Pentecostal Pioneers

[Sam]

continued from previous post:

Years later, I was honored as guest speaker at a ministerial gathering at old Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California. The Holy Spirit led me to speak from a text that day that I never had spoken from before or since: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:30. It was not for me to question the reason why, for long.

One precious brother, looking like a patriarch, stood and remarked that he was the father or founder of “the present day revelation of Jesus Christ as the Everlasting Father.” Another stood and claimed credit for the present day revelation of “baptism in Jesus’ name.” The Holy Spirit through the text given us in the Spirit that day, soon cut the ground from beneath their feet. When it was truly made known, the fact was that Jesus Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith.” Heb. 12:2. Thereupon we made known the manner in which the Lord first revealed the truth of baptism in Jesus name to us in Indiana; how about the same time the Lord revealed the same truth to one of our missionaries in far off India; and again to another precious minister in Canada; thus demonstrating the fact that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses” the Lord makes known the truth. Matt. 18:16. Thus, no single individual or group of persons have a right to call themselves the author or finisher of the “faith once delivered unto the saints” for this honor belongs to the Lord Jesus alone, who is indeed the true “author and finisher of our faith.”

Today, (written in 1967) after having been a minister of the Apostolic Faith better than half a century, and having evangelized in all of the states of the Union, the greater part of Canada, and sections of Mexico, we, together with you, dear reader, praise God for millions of souls that have been born into the kingdom of God through old time Apostolic revivals which have swept across our continent, affecting the entire Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish world. Truly, it is time for the Lord’s people to return to “the faith once delivered to the saints.”