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Early Pentecostalism (1906 – 1958) by J.D. King
Beginnings
“God does great things that cannot be explained, and awesome deeds that cannot be counted.” (Job 9:10)
Coming into nascent Pentecostalism, with its focus on tongues-speaking, it was argued that this was the beginning of something distinct. Proposing they were the embodiment of an end-time restoration of the book of Acts, many Pentecostals denied all precursors. They refused “to acknowledge their strong ties and rich heritage with the American divine healing movement.”[1] Yet, these connections are undeniable.
Not all within the Spirit-filled community denied the continuities. For example, Frank Bartleman (1871–1936), a significant early participant in the Azusa Street revival, acknowledged
The present Pentecostal manifestation did not break out in a moment, like a huge prairie fire, and set the world on fire. In fact, no work of God ever appears that way. There is a necessary time for preparation . . . men may wonder where it came from, not being conscious of the preparation, but there is always such.[2]
There is little doubt that constructs inherited from John Alexander Dowie,[3] Frank Sandford, and others “infused the worldviews” of Pentecostals with “supernaturalism, primitivism, and an apocalyptic eschatology.”[4]
Neil Hudson acknowledges that “Pentecostal theology developed from the nineteenth-century Holiness teaching of radical evangelicals.”[5] This zealotry “provided the miraculous atmosphere of ‘signs and wonders’ necessary to make the gift of glossolalia [tongues] acceptable to the multitudes.”[6]
Pentecostalism “grew from the confluence of diverse theological currents awash in the trans-Atlantic world toward the close of the nineteenth century.”[7] Participants embraced “premillennialism,”[8] and other “restorationist ideas on reclaiming the power and authority of the primitive church.”[9] Jonathan Baer points out that many
came to embrace a version of the ‘latter rain’ theory, based on their reading of prophetic scriptures, particularly Joel 2:28-29. This belief posited that in the last times, God would pour out his Spirit in extraordinary fullness upon believers—as he had in the apostolic age—enabling them to better spread the gospel in preparation for history’s glorious and awful culmination.[10]
Concerns about cosmic evil and cataclysmic realities imbibed the hearts of the Pentecostals. For them, “bodily healings served as visible signs of Christ’s power.”[11] They were “victories in a larger eschatological battle that was reaching its climax as the second coming of Christ grew near.”[12] Michael J. McClymond writes
Though often unacknowledged, the cessationists and the Pentecostals shared a common assumption, namely, that a New Testament era of miracles was followed by a dearth of miracles for some fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred years. The key difference between the two views was that Pentecostals embraced twentieth-century tongue-speaking and healing as a “latter rain” or end-time return of the spiritual manifestations that characterized the first century.[13]
Exhibiting a restorationist ethos, Bennett F. Lawrence, first assistant secretary of the Assemblies of God, writes that the Pentecostals were
laboring to obtain that supernatural character of the religion, which was so pre-eminently a mark of it in the old days. We do not mean to say that others who believe in the new birth have wholly lost this, but we desire a return to New Testament power and custom along all those lines of activity, which made evident beyond controversy that the church was the living body of a living Christ. We believe that healing for the body, expulsion of demons, and speaking in other tongues were in early times the result of an activity of the Holy Spirit in direct harmony with, nay, stronger still, a direct result of the divine attitude toward the church and the world.[14]
Within the Classical Pentecostal tradition, eschatology and missiology have been closely intertwined.[15]
Although glossolalia, with close affinities to the church’s beginnings, intensified things, there were negligible differences between Pentecostal expectancies and that of their forerunners. In his extensive studies, James Robinson observes that “radical Holiness and Pentecostalism were broadly of a common mind.”[16] Douglas Jacobsen suggests that “early Pentecostalism inherited almost all of its theological categories from the radical Holiness movement . . . there was only a ‘hairsbreadth’ of difference that separated Pentecostal theology from the theology of the radical Holiness.”[17]
Elaborating on these similarities, Grant Wacker records
Both tended to represent God in anthropomorphic terms. Both stressed the infallibility of scripture, the ready availability of miracles, the healing of the body, the omnipresence of demons, and the imminence of the Lord’s return. More basically, the worldviews of the two proved to be virtually identical: ahistorical, supernaturalist, primitivist, apocalyptic, biblicist, and pious.[18]
In most areas, adherents from the radical holiness and Pentecostal traditions held similar beliefs. However, there was one area that distinguished them—the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What set Pentecostals apart from radicals
was their conviction that the order of salvation entailed, beyond conversion and sanctification, a third definable experience called the baptism of the Holy Spirit . . . That innovation would not have turned into such an explosive issue if Pentecostals had said that much and no more since the three-blessing idea had been rumbling around in the radical evangelical subculture for several decades. The dynamite in the crevice, rather, was the Pentecostals’ uncompromising insistence that all who had been truly baptized by the Holy Spirit—all, in other words, who had experienced that third landmark in the order of salvation—would speak in unknown tongues as a demonstrable sign of its authenticity.[19]
Pentecostals framed much of what they were doing in terms of this prophetic expression. Despite their concentration on tongues, the ministry of healing remained dominant, embodying “the experiential and tangible essences of incipient Pentecostalism.”[20] Jonathan Baer argues that “healing formed a major line of continuity between the radical wing of the Holiness movement and early Pentecostalism.”[21] He continues, writing
Arising out of radical Holiness settings, Pentecostals carried forward the basic teachings of Maria Woodworth-Etter, John Alexander Dowie, the Fire-Baptized Holiness Association and a host of others. They viewed sickness as Satan’s work, healing as a product of Christ’s atonement, and medicine as a worldly accommodation or, more pointedly, as the devil’s devices to lead people away from the Great Physician.[22]
In its amalgamation of fundamentalism, millenarianism,[23] and restorationism, Pentecostalism drew heavily upon the radical fringes of the Holiness movement and ultimately transformed the milieu of divine healing in the twentieth century.
Healing in the Early
Pentecostal Revivals
Though tongues-speaking was accentuated in the early Pentecostal meetings, the ministry of healing received almost as much focus. Prayer for physical breakthrough was typically highlighted right alongside Holy Spirit baptism.
The ministry of healing undoubtedly characterized Charles F. Parham’s early services in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Before preaching provocative sermons on Spirit baptism with the evidence of tongues, he would often proclaim
Healing is as certainly purchased in the atonement of Jesus Christ as salvation. To be healed you don’t have to travel to some shrine . . . nor is it necessary that two or three agree in your case; healing is obtained like conversion, by faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ.[24]
In the fall of 1903, Parham launched a series of meetings in Galena, Kansas that captured the imagination of the region. Gary McGee points out that
daily services continued for months, concluding with over 800 conversions, 1,000 testimonies of physical healing, and several hundred receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues.[25]
A journalist from the Joplin Globe visited one of Parham’s meetings and reported the following:
Reverend Charles F. Parham has been holding a series of revival meetings in Galena for a couple of weeks, and some wonderful testimony is being given out by his converts. The wicked are being forgiven and blessed; the blind are being made to see, cripples throw away their crutches and walk as they never walked before. . . . The religion that he preaches is a new one and is somewhat startling in some of its beliefs . . . He does not think that it is strange that some of his converts receive the Holy Ghost and are able to speak in foreign tongues.[26]
The ministry of healing was undeniably foundational.[27] It was what often opened the door to a belief in glossolalia. Once people encountered physical deliverance, they were more open to the message of Spirit baptism.
Parham typically utilized this approach as he traveled to various cities. In Houston, things broke open when Mrs. Dulaney, who had been in a streetcar accident a few years before, was healed.
According to her testimony, “the onset of paralysis restricted her to life in a wheelchair and left her with no hope of recovery through medical intervention.” [28] After receiving prayer, “Mrs. Dulaney arose from her chair and walked in a state of ecstatic joy, shouting, clapping her hands, and praising the Lord for restoration.”[29] Remarkable healings attracted crowds and created openness to Parham’s Apostolic Faith message.
In meetings that were held in Houston in 1905, Parham inspired William Seymour (1870–1922), “a black Holiness preacher who was blind in one eye.”[30] Previously impacted by John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907),[31] Martin Wells Knapp (1853–1901),[32] and various leaders from the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), Seymour possessed “a fervent belief in . . . the practice of divine healing.”[33] He was not only a man of intense spiritual hunger but also one with great integrity. Seymour was once described by William Durham as the “meekest man he had ever met.”[34]
Seymour ultimately traveled to Los Angeles, California, and sparked the historic Azusa Street revival in April of 1906. Although tongues were stressed in these meetings, “healings were among the manifestations witnessed.”[35]
In the nightly services, Seymour often “worked his way through the throng, laying hands on people to receive some manifestation of the Spirit, whether tongues, prophecy or healing.”[36] The revival participants declared that “healing and miracles were to be expected wherever the presence and power of God was moving.“[37]
Although Seymour “was not primarily a ‘healing evangelist,’ he regularly taught on divine healing as the will of God.”[38] Writing in the widely circulated Apostolic Faith Newspaper, Seymour declared
Sickness and disease are destroyed through the precious atonement of Jesus. O how we ought to honor the stripes of Jesus, for “with his stripes we are healed” . . . Not only is the atonement for the sanctification of our souls, but also for the sanctification of our bodies from inherited disease . . . We who are the messengers of this precious atonement ought to preach all of it: justification, sanctification, healing, the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and signs following.[39]
Healing reports became widespread. In the April 18, 1906 edition of The Los Angeles Times, a journalist recounted the story of a Jewish rabbi named Gold who visited the revival meetings. After being healed of an ailment, he became a convert.[40]
Reflecting on what he observed on Azusa Street, A. W. Orwig stated, “The subject, or doctrine, of divine healing, received special attention, and many cases of deliverance from various diseases and infirmities were more or less continually reported.”[41]
As the revival in Los Angeles grew, other breakthroughs were being reported. One man who was asked to pray for the afflicted decided to approach it in an entirely different way. He
was asked to pray for the healing of a sick sister, and instead of praying in the old way, asked the Holy Ghost to pray through him. He waited in silence until the Holy Spirit gave the message, “The Lord for the body and the body for the Lord.” The sister was instantly healed and fell upon the floor under conviction for a deeper work of grace. This brother says that since he received his Pentecost, he can accomplish a hundred times as much in a day and much more easily than formerly. It is simply letting the Holy Ghost do the work.[42]
The interrelationship between tongues and healing was also being evidenced in other accounts. In 1907, the following report was distributed:
Soon I felt the power of God upon me in a mighty way, and I began to speak in an unknown language and to sing with one of the workers who was praying with me. My hands began to move swiftly over my body, and I knew I was asking for healing; my hands went to my eyes, and my glasses were taken off and laid on the floor, and I have never had them on since.[43]
Virtually every issue of the Apostolic Faith, the mission’s official periodical, included healing testimonies and detailed reports of remarkable breakthroughs. Along with speaking in tongues, healing became a major expression. It was noted that
The Lord is graciously healing many sick bodies. People are healed at the Mission almost every day. Requests come in for prayer from all over. They are presented in the meeting and the Spirit witnesses in many cases that prayer is answered, and when we hear from them, they are healed.[44]
Within these same pages, it was claimed that the blind were receiving sight, and other diseases were being cured instantly. One summary declared
canes, crutches, medicine bottles, and glasses are being thrown aside as God heals. That is the safe way. No need to keep an old crutch or medicine bottle of any kind around after God heals you. Some, in keeping some such appliance as a souvenir, have been tempted to use them again and have lost their healings.[45]
Healing in Expanding Pentecostalism
As the Pentecostal movement spread throughout North America and Europe, people were not only interceding for the baptism of the Holy Spirit but were also contending for healing. Prominent British Pentecostal A. A. Boddy (1854-1930) acknowledged, “Wherever the Pentecostal baptism is received, this question becomes prominent.”[46] Many were “requesting prayers that they might receive their Pentecost and also healing.”[47] Grant Wacker states
the early literature leaves little doubt that in the beginning, divine healing was, if not equally distinctive, at least equally important. Many of the original leaders, including Charles Fox Parham and William J. Seymour, had earned their livings as itinerant healing evangelists. The premier issue of the Apostolic Faith, published by the Azusa Mission in Los Angeles in 1906, overflowed with healing testimonials. The cover of the initial issue of the Latter Rain Evangel, published in Chicago in 1908, declared that its aim was to proclaim the message of “Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the Healer.”[48]
An emphasis on healing undoubtedly characterized early Pentecostalism. A. J. Tomlinson, the founder of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), wrote an editorial asserting the significance of healing within the broader Pentecostal movement. He wrote
There have been some remarkable cases of healings reported throughout the press for many years, but since the falling of the “latter rain” in Los Angeles eight years ago, these reports have grown more numerous. During this period of time, a large number of Pentecostal papers have been circulating throughout the world. The contents of these papers have been principally reports of great meetings, healings, miracles, and wonders performed by the power of God. Almost everything that is recorded in the book of Acts has been reported, from the slightest pain to the most stubborn diseases of long standing. Broken bones . . . burns have been instantly healed. . . Many kinds of incurable ailments have yielded to the power of God in answer to the prayer of faith.[49]
When Tomlinson’s organization convened a General Assembly in 1907, it was declared that members of the fellowship “should take Jesus as our physician.”[50] Some even carried “an identification card to convey the name of their personal physician:
Name: F. J. Lee
Name of Firm: Church of God
My Physician Is: Jesus
Address: Heaven
Phone: By Way of Prayer.[51]
Physical deliverance was evident throughout this emerging fellowship. As a doctrinal statement was later formulated, the Church of God boldly affirmed that “divine healing is provided for all in the atonement.”[52] J. E. Devore affirmed that his denomination “stood for divine healing for many years. From the beginning, it has been in the articles of faith.”[53]
Tomlinson’s organization was not alone in unwavering support of physical deliverance. We see it evidenced in other Pentecostal fellowships as well. In an official Pentecostal Holiness Church manual from 1902, the following was brazenly affirmed:
The healing of the body of its sickness is a blessed provision of the atonement, which is to be appropriated according to James 5:14–15, and other scriptures. We do not consider it an evidence of sin or a mark of divine displeasure because a person is sick or employs medical aid. Neither do we believe that it is an evidence in itself that a person is of God because he is healed in answer to prayer.[54]
In the Minutes of General Council held in Saint Louis, Missouri, October 1–7, 1916, Assemblies of God officials wanted to make it clear that “deliverance from sickness is provided for in the atonement, and is the privilege of all believers.”[55] They asserted that divine healing was one of their “cardinal doctrines.”[56] E. N. Bell (1866–1923), the first chairman of the Assemblies of God, resolutely declared that the ministry of healing “is both a duty and a privilege.”[57]
In the United Kingdom, the British Assemblies of God confidently affirmed, “We believe in the deliverance from sickness by divine healing.”[58] In a similar way, the Elim Pentecostal church declared, “We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Healer of the body and that all who will walk in obedience to His will can claim divine healing for their bodies.”[59]
The Pentecostals “pointed to physical healings and other demonstrations of supernatural power as evidence of their truthfulness, revealing in a broader sense an apologetic for the faith.” [60] Anna Reiff, writing in the Latter Rain Evangel, declared, “The young man who sees divine healing demonstrated and the Word made life, has no more struggle with infidelity.”[61]
Many incredible testimonies began to be recounted. In fact, Harrell argues that “the early Pentecostal movement produced thousands of testimonies of divine healing.”[62]
Healing experiences were at the very heart of being a Pentecostal. In fact, many Spirit-filled preachers had been healed of some type of illness prior to entering the ministry. Grant Wacker observes that many leaders
had experienced serious illness before converting to the movement and many suffered recurring bouts afterward. Yet there is a good reason to believe that significantly fewer of them endured debilitating illness than the national norm. Moreover, virtually all enjoyed stunning, divine healings in their own bodies. Those landmark events not only brought physical restoration but also stirred converts to proclaim the Pentecostal message with renewed vigor.[63]
The leaders embodied and expressed the astounding realities of physical deliverance. Healing practices naturally became a vital component of the altar ministry of most Pentecostal churches. They were convinced that it was not only a great responsibility but also a “privilege of the saints to ask and expect the heavenly Father to confirm his Son’s atoning work with healing grace.”[64] In his extensive analysis of early Pentecostal literature, John Taylor observes that
healings occurred to individuals in the context of normal church life, or as a result of prayer, or anointing with oil, or the laying on of a “prayed for” handkerchief after the pattern in Acts 19:12. Most of such healings seem to have occurred without the ministrations of persons professing to exercise a healing gift per se, took place in a random fashion, and covered the whole spectrum of diseases then prevalent.[65]
Typically the pastor or officiating minister would invite individuals “who were ill and desired prayer to come to the altar. He anointed the sick with olive oil, and fellow believers laid their hands on the petitioners and offered intercessory prayer.”[66] Dramatic encounters were being recounted. Historian Mickey Crews points out that when people began to experience the presence of God, there was
an assortment of reactions. Many spoke in tongues or prophesied; others demonstrated outward manifestations: shouting, running, leaping, dancing. One manifestation, “the art of being slain in the spirit,” when a believer fell unconsciously under the power of God, was taken as a sign to believers that the power of God was present. After the ecstatic mood calmed, the minister usually asked the individual who was divinely healed to give a testimony. The sharing of the healing experience was the culmination of the entire ritual.[67]
Sometimes the more severely afflicted were unable to attend the services, so the membership of the churches had to find other ways of ministering. Crews writes that sometimes
members anointed cloths (such as handkerchiefs) with oil and took them and placed them upon the sick. They performed such an act in obedience to Acts 19:11–12, which states that sick persons were healed when anointed cloths were placed upon their bodies. Another way to minister to shut-ins was simply by agreeing.[68]
Regardless of methodology, there were hundreds of testimonies of physical deliverance being recounted. Remarkable stories were being printed in many of the denominational publications. Considering these accounts, Taylor points out that
The range of diseases apparently healed is very diverse, and includes a claim to such stupendous miracles as raising of the dead. … The sick persons were frequently in a chronic or acute condition over many years, when natural remission was extremely unlikely, and moreover, they had often been regarded as hopeless cases by physicians … Most of the healings were witnessed by at least one person present, usually by many more. Such cases were normally instantaneously and totally cured. … A high proportion of these healings received medical corroboration, such as X-ray testing, etc. … No particular pattern emerges regarding the actual agency or method of effecting the cure. Normally, at least the patient had received prayer, but occasionally the healing was totally unexpected and apparently random.[69]
In one instance, Pastor Thomas M. Gray of Buckeye, Arizona, wrote the following in the Pentecostal Evangel:
The first of May, 1937, I came to Buckeye. I tried to preach but was very weak. October 12, 1937, I went after my wife who was at the Women’s Missionary Council meeting. I heard them shouting when I was about two blocks away. I went in and sat in the back seat. They dismissed the meeting and came back to me, telling me they had the victory for me, and it was so. I quit having a fever and quit chilling. I became strong and robust, and after a time had an X-ray taken, which showed T. B. scars but my lungs were sound. The spittle and blood test showed no T. B. [tuberculosis] germs.[70]
In another occurrence, A. K. Prince of Chickasaw, Alabama, testified how, through the virtue of Jesus, he was able to set aside his crutches and walk. Recounting his experience, he noted the following:
I was working at a sawmill and preaching some when I received a stroke of paralysis, in consequence of which I was unable to work for two and a half years. I walked on crutches. One night at a prayer meeting I received the Holy Ghost baptism, speaking in other tongues. I was disappointed to find, when I could speak my native tongue again, that I was not healed . . . A short time later I went on my crutches three blocks to a prayer meeting. One after the other prayed for me and then called on me to pray. The Spirit went through me like lightning, and I moved my fingers, a thing I had not been able to do. I sprang to my feet and found that my leg was healed. I left my crutches and walked home three blocks. I am still enjoying the wonderful blessing.[71]
The practice of tongues-speaking was considered exotic and intriguing, catching the notice of many local communities. However, the healings were what garnished the greatest attentiveness. The accounts of what was taking place in the Pentecostal meetings were truly captivating to the masses. Grant Wacker observes
Visiting journalists often said more about the purported healings than anything else. And for a good reason: The claims were so astounding, and recurred with such frequency, in so many contexts, one could hardly fail to take notice . . . Every conceivable form of healing—including replacement of missing organs and resurrection from the dead—was reported endlessly, page after page, normally in the jargon of the camp meeting, yet often in the straightforward prose of a daily newspaper. One reminiscence from 1903, drawn virtually at random, intimates the throbbing energy of a Pentecostal meeting: People [were] singing, shouting, praying, and many speaking languages that I couldn’t understand; while all about the tent were empty cots and wheelchairs; and numerous discarded canes and crutches were hung round about the tent while those who had been delivered from using same leaped and shouted and rejoiced.[72]
There is little doubt that in the makeshift tents and storefront churches, physical deliverance became an issue of central significance. Multitudes were drawn to the meetings by the offer of healing. For the Pentecostals
this emphasis on healing was never, and could never be, seen as secondary or a distraction from the evangelistic message. Since it was widely accepted that healing was provided for in the atonement, the offer of healing was part of the salvation message itself.[73]
Although glossolalia[74] was predominant in Pentecostalism’s formation, healing was, arguably, just as vital. Edith Blumhofer observes that there were often two components that made the gospel “full” for the Pentecostals:
the insistence that physical healing was “in the atonement” for all believers and the expectation that tongues speech and other spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12–14 should be manifested in the contemporary church.[75]
Although tongues are predominant, the ministry of healing is equally “foundational to Pentecostalism.”[76] It has been “a cardinal doctrine of the movement since its inception.” For many years, there was “an emphasis on healing in many Pentecostal circles, which makes it almost a second Pentecostal distinctive.”[77]
Healing Rooted in the Power of the Spirit
Since the classical Pentecostal understanding emerged from “Dowie’s pneumatological development,”[78] they followed radicalism “more so than the wider Holiness movement, in rooting healing in a more distinctly pneumatological . . . vein.”[79] The Holiness movement had insisted that “sanctification” was “the basic source of healing.”[80] Pentecostals, however, “came to stress the immediate source as the power of the Holy Spirit.”[81]
Although there were many commonalities with deeper life adherents, what was undoubtedly novel “about the Pentecostal practice was the increasing emphasis on divine ‘power.’”[82] In their thinking, physical deliverance was “a manifestation of Pentecostal ‘power’” and an evidence of God “bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by manifold powers and by gifts of the Holy Spirit.”[83]
When Alfred Garr, one of the Azusa Street leaders, prayed for a woman, she
immediately shouted that she was healed. I felt the healing power flow into her body. One other reader, who sent for an anointed handkerchief, wrote that as soon as she had opened the letter containing one, “such power went through my whole being as I have never felt before, and I praise Him. I feel the healing balm just now go through soul and body.”[84]
Healing was not just a display of power or even an eschatological sign; it was also an expression of special gifts and anointings. Some began to accentuate the uniqueness of the gift of healing. Nancy Hardesty observes that the older Holiness emphasis on every believer praying “the prayer of faith” shifted to the “Pentecostal notion that divine healing is a divine gift given to only certain people.”[85]
Healing was previously understood to be an expression of the “priesthood of all believers.” It was not the possession of the few, but the responsibility of many. However, Pentecostals began “focusing more directly on one person as a dispenser of healing.”[86]
In this shifting environment, “talented men and women attained prominence by convincing their fellows that God granted special gifts to them.”[87] There is little doubt that nascent Pentecostal practices “changed perceptions of divine healing.”[88]
Pentecostal Healing Evangelists
Although most early Pentecostal ministers were involved in the healing, in time, attention was drawn to the “specialists.” Everyone within the movement affirmed the reality of physical deliverance, but “it was the emerging evangelists who brought the message of healing to the masses.”[89] Craig Keener points out
While the Pentecostal churches may properly be regarded as the most important repositories of the new emphasis on divine healing, the most visible salesmen of the message in the twentieth century have been a series of Pentecostal revivalists.[90]
Drawing upon this reality, Chappell observes
By the end of World War I, a number of healing evangelists began building independent revival ministries, and their crusades attracted national attention. Many of these evangelists came out of Dowie’s ministry. There were also several British evangelists who toured the United States and became popular for their healing ministries.[91]
Grant Wacker observed a similar trajectory, pointing out that as the Pentecostal revival entered into the 1920s, a
number of demonstrably capable healers such as Aimee McPherson, Fred F. Bosworth, Smith Wigglesworth, and Charles S. Price had become minor celebrities in Pentecostal (and sometimes non-Pentecostal) circles.[92]
These popular evangelists helped bolster the value of healing among the masses and solidified the message of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. They established ministry patterns that would significantly influence later generations.
George and Stephen Jeffreys
The family of George (1889–1962) and Stephen Jeffreys (1876–1943) was associated with the Welsh Independent Church. The brothers committed their lives to the Lord at Shiloh Independent Chapel in Nantyffyllon, Wales, on November 20, 1904. This was during the height of the legendary Welsh revival of 1904–1905.
Riding the crest of the revival, a passion for evangelism began to arise, particularly in Stephen. Although he had no formal ministry training, he preached in the coalmines and prayed on street corners zealously. Years later Evan Roberts was asked to name any saved during the revival who accomplished great things for God. Without hesitancy he said, “Beyond all those I know—Stephen Jeffreys.”[93]
Though initially uncertain, the Jeffreys brothers were ultimately impacted by the burgeoning Pentecostal revival. Stephen’s son, Edward, attended a meeting where the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues was emphasized. He returned home and told his family what he encountered. When Pentecostal meetings were organized in nearby Maesteg in 1908, both brothers attended and spoke in tongues. Within a few years, their ministries would be known all over the United Kingdom.
Although both brothers became itinerates, George’s administrative prowess enabled him to surge ahead in his efforts. Reflecting on some of his large evangelistic meetings, Stanley Frodsham recounted
The campaigns held by George Jeffreys have packed some of the largest halls in the British Isles, including the historic Hall of St. Andrews, Glasgow, with its seating capacity of 4,500; the Guild Hall of Plymouth, which accommodates nearly 4,000; the Military Riding School of Carlisle, which holds 4,000; the Dome of Brighton, formerly the property of King George IV, with seating capacity of 300; and the Royal Albert Hall of London which accommodates 10,000. Over 1200 [persons] were swept into the kingdom in the campaign held in Brighton, and 300 [persons] gave testimony to the Lord’s healing power.[94]
George ultimately founded the Elim Pentecostal Church, which became one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in Great Britain. Although enthralled with Spirit baptism and the return of the Lord, George always left room for the ministry of healing. Everywhere he went, hundreds of testimonies were reported. An individual attending one of Jeffrey’s meetings affirmed
People who only a few weeks ago were bedridden or wheeled about in chairs are today walking and praising God for his kindness in healing them. Lame ones who moved only with the aid of crutches are able to dispense with these. Deaf ones have been made to hear, blind ones to see, [and] fourteen have testified to having been cured of cancer, tuberculosis, or tumor.[95]
Percy G. Parker later recounted what he witnessed at a George Jeffreys campaign that was held at Portsmouth:
Hundreds testified to healing; two at least had been wheeled into the meetings a few days before. One for fifteen years and the other for twenty years had been wheeled about helpless, but lo! They walked before us healed! The useless leg of one had faded to a skeleton. Not only was she instantly healed but [also] her flesh returned as fresh and full as the other. A little girlie of about three years of age had been healed of paralysis of both arms. She held them up before us. Another had been blind in her right eye for many years. Now she sees! Growths, dislocations, deafness, rupture, even sugar diabetes have all disappeared before the touch of the Master.[96]
George Jeffrey’s ministry had essentially turned England upside down. James Robinson recalls
Between 1924 and 1934, Jeffreys was at the peak of his powers and achieved national press coverage, fame in Europe, and acclaim in parts of America. Assisted by his small team, he conducted some of the largest and most successful evangelistic missions throughout the British Isles since the time of Wesley, with the added distinction that divine healing was proclaimed and practiced.[97]
Naturally, Stephen Jeffreys was also impactful. He was described by Stanley Frodsham as the “most radiantly joyful person we have ever met.”[98] Due to unfortunate personal differences with George, he launched out on his own through the British Assemblies of God. Stephen was as gifted as his brother, but less organizationally inclined. Desmond Cartwright comments,
In Bedford, Bishop Auckland, Bury, Chesterfield, Doncaster, Dover, Manchester, Sunderland, and many other places, Jeffreys established or strengthened assemblies. Outstanding miracles were witnessed. People sometimes stood in line all night to obtain seats.[99]
Reflecting on his own observations, Frodsham remarks,
Thousands were saved in his evangelistic campaigns, and the Lord never failed to confirm the Word he preached with signs following. Many astounding miracles were wrought through his ministry.[100]
Even skeptical newspaper reporters reluctantly acknowledged that healings that were taking place through Stephen’s expanding ministry. In one of the newspapers in Sunderland, a notable account was reported. The journalist writes that
a young woman, Miss Evelyn Waddell, of 10 Silver Street, Murton. As a result of a fall in infancy, she had suffered all her life from hip disease and had never been able to put the heel of one foot to the floor. The leg was undeveloped, and she walked merely on the toe. Almost immediately Pastor Jeffreys took her head in his hands she appeared to go off in a swoon and lay back in the chair moaning and in a state of, apparently, semi-conscious upheaval. The pastor repeatedly touched her with his hands, prayed over her, and ejaculated expressions of praise and thanks to God. “Hallelujah! Glorious!” he exclaimed. “She’s got it!” It was a remarkable scene for two or three minutes. “Can you thank Him?” he kept asking the patient in his excitement. She, poor girl, was in too disturbed a state to do more than gasp faintly, “Yes.” Gradually, she came around and was able to stand up and put her deformed foot flat to the ground, and thus she walked around the room. It was the first time in her life, declared her sister who was with her, that she had been able to walk with her heel to the ground. The sister was beside herself with joy, and the scene was a most touching one as the two sisters, and the missioner spontaneously embraced each other in their joy and gratitude.[101]
In a similar account from the Sunderland press, the following was recounted:
At a divine healing service conducted by Pastor Stephen Jeffreys, the well-known Welsh revivalist, in the Victoria Hall [in] Sunderland yesterday, a large number of people attended for treatment. A woman who stated that she had been deaf for 47 years announced her ability to hear, and a girl who was said to have been unable to walk for several years was able to leave her invalid bed and walk off the platform without assistance. Another patient stated that she had regained the use of her right hand that had been useless for years because of rheumatism. Scenes of remarkable enthusiasm were witnessed. One woman, who had a little blind girl with her, was very insistent that the girl should be treated, and though the pastor had finished his work for the afternoon, he took the mother and child into an ante-room and there laid his hands on the girl, whose sight was stated to have been immediately restored.[102]
George and Stephen Jeffreys transformed the religious climate of the United Kingdom, stirring a hunger for the deeper things of God. Their unequaled evangelistic giftings were widely noted. While Stephen’s preaching gift was extensively praised, George was considered “the greatest evangelist produced in Britain since Whitefield or John Wesley.”[103]
The brothers’ contributions to the expansion of Pentecostalism in the United Kingdom are momentous. Donald Gee believed that “in popular conception,” the whole Pentecostal movement in Great Britain “began with George and Stephen Jeffreys.”[104] Correspondingly, Walter Hollenweger said that the Jeffreys brothers
possessed extraordinary natural talents such as the Pentecostal movement, in Europe at least, has scarcely ever produced since. These talents did not consist of “American gimmickry.” By simple, powerful, and logically structured addresses, they captured the minds and hearts of audiences thousands strong.[105]
It would be difficult to comprehend healing’s extensive reach in the early twentieth century without considering the contribution of George and Stephen Jeffreys. Their influence on healing practices in the United Kingdom was immense.
Although the Jeffreys brothers were noteworthy in English Pentecostalism, Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947), dubbed by Stanley Frodsham as the “Apostle of Faith,”[106] was even more striking. He became “known throughout many parts of the world for his strong faith and legendary answers to prayer.”[107]
Wigglesworth was a “big brusque Yorkshire”[108] plumber. With a formidable presence, he was depicted as being
5 feet 8 inches tall, stocky, with an exceptionally strong build. Receding silver-grey hair framed a rugged, firm-chinned face that was distinguished by small, penetrating steel-blue eyes; a rather stubby nose; and a full, neatly trimmed mustache. He was immaculately dressed, as always, in a dark grey double-breasted suit, trousers scored by razor sharp creases, his size six handmade shoes gleaming like mirrors. In one big sausage-fingered hand, he clutched a small black Bible.[109]
Wigglesworth was first introduced to the ministry of healing through a fringe group in the city of Leeds. This upstart mission was closely associated with radical elements of the faith-cure movement. Its colorful ministry was impossible for Wigglesworth to ignore. Dorries writes
Wigglesworth journeyed weekly to Leeds, England, nine miles from Bradford, in order to obtain plumbing supplies for his business. While in Leeds, he met a group of Christians who were conducting divine healing services. He took great interest in the doctrine of divine healing and found opportunities to visit the healing services whenever possible.[110]
This mission “had been influenced by Dowie and became part of his worldwide network of healing communities.”[111] Wigglesworth and his wife’s association with the work ultimately “brought them directly into contact with John Alexander Dowie.”[112]
When the leaders of this mission later planned to travel to the Keswick Convention, they “invited Wigglesworth, who had hitherto been attending their services regularly, to lead the meetings” [113] Wilson remarks that the leaders
recognized Wigglesworth’s compassion for the sick and afflicted and when they all decided to attend that year’s Keswick Convention, they were unanimous in concluding that he was the only person capable of conducting the services while they were away. Wigglesworth protested that he had no experience [with] leading a healing service, but they persisted and assured him that all he had to do was take charge of the meeting, leaving him to assume that someone else would do the preaching. When he arrived for the first meeting of which he was in change, the hall was full.[114]
The notion of leading the services was unsettling to Wigglesworth. He attempted to turn over the reins to another but was unable to do so. Finally, he relented and agreed to conduct the service:
fifteen people with various infirmities rose from their seats and came forward to the altar of prayer. First up was a big Scotsman who hobbled slowly towards the platform on crutches. As Wigglesworth observed the man inching towards him, his heart sank at the prospect of having to pray for such an obvious case of infirmity. Faltering and with little confidence he prayed, laying his hands on the man and was stunned to see him drop his crutches and leap up and down ecstatically, completely healed.[115]
With a sudden explosion of faith, the atmosphere of the meeting changed, and people began to respond. By the time the service ended, “there were several instantaneous healings of kidney troubles, loss of voice, weak eyesight, rheumatics, and deafness.”[116] Wigglesworth later exclaimed, “I am sure it was not my faith, but it was God in his compassion coming to help me in that hour of need.”[117]
After that, Wigglesworth began to minister to others with a methodology similar to what he had seen demonstrated in Leeds. In his hometown of Bradford, he fervently interceded for a man “with a badly bitten tongue and a woman with an ulcer on her ankle and a large discharging sore.”[118] Both were healed along with numerous others.
There is little question that John Alexander Dowie had left an indelible mark on Wigglesworth. This influence may have been more direct than many presume. Wigglesworth’s wife, Polly (1860–1913), was baptized by Dowie during the time he was conducting meetings in London in 1900.[119]
James Robinson asserts, “Usually baptism by Dowie was tied to membership in Zion; it almost certainly indicated acceptance of Zion’s teaching and practices.”[120] Wigglesworth likely did not agree with Dowie on all matters,[121] but he “was emphatically committed to an understanding of the healing ministry that resonated in ways with that of Zion.”[122] Robinson comments
Regarding personality traits, Wigglesworth and Dowie were similar in a number of ways. They were sui generis, unconventional and unpredictable. They could adopt a severity of manner that was offensive to most conservative believers, born, as it was, of a self-assurance that what they were doing carried the seal of divine approval.[123]
Wigglesworth’s Healing Methodology
Imitating Dowie’s intensity, Wigglesworth picked up a “reputation for being rough and uncouth,”[124] particularly in his approach to prayer. Donald Gee acknowledged that Wigglesworth often “made people run up and down aisles, and even out into the street to ‘act’ faith. His violent laying on of hands would almost send the seekers flying.”[125] He would “hit or punch the part of the body of the person that was diseased, oblivious to the age or condition of the sufferer.”[126]
These actions occasionally involved greater physical force, “including slapping, striking or punching the afflicted part of the person’s body.”[127] For example, while ministering at Glad Tidings Tabernacle in New York City, Wigglesworth unexpectedly struck an Irish immigrant woman who had come forward for prayer. In response to this action, she drew back her fist and screamed, “Begorra, if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get!”[128] She was ready to strike him.
Later, a report in the Marlborough Press in New Zealand described how Wigglesworth “dealt a frail old lady such a smack in the stomach as might have doubled her up.”[129] Wayne Warner acknowledges
Wigglesworth was often accused of being rough on the people who came for prayer. It was claimed that he would strike a sick person with his fist; a person suffering from stomach problems might receive prayer along with a sharp hit to the afflicted area. Others who were crippled were ordered to run across the platform after he prayed for them.[130]
In one insistence, in front of thousands of people, Wigglesworth prayed for an obese woman severely afflicted with cancer. As soon as he understood what he was dealing with, he launched a fierce verbal attack against Satan. Alarmed at Wigglesworth’s barrage of angry words in front of the audience, she tried to get him to back off, but he would not. Wigglesworth recounts
As she came to me, the Spirit of the Lord revealed to me that inwardly there was an adversary destroying her life. Instantly God helped me to rise up against the adversary, not against the woman. In the name of Jesus, I dealt with this evil thing that had vexed the woman. With all the crowd looking on, she cried, “You’re killing me! You’re killing me!” She fell down on the floor. “Bring her back again,” I said, because I knew I had not finished the work. Then I went at it again, destroying the evil that was there. And I knew I had it to do. The people did not understand as again she cried, “Oh, you’re killing me!” I laid hands on her again in the name of Jesus; the work was done. She walked five yards in the aisle and dropped her big cancer.[131]
Reflecting on a similar occurrence that had taken place in one of Wigglesworth’s meetings in Oakland, California, Dorries writes
two sisters had their brother brought forward on a stretcher to receive ministry. Because of their brother’s serious condition, they urged Wigglesworth to be gentle. Yet the kind of action he was led to perform was anything but gentle. Wigglesworth reached back and slugged the man in the stomach. The man fell unconscious. One of the sisters cried out, “You have killed him. Call the police.” The man was taken to the hospital. When he regained consciousness, doctors found nothing wrong with the man. He was totally healed.[132]
To encourage people to act faith, he compelled them to make bold responses.[133] Wigglesworth would occasionally proclaim from the pulpit, “The first person in this audience who stands up, whatever his or her sickness, I’ll pray for that one, and God will heal him or her.”[134] Reflecting on one occasion when Wigglesworth ministered in this manner, his son-in-law, James Salter, declared
we shook in our seats as, in answer to his challenge, a poor, twisted, deformed man having two sticks for support struggled to his feet. When Brother Wigglesworth saw him, he did not turn a hair. In his characteristic manner, he asked, “Now you, what’s up with you?” He had the whole assembly join with him in prayer, and then, addressing the man, he said, “Now put down your sticks and walk with me.” The man fumbled for a time, and then he let his sticks fall to the ground and began to shuffle along. “Walk, walk!” Brother Wigglesworth called, and the man stepped out. “Now run,” he commanded, and the man did so to the amazement and great joy of all who were present, and to our unbounded relief![135]
Wigglesworth’s brusque methodology was not well received by everyone. Colleague Jack Hywel-Davies remarked that Wigglesworth was “not a popular man.” He was often “gruff, rarely smiling, and somewhat austere.” Davies insisted that he “was the least friendly man to receive my attention.” For many, Wigglesworth “could be frightening.”[136]
Occasionally “chastised” by ministry peers “for his ‘rough’ healing methodology,”[137] it seems that many Pentecostals “found Wigglesworth too strong in faith, and that frightened them.”[138] Wilson observes that this former plumber
was severely criticized by those who misunderstood his methods for what they perceived as his unnecessarily harsh and insensitive approach to praying for the sick and afflicted. Others took exception to what they considered his brusque, tactless manner and regarded him as a rather uncouth maverick.[139]
Criticism came from prominent figures such as E. S. Williams (1885–1981), the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God,[140] and Pentecostal ecumenist David du Plessis (1905–1987). When du Plessis met Wigglesworth in 1936, he described him, rather unflatteringly, as an “explosive, often cantankerous old man.”[141] George Jeffrey’s
Elim Pentecostal Church was unhappy about the methods employed in his services and for a time would not allow him to minister in the Elim churches because of this.[142]
It would be an understatement to say that “not everyone loved Wigglesworth.”[143]
There was criticism for reasons other than his methods. Some were “disdainful of Wigglesworth’s lack of education, eloquence, and his working-class background.”[144] Nevertheless, some of the same leaders “who denounced him in public, would secretly request his prayers for healing in private.”[145]
Wigglesworth was undoubtedly “impulsive”[146] and incapable of contemplating “the reaction of others to his statements or actions.” Undoubtedly, the “fear of man, self-consciousness, and embarrassment were emotions that were alien to him.”[147] Wigglesworth was largely “unrepentant”[148] and hesitant to alter “his method on the basis of another’s criticism or misunderstanding.”[149]
When asked about his seemingly contentious approach, Wigglesworth once recounted
You people, who are judging me, please leave your judgment outside, for I obey God. If you are afraid to be touched, don’t come to me to pray for you. If you are not prepared to be dealt with as God gives me leadings to deal, keep away. But if you can believe God has me for a purpose, come, and I will help you.[150]
Wigglesworth was of the view that “90 percent of the diseases were satanic in origin.”[151] Therefore, his antagonistic forms of prayer were understood to be “an act of spiritual warfare.”[152] Reflecting on some of the reasons for his aggressive approach, Wigglesworth once declared
There are sometimes when you pray for the sick, and you are apparently rough. But you are not dealing with a person; you are dealing with the satanic forces that are binding the person. Your heart is full of love and compassion to all, but you are moved to a holy anger as you see the place the devil has taken in the body of the sick one, and you deal with his position with a real forcefulness.[153]
What other ministry leaders saw as a lack of decorum and unnecessary roughness, Wigglesworth understood to be a bold demonstration of faith. He affirmed
When I lay hands upon people for a specific thing, I tell you, that thing will take place. I believe it will be so, and I never turn my ears or my eyes from the fact. It has to be so. The gift of divine healing is more than audacity; it is more than an unction. Those are two big things; however, the gift of healing is the solid fact of a divine nature within the person pressing forward the very nature and act of the Lord, as if he were there. We are in this place to glorify the Father, and the Father will be glorified in the Son since we are not afraid of taking action in this day. The gift of healing is a fact. It is a production; it is a faith; it is an unwavering trust; it is a confidence; it is a reliability; it knows it will be.[154]
Physical deliverance undoubtedly held a primary place in Wigglesworth’s ministry. No matter the topic that he was preaching on, he always brought things back to the ministry of healing. Warner asserts that “he would usually conclude a sermon by praying for the sick, regardless of what text he had taken.”[155] Wigglesworth once remarked
I am never happier in the Lord than when I am in a bedroom with a sick person. I have had more revelations of the Lord’s presence when I have ministered to the sick at their bedsides than at any other time. It is as your heart goes out to the needy ones in deep compassion that the Lord manifests his presence.[156]
Continuing with the same line of thought, Wigglesworth stated
When I was in the plumbing business, I enjoyed praying for the sick. Urgent calls would come, and I would have no time to wash, and with my hands all black, I would preach to these sick ones, my heart all aglow with love. Ah, you must have your heart in the thing when you pray for the sick. You have to get right to the bottom of the cancer with a divine compassion, and then you will see the gifts of the Spirit in operation.[157]
Accounts of Wigglesworth’s Ministry
Although his “legendary status” emerged because of “his eccentric healing methodology,” [158] the reason Wigglesworth was revered was because of his “success in seeing some people recover.”[159] There are hundreds of accounts of healings that took place through his ministry. Considering one such story, Stanley Frodsham asserts
In a meeting in Chicago, Mr. Wigglesworth told of a remarkable miracle, which took place in a town just on the Swiss border of Germany. He had been holding an afternoon meeting in the Pentecostal mission there. Sometime later, as he and the pastor were walking through the streets, someone came to them and said, “There is a blind man at the mission, and he says he is not going to leave there until he gets new eyes.” Brother Wigglesworth turned to the pastor and said, “Brother Ruff, this is the opportunity of our lives.” They hastened back to the mission. Brother Wigglesworth laid his hands on the empty sockets in the name of Christ, and immediately God wrought a miracle. Instantly this brother could see.[160]
Pastor Thomas A. Barratt (1862–1940), a pioneering Pentecostal leader in Sweden, also witnessed Wigglesworth’s ministry. Reflecting one of the tremendous healings, Barratt commented
A man and his son came in a taxi to a meeting. Both had crutches. The father had been in bed two years and was unable to put his leg to the ground. He was ministered to. He dropped both crutches, walking and praising God. When the son saw this, he cried out, “Help me, too,” and after a little while, the father and son, without crutches and without a taxi, walked away from the hall together. The wonder-working Jesus is just the same today.[161]
Wigglesworth would often share a few of the remarkable healing stories in his sermons. These fantastic stories would ignite the hearts of the crowd and position them for their own experiences. One of the stories that Wigglesworth recounted is as follows:
One day I was traveling in a railway coach, and there were two people on the coach who were very sick, a mother and her daughter. I said to them, “Look, I’ve something in this bag that will cure every case in the world. It has never been known to fail.” They became very much interested, and I went on to tell them more and more about this remedy that had never failed to remove disease and sickness. At last, they summoned up the courage to ask for a dose. So, I opened my bag, took out my Bible, and read them the verse that says, “I am the Lord who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). God’s Word never fails. He will always heal you if you dare to believe Him. Men are searching everywhere today for things with which they can heal themselves, and they ignore the fact that the Balm of Gilead (Jeremiah 8:22) is within easy reach. As I talked about this wonderful Physician, the faith of both mother and daughter went out toward him, and He healed them both—right in the train.[162]
Before his international recognition, Wigglesworth was baptized in the Holy Spirit in Sunderland under notable Anglican rectors Alexander (1854–1930) and Mary Boddy (d. 1926)[163] in 1908. Reflecting on this experience, Wigglesworth declared
the fire fell and [I had] a revelation of the cross and the regnant Christ. The intensity of the vision was such that I could not find words to express when irresistible power filled me . . . till I found to my glorious astonishment, I was speaking in other tongues clearly.[164]
This evangelist from Bradford continued his fierce ministry of healing under Pentecostal auspices.
Wigglesworth’s Legacy
Although Wigglesworth did not organize a movement or leave behind a local congregation, he undoubtedly became one of the fathers of Pentecostalism in England. As one of the “most well-known of the thaumaturgic healers of the twentieth century,”[165] he impacted multitudes. Brumback observes that “no other person exerted more influence over the Assemblies of God concerning faith for supernatural confirmation of the Word than this one-time illiterate English plumber.”[166]
Much of this influence was ultimately carried forward through the written compilations of his messages. Robinson records
It is through his published sermons that Wigglesworth still speaks to the post-1945 generation. He continues to hold an enduring fascination in some circles, particularly in America. The popular appeal of his two books Ever Increasing Faith (1924) and Faith that Prevails (1938) lies for many in the dramatic stories of healing found in the pages, all of which raise an expectation of continual displays of supernatural power.[167]
The stories of Wigglesworth’s great fervor and faith resonate far beyond his own lifetime.[168] His ministry has become almost legendary.
Although the notable ministries of Wigglesworth and the Jeffreys brothers overlapped for several decades, they seldom interacted. In many ways, they were starkly “contrasting characters.” [169] Robinson observes
Wigglesworth was a tough, forthright son of Yorkshire, stockily built, direct in manner and uncompromising in contention. While Jeffreys was gentle with the sick in praying for them, Wigglesworth, as shown, could be decidedly aggressive. Jeffreys’ lasting legacy remains in Elim as a denomination, Wigglesworth’s more as a motivating force in the reverberations of healing evangelism up to the present.[170]
These men “contrasted greatly in personality, ministry, and in the nature of their legacy.” However, they “shared a common purpose to expect great things from God” and to “attempt great things.”[171] They along with others enabled the spread of Pentecostalism across the farthest stretches of Europe. Taylor notes
It is quite clear that the success of these healings and evangelistic campaigns was a major factor in spreading the Pentecostal message throughout the UK, and that large numbers of conversions took place as a result of people witnessing such demonstrations of divine power.[172]
The European evangelists were not the only ones who were advocating for the ministry of healing. It was also evident in North American itinerates as well. As Pentecostalism spread across the United States, F. F. Bosworth (1877–1958), Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), Charles Sydney Price (1887–1947), and others captured the imaginations of the throngs. Their massive healing crusades significantly expanded the influence of Spirit-filled Christianity.
Roscoe Barnes III notes that Fred Francis Bosworth (1877–1958) was a “healing evangelist, musician, and author who held large evangelistic healing campaigns in the United States and Canada during the early decades of the 20th century.”[173]
Before Bosworth became a “Pentecostal pioneer,”[174] and “one of the nation’s greatest authorities on the ministry of divine healing,”[175] he was merely a Nebraska-born salesman in desperate need of a breakthrough. Bosworth had “contracted tuberculosis and believed he was going to die.”[176] He explains
I coughed much of the time for ten years, and finally got up from what I supposed would be my death bed and went from Illinois to Georgia for the purpose of saying goodbye to my parents and brothers and sisters before going to heaven. I coughed violently all the way, and the jarring of the train was like knives piercing my lungs.[177]
After arriving in Fitzgerald, Georgia, Bosworth attended a revival meeting conducted by Mattie Perry in a Methodist Church. This woman evangelist prayed for him, and he was powerfully healed. From that moment on, a tremendous spiritual hunger stirred in him.
Zion, Illinois
In the early 1900s, Bosworth and his family relocated to Zion, Illinois, to come under the ministry of John Alexander Dowie. Bosworth “had read about [Dowie’s] ministry of divine healing and apparently appreciated the type of community he had built.”[178]
Since he was a gifted musician, not long after “arriving in Zion, Dowie hired Bosworth as his band leader.”[179] Eunice Perkins comments
Dowie’s quick ear soon caught the different quality, the unusual interpretation of the new coronet and he soon afterward summoned Mr. Bosworth to his office and told him he would like him to take full charge of the band—to give his entire time to teaching, directing, and developing the music, guaranteeing him a pleasing salary if he would consent.[180]
Bosworth accepted the job and was able to “tour and play before large audiences. It brought him acclaim and rave reviews from music critics.”[181] Much of what he was experiencing would prepare him for a whole new era of spiritual engagement.
Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in the city of Zion. Numerous “allegations of Dowie’s financial and moral irregularities marred the dreams of the hopeful settlers.”[182] Bosworth noted that a time comes when a Christian has
to wake up to the utter falsity of the claims, which were even then developing in the mind and purpose of the mistaken, though really great leader of Zion City, and to decline to have further association with so misguided a man.[183]
Fortunately, a new pathway was about to open.
Bosworth was baptized in the Spirit on October 18, 1906, after “Pentecost came to Zion through a visit by Charles Parham.”[184] Barnes acknowledges that “after this experience, [Bosworth] accepted the call to preach.” Although Bosworth had “taught, sang, and played musical instruments, he apparently believed his true calling was that of an evangelist.”[185]
Bosworth Begins to Itinerate
Following his experience of Spirit baptism, he began working with Cyrus B. Fockler[186] (1863–1933) and John G. Lake. The team traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they received word about Alice Baumbach, a young girl who was dying of tuberculosis. They ministered to her, and a dramatic healing ensued. Gardiner writes
Brother Fockler and Brother Bosworth laid hands upon her and prayed. The doctors had said that if she stood on her feet, it would mean instant death, but when prayer was offered, she felt the power of God flow through her body, asked for her clothes, rose, dressed, and walked immediately—perfectly healed![187]
This event became a launching pad for Bosworth. From that point on, he “preached and taught the Word of God. He prayed for the sick and for believers to be filled with the Holy Spirit.”[188] As he actively ministered to the infirmed, Bosworth “saw immediate results.”[189]
After stopping off at the Azusa Street Revival in 1907,[190] Bosworth relocated to Dallas, Texas, planting a vibrant Pentecostal church. Bosworth invited the renowned evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter to speak to his congregation. From July to December of 1912, 68-year-old Etter ministered to multitudes and helped further the reach of Pentecostalism.
Through this and other efforts, the church became something of a regional hub. The “revival meetings” reportedly continued “for nearly ten years.”[191] Wayne Warner states that
Bosworth’s Dallas reports were picked up by Pentecostal papers around the world. And then other writers wrote about the exciting happenings in Dallas. The list of influential Pentecostals who flocked to Dallas reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of early Pentecostalism.[192]
Around 1920, Bosworth turned his church over to his associate pastor and became a traveling evangelist. In a short time, his “ministry saw unprecedented growth.”[193] Bosworth arguably became the “most respected healing evangelist of the 1910s and 1920s.”[194] As he traveled, he began holding meetings in many of the major cities in the United States. Richard Riss explains
At meetings in Pittsburgh in 1919, 4,800 conversions were reported. There were many dramatic healings; at a January 1921 meeting in Detroit, a woman was healed of blindness. In 1922 and 1923 the Bosworth team held meetings in Toronto with Oswald J. Smith, Paul Rader, and the “Cleveland Colored Gospel Quintet.” Campaigns were held in many other cities, including Chicago, Ottawa (where more than 12,000 people attended nightly), and Washington, DC. During these years, Bosworth became a pioneer in radio evangelism and established the National Radio Revival Missionary Crusaders, broadcasting over WJJD in Chicago.[195]
Testimonies of Healing
During Bosworth’s services, many notable healings were taking place. As an evangelist, he understood how healing captured the imagination of people and helped further the work. Bosworth writes that during
the seven weeks of the meeting, six thousand came for healing and about twelve thousand for salvation. I doubt if there would have been more than one thousand for salvation had it not been for the miracles of healing.[196]
Pondering some of what was transpiring, a journalist from the Los Angeles Times reported
Six normally intelligent young people in the little town of Rochelle, Illinois, sat in a special class in the basement of the Baptist Church there this morning and repeated over and over the simplest words their teacher encouraged them [to repeat]. “Soon they will know the whole alphabet,” she told them, “and will be able to talk. Nothing is wrong with the minds or the bodies of the two girls and four young men in the class. But a month ago they could not speak, and they could not hear. They had been deaf from birth, four in one family. Last month an old church member in the town went to the Houston home and said that God would cure the four deaf children if they had faith. In Chicago is Rev. F. F. Bosworth preaching in the Gospel Tabernacle. Thousands of sick have been made whole after this man had prayed over them,” she added. “Why not send the children to Chicago?” The four Houston children and two others were sent to Chicago. In the service in the tabernacle one night they went to the platform when Pastor Bosworth asked if any sick or infirm wished to be prayed for. Healing was instantaneous for all six that night, they testify. The next day their class in the church basement in Rochelle was continued, but teacher and pupils faced an educational revolution.[197]
Attending Bosworth’s revival meetings in Pittsburgh, Mr. J. H. Vitchestain, then editor of the National Labor Tribune, described some of the scenes that he witnessed. He writes
One man who had for years been afflicted with palsy sat in the rear of the Carnegie Music Hall and Evangelist Bosworth was urged to go back and pray with him. [The man] shook like an aspen leaf [and] almost doubled, [his] body badly cramped [by] this disease. A prayer, the laying on of hands, and instantly the victim leaps to his feet acknowledging the saving and healing power. Without stopping a moment, he left the hall, while the crowd followed to see what he would do as he left the building. Leaping upon a street car, he disappeared. Unbelievable? But that opinion of the outside world does not change reality, nor will it stifle the testimonies of those who are enjoying perfect health and relief from the numerous afflictions under which they [had] staggered.[198]
Mulling what had been transpiring in his crusades up to 1921, Bosworth stated
The past few years have witnessed one of the most wonderful and far-reaching revivals of the Christian era—a revival of power—one to which God has borne witness with signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Many thousands have spoken in supernatural tongues as on the Day of Pentecost, as a result of the same mighty baptism that came upon that waiting company in the upper room…Thousands have been healed through “the prayer of faith” (James 5:14–15) and of all manner of diseases and afflictions. We have witnessed many scores of miraculous healings as definite and wonderful as any recorded in the New Testament. Not only the manifestation of tongues and healing but also all the other signs that accompanied the first outpouring of the Spirit have been more or less in evidence.[199]
Bosworth’s Theology of Healing
In 1924, Bosworth compiled several of his sermons on healing and put them into print. He called this work Christ the Healer. It was “widely distributed and revered. In this outstanding work, Bosworth made many declarations about the ministry of healing that would shape the outlook of Pentecostalism (as well as subsequent movements).” The “impact” of Christ the Healer has “not subsided since its first publication in 1924.”[200]
In this work, Bosworth asserts that God’s intentions for healing are as certain as his intentions for salvation. Bosworth also declared that “our attitude toward sickness should be the same as our attitude toward sin. Our purpose to have our body healed should be as definite as our purpose to have our soul healed.”[201]
For Bosworth, both sin and sickness are rooted in the work of the devil. He believed that a spiritual component lay at the origin of illnesses. Although agreeing that doctors could sometimes provide help, he concluded that the typical medical approach “overlooks important facts—the supernatural agency in disease as well as the privilege of the supernatural in its recovery.”[202]
In this work, Bosworth effectively asserted that healing is included in the atoning work of Jesus. The work of the cross does not exclusively pertain to the spiritual: It also relates to the natural order of things. Deliberating this, Bosworth writes
If, as some teach, healing is not in the atonement, why were types of the atonement given in connection with bodily healing throughout the Old Testament? In the twelfth chapter of Exodus, why were the Israelites required to eat the flesh of the Passover lamb for physical strength, unless we too can receive physical life, or strength, from Christ?[203]
Emphasizing God’s desire to transform physical bodies and the natural order, Bosworth further rooted his understanding in the doctrine of the resurrection. He writes
If the body were not included in redemption, how can there be a resurrection? How can “corruption put on incorruption,” or “mortal put on immortality?” If we have not been redeemed from sickness, would we not be subject to disease in heaven, if it were possible to be resurrected irrespective of redemption? Someone has well remarked, “Man’s future destiny being both spiritual and bodily, his redemption must be both spiritual and bodily.”[204]
Bosworth was convinced that God wanted to heal. It was not even a matter of debate. He declared that “the gospel does not leave a man in uncertainty praying with an ‘if it be thy will;’ it tells him what God’s will is.”[205] A Christian should then pray with certainty about healing.
Although Bosworth was undoubtedly Pentecostal in orientation, he genuinely questioned the concentrated focus on tongues. While valuing glossolalia, he insisted that tongues are “not necessarily proof that one had a genuine Spirit baptism.”[206] Although “one of the leaders in the Assemblies of God,” Bosworth “decided to resign from his post … just before the 1918 General Council.”[207] To him, it was almost as if his denomination was “reducing the meaning of ‘Pentecostal experience’ by defining it.”[208]
Bosworth “went from the Assemblies of God to the Christian and Missionary Alliance as a result of this decision.”[209] While seemingly not Pentecostal enough for the Assemblies of God, he was perhaps too Pentecostal for the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Paul King notes that tensions arose in the Alliance as
President Paul Rader felt that the Bosworths were making a dangerous mistake in “giving healing the prominence they did.” Consequently, Rader discouraged Alliance churches in Canada from inviting them back. Likewise, Home Secretary E. J. Richards cautioned at the General Council, “There are possibly a few individuals in our ranks [who] seek the spectacular and magnify certain phases of truth out of just proportion to the other part of our testimony.”[210]
That was not the only source of trouble. For a season, in the mid-1930s, Bosworth “accepted the heretical teachings of British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism), and was forced to leave the Christian and Missionary Alliance.”[211] He ultimately renounced this view and was reconciled with the Alliance. For the rest of his life, Bosworth remained “well respected among Pentecostals and Holiness groups.”[212]
The level of Bosworth’s impact is difficult to ascertain. In 1948, he estimated that he had received over a quarter of a million written testimonies from people who were healed as a result of his ministry.[213] Barnes states that
Between 1907 and 1958, he carefully documented thousands of healing testimonies. They poured into his office from people of all ages and with all types of sicknesses and diseases. Not infrequently, medical professionals provided written verification of the healing claims.[214]
Well into his twilight years, Bosworth continued to proclaim his unique brand of Pentecostal Christianity, actively participating in the salvation-healing revival (1947–1958) and setting the stage for the Word of Faith movement (1962–Present).
Bosworth is truly a significant figure in twentieth-century Pentecostalism. Douglas Jacobsen writes,
While Bosworth may have severed his denominational connections with the Pentecostal movement, he never fundamentally changed who he was—a Pentecostalistic healing revivalist.[215]
Aimee Semple McPherson
While Bosworth was undoubtedly a major Pentecostal voice, no evangelist was as successful in the early twentieth century as Aimee Semple McPherson. James Robinson observes, “In terms of results, the healings associated with her were among the most impressive in late modern history.”[216]
Although she came from a devoted Christian family,[217] Aimee struggled with her faith during her teenage years. Everything changed in the winter of 1907. She “attended a Pentecostal revival meeting and experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”[218] Robert Semple, the young itinerant leading the meetings, awakened not only Aimee’s spirit but also her heart. Aimee “found both Semple and his message irresistible.”[219]
Aimee “went on to marry Robert at eighteen”[220] and joined him in ministry. The Semples “traveled throughout Ontario and the upper American Midwest as revivalists from 1908–10.”[221] For a while, they were based out of the Full Gospel Assembly in Chicago, Illinois.[222]
Sent overseas in 1910 “by two of the best-known North American Pentecostal missions,”[223] the Semples “journeyed to Hong Kong.”[224] They were filled with high hopes about what the future promised.
However, their experience turned out to be tragic: Shortly after arriving in Asia, Aimee became pregnant and ill “for the better part of a year; then Robert contracted typhoid and died. Only with the financial assistance of her mother were Aimee and her baby able to return home.”[225]
Finding herself in difficult straits, Aimee declared,
I had come home from China like a wounded little bird, and my bleeding heart was constantly pierced with curious questions from well-meaning people… Oh! How I longed for someone who would understand or put their arms around me and help me at this critical moment of my life.[226]
Losing her footing, Aimee settled into an ill-advised marriage to Harold McPherson in early 1912. She remarked,
It was just at the time of my greatest perplexity when I began to lose out spiritually and wander away from the Lord and was longing to make a home for the baby that I married again.”[227]
Her husband was a marginal believer and reluctant to embrace Aimee’s ministerial pursuits. Aimee later acknowledged that during this period, she was “stepping out of the work of the Lord.” She was turning “again to the world, endeavoring to stifle my longings…I wonder if there is anyone on Earth who is really as abjectly miserable as the backslider?”[228]
Within a short period, tensions arose. In Aimee’s mind, the situation had become “unpleasant.” She “chafed under the restricting roles of housewife and mother.”[229] Convinced that she was being called by the Lord to return to evangelism, Aimee ventured far from home with her two young children. It was a difficult decision that would ultimately cost her marriage.
Beginning in 1917, Aimee began traveling across America, moving “freely among the Pentecostal camp meetings and conventions that attracted all types of radical evangelicals.”[230] Among other influences, Richard Riss suggests, “McPherson probably derived a good deal of inspiration from the ministry of Woodworth-Etter.”[231]Aimee began developing “a distinctive persona as an independent Pentecostal revivalist,”[232] preaching everywhere she could.
Thomas Lately observes
with her first [financial] collection, she bought a tattered, moth-eaten tent and took off as an itinerant evangelist, sponsored by no church, carrying a message of joy and spiritual excitement to the poor, the backward, and the condemned. Living from hand to mouth, she followed the call from Maine to Florida.[233]
Developing “a penchant for dramatic preaching,” Aimee became a “bold innovator and synthesizer of popular culture.” This “dynamic and dramatic individualist” [234] was remarkably gifted at merging theatrics, sentimentality, and her own personal narrative with “traditional Pentecostalism.” There was undoubtedly a great deal of “sensationalism associated with her ministry.”[235] Yet, the masses genuinely loved her.
Just about everywhere that “McPherson preached, mammoth crowds were attracted.”[236] She was packing out the “largest auditoriums in major cities” and conducting “huge tent campaigns.”[237] Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy state, “Hundreds of revival meetings and publicity generated by her periodical, The Bridal Call, helped McPherson to develop a sizable following by the early 1920s.”[238]
Much of Aimee’s early public recognition came through expressions of healing. As “throngs of invalids” flocked to her meetings, Aimee’s “prayers naturally captured the public eye.”[239] Bruce Barron notes that
Though personally ambivalent about faith healing, she found that advertising healing brought bigger crowds, and it appears to have been partly for this reason that she made it a regular part of her ministry.”[240]
Although readily acknowledging that “cancers, tumors, tuberculosis, all manner of sickness has been healed instantaneously in answer to prayer, right in our meetings,”[241] Aimee “did not actively pursue a healing ministry… she did not relish it.”[242] Matthew Avery Sutton commented
McPherson hated being credited with performing healings. Both to protect herself when people were not instantly cured and out of her reverence for God’s sovereignty, she regularly deflected credit.[243]
In time, she felt like healing was “beginning to take over her services.”[244] Consequently, she sought ways to downplay it. She once declared, “Throughout our meetings everywhere, we have put the ministry for the soul first, then the ministry for the body.”[245]
Although Aimee would devote at least one night of each crusade to the ministry of healing, the aching masses clamored for more. They were thoroughly convinced that Aimee’s “prayers melted goiters” and “made the deaf hear and the lame walk.” [246] In her Wichita, Kansas, meetings, it was reported that
the healing lines were longer than ever. At the last healing service, over 1,000 people appealed for prayer. Nearly 900 obtained cards that gave them access to the section reserved for invalids, and Sister begged the healthier among them to give their places to the helpless.[247]
The newspaper journalists often “focused on McPherson’s healings.”[248] Some members of the press even depicted her as a “faith healer.”[249] By the time that she conducted a large crusade in San Diego, California, her
ministry to the sick had assumed greater prominence. For two days, in mass meetings that the police estimated 30,000 people attended, she and a host of assisting pastors had devoted hours to anointing thousands with olive oil and praying for their healing. Some testified to immediate healing, and the press dubbed Sister a “miracle worker.” Sister took care not to pray for the sick in any crusade until she had preached for several days. She regarded healing as a blessing for the faithful rather than as a benefit for the masses, and so she refused to pray for any who did not first profess conversion. She generally began a crusade on Sunday and held her first healing service on Wednesday night.[250]
Although the crowds were captivated by what they were witnessing, Aimee continually tried to withdraw from it. James Robinson observes that “although the healing side of her ministry had made her famous, it increasingly was the one part of her ministry she found least appealing.”[251] For Aimee, healing was a spiritual gift that “increasingly mystified and baffled her as well as wore her out—a gift she could not quite comprehend. It was thrilling, yet an uncomfortable gift and burden.”[252]
Robinson asserts, “Despite her renown as a healer, Aimee was not particularly comfortable with being cast in that role. It was not one she actively sought.”[253] Although she struggled with physical deliverance, she reluctantly accepted its role of bringing in the crowds.
Testimonies of Healing
Harry Long, a Midwestern Pentecostal minister, shared his first-hand account of what transpired in Dayton, Ohio. Many of the people were so desperate to receive prayer from Aimee that disorder ensued. Long states
Their earnest plea to get in with their sick ones went to my heart, for it was like the multitudes who thronged the Great Physician and moved his great heart of compassion. These exclamations were heard: “Can’t she pray for me?” “Let me get nearer so she can touch me,” etc.…The hunger on their faces would make angels weep for joy [along] with us who beheld them.”[254]
Long recounts how Aimee began to minister to the hurting, anointing them with oil and interceding for their breakthroughs. He says,
The sick were taken by willing hands onto the platform and anointed with oil and prayed for by Mrs. McPherson, and the healing touch was given to many who had the real faith to obey the command to rise in the name of Jesus and be made whole.[255]
As testimonies of healing began to be boldly recounted, the massive crowd erupted into joyous elation. Long declares, “How the great throng clapped their hands and shouted for joy at the sight they beheld.” It is during these pivotal moments that Pentecostalism can sway even the most skeptical crowds. Long remarks
Men left their crutches and canes as new life came into their limbs. … One young woman left her wheeled chair and walked without aid. She had never before walked. Many deaf ears were opened and hearing restored. One old lady who had been deaf for years could even hear a whisper. Blind eyes were opened. A little boy who was almost blind began to count the windows and lights and jump around, healed of a complication of diseases.[256]
Because of this, “the whole city” was “shaken.” Hundreds were giving their lives to Jesus with “tears of repentance . . . followed by shouts of victory and joy and some were straightway baptized in the Holy Spirit.”[257]
Aimee conducted hundreds of similar meetings in the largest cities in America. These meetings not only enthralled the masses, but they also captured the hearts of reluctant pastors.
Eli Fox Cunningham, an Assemblies of God pastor from Illinois, declared, “We saw eminent physicians testify before 10,000 people to the healing, instantly, of their patients and confess their faith in the power of Christ to heal.” [258] Similarly, William H. Clagett, a Presbyterian, declared
For the first time in my life, with mine own eyes, I have seen enacted before me scenes such as we read in the Bible as occurring in the days of Jesus Christ and the apostles. I have seen the lame made to walk, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and devils cast out. I cannot blame anyone for not believing things that can and will be told of these meetings, for I probably would not believe them myself had I not seen them, but I have seen them. And “we are witnesses of these things.”[259]
The healing claims were substantial and, in the minds of some, strained credulity. In the midst of these questions, some doctors stepped up and corroborated the testimonies. Robinson asserts that “there was no solid evidence of fakery to undermine claims to healing.”[260] In fact,
so strong was the desire to expose fraudulence during her San Francisco mission in August 1921 that those prayed for were seized upon by journalistic hawks, who proceeded to grill them. Posing as bona fide investigators, they set out to destroy the credibility of claims to healing. Unbeknown to the organizing committee, a group of doctors from the American Medical Association investigated covertly some healings. Their report disclosed a week later, confirmed that healing was “genuine, beneficial and wonderful.” This also was the drift of the plethora of press clippings, testimonials, and private correspondence that bore witness to healing.[261]
Angelus Temple
Ultimately walking away from the itinerancy in 1923, Aimee opened Angelus Temple, a 5,000-seat worship facility in Santa Monica, California. She intended to take what succeeded on the “sawdust trail” and bring it to the outskirts of Hollywood, California, during the golden age of motion pictures. Describing one of her meetings at Angeles Temple, James Robinson comments
Healing services were held on Thursdays, and at the final event, hundreds of sick people packed the church, while outside policemen were at times almost overpowered by the rush. Inside, the piteous sight of the many blind, halt, and maimed was tempered by “the sight of those who were completely delivered walking back and forth over the platform, praising God for what he had done.” Even Aimee was surprised at the instantaneous nature of a few healings. One notable case was that of a woman burdened by the weight of a tumorous growth on one of her legs. While she was being prayed for, the tumor “suddenly disappeared as if it had been a punctured toy balloon.” Swain was able to report that “letters are pouring in daily of people claiming complete deliverance.”[262]
As a young man, well-known actor Anthony Quinn attended Angeles Temple and witnessed many amazing things. Sharing some of his reminisces, Quinn observed
Suddenly a figure with bright red hair and a flowing white gown walked out to the center of the stage. In a soft voice, almost a whisper, she said, “Brothers and sisters, is there anyone here who wants to be cured tonight?” Long lines formed to reach her. She stood center stage and greeted each one. One man said, “I can’t see out of one eye.” She asked, “Do you believe, brother?” And suddenly, the man cried, “Yes, sister, I can see. I can see!” And the audience went crazy. To a woman dragging herself across the stage on crutches, she said, “Throw away that crutch!” Suddenly, the woman threw away her crutches and ran into Aimee’s open arms.[263]
Renegotiating the possibilities
Aimee, “by the force of her personality and the power of her oratory,” [264] renegotiated the possibilities of a Pentecostal woman. In addition to Angeles Temple, a widely circulated periodical,[265] a Bible college,[266] and a radio station, Aimee also “organized a denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.”[267] This enterprise did not surprise anyone. Aimee was so independent “that it is doubtful that she could ever have been a permanent member of any organization except her own.”[268]
Despite Aimee’s populist appeal, rumor mongering would follow her throughout her life. Although “not lacking in scandal with two divorces and one alleged ‘kidnapping’ in 1926, which most judged a cover for her affair with the operator of her KPSG radio station,” [269] other unsubstantiated accusations were made. Aimee was undaunted in all of this. She always found a way to overcome setbacks and rally people to her way of thinking.
Aimee combined the ministry of healing with “dazzling religious theatrics and a penchant for publicity.” This amalgamation arguably made McPherson “one of the most famous American personalities of the interwar years.”[270] Combining “the old-time faith, show biz sensibilities, marketing savvy, and passionate Americanism,” [271] she was able to significantly shape “one of the twentieth century’s most explosive religious movements.”[272]
Charles Sydney Price (1887–1947) was once described as a preacher with a “mildly British accent and a profound salvation and healing ministry.” As he emerged on the scene in the 1920s, he unquestionably became “one of the most noteworthy Pentecostal evangelists of the twentieth century.”[273]
Price’s spiritual journey is one of the most astounding. Not long after entering the ministry, Price became heavily influenced by modernism, questioning miracles and the veracity of the Bible. However, while pastoring Calvary Congregational Church in Oakland, California, in 1921, his ministry would be forever disrupted.
It all began when individuals from Price’s congregation began attending some of Aimee Semple McPherson’s tent meetings. Elated by their experiences, they came back and shared stories of dramatic healings. After hearing so much about what was transpiring, Price decided to attend. He was not going as a willing participant, but as a concerned critic. With repudiation in mind, Price was convinced that it would not take much effort to expose this female evangelist as a fraud. Tim Enloe writes that Price
planned on going as a skeptical observer, taking notes, and then dismantling the revival and the alleged miracles publicly in Sunday morning’s sermon, but first, he took out an ad in the local paper with his Sunday sermon topic, “Divine Healing Bubble Explodes.”[274]
Upon arriving, he found that McPherson’s tent was packed with six thousand people. To his chagrin, “Price could only find an open seat in the ‘cripples section.’”[275] What he began to encounter was completely unexpected.
Reflecting on what he heard from Aimee, Price stated that “a masterful message came from the lips of the evangelist, and my modernistic theology was punctured until it looked like a sieve.”[276] He went on to declare
In the course of a few short days, not only had my outlook on life and my viewpoint changed, but also my life itself had been transformed. … The burning, flaming fires of evangelism began to blaze in my heart. The thing that I desired more than anything else in the world was to win souls for Jesus.[277]
Price was baptized in the Holy Spirit and within a short time left the pastorate to itinerate. Enloe comments that it was the “effectiveness of the McPherson campaigns” that “stirred his heart for itinerant evangelism.”[278]
During one of his first meetings, Price began to see marvelous healings. He remarked
The power fell, and hundreds and hundreds were healed. The first person that I prayed with for bodily healing fell under the power of God. I myself was afraid. I prayed for the second one, and the same thing happened. I trembled in the presence of the Lord, but both of them, rising to their feet and proclaiming they were healed, gave me courage and I went on praying. After that, scores and scores would be prostrated under the power at one time. An adjacent building was rented so great became the crowds, and the meeting continued longer than the advertised time.[279]
Price’s vibrant ministry was being well received as he traveled across America. He held meetings in Ashland, Oregon, in a 5,000-seat theater and later began to minister in nearby Medford. Describing the scenes taking place, a journalist noted
The first 37 people who moved across the platform were so filled with the power of God that they had to be carried to their seats in the church. Out of 50 people prayed for, 47 fell under the power of God. The Lord was present in such a mighty way that twice Dr. Price collapsed and had to lay on the floor at one time to get control of himself. During the last half hour of the healing service, the evangelist was literally held up in the arms of two of the preachers. One deaf and dumb girl heard and spoke . . . one goiter melted away to such an extent that the preachers were crying “Look! Look!” And some of the audience broke from their seats. . . . it was a great night in Medford.[280]
Other meetings were organized in Minneapolis, Saint Louis, Dallas, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and other metropolitan areas.[281] Price even traveled to Canada to host several healing crusades. Richard Riss observes
Several miraculous healings in Victoria became well publicized. During the following year, meetings in Vancouver attracted 250,000 people over the course of three weeks. Price later held meetings in Calgary and Edmonton where people smashed windows to gain admittance after the 12,000 seats in the Ice Arena were taken. At the amphitheater in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Price had to climb through a kitchen window to get into the building. Later meetings were held in Toronto, Minneapolis, Duluth, St. Louis, and Belleville, Illinois. One thousand conversions per day were reported during the last ten days of the Belleville campaign.[282]
What was transpiring in Price’s prayer lines was being widely reported in local newspapers. Sensational headlines drew readers into what was transpiring. Some of the headlines read “Lame Arise from Chairs and Walk,” “Cripple Walks at Arena: Scores Go Down as if Before Machine Guns,” “Deaf and Dumb Converse After Evangelist Prays,” and “Prayer Restores Sight.”[283]
Price eventually purchased a large tent that he affectionately called the Kanvas Kathedral. Everywhere he erected it remarkable healings were reported. In one example, Phoebe Aker of Klamath Falls, Oregon, shared the following:
When I was a little girl about five years of age, I had a terrible sickness, and it left me in a condition of deafness. In fact, I was stone deaf. So deaf I could not hear any noise, no matter how loud it was. I had to read the lips and watch the mouths of people as they spoke to me to understand. I made a profession of religion about two years ago, but have not enjoyed the experience as I should, and it was not until Dr. Price held that wonderful meeting in Klamath Falls that I really found the Lord. Deaf as I was, I went to the altar and for the first time really felt the power of God. Then one night it came my turn to be anointed and prayed for. How glorious! The power of God came upon me and down I went. My heart felt so light, and I was so happy. Then a terrible pain went through my head. It was awful. I could hardly stand it. Then something popped with a loud bang in my ears. Then I heard. Oh, praise the Lord! I could hear the people praying all around me. I could hear them singing and talking. How happy I was![284]
In another instance, Price reported the following story:
There was a minister in attendance who told us a remarkable story. He was an Anglican clergyman, originally stationed near Saskatoon. Years ago, when we, by the providence of our Lord, were privileged to speak in the arena in that town, he attended the meetings. His wife had had an operation during which the organs in her body had been removed. She could never have a baby. And for a baby, they had longed and dreamed. She was brought for prayer. The critics say there are no organic healings. Yet, God answered prayer and a baby was born into that home. The miracle happened. The organs must have grown back. There can be no other explanation. This was the testimony given to us from the lips of that minister who now believed in and practiced divine healing with all his heart.[285]
Price was determined to see a breakthrough, and he would often feverishly labor alongside the afflicted until the healing transpired. Pentecostal evangelist Lester Sumrall (1913–1986) attended one of Price’s meetings and later reported that
He did not just lay hands on people; he got them healed. He would stay with them until the healing came through. It might take an hour for him to pray for just a few people because he prayed in depth for deliverance, [and] people were set free by the mighty power of God.[286]
Price was a brilliant man and was cognizant that a number of dynamics affected the services. He went to great lengths to make sure things were established in a way that would encourage faith. James William Opp stated
Price placed great stock in the amount of genuine faith—not only in the believer but also in the social space defined by the arena itself. When those in the seats were “filled with faith,” the greatest cures were accomplished . . . Price even measured the amount of faith present by how easily those seeking cures swooned in the faith . . . and was not afraid to rebuke his audience for a lack of faith if these manifestations did not result.[287]
Price also comprehended that the way ministry was executed could significantly affect things—particularly when one is dealing with thousands of people. Price began to establish protocols to facilitate ministry better. Opp comments
In his campaigns, Price developed a method whereby the opening meetings emphasized evangelism and explained the doctrine of divine healing without performing any healings. It was only after he felt that the message of consecration and personal trust in God had been accepted by the audience that he moved to actual anointing services, and even then, the suffering were asked to attend morning preparatory meetings where workers would discuss both their ailments and their personal spirituality. These preparatory meetings also served an administrative function, with Price’s team keeping careful track of names, addresses, illnesses, and later, noting whether they were healed and the permanence of the healing. Those deemed good candidates for the reception of healing through faith were issued a white card, which would serve as a type of ticket to gain access to the front of the stage where the anointing took place after the evening’s address. To control the numbers and regulate who would be allowed on the platform, Price would only pray for those holding these cards. It was a system that efficiently maximized the evangelist’s time and circumvented an indiscriminate rush to the stage from those who, lacking faith, would not be healed in any event.[288]
Not everyone understood his methodology. When Sumrall first encountered Price, he thought it was misguided, but he rapidly changed his mind. Sumrall writes
When you came to his tent to receive healing, you had to hear at least three sermons, indicating the three sermons you had heard on the prayer card. He would not permit anyone to be prayed for until they had heard him preach at least three times. At first, I did not understand why he did this, but later realized he was building faith inside of them for healing. He preached at least two hours every service.[289]
Though Price was careful to set controls in place, things did not always go as planned. The masses were desperate for a breakthrough, and were not prone to stand back when their opportunity for healing arrived. Sometimes people would rush the stage and make a scene. Opp observed
One evening meeting, during the Vancouver campaign, Price was about to deliver his address when there was a disturbance on the main floor. A woman was waving her hand above her head and crying out. Telling the ministers on the platform to sing a song, Price left the stage with his jar of anointing oil. And when he returned, he explained that a woman’s hand was suddenly healed of paralysis. Before he could continue the address, however, more spontaneous cures within the audience broke out. And Price, once again, went out to anoint them. It became impossible to proceed with the service. So, Price simply carried out the healing part of the meeting, bringing up those in the audience with their white cards, and laying hands upon their foreheads. Despite the fact that his own message for the evening was “no miracle of the healing of the body is equal to the miracle of the regenerating power of the Lord Jesus in the hearts and lives of men,” those in attendance were clearly intent on pressing the issue of healing more than conversion.[290]
As was the case with Bosworth and McPherson, the sheer number of testimonies was astounding. Hundreds of people claimed to have been healed under the canvas tent. Thomas McCrossan, a Presbyterian minister intimately acquainted with Price, noted that “many persons were not healed,” yet,
when hundreds received perfect cures, why not praise God for the tremendous amount of suffering alleviated, and not cry “fake or faker” because some were not cured? . . . If Dr. Price is a “faker,” may the good Lord raise up hundreds like him.[291]
Price’s influence continued to grow, and multitudes began coming to his large, non-affiliated[292] meetings. Tim Enloe pens,
From 1922 to the late 1930s, Price’s mammoth campaigns brought the Full Gospel’s message and experience to the masses of the United States, Canada, and Northern Europe. Even the Great Depression did not hinder his efforts.[293]
Arguably, Price’s greatest influence came through his voluminous writing. He edited a monthly periodical called Golden Grain for over twenty-one years and also published a number of books on physical deliverance, such as The Sick Are Healed (1939) and The Real Faith (1940). The Real Faith definitely “had the broadest impact; it has been continuously in print since 1940.”[294] In it, Price “argued that the faith to be healed had to be given immediately and directly by God. It cannot be worked up.”[295]
The shadow of Price’s ministry extended beyond his death in 1947. Many Pentecostal evangelists, who followed in his footsteps, emulated his methods. David Edwin Harrell Jr. argues that “The man who probably influenced the healing revivalists of the postwar period most directly was Dr. Charles S. Price.”[296]
Price, McPherson, Bosworth, Wigglesworth, the Jeffreys brothers, and many others[297] “embodied healing” publicly and helped make it a significant component of Pentecostalism. It was largely through their efforts that “faith healing was constituted as a public spectacle within the urban evangelistic campaigns.”[298]
This controversial expression of faith healing “had never been incorporated within the consumer elements of performance quite like it was in the hands of Aimee Semple McPherson, the Bosworth Brothers, and Charles Price. As a tool of evangelism, healing attracted crowds and publicity on an unprecedented scale.”[299] Opp writes
There was nothing ‘old-fashioned’ about the social geography of evangelical faith healing in the decade that followed World War I. From the close community of believers that drew upon healing as divine power, the evangelist transformed healing into a full public spectacle. The consumer culture that shaped the emergence of professional evangelism also restructured the nature of faith healing, which was now presented to mass audiences in crowded auditoriums and arenas. Not only an end in itself, faith healing also became a tool to convert souls and change lives.[300]
Divine healing expressions, through the hands of the Pentecostal evangelist, were considerably different from what was expressed in the 1800s. In the earlier period, physical deliverance was being transacted through “careful scriptural expositions and quiet services for anointing.”[301] The ministry transpired in healing rooms or through private anointings in the home. [302] Opp observes that
Divine healing conventions [of the 1800s] encouraged faith and offered anointing services, but they were not a place for ecstatic outbursts or miraculous cures. It was an experience that was often brought back to the bedroom where God’s grace could be further contemplated. Faith homes purposely surrounded those seeking healing through faith with elements of Christian domesticity.[303]
Through the emergence of Pentecostalism, the public understanding of physical deliverance was forever altered. With a readiness to embrace the disorientation of “public spectacle,”[304] the Spirit-filled evangelists “introduced a religious experience that was communal, rather than private.” [305] By the first quarter of the twentieth century, the ministry of healing “was being propelled by massive campaigns with large tents, promotional drives, and large brass bands.”[306]
Gary McGee observes that
second-generation evangelists held mass campaigns that Cullis, Gordon, Simpson, and Murray might not have dreamed possible or even proper, from filling Royal Albert Hall in London to civic auditoriums and churches, to large open-air meetings in parks and other places.[307]
What was taking place was considerably different than what had been expressed through the Holiness movement. James Opp provides further reflection on these innovations:
The techniques of mass evangelism transformed the social space of healing, and the prospective body was now systematically guided through preparatory meetings, required to fill out cards, and lined up in rows to receive the touch of the faith healer. The space of the arena was where the Spirit moved bodies to swoon and healed afflictions. As a public spectacle, the tendencies of faith healing to become increasingly instantaneous and “miraculous” were reinforced. Instead of sharing devotional literature and healing testimonials through the mail, souvenirs and books were sold at the arena door. The silence that pervaded the bedroom (and the meditative anointing sessions of the early divine healing conventions) was replaced with professional music leaders who kept the audience entertained with song services and provided soothing background music while the afflicted were slain in the Spirit.[308]
While some saw this as a healthy development, others saw it as a travesty. To many of the critics, these abrupt healing practices “amounted to a power grab, with healers trying to usurp the authority of God and medicine.”[309]
However one ultimately looks at it, healing indubitably “became of central significance to Pentecostals in the twentieth century, particularly in the context of the evangelism of the main revivalists.” Multitudes of people became “attracted to their meetings by the offer of healing.”[310]
When the Pentecostals talked about “holding revivals,” what they had in mind was mass salvations, Spirit baptisms, and physical deliverances. Vinson Synan readily acknowledges, “No revival meeting could be termed a ‘success’ without several cases of healing.”[311]
Although healing remained vital to the revivals, it also shaped the ministry of the local churches. Many Pentecostal pastors fervently prayed for healing in their Sunday or Wednesday evening services. Any church that claimed to be Pentecostal would be poised to intercede for those who were struggling with pain.
Though the Christian and Missionary Alliance and other Holiness fellowships began to back away from healing in the 1920s, the Pentecostals were adamant about its importance. For them, it was not just experiential religion; it was an embodiment of New Testament Christianity.
Poloma observes, “divine healing is much more than simply a set of beliefs and rituals, but rather it is woven into the very warp and woof of the Pentecostal worldview.”[312] For Spirit-filled believers, physical deliverance
and other miracle experiences have effectively functioned as sacraments, palpable symbols of those rare but unforgettable moments of grace in the life of the believer. This is especially true of the first generation, the men and women who chose to endure pain rather than resort to worldly means.[313]
Although the ministry of healing had been gaining traction in the later 1800s through the Wesleyan and Higher Life movements,
it was not until the twentieth-century Azusa Street revival (1906–1909) and the rise of Pentecostalism that divine healing once again assumed a central role in orthodox Christian practice to match its role in the early church.[314]
Theologian Allan Anderson acknowledges that, even to this day, physical deliverance is “perhaps the most universal characteristic of many varieties of Pentecostalism and perhaps the main reason for its growth in the developing world.”[315] Undoubtedly, one cannot minimize healing’s centrality in early Pentecostalism’s identity and expression.
[1]. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America,” Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1983, 364.
[2]. Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street: The Roots of Modern-day Pentecostalism (Plainfield: Logos International, 1980), 44. This work was originally published in 1925.
[3]. John Alexander Dowie made a profound impact on the theology and methodology of Pentecostalism. Those who left Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church for Pentecostalism strongly influenced the new movement. “Fred Vogler, Harry Bowley, F. F Bosworth, Edith Banger, Mary Burgess Brown, and F. A. Graves, all early leaders in the Assemblies of God, were formerly associated with Dowie’s work in Zion.” William Menzies, Anointed to Serve (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), 65, 66, 85. Also, see Klaude Kendrick, The Promised Fulfilled (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1961), 46-49. Carl Brumback, Suddenly . . . From Heaven (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1961), 72. It is believed that over five hundred Pentecostal leaders came from the ministry of Dowie and Zion; and, surprisingly, one of the most “enduring, indirect influences of Dowie was through the ministry of Smith Wigglesworth.” Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing, and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 283-301. Wacker, Armstrong, and Blossom write, “Though the prophet died, broken, in 1907, his influence continued. Many first-generation Pentecostal leaders had spent time in Zion or had experienced significant contract with Dowie. Others had read about his work in Dowie’s widely circulated newspaper, Leaves of Healing. More significantly, early Pentecostals embraced Dowie’s conviction that Christian faith required claiming the supernatural gifts that God had amply given.” Grant Wacker, Chris R. Armstrong, and Jay S. F. Blossom, “John Alexander Dowie: Harbinger of Pentecostal Power,” in Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2002), 56.
[4]. Jay R. Case, “And Ever the Twain Shall Meet: The Holiness Missionary Movement and the Birth of World Pentecostalism, 1870–1920,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 16:2 (2006), 125.
[5]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 284.
[6]. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America,” Ph.D., diss., Drew University, 1983, vi-vii.
[7]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 54.
[8]. Ben Pugh writes, “By the time Pentecostalism emerges, the premillennial eschatological framework had become definitive.” Ben Pugh, Bold Faith: A Closer Look at the Five Key Areas of Charismatic Christianity (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 8. Reflecting on the ascendency of Premillennialism during this period, Heather Curtis writes, “According to this perspective, which was steadily replacing the postmillennialism that marked most of antebellum evangelicalism, Christ’s return to earth was imminent. Unlike their more optimistic forbears, premillennialists did not believe that the world was progressing toward a period of peace and righteousness that would culminate in Christ’s second coming.” Heather D. Curtis, “The Lord For The Body,” Ph.D., diss., Harvard University, 2005, 113, 114.
[9]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Portland, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 54.
[10]. Jonathan Richard Baer, “Perfectly Empowered Bodies: Divine Healing In Modernizing America,” PhD diss., Yale University, 2002, 81.
[11]. Heather D. Curtis, “‘The Lord for the Body’: Sickness, Health, and Divine Healing in Nineteenth-Century Protestantism,” Ph.D., diss., Harvard University, 2005, 301. Eric Paterson writes, “Classical Pentecostals tended to agree that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as manifested by tongues, healings, salvation experiences, sanctification, and “deliverance” from various maladies, were harbingers of the soon return of Christ.” Eric Patterson, “Conclusion: Back to the Future? U.S. Pentecostalism in the 21st Century,” in The Future of Pentecostalism in the United States, eds. Eric Patterson and Edmund Rybarczyk (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2007), 191.
[12]. Heather D. Curtis, “‘The Lord for the Body’: Sickness, Health, and Divine Healing in Nineteenth-Century Protestantism,” Ph.D., diss., Harvard University, 2005, 301. George Marsden writes that Pentecostals “saw in the renewal of healing and tongues a sure sign of the end of the age and the rapture of the church.” George Marsden, “Fundamentalism,” Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley Burgess and Gary McGee (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1988), 327.
[13]. Michael J, McClymond, “Charismatic Gifts: Healing, Tongue‐Speaking, Prophecy, and Exorcism,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity, eds. Lamin Sanneh and Michael J. McClymond (West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons, 2016), 402-403.
[14]. B. F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored: A History of the Present Latter Rain Outpouring of the Holy Spirit Known as The Apostolic or Pentecostal Movement (Saint Louis, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1916), 13.
[15]. See Mark J. Cartledge, “’Catch The Fire:’ Revivalist Spirituality From Toronto to Beyond,” PentecoStudies 13:2 (2014), 234.
[16]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 43.
[17]. Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking In The Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003), 288.
[18]. Grant Wacker, “Travail of a Broken Family: Evangelical Responses to Pentecostalism in America, 1906-1916,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47:2 (1996), 26.
[19]. Grant Wacker, “Travail of a Broken Family: Radical Evangelical Responses to the Emergence of Pentecostalism in America, 1906—16,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, ed. Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell Spittler, and Grant Wacker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 26.
[20]. Jonathan Richard Baer, “Perfectly Empowered Bodies: Divine Healing in Modernizing America,” Ph.D., diss., Yale University, 2002, 252.
[21]. Ibid.
[22]. Jonathan Richard Baer, “Perfectly Empowered Bodies: Divine Healing in Modernizing America,” Ph.D., diss., Yale University, 2002, 256.
[23]. This word is from Latin millenarius “containing a thousand,” is rooted in the futuristic notions of “Millennium” in Revelation 20. It is the belief in a coming cataclysmic transformation of society, after which all things on Earth will be transformed.
[24]. Charles F. Parham, “Healing,” in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Baxter Springs, Kansas: Apostolic Faith Bible College, 1902), 47, 48.
[25]. Gary B. McGee, “Tongues, The Bible Evidence. The Revival Legacy of Charles F. Parham,” in Enrichment Journal (Summer 1999).
[26]. Editor, “Revivalist in Galena Heals the Sick—Cripples Are Enabled To Walk,” in Joplin Globe, Friday Morning, October 23, 1903.
[27]. Charles Parham declared, “Healing is as certainly purchased in the atonement of Jesus Christ as salvation. … The healing of the sick is as much a part of the gospel as telling them of heaven. … This is the great salvation that so many thousands are neglecting today, a salvation that heals the body as well as the soul.” Charles Parham, The Selected Sermons of Charles Parham (Baxter Springs, Kansas Apostolic Faith Bible College, 1941), 46, 48.
[28]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 20.
[29]. James Goff. Fields White unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987), 97.
[30]. Richard Riss, A Survey of Twentieth Century Revival Movements in America (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1988), 47.
[31]. “In 1900, Seymour moved to be a part of the center of the Divine Healing Movememnt under Dowie.” Meesaeng Lee Choi, “Healing,” Encyclopedia of Christianity In the United States, Volume 3, eds. George Thomas Kurian and Mark A. Lamport (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 1066.
[32]. “Around 1901, he met Martin Wells Knapp at God’s Bible School and learned about holiness, healing, and premillennialism.” Meesaeng Lee Choi, “Healing,” Encyclopedia of Christianity In the United States, Volume 3, eds. George Thomas Kurian and Mark A. Lamport (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 1066.
[33]. Merle Strege, I Saw the Church: The Life of the Church of God Told Theologically (Anderson, Indiana: Warner Press, 2005), 122.
[34]. William Durham quoted in James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 23.
[35]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 22.
[36]. Ibid., 23.
[37]. Meesaeng Lee Choi, “Healing,” Encyclopedia of Christianity In the United States, Volume 3, eds. George Thomas Kurian and Mark A. Lamport (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 1066-1067.
[38]. Ibid.
[39]. William Seymour, Apostolic Faith 1:1 (September 1906), 2.
[40]. “Weird Babel of Tongues: A New Sect of Fanatics is Breaking Loose,” The Los Angeles Daily Times (April 18, 1906), II.1. This newspaper article asserts: “Among the ‘believers’ is a man who claims to be a Jewish rabbi. He says his name is Gold, and claims to have held positions in some of the largest synagogues in the United States. He told the motley company last night that he is well known to the Jewish people of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and referred to prominent local citizens by name. Gold claims to have been miraculously healed and is a convert of the new sect.”
[41]. A. W. Orwig quoted in B. F. Lawrence, The Apostolic Faith Restored: A History of the Present Latter Rain Outpouring of the Holy Spirit Known as The Apostolic or Pentecostal Movement (Saint Louis: Gospel Publishing House, 1916), 78.
[42]. Editor, Apostolic Faith 1:8 (May 1907).
[43]. Ibid.
[44]. Editor, Apostolic Faith 1:5 (January 1907).
[45]. Editor, Apostolic Faith 1:1 (September 1906), 2.
[46]. A.A. Boddy, footnote, in Mary Boddy, “Health and Healing in Jesus,” Confidence 1:2 (May 1908), 16.
[47]. Editor, Apostolic Faith 1:4 (December 1906).
[48]. Grant Wacker, “The Pentecostal Tradition” in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 520-521. (Indiana University Press Press, 1463-1464. ca, 1906-1916.” by the former archivist of the Assemblies of God. (Indiana University Press, 1463-1464.ca, 1906-1916.” en by the former archivist of the Assemblies of God.
[49]. A. J. Tomlinson. “Marvelous Healings,” Church of God Evangel 21 (May 1914), 1.
[50]. Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), 2nd General Assembly Minutes (Cleveland, Tennessee: Church of God, 1907), 25.
[51]. F. J. Lee Jr., interview, September 3, 1982, in Mickey Crews. The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 70.
[52]. J. L. Slay. This We Believe (Cleveland, Tennessee: Pathway Press, 1963), 75.
[53]. J. E. DéVore, “We Believe in Divine Healing,” Church of God Evangel 4 (December 1954), 3.
[54]. The Discipline of the Holiness Church (Goldsborough, North Carolina: Nash Brothers, 1902), 10-11.
[55]. Minutes of General Council of the Assemblies of God (Saint Louis: October 1–7, 1916), 11. Whereas the Assemblies of God British counterpart states simply, “We believe in the deliverance from sickness by divine healing.” Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: SCM, 1972), 520.
[56]. This was also the view of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Mickey Crews notes, “divine healing was a cardinal doctrine in the early history of the church.” Mickey Crews, The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 70.
[57]. E. N. Bell, Questions and Answers (Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1923), 53.
[58]. Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: SCM, 1972), 520.
[59]. Ibid., 519.
[60]. Gary B. McGee, Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Book, 2010), 179.
[61]. Anna C. Reiff, “The Remedy for Higher Criticism,” The Latter Rain Evangel (December 1921), 13.
[62]. David Edwin Harrell, Jr., “Divine Healing in Modern American Protestantism,” in Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, ed. Norman Gevitz (Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1988), 216.
[63]. Grant Wacker, “Searching For Eden With A Satellite Dish,” in Religion and American Culture, ed. David G. Hackett (New York: Routledge, 2003), 423.The leaders embodied and expressed eadersealed of some kind of illness. Grant Wacker observes that,wn bodies. Those landmark eve
[64]. Mickey Crews. The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 70.
[65]. Malcolm John Taylor, “Publish and Be Blessed: A Case Study in Early Pentecostal Publishing History, 1906-1926,” M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994, 284.
[66]. Nora Jones interview, July 8, 1982 in Mickey Crews, The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 72.
[67]. Mickey Crews, The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 72.
[68]. Ibid.
[69]. Malcolm John Taylor, “Publish and Be Blessed: A Case Study in Early Pentecostal Publishing History, 1906-1926,” M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994, 290.
[70]. Thomas M. Gray, “Healed of Tuberculosis,” Pentecostal Evangel 1265 (August 6, 1938), 11.
[71]. A. K. Prince, “Healed of Paralysis,” Pentecostal Evangel 1707 (January 25, 1947), 7.
[72]. Grant Wacker, “The Pentecostal Tradition,” in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in The Western Religious Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 521.. (Indiana University Press;ity Press, 1463-1464.ca, 1906-1916.”en by the former archivist of the Assemblies of God.n one of th. (Indiana University Press;ity Press, 1463-1464.ca, 1906-1916.”en by the former archivist of the Assemblies of God.n one of th
[73]. Keith Warrington, “Acts and the Healing Narratives: Why?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (2006), 189.
[74]. “Glossolalia is a technical term that refers to the ecstatic practice of non-semantic verbal or vocal utterances that occur in the context of sacred space or in private prayer.” Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse. Catch the Fire: Soaking Prayer and Charismatic Renewal (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 98.
[75]. Edith L. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 5.
[76]. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America,” Ph.D., diss., Drew University, 1983, vi-vii.
[77]. Frederick Dale Brunner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1970), 141.
[78]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 284.
[79]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 45. In Pentecostal thought, tongues and healing are an outworking of the Holy Spirit. Often “the rhetoric of spiritual gifts linked the experience of healing with the baptism of the spirit.” James William Opp, “Religion Medicine, And The Body: Protestant Faith Healing in Canada,” Ph.D., diss., Carleton University, 2000, 270-271.
[80]. J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 257.
[81]. Ibid.
[82]. James William Opp, “Religion Medicine, And The Body: Protestant Faith Healing in Canada,” Ph.D. diss., Carleton, University, 2000, 271.
[83]. Donald Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody, Massachusetts, 1987), 137.
[84]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 46.
[85]. Nancy Hardesty, The Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 2003), 5, 134. Earlier Hardesty asserts, “it is not until one gets into Pentecostal writers that one finds consistent references to the gift of healing as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:9.” Ibid., 91.
[86]. Ibid., 126.
[87]. David Edwin Harrell Jr. in Mickey Crews, The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), xi.
[88]. Nancy Hardesty, The Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 2003), 126.
[89]. Frank D. Macchia, “Pentecostal Theology—Theological Issues: Divine Healing.” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1135.
[90]. David Edwin Harrell, Jr., “Divine Healing in Modern American Protestantism,” in Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, ed. Norman Gevitz (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988), 217.
[91]. Paul Chappell, “Healing Movements,” Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess, Gary B. McGee, Patrick H. Alexander (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 370.
[92]. Grant Wacker, “The Pentecostal Tradition,” in Curing and Caring: Health and Medicine in the Western Faith Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darryl W. Amundsen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 526.
[93]. Evan Roberts quoted in Vinson Synan, Voices of Pentecost: Testimonies of Lives Touched by the Holy Spirit (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 2003), 90.
[94]. Stanley Frodsham, With Signs Following: The Story of the Pentecostal Revival in the Twentieth Century (Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1941), 97–98.
[95]. Ibid.
[96]. Stanley Frodsham, With Signs Following: The Story of the Pentecostal Revival in the Twentieth Century (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1941), 64–70.
[97]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 115.
[98]. Stanley H. Frodsham, “With the Lord,” Pentecostal Evangel 1548 (January 8, 1944), 15.
[99]. Desmond W. Cartwright, “Jeffreys, Stephen,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 808.
[100]. Stanley H. Frodsham, “With the Lord,” Pentecostal Evangel 1548 (January 8, 1944), 15.
[101]. Editor, “Missioner’s Many Converts: Remarkable Cure of Murton Woman,” Sunderland Daily Echo, Thursday, September 8, 1927.
[102]. Editor, “Divine Healing: Blindness Cure Claim at Sunderland,” Shields Daily Gazette, Thursday, September 8, 1927.
[103]. Wayne Warner, “Smith Wigglesworth,” New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 804-805.
[104]. Donald Gee, Wind and Flame: Incorporating the Former Book The Pentecostal Movement, with Additional Chapters (Nottingham, United Kingdom: Assemblies of God Publishing House, 1967), 140.
[105]. Walter Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg, 1972), 199.
[106]. Stanley Frodsham titled his biography of Smith Wigglesworth, “The Apostle of Faith.” This was his way of describing Wigglesworth’s tremendous faith and willingness to trust in the promises of the Bible.
[107]. Desmond W. Cartwright, “Jeffreys, George,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 807.
[108]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 133.
[109]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 77–78.
[110]. David W. Dorries, “The Making of Smith Wigglesworth, Part One: The Making of the Man.” Assemblies of God Heritage (Fall 1992), 7.
[111]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. 6:2 (2003), 291, 292.
[112]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 33.
[113]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 291.
[114]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 33.
[115]. Ibid., 34.
[116]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 283–301.
[117]. Smith Wigglesworth quoted in Stanley Frodsham, Smith Wigglesworth: Apostle of Faith (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1948), 34.
[118]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 34.
[119]. Mary Jane “Polly” Wigglesworth is listed among the names of those baptized by Dowie during his trip to London. According to the record, one of those baptized by triune immersion by Dowie was “Mrs. M. J. Wigglesworth of Bradford,” Leaves of Healing (November 3, 1900), 64.
[120]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, 1890–1906 (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 100.
[121]. Dowie’s “outlandish claims and radical actions caused most in the Holiness movement to disassociate themselves from him or his teaching.” Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 289.
[122]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 135.
[123]. Ibid., 136.
[124]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 121.
[125]. Donald Gee, These Men I Knew (Nottingham: Assemblies of God Publishing, 1980), 90–91.
[126]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 121.
[127]. Ibid.
[128]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 136.
[129]. Desmond Cartwright, The Real Smith Wigglesworth: The Man, the Myth, the Message (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2003), 117. The date of the report was December 10, 1923.
[130]. Wayne Warner, “Smith Wigglesworth,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 804–805.
[131]. Smith Wigglesworth, Smith Wigglesworth Speaks To Students of the Bible (Tulsa: Albury Publishing, 1998), 62.
[132]. David W. Dorries, “The Making of Smith Wigglesworth—Part Two: The Making of His Message,” Assemblies of God Heritage (Winter 1992–1993), 27.
[133]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 136.
[134]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 125.
[135]. Robert Salter quoted in Stanley Frodsham, Smith Wigglesworth: Apostle of Faith (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1948), 63.
[136]. Jack Hywel-Davies quoted Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), ix-x.
[137]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 283–301.
[138]. Lester Sumrall, Pioneers of Faith (South Bend, Indiana, LeSEA Publishing, 1995), 175.
[139]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 141.
[140]. Wayne Warner writes, “Criticism came from such leaders as E. S. Williams, former general superintendent of the General Council of the Assemblies of God.” Wayne Warner, “Wigglesworth, Smith,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 805.
[141]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 81.
[142]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. 6:2 (2003), 293.
[143]. Bill Johnson notes that his grandfather had been in Wigglesworth’s meetings, and he disturbed many of the American leaders. Johnson writes, “My grandparents also sat under Smith Wigglesworth’s ministry. Grandpa used to tell me about those days, but he would add, ‘Not everyone loved Wigglesworth.’ Of course, he is loved today—because he is dead.” Bill Johnson, The Essential Guide to Healing (Bloomington, Minnesota: Chosen Books, 2011), 38.
[144]. Julian Wilson, Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 141.
[145]. Ibid., 142.
[146]. Ibid., 121, 149.
[147]. Ibid., 89.
[148]. Ibid., 121, 149.
[149]. David W. Dorries, “The Making of Smith Wigglesworth—Part Two: The Making of His Message.” Assemblies of God Heritage (Winter 1992–1993) 27.
[150]. Julian Wilson. Wigglesworth: The Complete Story (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Authentic Publishing, 2002), 121.
[151]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 146.
[152]. Ibid., 135.
[153]. Smith Wigglesworth, Ever Increasing Faith (New Kensington: Whitaker House, 2000), 187.
[154]. Smith Wigglesworth, Greater Works (New Kensington: Whitaker House, 1999), 359.
[155]. Wayne Warner, “Smith Wigglesworth,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 804–805.
[156]. Smith Wigglesworth, Ever Increasing Faith (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1924), 82.
[157]. Ibid., 83.
[158]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. 6:2 (2003), 293.
[159]. Ibid. While several volumes have described his successes, Hudson writes that there “were a few failures, some deaf persons, and some almost blind stating that they could not admit any improvement.”
[160]. Stanley Frodsham, With Signs Following: The Story of the Pentecostal Revival in the Twentieth Century (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1941), 171.
[161]. Thomas Barratt quoted in Stanley Frodsham, With Signs Following: The Story of the Pentecostal Revival in the Twentieth Century (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1941), 118.
[162]. Smith Wigglesworth, Greater Works (New Kensington: Whitaker House, 1999), 47–48.
[163]. Before Evan Roberts impacted A. A. Boddy through the Welsh revival (1904-1905), his wife Mary was already operating in healing due to a spiritual encounter in 1899. In 1905, Boddy was impacted by T. B. Barratt who was leading a religious revival in Oslo modeled on the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Barratt was invited to Boddy’s church and, subsequently, Boddy and his wife began to experience glossolalia. Boddy is the “founding father of British Pentecostalism. He hosted the annual Whitsuntide Convention at Sunderland between 1908 and 1914, as well as acting as the editor and publisher of the monthly periodical Confidence (1908–1926).” James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 3.
[164]. Smith Wigglesworth quoted in Phillip Taylor, “In the Steps of Smith Wigglesworth” (Phillip Taylor, Privately Published, 2007), 78.
[165]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 134.
[166]. Carl Brumback, Suddenly from Heaven: A History of the Assemblies of God (Springfield, Missouri: Gospel Publishing House, 1961), 272.
[167]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 142.
[168]. Wayne Warner writes, “An indication of Wigglesworth’s continued popularity is the fact that no fewer than six books by or about him are in print—three of which were first published in the 1980s.” Wayne Warner, “Smith Wigglesworth,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), 805.
[169]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 137.
[170]. Ibid., 137, 140.
[171]. Ibid., 220.
[172]. Malcolm John Taylor, “Publish and Be Blessed: A Case Study in Early Pentecostal Publishing History, 1906-1926,” M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994, 291.
[173]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 89.
[174]. Ibid.
[175]. Gordon Lindsay, “Conversations with Evangelist F. F. Bosworth,” The Voice of Healing 1:1 (April 1948), 4.
[176]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 20.
[177]. Eunice Perkins, Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story (Dayton, Ohio: John J. Scruby, 1921), 210.
[178]. Ibid., 35.
[179]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 21.
[180]. Eunice Perkins, Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story (Dayton, Ohio: John J. Scruby, 1921), 36.
[181]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 114.
[182]. Gordon P. Gardiner, Out of Zion Into All the World (Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Companion Press, 1990), x.
[183]. F. F. Bosworth quoted in Eunice Perkins, Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story (Dayton, Ohio: John J. Scruby, 1921), 38.
[184]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 21.
[185]. Ibid., 36.
[186]. Cyrus Barnette Fockler was at one time an elder in Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church. He attended the Pentecostal meetings organized by Charles Parham in Zion in 1906 and was ultimately baptized in the Holy Spirit. He later launched a successful ministry in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, under the auspices of the Assemblies of God. Fockler actively prayed for the sick.
[187]. Gordon P. Gardiner, Out of Zion into All the World (Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Companion Press, 1990), 12–13.
[188]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 116.
[189]. Ibid., 21.
[190]. In June of 1907, he traveled to Los Angeles, California, and had the privilege of visiting the Azusa Street revival. John G. Lake, Thomas Hezmalhalch, and Bosworth were able to meet with William Seymour and have a photograph taken. It was one of the celebrated images of the revival.
[191]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 21.
[192]. Wayne Warner, The Woman Evangelist: The Life and Times of Charismatic Evangelist Maria B. Woodworth-Etter (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1986), 164. Some of the prominent leaders who attended the Dallas services included Stanley Frodsham, Carrie Judd Montgomery.
[193]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 21.
[194]. Grant Wacker quoted in Joseph W. Williams, “The Transformation of Pentecostal Healing, 1906– 2006,” Ph.D., diss., Florida State University, 2008, 32.
[195]. Richard Riss, “F. F. Bosworth,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 439–440.
[196]. F. F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Chosen Books, 2008), 83.
[197]. Los Angeles Times (May 6, 1928).
[198]. Mr. Vitchestain quoted in Eunice Perkins, Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story (Dayton, Ohio: John J. Scruby, 1921), 128.
[199]. F. F. Bosworth quoted in Eunice Perkins, Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story (Dayton, Ohio: John J. Scruby, 1921), 55–56.
[200]. Daniel J. Simmons, “They Shall Recover: Towards a Pneumatological and Eschatological Understanding of the Atonement in Pentecostal Healing,” M.A. thesis, Southeastern University, 2015, 7, 21. Barnes notes, “The impact of Bosworth’s teachings continues to be felt in many parts of the world. Many of today’s mega Charismatic/Pentecostal churches and other ministries, including those of T. L. Osborn, Kenneth Copeland, Fred Price, Benny Hinn and the late Kenneth E. Hagin, have been greatly influenced by his work.” Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 89.
[201]. F. F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Chosen Books, 2008), 18.
[202]. Ibid., 126.
[203]. Ibid., 25.
[204]. Ibid., 38.
[205]. Ibid., 17.
[206]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 48.
[207]. Jennifer Ann Miskov, “Life on Wings: The Forgotten Life and Theology of Carrie Judd Montgomery (1858–1946),” Ph.D., diss., University of Birmingham, 2011), 282. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 48.
[208]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage (Spring 1993), 25. Editor, “The Apostolic Faith Movement,” The Apostolic Faith (September 1906), 2.
[209]. Jennifer Ann Miskov, “Life on Wings: The Forgotten Life and Theology of Carrie Judd Montgomery (1858–1946,” M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011, 282.
[210]. Paul King, Genuine Gold: The Cautiously Charismatic Story of the Early Christian and Missionary Alliance (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Word and Spirit Press, 2006), 197.
[211]. Ibid., 235.
[212]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 89. His influence continued in the Pentecostal and Holiness ranks. Among others, Bosworth “served as a mentor to A. W. Tozer” (1897–1963) whom he urged “to embrace the healing ministry, but to keep it as secondary to his evangelist ministry.” Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 38.
[213]. Ibid., xvii.
[214]. Ibid., 102.
[215]. Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking In The Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003), 287.
[216]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World. (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 204.
[217]. Her father was a Methodist and her doting mother was a member of the Salvation Army.
[218]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[219]. Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 10.
[220]. Edith Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 1993), 87.
[221]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[222]. William Durham (1873–1912) was the pastor of Full Gospel Assembly. He was “a prominent early Pentecostal leader who had preached at the Azusa Street Revival and had popularized the ‘finished work’ doctrine.” Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[223]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage 13 (Spring 1993), 25.
[224]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[225]. Ibid.
[226]. Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPerson (Los Angeles: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919), 94, 95.
[227]. Ibid., 95.
[228]. Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPerson (Los Angeles, California: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919), 96.
[229]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[230]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage 13 (Spring 1993), 25.
[231]. Richard Riss, A Survey of Twentieth Century Revival Movements in North America (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 1988), 95.
[232]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 272.
[233]. Lately Thomas, The Vanishing Evangelist: The Aimee Semple Mcpherson Kidnaping Affair (New York: Viking, 1959), xii. This is a work by journalist Robert V. Steele who used a pseudonym.
[234]. Edith Blumhofer, “Two Women on the Sawdust Trail,” Assemblies of God Heritage (Spring 1985–1986), 11.
[235]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy. “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 273, 274.
[236]. Carl Brumback, “Two Women on the Sawdust Trail,” Assemblies of God Heritage 6:1 (Spring 1985–1986), 11.
[237]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage 13 (Spring 1993), 18.
[238]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 273.
[239]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting.” Assemblies of God Heritage (Spring 1993), 19.
[240]. Bruce Barron, The Health and Wealth Gospel (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1987), 44.
[241]. Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPerson (Los Angeles, California: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919), 582.
[242]. Daniel Mark Epstein, Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt and Brace, 1993), 111.
[243]. Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 17.
[244]. Janice Dickin, “‘Take Up Thy Bed and Walk:’ Aimee Semple McPherson and Faith-Healing.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 17 (2000), 143–144.
[245]. Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That: Personal Experiences Sermons and Writings of Aimee Semple McPerson (Los Angeles: The Bridal Call Publishing House, 1919), 245.
[246]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage (Spring 1993), 21.
[247]. Ibid.
[248]. Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 17.
[249]. Frances Wayne, “Aimee Semple McPherson, Faith Healer,” The Denver Post, 1921, Referenced in Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 17.
[250]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage 13 (Spring 1993), 20.
[251]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 203. Robert Bahr, admittedly writing a “speculative biography,” suggests that Aimee said something like the following: “I say very definitely, right now, that I do not wish the lame, the halt, the blind, and the cripples to crowd my meetings. That is the portion of my work to which I am least attracted.” Robert Bahr, Least of All Saints: The Story of Aimee Semple McPherson (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1979), 168. This quote is without a source attribution.
[252]. Chas H. Barfoot, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Making of Modern Pentecostalism, 1890–1926 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 346.
[253]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 220.
[254]. Harry Long, “The Great Revival In Dayton, Ohio,” The Pentecostal Evangel (May 29, 1920), 8.
[255]. Ibid.
[256]. Ibid.
[257]. Ibid.
[258]. Eli Fox Cunningham quoted in Edith Blumhofer, “Sister McPherson: Saint Louis Host to 1921 Salvation-Healing Meetings,” Assemblies of God Heritage 15:2 (Summer 1995), 7.
[259]. William H. Clagett, President, Board of Trustees, Texas Presbyterian University quoted in Edith Blumhofer, “Sister McPherson: Saint Louis Host to 1921 Salvation-Healing Meetings,” Assemblies of God Heritage 15:2 (Summer 1995), 7.
[260]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 220.
[261]. Ibid.
[262]. Ibid., 199.
[263]. Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1972), 152.
[264]. Edith Blumhoffer, “Aimee Semple McPherson and the Decisive Wichita Meeting,” Assemblies of God Heritage 13 (Spring 1993), 26.
[265]. Bridal Call began to be published in 1917 and had quite an extensive circulation for the next 30 years. Aimee also went on to publish Divine Healing Sermons in 1923, which reflected some of her doctrinal insights. This is the only work she produced on this topic.
[266]. When Aimee founded the college in 1923, it was called Echo Park Evangelistic and Missionary Training Institute. Later it was changed to LIFE Bible College.
[267]. Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 273.
[268]. Carl Brumback, “Two Women on the Sawdust Trail,” Assemblies of God Heritage (Spring 1985-1986), 11. The notion of “Foursquare Gospel,” said McPherson, “came to her in a vision of Christ’s fourfold role as savior, baptizer, physician, and king.” Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “McPherson, Aimee Semple,” in The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 273.
[269]. James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Years of Expansion, 1906–1930: Theological Variation in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 197.
[270]. Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.
[271]. Ibid., 4.
[272]. Ibid.
[273]. Tim Enloe, “Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry, and Influence,” Assemblies of God Heritage 28 (2008), 4, 12.
[274]. Tim Enloe, “Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry, and Influence,” Assemblies of God Heritage 28 (2008, 8.
[275]. Ibid.
[276]. Charles S. Price, The Story of My Life (Pasadena, California: Charles S. Price Ministries, 1944), 34–35.
[277]. Ibid., 32.
[278]. Tim Enloe, “Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry, and Influence,” Assemblies of God Heritage 28 (2008), 8.
[279]. Charles S. Price, The Story of My Life (Pasadena, California: Charles S. Price Ministries, 1944), 29–30.
[280]. Editor, “Medford Day is Huge Success for Dr. Price,” Ashland Daily Tidings (September 29, 1922), 1.
[281]. Tim Enloe, “Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry and Influence,” Assemblies of God Heritage 28 (2008). 8.
[282]. Richard Riss, “Price, Charles S.,” The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 997.
[283]. “Lame Arise,” Free Press Evening (August 16, 1924). “Cripple Walks,” Vancouver Daily World (May 16, 1923), 1. “Deaf and Dumb Converse,” East St. Louis Daily Journal (February 18, 1925), 1. “Prayer Restores Sight.” The World Pointer (August 23, 1931), 1.
[284]. Phoebe Aker, “Testimony,” Golden Grain 1:1 (March 1926), 23.
[285]. Charles S. Price, “From The Editors Desk,” Golden Grain 17:5 (August 1942), 27.
[286]. Lester Sumrall, Pioneers of Faith (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1995), 129.
[287]. James William Opp, “Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing In Canada, 1880–1930,” M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 2000, 302-303.
[288]. James William Opp, “Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing In Canada, 1880–1930,” M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 2000, 297-298.
[289]. Lester Sumrall, Pioneers of Faith (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1995), 129.
[290]. Ibid., 301-302.
[291]. Thomas McCrossan, “The Healing Ministry of Dr. Price: An Answer to Critics of the Healing Ministry of the Editor of Golden Grain (Part Two),” Golden Grain 2:8 (October 1927), 23.
[292]. While not officially a part of a Pentecostal denomination, Price held close ties with the Assemblies of God. He often spoke in many of their camp meetings.
[293]. Tim Enloe, “Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry, and Influence,” Assemblies of God Heritage 28 (2008), 8.
[294]. Ibid.
[295]. Ronald Kydd, Healing Through the Centuries: Models for Understanding (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 1995), 209.
[296]. David Edwin Harrell Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 17.
[297]. A. H. Argue (1868–1959), a businessman from Winnipeg, Canada, attended William Durham’s North Avenue Mission in Chicago where he experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He later went onto the evangelistic field, actively ministering in healing. He worked with Maria Woodworth-Etter and Charles S. Price. Raymond T. Richey (1893–1968) was also a prominent evangelist. After being healed of tuberculosis in 1919, he began a traveling ministry. In a 1923 healing crusade in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so many were healed that they paraded through the streets with “a truck piled high with discarded crutches.” Eloise May Richey, What God Hath Wrought in the Life of Raymond Richey (Houston, Texas: Full Gospel Advocate, 1925), 107uest er, St celebrated. she angelists were very popular. However, were evidently supernatural to her “ese miracles is because o.
[298]. James William Opp, “Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing In Canada, 1880–1930,” M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 2000, 375.
[299]. Ibid.
[300]. Ibid., 281.
[301]. Ibid., 270-271.
[302]. Opp writes, “In the nineteenth century. The gendered associations of religion and domestic space were aligned to make the bedroom the preferred site for treating the ill. This was a physical space that was increasingly privatized in Victorian homes, as architectural trends separated bedrooms further away from one another and from other parts of the dwelling. Access was restricted to family members, except in cases of illness when this space could be opened to allow a physician, minister or close friend to attend.” Ibid., 379.
[303]. Ibid., 373.
[304]. Ibid., 374.
[305]. Ibid.
[306]. Roscoe Barnes III, “F. F. Bosworth: A Historical Analysis of the Influential Factors in His Life and Ministry,” Ph.D., diss., University of Pretoria, 2009, 5.
[307]. Gary B. McGee, Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2010), 183.
[308]. James William Opp. “Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing In Canada, 1880–1930,” M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 2000, 375.
[309]. Jonathan Richard Baer, “Perfectly Empowered Bodies: Divine Healing in Modernizing America,” Ph.D., diss., Yale University, 2002, 79. Baer references Arthur T. Pierson, Forward Movements of the Last Half Century (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984), 389. Pierson’s work as originally published in 1900.
[310]. Neil Hudson, “Early British Pentecostals and Their Relationship to Health, Healing, and Medicine,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 6:2 (2003), 283.
[311]. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), 192.
[312]. Margaret Poloma, “Divine Healing, Religious Revivals, and Contemporary Pentecostalism: A North American Perspective,” in The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts, edited by Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2009) 39.
[313]. Grant Wacker, “The Pentecostal Tradition,” in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in The Western Religious Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 532.
[314]. Margaret Poloma, “Divine Healing, Religious Revivals, and Contemporary Pentecostalism: A North American Perspective,” in The Spirit in the World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Contexts, ed. Veli-Matti Karkkainen (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2009), 21-22.
[315]. Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 30.
Varnel Watson
this is a GREAT post and demands my attention William DeArteaga has done a great work on women in ministry at Azusa and prior to it What have you found on early Pentecostal women ministers J.D. King I think it was Larry Martin who has also written on the subject and published quite a few historical books
J.D. King
This is a chapter from my three-volume work on divine healing in Church history.
Joe Absher
thank you
Varnel Watson
I find particularly strange that most early accounts do NOT mention Anna Bartleman…
J.D. King
Troy, this is a Healing account. There is material overlooked that is not pertaining to this.
Varnel Watson
J.D. King well Bartleman provided the earliest of healing accounts within Azusa AND many of them were with his family and wife I Will post some when I get to my documents archive today
J.D. King
Troy, I was not aware of her healing experiences. I would be most interested in that.
Varnel Watson
J.D. King well I said Id get to me notes but I havent yet today Sorry about I will have to post what I got later on tonight Most of his books report family healings and other miracles Reminds of healing preacher diary at times when you read it
Varnel Watson
J.D. King On August 12, 1906 the Bartlemans opened meetings in a church at 8th and Maple Street. Anna would often pray through the night for his safety as services continued. Not merely a publisher of the Azusa chronicles and the Apostolic Faith newspaper, Bartleman envisioned that Azusa would be “a world-wide one without doubt.” For two years starting March of 1907, he travelled with his family spreading Pentecost. They labored so hard that both became ill in Houston and so did their son John while in Phoenix, but were soon eventually arrived back in Los Angeles on February 26, 1909.
Jeffrey Tankersley
J D King, I have your 3 volume “Regeneration” set and also your book on Etahn O Allen – ALL EXCELLENT READS!!