This is from pages 9-12 of The Phenomenon of Pentecost, by Frank J. Ewart
The book was originally copyrighted in 1947 by Herald Publishing House. I rhink this was Bro. Kidson’s Publishing house. The copyright was transferred in 1975 to Word Aflame Press and the book was revised in 2004 by Word Aflame. The edition I copied this from is the digital version distributed by the PPH.
Notice in this testimony he speaks of tarrying for 21 days before he was baptized in the Spirit. Tarrying was big back then.
I was born in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, in 1876. My father was Scotch and my mother of Irish descent. After I had graduated from school I entered into the varied life that the sawmills, lumber woods, and bush life affords. I loved every form of athletic work, and early in life I became a good cricketer and a proficient foot-runner. I cherished the ambition of entering that profession with its questionable involvements of gambling. However, at the very threshold of this career God apprehended me with a better vision—the vision of a new racing career for an imperishable prize.
I had a vision one day of Christ on the cross. His hair was all disheveled and blood bespattered, and His lovely face white with agony. I can never forget the expression in those large, luminous eyes as they looked down on me from the cross of shame. I thought I heard a voice saying, “I died for you!” Then the vision passed. But it changed my life. I had visited Golgotha; I had seen humanity hanging on a tree in Christ, its federal head.
The ambition for worldly fame and popularity vanished from my horizon, and I surrendered my heart to Christ and dedicated my life to the new vision of service for Him.
I enlisted in a new race that day. I became temperate in all things. I had to lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset me and run with patience the race set before me. Oh, what a change! I was in dead earnest from the start of this new career. I would get everything out of Calvary that God put into it. I would appropriate Christ in His fullness. He said that He died for me. That was enough! I would cease looking at the bleachers for their applause. I would seek that honor that comes from God only.
My early ministry as a bush missionary in Victoria was attended by unusual success. All I had was my experience and an insatiable hunger for knowledge of the Word of God. I studied and prayed while other men slept. I would often go to sleep while at study and wake up with the smell of my hair singed in the candle on the table. When I got a revival going, they would send up a man from the Baptist church headquarters to take over and I would move on to other pioneer work. In 1903 my health broke, and the doctors told me that I had not enough blood in my body to live on. They advised a change of climate.
I had some relatives in Canada, the country we Australians called Our Sister of the Snow! So I set my face towards that New World. Many almost insurmountable obstacles beset me in this purpose, but I never wavered, and I would say to my people: Canada is the place for me! In June of that year, I sorrowfully bid goodbye to the old life, its allurements and endearments, and sailed across the South Pacific Ocean. I landed at Vancouver and at once took a train for Weyburn, a town in the province of Saskatchewan, near where my cousin lived on a farm.
I presented my credentials to the officials at theBaptist headquarters in Winnipeg and was given a church pastorate. I married a Christian girl of a family of Baptists. I was reordained and worked for a few years at two different pastorates. However, the old insatiable hunger for a real experience with the Word of God still possessed me. My wife and I would come home from the Sunday’s services and would get down and weep and pray for the power of the Holy Ghost to be manifested in our ministry as it was in Finney’s and Moody’s ministries.
God is always on hand to satisfy the longing soul and fill it with His goodness. There came a letter from my brother-in-law inviting us to come out and rest at his farm near New Westminster, British Columbia. He told us of some religious prodigy that had invaded that territory. He said it had everything in the religious world backed clean off the map. He said the pastor and every bonafide member of the church claimed to have received the baptism with the Holy Ghost, with the sign of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance, exactly as the early saints and apostles of the Lord Jesus received it. He said that many claimed divine healing, and they also claimed that the gifts of the Spirit were still available, as these had never been withdrawn from the church of Christ.
My physical trouble became worse, and in a few weeks we received a furlough from the church and were on our way rejoicing. We attended a few of their meetings, but hearing of a large camp meeting at Portland, Oregon, [in 1908] we decided to go there and see the new thing at its best.
I can never forget the first day I spent on that campground. The place seemed to be hallowedwith the presence of the Deity. A strange, unearthly feeling possessed me, and I walked around attending every meeting and talking to everyone I could about this wonderful experience. I perceived with my own eyes and ears miracles that were indisputable being performed by the power of faith in the Word of God. Drunken men brought in on the gospel wagon from the street meetings would be sobered up, saved, and filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues. I would select those who gave the most wonderful testimonies and accost them after the meetings with: “I heard your wonderful testimony. I can’t bring myself to believe that God is doing such things for His people. Is it on the level? My life is in the balance; everything depends on my getting this thing and getting it straight.” Then they would go over it again and graciously assure me that it was for me, as God was no respecter of persons.
Then the great miracle happened. I got an insatiable hunger for this experience and commenced tarrying. I prayed night and day for twenty-one days. At midnight, as the twenty-first day ended, I received a mighty infilling with the Holy Ghost. God left no room for doubt. I spoke in several known languages that I knew nothing about, and some of them were interpreted that night. I had asked the Lord to let all diseases go out of my body when the Holy Spirit came in. He took me at my word and answered my prayer. I had been wearing glasses for years, but my eyes were completely normal again, and the new blood pulsated through my veins like a mountain stream. I felt like the psalmist, “I have run through a troop; and . . . leaped over a wall” (
Psalm 18:29).
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