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Eighty-Five Years Ago

by Cordas C. Burnett

The following article is taken from the first two parts of a three-part series first published in The Pentecostal Evangel in 1954 (March 28, April 4,11) on the 40th anniversay of the Assemblies of God. The author is the late Cordas C. Burnett. We have updated and adapted the material for the Enrichment Journal.

April 2–12, 1999, marked the 85th anniversary of the founding of the General Council of the Assemblies of God. The prayers and dreams of the 300 who gathered that year at Hot Springs, Arkansas, have been more than fulfilled. Their embryonic group has become a powerful, aggressive, Christ-honoring, Spirit-filled body of Christians over 30 million strong worldwide who are still carrying out one of the original purposes by spreading the Word at home and abroad.

Pentecostals today, conscious of our need for the Holy Spirit’s ministry, should remind ourselves again of the humble, God-fearing origins from which we sprang.

Reliable records indicate the Holy Spirit fell in New England as early as 1854; and in the Cumberland Mountains in 1877; on an Arkansas Holiness preacher, W. Jethro Walthal, in 1879; on Daniel Awrey in Delaware, Ohio, in 1890; and on a preacher named C.M. Hanson of Dalton, Minnesota, in 1899. Then on January 1, 1901, God poured out His Spirit in Bethel Bible College, Topeka, Kansas, where Agnes Ozman became the first of millions in the 20th century to experience the Pentecostal baptism.

Although many religious leaders opposed it, this glorious effusion of God’s glory and power could not be kept under a bushel but spread across Kansas, into Missouri, down into Texas, and finally to the West Coast, where its holy fire broke out anew in 1906 in the Azusa Street Mission, Los Angeles.

Spontaneously in 1906–07, the revival broke out among students at a Christian and Missionary Alliance ministerial training school at Nyack, New York. Four of our Assemblies of God leaders received the Holy Spirit there: David McDowell, Frank M. Boyd, G.F. Bender, and W.I. Evans. Pastor D.W. Kerr accepted the message at Beulah Park Camp near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1907. Miss Marie Burgess, who later married Robert A. Brown, carried the message from Zion, Illinois, to New York City in 1908, where she and her husband founded Glad Tidings Tabernacle. Glen A. Cook held a revival in Indianapolis in January 1907, where J. Roswell Flower, who later became general secretary of the Assemblies of God, was converted and Mrs. Flower received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Giving up the study of law, Brother Flower, assisted by his fiancée, then Miss Alice Reynolds, sponsored a camp meeting in Indianapolis 2 years later, where he, too, was filled with the Spirit. This dynamic soul-stirring move of the Holy Ghost continued, making people everywhere conscious of their own unworthiness and of His glorious grace. In short, “a revival had come from God.”

With the revival came many concomitant effects. New converts, eager for every morsel of truth, became victims of those who preyed on the unsuspecting. Doctrinal issues arose to confuse them. Religious leaders with few restrictions and less inhibitions led many astray. Others were cast out of their orthodox churches. Congregations without pastors had no one to whom they could turn. Missionary efforts were hampered because the congregations and their leaders had little or no knowledge of the foreign fields. Clergy and laity alike recognized the need for some semblance of organization—at least for fellowship and the furtherance of the missionary cause. For the most part, organization was frowned on. With the exception of two small Pentecostal bodies in the Southeastern states, there was little semblance of organization anywhere.

As early as April 14, 1906, many had banded together at Orchard, Texas, to found the Apostolic Faith Movement. Under the leadership of H.A. Goss, W.F. Carothers, and (at a later date) Arch P. Collins and E.N. Bell, it progressed into a strong Pentecostal nucleus in the southwest. E.N. Bell, formerly a Baptist preacher in Fort Worth, had received the Holy Spirit in Pastor Durham’s old North Avenue Mission in 1908 and soon after became the editor of Apostolic Faith.

Another of these early leaders was D.C.O. Opperman who conducted scores of 6-week Bible schools in the Midwestern States. Other Bible schools of more permanent nature had been established in other parts of the country. One of these, established at Plainfield, Indiana, by D. Wesley Myland, was attended by Flem Van Meter, Fred Vogler, and J. Roswell Flower. In another, at Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1909, Ralph M. Riggs, who later became general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, and his mother received the light of the Pentecostal testimony.

At the request of a schoolteacher named L.P. Adams, Brother Cashwell came to Memphis in 1907. Here, H.G. Rodgers of Alabama received the Holy Spirit. Likewise M.M. Pinson, editor of Word and Witness, accepted the truth. Rodgers, Pinson, and a convert of the latter, D.J. Dubose, evangelized the Deep South while Cashwell took the message to the groups now comprising the Church of God and the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Pinson and Rodgers carried the message to Alabama where the first Pentecostal church was founded in 1910 at New Brockton.

Sometime later, Rodgers sent out a call to the ministers in the area for a 3-day convention at Slocomb, Alabama. On February 11, 1911, about 20 ministers calling themselves the Church of God (with no connection to the group in Tennessee) met at Providence, near Slocomb. They elected H.G. Rodgers as chairman and J.W. Ledbetter as secretary, ordained four men, licensed seven, and issued Home certificates to two women. The next day, over 100 participated in a Communion service; and having agreed to meet again in October at Montgomery, they adjourned.

Shortly after this initial meeting in 1911, this group changed their name to the Church of God in Christ in agreement with the leaders of the black church with the same name. That fall they met in Dothan, Alabama, instead of in Montgomery. About this time this group and the Apostolic Faith movement merged. Although no record of any official business meeting has been found between the fall of 1911 and summer of 1913, several factors point to this union. For example, ordination credentials issued to J.W. Welch on June 4, 1912, are signed by E.N. Bell, H.A. Goss, W.T. Gaston, Arch P. Collins, and D.C.O. Opperman, all leaders in the Apostolic Faith group. But the credential is issued in the name of The Church of God in Christ and in unity with the Apostolic Faith movement. Another ordination certificate issued to Bright Haggard on August 20, 1912, carries the dual name. The Word and Witness of January 20, 1913, urged attendance of ministers of both groups at Dothan, Alabama, in February 1913.

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