay that the Lord had said he was ready
to take Jack home. Early in 1957, Jack went home to be with the Lord.

John Alexander Dowie

My tears were wiped away, my heart was strong, I saw the way of healing…I said,
“God help me now to preach the Word to all the dying around, and tell them how
‘tis Satan still defiles, and Jesus still delivers, for He is just the same today.”
John Alexander Dowie shook the world at the turn of the century with his passion
for truth and zeal for the work of the Spirit. He brought to the forefront divine
healing and repentance by shaking up a complacent Church and slaking the thirst
of a parched society. He is known as the Healing Apostle of the late 19th century.
Untold millions came to a revelation of Christ and the living power of the Holy
Spirit through his deep conviction, unwavering faith and expansive vision. Against
hypocritical, opposing clergy, fierce slanderous tabloids, murderous mobs, and
relentless city officials, Dr. Dowie wore his apostolic calling as a crown from God,

51
and his persecution as a badge of honor. Dowie was a force to be reckoned with.
Born May 25, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dowie displayed from an early age a
brilliance and enthusiasm for learning and a hunger for the truth of the Word of
God. At only six years old he read the Bible front to back and upon encountering a
humble street preacher named Henry Wright, Dowie gave his heart to the Lord. As
a young man Dowie found much success in business applying himself
wholeheartedly to all he set his hand to, but could not escape the deepening call of
ministry upon his life.
At twenty-one years of age, Dowie answered that call and began studying under a
private tutor in preparation for the ministry. Less than a year and a half later, he
enrolled in Edinburgh University to study in the Free Church School. As a student
of theology and political science, his professors found him to be full of fervor as he
often challenged their shallow interpretations with complete brilliance and
accuracy.
While still in Edinburgh, Dowie became the “honorary chaplain” of the Edinburgh
Infirmary and it was his experiences there that would begin to shape his ministry
forever. As he sat with the famous surgeons of that time, he came to an increasing
realization about the primitive state of medicine and its inability to heal. Dowie
exposed the lack of knowledge among these doctors and began to develop an
intense aversion to the field of medicine. He brought their deceptive methods to
light and was able to prove the accuracy of his accusations.
Not long after, Dowie received an invitation to pastor in Australia at the
Congregational Church in Alma. Naturally, the forwardness of his preaching
created a rift within the church and persecution ensued shortly thereafter. Dowie
was unable to stir up passion within his congregation and resentment towards him
was openly voiced. So reluctantly he resigned, feeling that it was a waste of time to
stay.
Shortly after his resignation, Dowie received an invitation to pastor the
Congregational Church in Manly Beach where he was warmly received. He stayed
on with the pastorate though he felt frustration over their unyielding spirits to the
Word of God. Eventually, his desire for a larger congregation consumed him and
that was when God opened another door.
In 1875, Dowie began pastoring a much larger group of believers in a suburb of
Sydney called Newton. While in Newton, a disastrous plague ravaged the area and
filled the inhabitants with terror. Within weeks of his arrival, Dowie presided over
forty funerals within his congregation alone. It was on one such night that he heard
52
a loud knock at his door. Two messengers had come bidding him to pray for a girl
named Mary who was dying. Dowie rushed to her house and when he arrived he
found her lying there, grinding her teeth and groaning in agony. Something in him
at that moment snapped and he began to cry out to God. Suddenly she lay still.
When asked if she was dead, he replied, “No…she will live. The fever is gone.” 1
From that point the plague in Newton had lost its power. Not one member of his
congregation died from the epidemic and Dowie’s healing ministry began. It was
not long after, at the age of twenty-nine, that Dowie married his first cousin,
Jeanie. Through many trials and hardships that followed their wedding, Dowie
made an extraordinary decision to walk away from the denomination in which he
had found such ministry success. He could not tolerate the cold, lethargic state of
their leadership as he increasingly longed to proclaim the message of divine
healing to an ailing city. He felt constrained by denominational politics and “letter
of the law” theology.
Deeply frustrated and disturbed by the lack of passion that the leadership and
congregation demonstrated towards the Lord, Dowie targeted his mission towards
those masses in the city who were uncared for, unnoticed and perishing, showing
them that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. In 1878, Dowie secured
the Royal Theatre in Sydney and began an independent ministry, selling his home
and furnishings to keep the ministry afloat. Hundreds came to hear him speak
despite rising opposition. Violent persecution rose from local pastors in response to
Dowie’s merciless confrontations of the apathetic clergy. They became further
enraged and conspired more vehemently against him as he continued to rebuke
them with unprecedented accuracy and intelligence.
In spite of intense criticism, Dowie also had many friends and supporters. The
Temperance Society, for example, saw the potential of his influence and urged him
to run for Parliament. Initially he opposed the idea, but eventually felt that he
might be able to influence more people on a political platform. So he ran but was
soundly defeated. As a result, Dowie had disgraced his ministry and hurt his
church. Not to mention, made himself the prime target of the local newspapers,
who having been damaged by his ministry, waged an all out war against him. Soon
things got even worse.
The time Dowie had spent campaigning for office had taken much away from his
other responsibilities – not to mention the toll it took on his calling to preach divine
healing. As a result of this pursuit he lost much ground in his ministry and spent
the rest of his time in Australia in darkness and futility. Finally, in 1880, Dowie
53
realized his error and repented. He returned to his first love and hungered again for
revival. As he once more focused on preaching divine healing, the gifts of the
Spirit manifested in his life and ministry; thousands were healed and thousands
more were touched by the Spirit of God as a result. But once again, with the
overflow of blessing came the onslaught of persecution.
In 1888, Dowie felt led to travel through America and Europe and in June of that
year he did. Upon the news of his arrival to the States, people came in droves from
all parts of California for healing. Soon healing crusades ran up and down the
California coast. After Dowie had traveled much of America he chose to settle
down in Evanston, Illinois. Unfortunately, he did not receive a warm welcome
there either. The Chicago newspapers denounced him as a false prophet and made
it very clear that he was not wanted or welcome in the area. But Dowie continued
on, ministering wherever he felt led to go. It may have been precisely because of
the intense spiritual opposition he felt in Chicago that Dowie chose to locate his
headquarters nearby—he raised up Zion, Illinois, on its outskirts.
By 1894, Dowie’s newsletter, Leaves of Healing, had a weekly, worldwide
circulation. True to his form, Dowie never minced words in his writings. He
fervently denounced and exposed evil industries and warned readers against
lethargic and controlling denominations. He offended the Postmaster General of
Chicago, who revoked his second-class mailing privileges, forcing Dowie to pay
fourteen times the usual cost. Dowie solicited his readers to write Washington DC
and was granted an immediate audience with the Postmaster General in
Washington who not only reinstated his mailing privileges, but made sure the U.S.
government publicly denounced the Chicago newspaper and its editor, one of
Dowie’s greatest persecutors.
While in Washington, Dowie was also granted an audience with President William
McKinley. After leaving the office of the president, who warmly thanked him for
his prayers, Dowie commented to his staff that he felt the president’s life was in
danger. He later asked his followers to pray for the safety of the president who was
assassinated on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York.
By the end of 1896, Dowie had gained great influence over the city of Chicago.
His enemies were all either dead, imprisoned, or silent. The police department and
political officials were considered as friends. Few in the city had not heard the
Gospel as a result of Dowie’s outreach, while famous people from around the
country received miraculously healings through his ministry. He literally ruled the
city of Chicago for Jesus Christ moving the great Zion Tabernacle into its largest
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auditorium filling its six thousand seats at every service.
In January of 1900, Dowie unveiled his plans to build a city called Zion outside of
Chicago. It would be a “moral utopia” and it consumed him until his final days. He
no longer gave himself to preaching divine healing, but to the matters of governing
the rise of a new city. He considered himself to be a modern-day Elijah and set his
sites on building what would ultimately be his own kingdom. He received counsel
from no one and ended up letting personal pride separate him from the will of God.
The city of Zion could not make it financially, and in the end, Dowie attempted to
escape his woes through world travel. While he was out of the country, the city of
Zion voted Dowie out of leadership, and though he fought the decision with his last
ounce of strength, he was allowed to retire to his home there where he spent his
remaining days. He died quietly on March 9, 1907

“Mr. Pentecost”

“Lord, they’re enemies.”

Then love them.
“How can I love people that I don’t agree with?”
Forgive them.
“I can’t justify them.”
I never gave any child of mine authority to justify anyone. I gave you full
authority to forgive them. That’s all you have. 2
While ministers such as Smith Wigglesworth and Kathryn Kuhlman took the
Pentecostal experience to the masses in crusades and revivals, David du Plessis
became the theological backbone of the Charismatic Renewal. He
uncompromisingly and loving presented the biblical and theological justification of
the Pentecostal Movement to the leaders of the traditional denominations the world
round. Though this role was critical to the historical denomination’s openness to
the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the fifties and sixties, and the fact that David was
recognized at one of the eleven greatest “shapers and shakers” of Christianity in
the twentieth century in the September 9, 1974, issue of Time magazine, it is sad to
note that David is relatively unknown despite the significance of the legacy he left.
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Regardless, this simple and unassuming South African is perhaps the most
important figure in opening the door to Catholics as well as other traditional
denominations, to the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

An Early Hunger
David Johannes du Plessis was born in a small town called Twenty-Four Rivers
near Cape Town, South Africa, on February 7, 1905—just over a year before
William Seymour opened the mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles that would
spark the Pentecostal Revival. Ever hungry for all that God had for them, David’s
parents came into Pentecost in 1914 through the ministries of John G. Lake and
Thomas Hezmalhalch, who had come out of the ministry of John Alexander Dowie
in Zion, Illinois.3
In 1916, David’s family moved to Basutoland (which was renamed Lesotho in
1966) as missionaries. The area was often called the “Switzerland of South Africa”
because of the beautiful, rugged, and often snow-covered peaks. Their mission
station was halfway up one of these mountains. It was here David felt he first
learned about simple and sincere faith. He knew that the Africans were illiterate,
yet at the same time, much to his ten-year-old consternation, he also realized they
knew Jesus in a much more real way than he did.
When Europeans were saved, noticeable change took some time to detect, yet
among the Africans it seemed overnight. He saw that to them, if the Bible said it
one way, then that was the way it was, no questions asked. He had been getting up
and praying and reading his Bible every morning as long as he could remember,
but at the same time he knew he did not know Jesus as these people did. A new cry
came from his heart to know Jesus as authentically as the Africans did.

Jesus Saved Me
Later that same year, this cry began to be answered. While riding from their
missionary compound to the distant post office and back again on a fellow
missionary’s horse, David saw a thunderstorm in the distance behind him that put
great fear into his heart. He decided to try to outrun the storm, but this proved
futile, and soon he found himself in the midst of a downpour. He was about a third
of the eleven miles home when a lightning bolt struck the ground no more than
twenty feet in front of him and the galloping horse. Then came the deafening
thunderclap. Half thrown from his horse already, he slid off the rest of the way and
called out, “Jesus! Save me! Save me!”

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Although no such appeal had before changed him, this call to Jesus did not go
unanswered. Immediately upon his request, he knew in his heart that he was saved.
Nothing around him had changed, but it was as if everything within had. The fear
was gone and he knew that he was saved. He looked into the clouds wondering if it
was in such clouds Jesus would return to the earth. He wanted so strongly to meet
Him face to face! He mounted his horse again and headed home. When the mail
was delivered and the horse was rubbed down and dried in its barn, David returned
home where, his mother asked how he had gotten through the rainstorm. His
answer was simple and to the point, “Well, Jesus saved me.”

A Thirst To Be Filled
A few years later, in 1918 at about the age of thirteen, David longed to receive the
infilling of the Holy Spirit with all of his heart. While it seemed a strange request,
he asked his high-school principal for a day off from school so that he could spend
the day in prayer. This was granted. Because the Pentecostals were still regarded
with great suspicion in the area, the only place they could rent to meet was the
storehouse of a coffin maker. So David, his father, and some half-dozen others
interested in helping in his quest gathered in this warehouse with him to fast and
pray until he received this baptism.
They prayed all day Friday, through Friday night, and into Saturday. By this time
they were worn out, and David’s nerves were fraying with frustration. A quieter
youth who had gathered with them, a farm girl about a year older than David, came
to him to give him a message she felt she had from the Lord, “If you will confess
the thing that is on your conscience, He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.”
Searching his conscience, he found that a lie he had told his parents seven years
earlier still troubled him. It was the first sin he had ever been aware of making. He
promptly confessed this to both parents who just as promptly forgave him, and
with his conscience now cleared, he returned to prayer feeling anything but worthy
of being filled with God’s Spirit. However, it was at this moment he received his
first vision. He saw a book being held by two hands whose pages were totally
white and clean. Then he heard a voice say, “There is nothing recorded against
you. The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God has cleansed you from all
unrighteousness.”5 His heart was filled with joy at this, and he broke forth in holy
laughter which soon gave way to a flow of speaking in tongues.
David eventually arose from this to begin developing his skills and anointing as a
street preacher in the weekly outdoor evangelism sponsored by his church in
Ladybrand and elsewhere. In an increasingly strong and persuasive voice, he told
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his testimony again and again and received strong responses from all of his
audiences.

David’s Early Years in Ministry

When David’s funds ran short for continuing at university, he moved to Pretoria to
find work with the South African Railways engineering department. While in
Pretoria, he became a regular minister in the Upper Room, a series of rooms and a
meeting hall above a chemist’s shop a block from the largest Dutch Reformed
Church in Pretoria. Since Pentecostals were still looked upon in those times as
false prophets, it was always interesting on Sundays to see the two churches
emptying into the streets where the city’s and nation’s highest officials and
business leaders mingled with the poor, outrageous “apostolics.”
It was as a minister in the Upper Room that one of the members of the
congregation asked David to speak to his backslidden niece. When he met Miss
Anna Cornelia Jacobs, he found out she had spoken a word from the Lord to one of
the more distinguished women in her congregation and had been rebuked for it by
the pastor. She had decided, because of this, that she would not return to church. At
this, David asked about the genuineness of her conversion, and in telling him about
it she melted and began weeping. While there had been no question about her
offense, there was also no question about her love for Jesus.
Before the evening was over, she was restored to the faith, and David had had a
very special word from the Lord about her. The Lord simply told him, “That’s your
wife.” Shocked, he didn’t know what to make of it, but he was grateful that she
was so pretty. Two days later they had their first date, and their courtship lasted for
eighteen months. They were married on August 13, 1927. They had seven children
together—Anna Cornelia “Corrie” (1928–), Eunice Elizabeth (March-December
1932), David Johannes (1933-1985), Philip Richelieu (1940–), Peter Louis le Roux
(1944–), Matthew Kriel (1947–), and Basel Somerset (1949–). Their marriage
would last just short of sixty years.
David was ordained at the age of twenty-five. In 1932, he finished second in the
elections of the general secretary of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) and won
the post in 1936, which he held until he resigned in 1947. It was as general
secretary of the AFM that David was in charge of organizing the tour and speaking
arrangements of Smith Wigglesworth, when he came to the country the same year
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David was elected general secretary. David was still a young man of thirty at the
time.

Smith Wigglesworth Visits South Africa

When Rev. Wigglesworth came to him, David was no fan of the mainline
denominational churches. His run-ins with the Dutch Reformed Church, which
considered Pentecostals little better than heretics at best, greatly colored his
opinions of the traditional churches of the time. His hope was that the Baptism of
the Holy Spirit would sweep true believers out of the mainline denominations and
into Pentecostal churches. Yet the essence of Rev. Wigglesworth’s prophecy to
him was that he would take Pentecost to them rather than the other way around—
that this young man from South Africa would be chosen of God to travel to the
United States and be a major catalyst of the Charismatic Renewal in the traditional
denominations. Thus it was that Rev. Wigglesworth pinned this young man to the
wall of his AFM office in 1936 and told him where God would lead him in the
second half of the twentieth century.
In 1937, David was invited to address the General Counsel of the Assemblies of
God in Memphis, Tennessee. This was not only his first trip to the United States,
but also his first trip outside of South Africa. David was also key to the
organization of the first Pentecostal World Conference that was held in Zurich,
Switzerland in May 1947. David ended up giving the keynote address for the
conference, a message entitled “Gather the Wheat—Burn the Chaff,” about coming
into the maturity Christ has for all of us. Not long after this, God spoke to David
about more of a worldwide ministry, and he resigned as secretary of the AFM and
moved his family to Basel, Switzerland.

Disaster Leads to Revelation

While traveling and ministering in the United States in 1948, David and Pastor
Paul Walker had a major accident when their Packard ran into a train on a foggy
West Virginia mountain road. While he was recovering, David had great blocks of
time to pray and seek the Lord. During this time, the Lord again spoke to him
about Rev. Wigglesworth’s prophecy. He thought the Lord would bring him in like
a prophet to pound them with the truth, yet God was asking him to go to them in
meekness and humility and simply share. The revival would come through
forgiveness offered without it being asked for. While David wanted to come in like
Jonah and prophesy doom over them unless they repented, he was to come in as a
servant and offer the truth. It would be a revival birthed from forgiveness, not
fight. It took some time for David to get his mind around this fact, and he spent a
lot of time meditating on 1 Corinthians 13 during the rest of his hospital stay.
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David also continued to work on the details of the 1949 Pentecostal World
Conference (PWC) from his hospital room and attended the meeting in Paris on his
crutches. Here, armed with his more profound understanding of love and
forgiveness, David was very effective in stopping the arguments so that the
conference could go on in peace and growing unity.

The Door Opens to the Ecumenicals

One day as he was reading the newspaper (David and his family were living in
Stamford, Connecticut, at this time), David came across a statement by Dr. John A.
MacKay, who was president of Princeton Theological Seminary and a major
Presbyterian leader. Previously, David had read that he had called the Pentecostal
missionaries in Latin and South America “the fly in the ointment of Protestantism.”
He had seen them as a hindrance to all that the Protestants were trying to
accomplish in these areas, yet in this article Dr. MacKay said that the Pentecostal
Movement was the greatest blessing to the church in the twentieth century. David
was curious about such a change of heart. Could this be his open door?
He telephoned Dr. MacKay at Princeton and asked him about his quote. He found
that Dr. MacKay had indeed had a change of heart about what the Pentecostals
were doing, and he invited David to lunch. David went to Princeton, met Dr.
MacKay and, as David himself described, “It was one of those rare and precious
relationships in which both parties fully perceive the truth about the other—
differences and all—and are in a twinkling of an eye united forever in the Spirit.”6
The friendship was indeed one that would last the rest of their lives.
A few days after this meeting, David felt prompted in the Spirit to visit the
headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Manhattan. With little more than
this, he went and fumbled in his introduction of himself to Dr. Roswell Barnes
because he couldn’t explain why he had come. However, Dr. Barnes and his staff
were fascinated to have a Pentecostal in their midst, and David ended up spending
the entire day with them as they asked him questions, and he explained what
Pentecostalism and baptism in the Holy Spirit were all about.
When he contacted Dr. MacKay to thank him for his help, David was then invited
to attend the world conference for the International Missionary Council (IMC) in
Germany right on the heels of the 1952 PWC in London. David accepted, knowing
he could easily extend his time for the PWC to attend the second event, but now he
knew he was in the thick of it. The leading figures of the mainline denominations
would be there, and he would be walking like Daniel into the mouth of a potential
lion’s den. But it just happened that Dr. MacKay was still president of the IMC,
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and when David walked in Dr. MacKay greeted him quite warmly and introduced
him around. David had planned on staying three days, but in the end he stayed for
the full eleven days of the conference and had 110 interviews among the 210
delegates. It was from this meeting that people began to refer to David as “Mr.
Pentecost.” David attended every WCC conference from 1956 until the end of his
ministry.
In 1956, David was invited to speak at a retreat of ecumenical leaders in
Connecticut. He was invited to speak candidly on the issues surrounding the Holy
Spirit, the Pentecostal Movement, and the growing Charismatic Renewal. David
poured out his heart to them, and they still wanted more. David remembered this
later as one of the greatest meetings of his life.

The Door Opens to the Catholic Church

A new breakthrough came when David spoke at a gathering in St. Andrews,
Scotland, by invitation of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World
Council of Churches. This was in preparation for the third assembly of the World
Council of Churches, which was to meet in New Delhi in 1961. It was here that
David had his first encounter with a Roman Catholic priest, Father Bernard
Leeming, who just happened to be a personal friend of Pope John XXIII. Through
this relationship, God would eventually open the door for David to minister in
Rome and the Vatican.
Despite this growing flow of the Spirit, in 1962 David received a letter saying that
his papers as a minister with the Assemblies of God were being pulled, credentials
he had obtained shortly after moving to the United States. There were no reasons
given, just notice that he was no longer ordained by their body. David had too
much work to do for the Lord to worry about who was ordaining him or not. While
the mainline Pentecostals were no longer calling him to speak at their meetings, the
rest of the Christian world was.
While the 1950s seemed to be the crucial years of breakthrough for David, the
1960s and 1970s would be major years of spreading the Gospel wherever the doors
were opened—he would average over 100,000 miles of travel each year,
ministering to the broadest group of people imaginable. These decades proved to
be incredibly busy times. By then, David’s work had been again validated in the
eyes of most Pentecostals, although his credentials as a minister were not reinstated
until 1979.

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In 1972, and as a result of Vatican II’s desire to understand the growing
Charismatic Renewal going on around the world in Catholic churches, David was
crucial in initiating a series of dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and a
team of Pentecostals led by himself, and then eventually his youngest brother,
Justus. Because he did not belong to any of the formal Pentecostal denominations,
he became the perfect man for the job, as there were strained relationships between
mainline Pentecostal denominational churches and Catholic churches around the
world, especially in South America. These dialogues spanned four- or five-year
periods continuing into the 1990s, but David served as the chairman of the
Pentecostal side in the initial two, which spanned 1972-1976 and 1977-1982. It is
easy to say that these dialogues would never have happened except for the constant
efforts of David and his counterpart on the Catholic side, Father Kilian McDonnell.
Martin Robinson described David as “the chief architect”7 of these talks, and as
being instrumental to the tone and camaraderie of the discussions.
Another note of this incredible opening was that David himself ministered in St.
Peter’s Basilica as part of the 1975 Congress on Charismatic Renewal in the
Catholic Church. The one frustration was that, despite the impact this had on the
Catholic Church in paving the way for the Charismatic Catholic Movement, none
of the Pentecostal denominations, in either the West (such as executives from the
Assemblies of God in the U.S.) or the third world (such as Pastor Paul Yonggi Cho
of South Korea, who was also invited to attend) would be involved officially,
despite the best efforts of both sides.

Years of Faithful Service Are Finally Recognized

David was recognized time and again for his work, having been the only
significant leader to be part of the three most noteworthy Christian movements of
the twentieth century: the Pentecostal Movement, the Charismatic Renewal, and
the Ecumenical Movement. In the September 9, 1974, issue of Time magazine,
David was mentioned alongside such people as Billy Graham, Hans Küng, Jürgen
Moltmann, and Rosemary Ruether as one of the eleven greatest “shapers and
shakers” of Christianity in the twentieth century. On May 23, 1976, St. John’s
University in Collegeville, Minnesota, presented him with the Pax Christi award.
In May 1978, he finally received a D.D. that honestly gave him the title of “Dr. du
Plessis,” when Bethany Bible College in Santa Cruz, California, awarded him an
honorary doctorate. As a result of these things and a growing acknowledgement
that David had been following God throughout his ecumenical involvement, his
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Assemblies of God ordination papers were reissued in 1979. Then on November 9,
1983, David was honored with the Benemerenti Medal by Pope John Paul II, an
award for outstanding service to all of Christianity. It was the first time this award
had been given by the Roman Catholic Church to someone who was not a
Catholic.
At the invitation of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, David
formally donated his personal papers and library to what would become the David
du Plessis Archive, which still exists today. Then from 1985 until his death, David
also served at the seminary as their Resident Consultant for Ecumenical Affairs
with part of his duties being to organize this archive.
David’s final days came when, during a routine gall bladder operation in August of
1986, the doctors discovered David had inoperable abdominal cancer. David
passed away within a few months on February 2, 1987, just five days short of his
eighty-second birthday.

Kathryn Kuhlman
The world called me a fool for having given my entire life to One whom I’ve never
seen. I know exactly what I’m going to say when I stand in His presence. When I
look upon that wonderful face of Jesus, I’ll have just one thing to say: ‘I tried.’ I
gave of myself the best I knew how. My redemption will have been perfected when
I stand and see Him who made it all possible.
In a time that was suspicious of both women ministers and Pentecostals, Kathryn
Kuhlman shook twentieth-century Christianity back to its roots. Believers of all
persuasions—Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, or whatever, it
didn’t matter—flocked to her meetings to be healed or filled with the Holy Spirit
as they had read about in the book of Acts. Though she called herself “an ordinary
person,” the effects of her ministry were anything but ordinary. Kathryn was one of
a handful of ministers after World War II who prophetically reintroduced the Holy
Spirit and His gifts to the body of Christ on the earth in what has proven the
greatest revival of all time: the Charismatic Renewal.
Kathryn Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, to Joseph and Emma Kuhlman. A
childhood friend described Kathryn as having “large features, red hair, and
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freckles. . . . She wasn’t dainty or appealingly feminine in any sense of the word.
She was taller than the rest of ‘our gang,’ gangly and boyish in build, and her long
strides kept the rest of us puffing to keep up with her.”
One Sunday when Kathryn was fourteen, she attended church with her mother. As
she stood singing, she began to shake all over and sob. A weight of conviction
came over her, and she realized that she was a sinner in need of salvation and
forgiveness. She slipped out from where she was standing, went to the corner of
the front pew and sat weeping. At that moment Jesus lifted the weight from her
shoulders and entered her heart.
In 1924 when Kathryn was about seventeen, she and her older sister Myrtle
persuaded their parents that it was God’s will for Kathryn to travel with Myrtle and
her husband Everett in their evangelistic tent ministry. Then in 1928, after a
meeting in Boise, Idaho, Everett decided to go on to South Dakota, while the
women stayed behind and continued to minister there. The offerings collected,
however, were not enough to support them and Myrtle soon decided to rejoin her
husband. After this happened, a local Boise pastor offered Kathryn a chance to
preach at an old pool hall that had been converted into a mission and Kathryn’s
ministry began.
From the “pool hall” mission, she went on to minister in Pocatello and Twin Falls
and eventually ended up in Denver, Colorado. It was there that she founded the
Denver Revival Tabernacle in 1935. That same year, Kathryn met Burroughs
Waltrip, an extremely handsome Texas evangelist who was eight years her senior.
Despite the fact that he was married with two small boys, they soon found
themselves attracted to each other. Shortly after his visit to Denver, Waltrip
divorced his wife, left his family and moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he began
a revival center called Radio Chapel. Kathryn and her friend and pianist Helen
Gulliford came into town to help him raise funds for his ministry. It was shortly
after their arrival that the romance between Burroughs and Kathryn became
publicly known.
Burroughs and Kathryn decided to wed. While discussing the matter with some
friends, Kathryn had said that she could not “find the will of God in the matter.”
These and other friends encouraged her not to go through with the marriage, but
Kathryn justified it to herself and others by believing that Waltrip’s wife had left
him, not the other way around. On October 18th, 1938, Kathryn secretly married
“Mister,” as she liked to call Waltrip, in Mason City. The wedding did not give her
new peace about their union, however. After they checked into their hotel that
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night, Kathryn left and drove over to the hotel where Helen was staying with
another friend. She sat with them weeping and admitted that the marriage was a
mistake. She decided to get an annulment.
The three women left Iowa for Denver in hopes of explaining what had happened
to the congregation of Denver Revival Tabernacle. The congregation, however,
was so furious with her for the secrecy of the marriage that they drove Kathryn
“back into Waltrip’s arms.”
In a moment’s time, the ministry that Kathryn had so diligently built was
completely undone. People stopped attending her services. Her ministry was
dissolved. Kathryn sold her portion of the Tabernacle. She’d lost everything. Her
relationship with the Lord had suffered because she had put a man before her God.
But from the moment she made the decision to divorce Waltrip and to surrender
herself fully to the Lord, she never wavered again in answering the call that God
had placed on her life so many years before.
After Kathryn spent some time preaching in a mining community in Franklin,
Pennsylvania, her ministry began to reshape. She traveled throughout the Midwest
and the south into West Virginia and the Carolinas. In some places she was quickly
accepted. In others, her past resurfaced and the meetings were closed. After an
unsuccessful tour of the South, Kathryn was invited to hold a series of meetings in
the fifteen hundred seat-auditorium of Gospel Tabernacle back in Franklin. It was
there that Kathryn’s ministry was revived and the ills of the past eight years
seemed to wash away.
Not long after she opened meetings at the Tabernacle, she began daily radio
broadcasts. Responses to the broadcasts were so great she soon added a station in
Pittsburg. At this time Kathryn was mainly praying for people to receive salvation,
but she was also beginning to lay hands on and pray for people who came asking
for healing. Though she despised the term “faith healer,” she attended the meetings
of such ministers hoping to find out more about this phenomenon of God. Kathryn
took a deeper understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit from each meeting,
though many of the things that she witnessed she found to be “unwise
performances” and a misuse of the Holy Spirit. In response, she always exhorted
people to focus on Jesus and nothing else.
As Kathryn searched the Scriptures about divine healing, she made a life-changing
discovery. She read that healing was provided for the believer at the same time as
salvation, and it was at this time that she began to better understand the believer’s
relationship with the Holy Spirit. Then one night, a woman stood to give a
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testimony of healing. At Kathryn’s service the night before, without anyone laying
hands on her and without Kathryn being aware of it, this woman had been healed
of a tumor. She had even gone to her doctor to confirm her healing. Then that next
Sunday, a second miracle occurred. A World War I veteran who had been declared
legally blind from an industrial accident had eighty-five percent of his vision
restored in the permanently impaired eye and perfect eyesight restored to his other
eye.
The crowds at the Tabernacle grew. Auditoriums would fill to capacity hours
before she was to speak, and thousands were turned away. Countless miracles took
place, most without any touch or prayer by Kathryn. She would simply walk the
stage and call out healings as they took place where people sat. Sections of those in
wheelchairs would walk. In one service, a five-year-old boy who had been crippled
from birth walked onto the stage. In another in Philadelphia she laid hands on a
man who had received a pacemaker eight months earlier, and the scar from the
operation disappeared. Later x-rays confirmed that the pacemaker had as well!
Great healing services continued and her ministry expanded to the neighboring
towns. In 1950, a worldwide ministry began to develop and Kathryn’s messages
were heard all over the United States via radio and her television broadcast, I
Believe in Miracles. She grew so popular that she made appearances on The
Johnny Carson Show and The Dinah Shore Show among several others. For the
last ten years of her life, she held monthly services at the Shrine Auditorium in Los
Angeles, where she ministered to countless thousands.
Kathryn Kuhlman’s last miracle service was held in that same arena. Three weeks
later, Kathryn lay dying in the Hillcrest Medical Center of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after
open-heart surgery. Oral and Evelyn Roberts were among the few visitors
permitted to see her. As they walked into her room and began to pray for her
healing, Kathryn recognized what they were doing and “put her hands out like a
barrier and then pointed toward heaven.” Kathryn gave her sister, Myrtle, the same
message and on Friday, February 20th, 1976, K

John G. Lake
No words of mine can convey to another soul the cry that was in my heart and the
flame of hatred for death and sickness that the Spirit of God had stirred within me.
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The very wrath of God seemed to possess my soul!
These words summarized the passion that propelled the life-long ministry of John
G. Lake. He spoke these words in reference to the intensity of emotion he felt as
his thirty-four year old sister lay dying. He had already witnessed eight of his
fifteen siblings die from illness--yet he had also witnessed the miraculous healing
of his own childhood rheumatoid arthritis, as well as a sister’s cancer and brother’s
blood disease under the ministry of John Alexander Dowie. It was already too late
to take this sister who now lay dying to Dowie’s Healing Home in Chicago, so he
telegraphed Dowie with a desperate plea for prayer. Dowie telegraphed back:
“Hold on to God. I am praying. She will live.” That simple declaration caused John
Lake to wage a furious spiritual attack on the power of death – and within the hour
his sister was completely healed.
It was battles such as this—at death’s very door—that brought John G. Lake face
to face with his convictions. Was he going to stand by as the enemy took yet
another loved one from him, or was he going to choose to stand in the enemy’s
way? Such an opportunity again presented itself on April 28, 1898, when his wife
of five years lay dying. Jennie battled for breath in her final hours when Lake
finally put his foot down. He would not tolerate the enemy stealing away the
mother of his children and his spiritual partner. He determined to believe God’s
Word as it was revealed to him for her healing and at 9:30 a.m. he contended for
her life in prayer upon which she rose up healed, praising the Lord in a loud voice.
News spread of Jennie’s miraculous healing, and from that time on, John Lake was
sought after for the power of his healing anointing.
Such was the power of his anointing that he wrote about it as being like the
lightning of Jesus: “You talk about the voltage from heaven and the power of God!
Why there is lightning in the soul of Jesus! The lightnings of Jesus heal men by
their flash! Sin dissolves and disease flees when the power of God approaches!”
Lake would also compare the anointing of God’s Spirit to the power of electricity.
Just as men had learned the laws of electricity, Lake had discovered the laws of the
Spirit. And, as God’s “lightning rod,” he would rise within God’s calling to
electrify the powers of darkness and solidify the body of Christ.
In 1901, at the age of thirty-one, Lake moved to Zion, Illinois, to study divine
healing under John Alexander Dowie. But in 1904, when Dowie’s increasing
financial problems began to surface, Lake decided to distance himself and
relocated to Chicago. When his personal investments in Zion properties left him in
near financial ruin following Dowie’s death in 1907, he bought himself a seat on
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the Chicago Board of Trade and over the next year was able to accumulate over
$130,000 in the bank and real estate worth $90,000. This prompted the notice of
top business executives who asked Lake to form a trust of the nation’s three largest
insurance companies for a guaranteed salary of $50,000 a year. He was now a top
business consultant to top business executives making money on the side through
hearty commissions as well. By turn-of-the-century standards, John Lake was
making a fortune.
For a while he was able to juggle his great secular success and grow in his desire
for God. He had learned to walk in the Spirit as he described like this: “It became
easy for me to detach myself from the course of life, so that while my hands and
mind were engaged in the common affairs of every day, my spirit maintained its
attitude of communion with God.” But by 1907, he yielded to the call to full-time
ministry, and he and Jennie sold their estate and all their belongings. From that
point on the Lake’s relied on God for provision as they traveled the country
ministering. By January of 1908, they began praying for the necessary finances to
take their team to Africa.
In April of that same year, the Lakes and their seven children left for Africa with
only money to pay for passage on the ship. In faith, they believed God for the
finances necessary to gain them admittance into the country and for provision once
they arrived. He provided what they needed as they were lining up to pay upon
leaving the ship, and once aground, a miraculous housing offer presented itself
before they had even left the dock. They immediately settled into a furnished home
in Johannesburg. Days later, John was asked to fill in for a South African pastor
who was taking a leave of absence. Over five hundred Zulus were in attendance his
first Sunday in the pulpit, and as a result, revival broke out so that within weeks
multitudes in from the surrounding area were saved, healed, and baptized in the
Holy Spirit. The success astounded Lake so that he wrote: “From the very start it
was as though a spiritual cyclone had struck.” In less than a year, he had started
one hundred churches.
Ministry success came at a price. Before the year was out, on December 22, 1908,
Lake came home to find Jennie had died from physical exhaustion and
malnutrition. He was devastated. Early in 1909, he returned to the States to
recuperate, raise support, and recruit new workers. By January of 1910, he was
headed back to Africa in the midst of a raging plague there. He was among few
who ministered to the sick and dying. He proved to local physicians that the germs
would not live on his body due to the Holy Spirit alive in Him. He actually verified
this under a microscope showing that the germs died upon contact with his body.
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Those who witnessed the experiment stood in amazement as Lake gave glory to
God explaining that: “It is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. I believe
that just as long as I keep my soul in contact with the living God so that His Spirit
is flowing into my soul and body, that no germ will ever attach itself to me, for the
Spirit of God will kill it.”

In 1912, after five years of ministry in Africa, having produced 1,250 preachers,
625 congregations, and 100,000 converts, Lake returned to the United States. In
1913 he married Florence Switzer with whom he had five children. They settled in
Spokane, Washington, where they founded the Spokane Healing Home and the
Apostolic Church, which drew thousands from around the world for ministry and
healing. In May of 1920, the Lakes left Spokane for Portland, Oregon, where he
started another Apostolic Church and healing ministry similar to the one in
Spokane.
By 1924, Lake was known throughout America as a leading healing evangelist. He
had established forty churches throughout the United States and Canada in which
there had been so many healings that his congregations nicknamed him “Dr.”
Lake. In December of that year, Gordon Lindsey, founder of Christ for the Nations
in Dallas, Texas, was converted while hearing Lake preach in Portland. He
attended his services nearly every night for a week and considered Lake to be a
mentor. Lindsey later contracted deadly ptomaine poisoning, but was totally healed
once he was able to get to Lake’s home.
In 1931, Lake returned to Spokane at the age of sixty-one. He was weak with
fatigue and nearly blind. God ultimately restored his vision after Lake had a “talk”
with the Lord about it. Sadly, on Labor Day of 1935, after returning from a church
picnic, John G. Lake went home to be with the Lord. He was sixty-five years old.
I can see as my spirit discerns the future and reaches out to touch the heart of
mankind and the desire of God, that there is coming from heaven a new
manifestation of the Holy Spirit in power, and that new manifestation will be in
sweetness, in love, in tenderness, and in the power of the Spirit, beyond anything
your heart or mind ever saw. The very lightning of God will flash through men’s
souls. The sons of God will meet the sons of darkness and prevail.

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 “The Battle-Ax of the Reformation”
Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures
or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning . . . then I cannot and will not
recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience.
Perhaps one of the most influential Germans ever to live, Martin Luther was
instrumental in not only shaking loose from the foundations of the Catholic
Church, but in bringing about the modern German language, as well as a renewed
appreciation for the arts. Much like his predecessor, John Hus, he searched the
Scriptures and discovered the truth regarding the love of God and His plan of
redemption through faith and not works. And like Hus, he burned to bring the truth
of the Gospel to the people in their own language. Though he was unreserved in
his convictions, he seasoned his boldness with compassion. As a fearless visionary
and leader, exceptional theologian, prolific writer, translator, and composer, he
made time to converse with his students and dote on his children.
Luther sought to dispel the deception of the Church and expose its abuses. He
challenged the Pope at every turn, from posting and distributing his ninety-five
theses, to burning papal decrees and the Church’s canon law, to liberating nuns and
priests “imprisoned” in convents and monasteries, and then marrying them off to
one another. He even married himself while continuing his duties as a priest. He
wrote a German mass and a catechism for both adults and children; and gave the
people a Bible in their vernacular German. Luther composed hymns and led his
congregation in revolutionary worship with singing and instruments, calling them
all to attend a music practice weekly.
All the while, Martin Luther expected any day to be tried and burned as a heretic.
Though he suffered continual ailments and illnesses, he remained a gentle husband
and father, as well as a dedicated teacher and mentor. Luther was not only an
unconventional pastor and priest, but he was a compassionate servant of the
people, taking in orphans and needy students. He even intervened during times of
social unrest to bring understanding between the peasants and nobles. Martin
Luther is truly one of history’s most notable reformers, and certainly one of God’s
most heroic Generals.

The Early Years

Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany. His father
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worked in the copper mines, and eventually established two smelter furnaces.
Through hard work, they were no longer looked upon as peasants and the family
became social with people of stature in the community. Martin’s parents were
religious, praying with their children every night, as well as strict disciplinarians,
never sparing the rod. The schools carried on the custom by administering
whippings if students fell short in their Latin drills.

Martin flourished in this atmosphere of routine and discipline. He completed his

baccalaureate and masters degrees in record time with the intention of studying
law, which was his father’s greatest ambition for him. An unexpected event would
suddenly change the direction of his life when he was just twenty years old.
It was on July 2, 1501, as he was walking back to school after visiting his family,
when a thunderstorm overtook him. As the lightning struck violently around him,
he feared for his life as he remembered how a friend has been struck dead by
lightning. Caught in a clearing with nowhere to hide, he cried out in desperation to
the only help he knew, “St. Anne help me! I will become a monk.” He kept his
vow, and that is how Martin Luther entered the priesthood to the great dismay of
his father.

In Search of Holiness
If nothing else, Martin seemed to do whatever he did wholeheartedly and without
reservation. He threw himself into his new calling with gusto and joined the
strictest monastery of his day, the Order of the Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt,
Germany. He knew full well that he was committing to at least one probationary
year of “scant diet, rough clothing, vigils by night, labors by labors, mortification
of the flesh, the reproach of poverty and the shame of begging.” Martin was so
driven to appease God, that he couldn’t seem to fast, pray, or torture himself
enough.
After his probationary period, Martin vowed to commit his life to God and
continued as the most devout monk in the degree to which he labored, fasted, and
debased himself—yet for all his works the peace he sought with God ever eluded
him. No matter how he strived for holiness and to be counted worthy in the sight of
God, no matter how many hours he spent in confession, or how long on his knees
praying, reading, or chanting, no matter how much he fasted from food, drink, or
sleep, he couldn’t bring himself closer to God. Yet it was through these dark years
of pursuing endless works in search of holiness that he came to the revelation that
the righteousness of God can only be attained through grace by faith in the Blood
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of Christ.

The Long Road to Revelation

In 1510, Luther traveled to Rome as a representative from his cloister to settle a
dispute with the Pope. While there, he discovered the priests to be irreverent in the
way they rushed through Mass and the comments he overheard them make while
preparing Communion. This was his first taste of disillusionment with the
established Church. When he returned home he was transferred to an Augustinian
Cloister in Wittenburg, Germany, which was a small town compared to the city of
Erfurt. It was here that he found a mentor in Johann von Staupitz who would
remain faithful to Luther until the end of his life.
When Luther seemed inconsolable in his efforts to find peace with God, it was
Staupitz who gave up his position at the University of Wittenburg to Luther so that
he might be absorbed by the challenges of studying and teaching the Scriptures. As
a result, he was made a doctor of theology in 1512 at twenty-nine years of age, and
so began his exodus into the freedom that knowledge of the truth brings.
And so Luther studied the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles for the next five years
and entered into a growing revelation of righteousness and the justice of God.
Meditation and study over this period brought Luther to a new theology of justice
and justification. He wrote of his experience during this critical time: “At last,
meditating day and night and by the mercy of God, I . . . began to understand that
the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. . . . Here I felt as if I were
entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through gates that had been
flung open.”

Coming to the Cross

Somewhere between 1518 and 1521, Luther’s final revelation came to him—and it
would set off a revolution. He wrote of the days immediately preceding his
breakthrough as a time when he was depressed. Historians refer to this
transformation from depression into freedom as his “evangelical breakthrough” or
his “tower experience.” You can almost feel the peace of God in Luther’s heart as
he wrote of his revelation, “If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then
at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart
and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold
God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is
neither anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him
rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his
face.”
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Luther’s new revelation of Scripture resolved all the worries about falling short of
God’s approval that had been instilled in him since childhood. All his personal
battles of unworthiness stopped with the Cross and he could see there the mercy of
God and Christ’s victory over Satan. This new understanding of his position in
Christ as a result of the Cross is summed up in the following hymn:
Thus spoke the Son, “Hold thou to Me,
From now on that wilt make it.
I gave my life for thee
And for thee I will stake it.
For I am thine and thou art mine,
And where I am our lives entwine,

The Old Fiend cannot shake it.”

Nailing His Revelation to the Church Door
When Luther saw the truth of God’s redemptive plan, he came face to face with the
greed and hypocrisy governing church affairs. Grieved by the deception and
abusive practices taking place, he determined to expose the Church and bring its
followers to a clear understanding of God’s redemptive work on the Cross. Luther
began this daunting task by compiling a list of concerns.
By the time he finished writing down his concerns and objections, there were
ninety-five statements. It was his intention that these would provide the basis for
open discussion. Not even sure of their scriptural accuracy, he nailed them to the
church door with an invitation to explore the topics further during a time of public
debate. He had no idea that what he posted would ignite a revolution that
ultimately changed the course of history. The main points of Luther’s theses were:
1) his objection of indulgence money going to build St. Peter’s Basilica; 2) his
denial of the Pope’s power over purgatory; and 3) his consideration of the welfare
of the sinner.
The ninety-five theses as they came to be known had been translated into German
and were circulating among the common people as well as the church officials. At
the same time that they angered Church leaders they were opening the eyes of the
people. Within a matter of weeks, all of Germany knew of the articles and nearly
everyone praised Luther’s boldness. It wasn’t long before Rome was alarmed and a
case was established against Luther.

Rome’s Reply
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The Pope set a trap and invited Luther to a forum in Augsburg to engage in a
public debate. It was the fall of 1517 when Luther arrived ready to make his case
heard. Soon Luther discovered the Pope’s true agenda for the meeting, and that
was to intimidate Luther into recanting without any room for discussion under
threat of being bound and taken to Rome. Luther boldly declared that he would not
and stated that a common man armed with Scripture had more authority than the
Pope and all his councils.
Somehow Luther was not bound, nor taken to Rome, but simply thrown out of the
building. He made his way back to Wittenburg where he was safe from the arm of
the Church due to his popularity among the people there. The Church hierarchy
became increasingly frustrated and determined to ensnare Luther.
An order was issued by the Pope declaring his official stand regarding the sale of
indulgences—one of the main issues Luther had spoken out against. This put
Luther one step closer to being charged with heresy. The papal bull was issued in
October of 1520 and Luther was given sixty days to recant. Meanwhile, as a result
of the bull, Luther’s books were being burned throughout Europe. Luther’s
response was to issue a statement in which he declared:
"Know that I, with all who worship Christ, consider the Seat of Rome to be
occupied by Satan and to be the throne of the Antichrist, and that I will no longer
obey nor remain united to him, the chief and deadly enemy of Christ. If you persist
in your fury, I condemn you to Satan, together with this Bull and your decretals for
the destruction of your flesh, in order that your spirit may be saved with us in the
Day of the Lord. In the name of Him whom you persecute, Jesus Christ Our
Lord."
When the sixty days passed, Luther posted another invitation—this time he invited
the public to witness a grand display of burning not only the papal bull, but also the
precious canon law! Like Hus, he asserted that Scripture alone was the final
authority not the Pope nor his councils, nor the canon law—and that furthermore,
the Pope had no power over purgatory. In fact, there was no biblical basis for any
such thing as purgatory in the first place.

New Waves of Reform and Rebuke

Threatened with excommunication, Luther remained undaunted. He pressed on
with a renewed fervor in his preaching, teaching, and writing. He published
devotional booklets, tracks on prayer, studies on the book of Psalms and a
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commentary on Galatians. Four thousand copies of Luther’s Address to the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation sold within eighteen days of it printings
and a number of reprints went to press. Almost the entire upper class of Germany
read it. Next he published On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and shortly
after that he wrote On the Freedom of a Christian.
In response to these writings, a second attempt was made to silence Luther. It was
now 1521 and the annual meeting of a secular court of judges was being held
called the Diet of Worms, in the city of Worms. Luther was summoned there to
answer for his writings. Again, he was given the opportunity to claim
responsibility for the writings and to recant. Again, Luther refused not being able
to “act against his conscience.” He was condemned and given twenty-one days to
return to Wittenburg. The Edict of Worms legally condemned Luther as a heretic
which meant anyone could murder him without consequences.
A high-ranking friend arranged for a fake arrest as Luther made his way home and
brought him to one of his castles. Luther hid there in a room behind a retractable
staircase for ten months. He grew his hair and a beard and was referred to as
“Knight George.” When he left the castle he was not even recognized by a close
friend. It was during his time in hiding that he translated the entire New Testament
from Latin to German.

Life back in Wittenberg

A peasant revolt broke out on the heels of Luther’s stand for reformation. There
were violent clashes between the classes, and the churches were being desecrated.
Luther stepped in to keep the peasants from destroying religious artwork and
relics; and to keep the nobles from retaliating too harshly against the peasants. He
aided in liberating monks and nuns from being held against their wills in
monasteries and convents, and began social reforms that included care of the poor,
orphans, students at the university, and providing dowries for poor brides.
One of the nuns he helped to liberate, Katherine von Bora, had been placed in the
convent against her will by a new stepmother when she was only nine or ten. She
was now twenty-six years old and Luther was having a difficult time finding a
suitable husband for her. Katherine suggested Luther himself, and despite their age
difference—Luther was forty-one—and the two became close friends. On June 13,
1525, they were married. She was an excellent administrator and financial
manager. The two complimented each other well, she cared for his ailments and
kept his affairs in order. Together they had six children.
Luther continued his pastoral duties—preaching, teaching, writing, and mentoring
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students. He wrote a German Mass that was centered on Scripture and two
catechisms for both children and adults to study. He wrote hymns and brought
music and singing into his services. And most importantly, in 1534, he expanded
his translation of the Bible to include the Old Testament. He assembled a team of
the best scholars and visited different regions to hear how they spoke so he could
make the translation relevant to all. Every German sought to possess Luther’s
Bible and it remains a popular translation in Germany today. It not only brought
the light of Scripture into the homes and hearts of the laity, but also laid the
groundwork for the formation of the modern German language.

His Last Days

On January 23, 1546, Luther set out on a journey to settle a dispute between
various dukes and their subjects. Although he was weak from illness and had to
stop and rest along the way, when he arrived he still managed to preach four times,
administer Communion twice, and ordain two ministers. He commented, “If I can
but succeed in restoring harmony amongst my dear princes and their subjects, I
will cheerfully return home and lay me down to the grave.”
By February his illness had grown worse, and on the night of February 17, Luther
prayed continuously that the Lord would take him

“The Father of Reform”

Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the
truth, speak the truth, adhere to the truth, defend the truth to death; for truth will
make you free from sin, the devil, the death of the soul, and finally from eternal
death.
If it can be said that John Wycliffe was the grandfather of the Reformation, then
John Hus would be its father. Wycliffe’s ideas and writings found their way to the
University of Prague in the late Fourteenth Century—about the same time as John
Hus. The University of Prague had risen in recent years to become the most
prestigious university in central Europe, and Hus had risen to prominence at the
center of it. He was not only her most respected theologian, but among the most
compassionate of scholarly priests whose concern for the welfare of common
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people would put him in direct opposition to the practices of the Catholic Church.
His heart’s most ardent desire was to bring Christ to Christians.
Hus loathed the sin and corruption that permeated the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
He spoke out boldly from the pulpit of Prague’s most notorious church, Bethlehem
Chapel, against the self-serving motives of Catholic bishops, cardinals, and priests.
He studied after Wycliffe and made alliances with his supporters seeking to restore
the Catholic Church to her original glory, much as Wycliffe had hoped to do. He
opposed unchecked papal rule, ignoring its dictates, bulls, and indictments. He
continued to preach the truth of God’s Word undaunted by threats of
excommunication, imprisonment, and finally death.

Early Success
Little is known about the childhood of John Hus other than that he was born in
1372, in a village called Husinec in the southern part of Bohemia. Though his
parents were poor peasants, his mother had a rich faith in God. She taught John
how to pray and trust God, and encouraged him to become a priest. When John
was thirteen, she brought him to a school an hour away in the commercial city of
Prachatice so that he could begin to secure his future. At the age of fourteen, he left
for Prague where he enrolled in a preparatory school and was admitted to the
University of Prague at eighteen. This was admirable as few from his area made it
to university.
When Hus enrolled in university, he decided to change his name from John of
Husinec to simply John Hus. He was a typical struggling student who sang for his
supper at nearby churches. Originally he determined to enter the priesthood so he
could be financially well off, but as he read the Scriptures he came to a personal
knowledge of Christ which further stimulated his hunger for the Word of God.

The Mark of a Reformer

Early in his studies Hus was quoted as saying, “For I know that those things I have
learned are but the least in comparison with what I do not know.” That shows the
humility and teachable spirit he possessed. He was a seeker of the truth at any cost.
Because of his diligence he received his Bachelor of Arts degree by the time he
was twenty-one. Three years later, in 1396, he passed the rigors of his Masters
degree. From 1398 to 1402 he lived in the King Wenceslas College, a small section
of the university, teaching and mentoring students.
Over these ten years he became close friends with a fellow student, Stephen of
Palec, and an admired instructor, Stanislov of Znojmo. Palec and Stanislov, along

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with Hus, formed a tight friendship as they studied and talked together continually.
Stanislov taught from Wycliffe’s writings and followed all of his beliefs. Hus
began copying some of Wycliffe’s works for his own use. Interestingly, the
Swedish Army took one of these manuscripts with them during the Thirty Years’
War and it is now on display in Stockholm.

Hus began lecturing several times a day as well as training students how to use
what they had learned and put it into speeches. Two years later, he was chosen to
promote students to the degree of bachelor. He loved his role as mentor and friend,
and formed many close alliances throughout this time. In 1401, his old friend
Jerome of Prague returned from Oxford with chest full of Wycliffe manuscripts
that he had copied. He left them with Hus and the other reformist thinkers before
leaving on a series of world adventures, not to reappear on the scene until 1412.

Bethlehem Chapel
In 1402, Hus was appointed to pastor the infamous Bethlehem Chapel—the church
that was at the center of the Bohemian reform movement. This appointment
demonstrated the confidence Hus inspired as a promising reformer. What made
Bethlehem Chapel particularly unique was that all its services were conducted in
the native Czech language. Hus would be called upon to exhibit the wisdom and
character necessary to live on the front line of the reform movement, not only as a
priest, but also as a young Czech patriot.
Bethlehem Chapel held three thousand people and the local population crowded
into each service. Out of the cities forty-four churches, twenty-seven chapels,
sixteen monasteries, and seven convents this was the only place they could hear a
sermon in their own language. Hus was creative in his efforts to reach the common
folk, even the illiterate. He painted the walls of the chapel with huge paintings
portraying the humility and servitude of Christ juxtaposed with paintings depicting
the excessive wealth and pride of the Pope. For example, a painting of the
modestly attired Lord Jesus bending down to wash his disciples feet was displayed
alongside the Pope in his elaborate robes, crown, and jewels extending his hand to
be kissed.
Hus was determined to fill the hearts and minds of the people with God’s
principles of truth. He was an attentive and revolutionary pastor who believed it
was his duty to look after the spiritual and eternal welfare of his flock. In a year’s
time, Hus would preach over two hundred fifty sermons at Bethlehem Chapel
alone, in addition to lecturing and mentoring the students at the university. He also
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established a home for the poorest students behind the chapel which he personally
supervised. He identified with the peasant class and they, along with the educated
and well to do of the city, became his loyal followers.
After Hus had been pastoring for four years, he took on the challenge of revising
and improving the Czech New Testament. He also revised portions of the Old
Testament. Eventually, he would revise the entire Czech Bible in order to make it
easier to read. Hus hoped to free all people, including the clergy, from the bondage
of sin and death through a personal revelation of Christ.

Champion of Truth
In seeking to bring people to an authentic relationship with God, Hus found the
Church to be his greatest obstacle. Foremost on his mind was persuading the
priests to live a lifestyle free from lustful greed and immorality. This message
alone set the entire Church hierarchy ablaze. Hus fearlessly called for a complete
reevaluation of Church doctrine and what it meant to be a priest. He stated that the
true authority of the priest was linked to his character, not his office. He went on to
say that the love of money had destroyed their morals.
Hus denounced the elite attitudes of the clergy and their excessive wealth. He
rebuked priests who used their churches for personal gain and prestige, who
indulged in sexual immorality, and then bought and sold pardons to excuse and
further prosper themselves. In a very bold statement he declared that no one should
attend a Mass conducted by a priest who was involved in providing ministerial
duties for financial gain or engaged in sexual indiscretions. He further declared that
people should withhold their tithes from such priests.

Friends Turned Foe

By now the Pope taken notice of these Bohemian reformers. In 1408, Hus’s old
friend and confidante, Stanislov, capitulated under persecution for his Wycliffe
teachings and increasingly distanced himself from Hus and the other reformers.
Stanislov convinced their mutual friend Palec to do the same and the two became
outspoken enemies of Hus. Still, for all their efforts to realign themselves with the
papacy, they were summoned to appear before the court in Italy and subsequently
thrown in prison.
Amazingly, Hus was not yet formally accused of heresy—only of causing division
in the Church because he denounced the sins of the clergy. He had, however, fallen
out of favor with the King of Bohemia and the Archbishop of Prague, who at one
time had been one of Hus’ most ardent supporters. Together they set out to quiet

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Hus in an effort to preserve the peace, and more importantly, secure favor with the
Pope.

The Battle Lines Are Drawn

As Hus continued to write and preach on the necessity of Church reform, the Pope
issued an order prohibiting preaching in any place except a Catholic cathedral or
monastery. This was directed at Hus because his chapel was the only place not
deemed a cathedral. Hus refused to stop preaching and garnered even more
dedicated backing from his followers who loudly pledged their support for the
cause.
In outrage and retaliation, on July 16, 1410, the Archbishop of Prague ordered all
of Wycliffe’s books to be burned in a public ceremony. Hus responded with a
public declaration, “Such bonfires never yet removed a single sin from the heart’s
of men. Fire does not consume truth. It is always the mark of a little mind that it
vents its anger on inanimate objects.” This remark caused the Czech citizens to
openly revolt. They mocked the Archbishop who became outraged and
excommunicated Hus. He then fled Prague for his life.
By the fall of that year, Hus was ordered to appear in Italy to explain why he
disobeyed papal orders. He ignored the summons, as well as the Archbishop’s
attempt to excommunicate him, and continued to preach and carry on his duties at
the chapel. In February of 1411, Hus was excommunicated yet again by a superior
cardinal in Italy for not appearing before the Pope. After a series of battles and
hearings in Prague, riots ensued and the King feared for control of the city.
Finally, during the Roman council of 1412-1413, the cardinal declared Hus
excommunicated for the last time and ordered that if Hus did not appear before the
council in twenty days, the entire city of Prague, or any city that harbored Hus,
would be under interdict. This meant that no one would be allowed to interact with
Hus in anyway, and that wherever Hus was found, that place would have all church
services suspended for three days. Hus again refused to appear before the council,
only this time for the welfare of the people he retreated to the surrounding
countryside.

Lies and Deception

From October of 1412 until Easter of 1413, it is unknown where he resided. He
used this time to write several manuscripts including his most renowned document
entitled “On The Church” in which he outlined his beliefs on how the true church
should be governed—with Jesus Christ as its head. Meanwhile, kings and councils

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were plotting to ensnare Hus for the last time.
When the Pope called for the next council, the King of Hungary and Germany,
who had by now been deemed the Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope, designated
that the council be held in his jurisdiction. He plotted with his half-brother, the
King of Bohemia, to invite Hus to the council under the pretense of allowing him
to present his views. Despite the eminent danger, Hus agreed to go having been
promised safety under the King’s protection.
Two knights came to escort him to the council who firmly believed they were to
protect Hus throughout his journey. On October 11, 1414, in the company of the
two knights, he set off for Constance, Germany fully prepared to make his
presentation before the council. The Pope lifted the interdict and Hus and the
knights experienced a peaceful journey and were welcomed upon their arrival.
They stayed together in the home of a widow for one month before being
summoned by the Pope. Although one of the knights’s sensed danger, Hus calmed
him down and agreed to go.
After arriving at the Pope’s residence, Hus was questioned by a Franciscan
theologian. Later that evening, Hus was told he would have to remain but the
knights could leave. When they resisted, they were assured that Hus would be
taken care of since he had been brought this far in order to state his case before the
council. Reluctantly they left him in the hands of his inquisitors and eight days
later Hus found himself in a dark dungeon on an island off the shore of Lake
Constance. He was held there for three and a half months, never having the
opportunity to present his position to anyone.

The Next Six Months

Now it was January 1415, and Hus was being roughly interrogated about whether
or not he agreed with all of Wycliffe’s forty-five articles. When Hus finally
managed to calm his interrogators down, they agreed to allow him to submit his
response in writing. Hus wasn’t prepared to address every detail of Wycliffe’s
articles, that’s not what he had come to Germany to discuss. Hus did not agree with
everything Wycliffe wrote and did not base his doctrine completely on Wycliffe’s
beliefs. He had his reservations regarding thirty-two of the articles and stated that
he could only partially support thirteen of them.
Hus did not hear a word back for another several months. His health was beginning
to fail due to his living conditions in the prison. By spring, the King revoked the
safe conduct passes that had been issued to anyone still in Constance.

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Finally, his former close friend and associate, Palec, was assigned the task of
preparing a list of errors from Hus’ own writings. Palec compiled a twenty-page
thesis outlining Hus’ errors, embellishing it with other accusations. When Hus
received a copy, he found it full of lies and malice, yet he answered every error
listed and accusation made in one night. He humbly requested that he be shown
where any of his replies were not consistent with Scripture, and added that if this
were so, he would recant.

Hus’ supporters in Prague were up in arms over the news of his arrest and almost
five hundred noblemen signed a petition demanding his release. Though these
nobles were ordered to appear before the council, they refused. The council was
preoccupied with deposing Pope John XXIII for immoral crimes including murder
and sodomy for which he was sentenced to three years in prison. The changing of
the guard only meant a change of prisons for Hus. He was moved from the
dungeon to a castle in Gottlieben where he was kept in strict isolation—his feet
bound by day and one of his hands chained to the wall by night.

The Trial
The Czech and Polish nobles were finally able to intervene on Hus’ behalf stating
that only a public trial would prove if Hus was guilty or not. After five months in
prison, the council promised to hear Hus at a public meeting on June 5, 1415.
When June 5th arrived, the council held the meeting without Hus. When word got
to the nobles they demanded that the King intervene. The King ordered the
meeting stopped until Hus was summoned. When Hus arrived, weak and filthy, he
stood before his accusers. None of his supporters were allowed inside. Every time
Hus attempted to give an answer, he was cut off, told to answer only “yes” or “no,”
and if he did not answer quickly, it was taken as an admission of guilt.
There was such an uproar, that the trial was reconvened for the following Friday
when a weary Hus was brought in again to undergo the same battery of questions
without truly being given the opportunity to speak. Finally the court ordered that
Hus’ writings be condemned and Hus knew his fate was sealed. In a letter he
wrote: “This is my final intention in the name of Jesus Christ: that I refuse to
confess as erroneous the articles which have been truthfully abstracted and, to
abjure [renounce] the articles ascribed to me by false witnesses. For God knows
that I have never preached those errors which they have concocted.”

The Sentence
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On the morning of July 6, 1415, Hus stood before the council one final time. He
looked nothing like the former preacher and pastor, but was so frail he could hardly
stand. Thirty articles were read against him. When he tried to protest he was told to
keep silent and that he could speak at the end, but when the end came, he was not
allowed to speak. The bishop stood and read the sentence. As an incorrigible
heretic, he was to be stripped of his priestly office and turned over to the secular
authorities and burned. His writings were also to be publicly burned at the same
time. When Hus quietly asked if his writings had ever been read, the angry shouts
quickly silenced him. Hus fell to his knees and prayed aloud, “Lord Jesus Christ, I
implore Thee, forgive all my enemies for Thy great mercy’s sake.”
Hus was ordered to mount a platform and put on priestly vestments. He stood
holding the communion cup which was ripped from his hands as a curse was spat
upon him. Hus loudly answered back, “I trust the Lord, Almighty God . . . that He
will not take the cup of His salvation from me. I have the firm hope that I shall
today drink of it in His Kingdom.” Then, after cutting his hair, they placed a paper
crown upon his head depicting three devils fighting for his soul. They mocked and
cursed him as they violently stripped his vestments from his body. After they
humiliated him to their satisfaction, he was turned over to the soldiers.
A procession of accusers, townspeople, and sympathizers followed as he was
escorted out of town past a cemetery where his writings were already being
burned. Nearby, stripped of all his clothing except a thin shirt, he fell to his knees
one last time to pray. He was pulled up by his executioner and tied to a stake with
wet rope, his neck secured to the pole by a rusty chain. Bundles of wood and hay
were stacked around him up to his chin.
Before the fire was set, he was asked one last time to recant. Hus lifted his voice
over the hush of the crowd and speaking in German said, “God is my witness that .
. . the principal intention of my preaching and all of my other acts or writings was
solely that I might turn men from sin. And in that truth of the Gospel that I wrote,
taught, and preached in accordance with the sayings and expositions of the holy
doctors, I am willing gladly to die today.”
The executioners were ordered to set the fire and as the flames mounted, Hus was
heard singing a hymn before the flames overtook him and his head bowed in
prayer. Hus’ ashes were loaded in a cart and thrown into the Rhine River.

Revenge of the Husites

News of Hus’s execution shook Bohemia and nearly five hundred nobles gathered
in Prague to protest his trial and death. They entered into a solemn covenant
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pledging to defend Hus’s teachings and the Czech reformation against all threats.
Four years later, in 1419, the Husites were a force to be reckoned with. They
refused to diplomatically resolve their disputes with the Catholic Church since the
deception of the Hus trial, and from then on took matters in their own hands. If the
Catholic councilmen held reformers in jail and refused to release them, the Husites
would throw the councilmen out the window to their deaths.
The Husites became a trained militia called the “Warriors of God.” They had
fortified settlements, were armed with weapons, and used innovative battle
strategies. They created a banner depicting the communion cup that became the
symbol of the entire movement. The banner read, “Truth conquers.” It was said
that the Husites created such fear by their fighting that an army once fled at the
sight of their banner. For twenty-one years the Husites remained a force to be
dreaded by governments and the Catholic Church.
The legacy that Hus left behind changed the course of history. The next generation
of great reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and George Fox were
influenced by his teachings. Martin Luther once said, “We are all Husites.”
Through the Moravians (a Husite Branch), Hus’ influence reached John Wesley.
Hus brought to light truths that are central to the message of Christ and have
become the foundation of the modern Church.

Charles H. Spurgeon
“I would go into the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for
me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one
that is weary.”
With a voice that could captivate thousands, Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s eloquent
and dynamic preaching brought understanding and freshness to the word of God
for everyday people in nineteenth century London. Spurgeon’s dedication to
preaching and ministering to the common masses made him a servant unlike other
ministers in his day. While some called his style “vulgar and theatrical,” Spurgeon
maintained that there was value in speaking to people in language relevant to them.
He was aflame with a passion to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and draw
everyone into faith. Even as he battled harsh criticism, bad health, and chronic
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depression, Spurgeon remained faithful to his calling to become one of the most
compelling preachers of his time, and to this day has more material in print than
any other Christian author.
Born in 1834 in Kelvedon, Essex, to a family of Independent ministers, Spurgeon
grew up listening to sermons, singing hymns, and reading Christian works.
Pilgrim’s Progress and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs were among his favorites and
remained an influence on his understanding of spiritual life.
Spurgeon was fifteen in the winter of 1850 when he decided to breach his family’s
religious tradition and become a Baptist. He’d been traveling when a snowstorm
diverted his trip and he found himself in a Primitive Methodist chapel where “God
opened his heart to the salvation message.” This “accident” helped strengthen
Spurgeon’s resolve “…that the truth was more likely to be found among the poor
and humble than among the overeducated and refined.” A year later he preached
his first sermon. In 1852 he became the pastor of a small Baptist church in rural
Cambridgeshire, where he became known for his preaching, which most
considered above average. Spurgeon’s reputation soon spread and led him out of
Cambridgeshire and into London where he was called to the pastorate at New Park
Street Chapel, London’s historic Baptist church.
Spurgeon’s youth, dramatic style, and paradoxical beliefs blending Calvinism and
Arminianism quickly brought criticism from the press and his peers. His dramatic
and emotional approach to preaching inspired some critics to compare him to
popular circus entertainers, while others dismissed his style as mere
sensationalism. And his conviction that infant baptism was unscriptural (developed
when he as still a schoolboy) alienated many evangelicals of his time, who
practiced it as a form of family initiation. Despite these attacks, God allowed
Spurgeon’s ministry to flourish, and his congregation multiplied rapidly. In fact, so
many thousands of people flocked to hear him that he began preaching in places
like London’s Exeter Hall and the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall which were
large enough to accommodate his audiences. His fame and power as a preacher
were growing, but the weight of his ministry would only intensify.
Spurgeon was holding his first service in Surrey Hall in October 1856. The
building could accommodate twelve thousand people, but an additional ten
thousand had gathered in the gardens. While Spurgeon was praying, a prankster
shouted, “Fire! The galleries are giving way!” There was widespread panic, and in
the rush to evacuate the building and premises, seven people died and twenty-eight
were hospitalized. Spurgeon was inconsolable and had to be carried away from the
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pulpit. His depression lasted for several days, and he would carry the burden of
that night for the rest of his life. A close friend commented about the affair, “I
cannot but think, from what I saw, that [Spurgeon’s] comparatively early death
might be in some measure due to the furnace of mental suffering he endured on
and after that fearful night.”
It wasn’t all darkness, though. That same year, Spurgeon married Susannah
Thompson, a member of his congregation. Though she did not describe their
relationship as “love at first sight,” Spurgeon was a determined suitor and finally
won her heart. Before the year was out, Susannah gave birth to twin sons, Charles
and Thomas. God blessed their marriage with steady and abiding love, and in
Susannah, Spurgeon found comfort and consolation.
In 1861, Spurgeon’s congregation moved permanently to the newly built
Metropolitan Tabernacle. The new building could seat five thousand people and
left standing room for an additional thousand. Although this afforded him less
travel time from London, he remained busy with the duties of caring for his
sizeable flock. The anxiety Spurgeon harbored over his responsibilities probably
only aggravated the illness he first saw signs of in 1858, but he refused to slow his
pace. Spurgeon felt he was accountable to God for the people in his care, and he
would only settle for giving his all. “We are all too much occupied with taking care
of ourselves…,”Spurgeon wrote, “A minister of God is bound to spurn the
suggestions of ignoble ease, it is his calling to labour; and if he destroys his
constitutions, I, for one, only thank God that he permits us the high privilege of so
making ourselves living sacrifices.”
The effects of his ministry were taking their toll on his body and mind. In 1869,
Spurgeon was severely afflicted with gout and as well as periodic episodes with
different illnesses that could incapacitate him for weeks or even months out of the
year. With sinking spirits he battled depression, and tried to find God throughout
his sufferings. However, Spurgeon’s assurance in God’s being in charge could not
keep from letting the question, “why?” fall from his lips. The answer he seemed to
receive was not an easy one, but one that he accepted with grace. “The way to
stronger faith usually lies along the rough pathway of sorrow,” he said, “…I am
afraid that all the grace that I have got out of my comfortable and easy fumes and
happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from
my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable.... Affliction is the best
bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.”
Spurgeon burned to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and bring people into
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relationship with God. His originality, energy, and charisma influenced countless
lives as he reached into people’s hearts and spoke to them in a way that not many
ministers were willing to do at the time. His resonant voice was a gift—before
electronic amplification, Spurgeon’s voice could be heard by thousands who
gathered to listen, and yet, he never seemed to be straining. When Spurgeon died in
1892, a funeral parade two miles long followed his hearse to the Upper Norwood,
where his burial would take place. Along the way, a hundred thousand people lined
the streets, and shops and pubs were closed. Despite his depression and illness,
Spurgeon was steadfast and answered the call of God to bring the people into life
with Jesus Christ. He was one of the greatest preachers of the Victorian age, and
his witness still shines brightly for all to see.

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