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Shortly after this time
Will Sowders was fishing in Olmstead, Illinois. Though he describes himself
as a rough fellow, he must have been something of an idealist. He joined the
police force of his home town of Louisville, Kentucky. One day Will and
another officer got news of a gambling party. Without checking with their
superiors, they readied their horse-drawn paddy wagon and proceeded to raid
the party. To their surprise and everyone's embarrassment they found both the
mayor and the police chief were in attendance. This was a time when the
Puritan ethic in America was breaking down through the combined forces of
prosperity and the huge numbers of Catholic immigrants who were flooding the
country. The Catholics did not inherit the Puritan tradition. Disillusioned
with this hypocrisy, Will Sowders resigned from the police force, and decided
to become a hermit, fishing and hunting along the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers. He was in his early thirties when he met this group at Olmstead.
Sowders had ambivalent feelings about the Pentecostals. He didn't like their
speaking in tongues. This made him mad. But he did like their music; and he
noted that they treated one another better than did the other Christians. As
he got to know them better he would offer to ferry people across the Ohio so
they could attend the meeting at Olmstead. Eventually, he was talked into
attending the services, and he was converted under the preaching of Frank
Knight. The freedom of the
early Pentecostal Movement Too frequently, those who
write about the great Pentecostal revival at the beginning of the century
project the later situation back into that movement. They give the impression
that the Pentecostal revival was confined to certain churches and movements.
Remember, there weren't any Pentecostal churches then. The Pentecostal
revival was a broad-based movement that really did sweep the country; at
least, every place where the people were hungry for the things of God. One of
the significance of the outbreak of tongues was that no one knew what to do
with, or what to make of, or how to deal with this new revival. At first,
they were not generally inclined to oppose a new work of God, which was
manifestly a work of God. This revival broke out especially among those
churches most open to a new work of God. Because so many of the
Pentecostals were forced out of the established churches, there was much
freedom. They had to have church in their homes. They had no platforms, no
special seats, no routine order of service to
follow. All the people could and were expected to participate in the services.
They found innovative ways to spread the gospel. Brother Aubrey had a boat
large enough to hold meetings. After Brother Sowders got saved, he and
Brother Aubrey would travel up and down the Ohio River preaching the gospel.
They would pull into every little town or settlement and begin preaching. The
people would hear about it; and they would come. Often they were invited to
preach in some home or church. Sister Mary Snyder remembers when Brother
Sowders pulled his boat into Louisville. She was then a little girl, standing
beside her mother. She thought Brother Sowders was just like Jesus, preaching
from the boat. Another option available to
them was the tent. The tent was an improvement on the brush arbors of earlier
days. When Brother Sowders got a tent, he was no longer limited to preaching
along the Rivers. He could travel anyplace and hold a meeting. That is how he
got his church started in Louisville. He pitched his tent in Louisville. It
really shook up the Pentecostals in Louisville. When he had a lot of people
gathered, he got a building. The tents were also used for camp meetings,
which the Methodists had abandoned in favor of retreats. One was expected to
hold a revival at a camp meeting. Brother Sowders did something different,
probably a first in the history of religion. He held schools in the tents and
at the camp meetings. At first the camp meeting school was at Olmstead, then it was moved to Elco Hill.
Because Brother Sowders allowed the "colored folks" to attend the
citizens at Elco gave him trouble. He then move the school back to Olmstead. In 1934, he got the site
at Shepherdsville. That Little Church After his conversion
Sowders would attend the breakfast meetings at the Shelton's home. Every
morning at 9:00 the church would gather for prayer and worship. Sometimes
they would get so caught up in the Spirit they would let the breakfast burn.
These prayer breakfasts became the prototype for the form at our camp
meeting. The order at that little church would be the order which Brother
Sowders would preach as the order of the restored church. As the Pentecostals
started to introduce formalites, to organize, and
to quench the Spirit out of their churches, Brother Sowders would resist all
the new formalities, eventually separating himself from the other
Pentecostals. This is the truth, which a deep study of William Sowders is
proving more and more. So in order to understand Brother Sowder's
message, it is important to understand what they had back there in that
little church. This doesn't mean that the movement didn't advance, but part
of the advance was recognizing how Babylon creeps into new movements which
try to perfect with the flesh what was begun in the Spirit. One thing they
did was to challenge one another. Their worship was not controlled by a
pastor. In fact, in that church they didn't even have a pastor. This does not
mean that they did not recognize the elders in the Lord, but there was no one
then who lorded themselves over the church. The assembly I was
raised in was a home where we worshipped, with about 20 saints. And we would
go in there with no pastor. A pastor that doesn't get in God's way is a
dandy. Brother Knight was there and Brother Shelton. No one was head over it
as a pastor. We saw some wonderful things happen in the meetings. God
revealed things right there. When the light of heaven is shining you can't
hide. If you had a quarrel with your wife someone would say, "You did so
and so ... and so...." it was rich. I'll tell you we were so anxious to
come to church and see the manifestations of God. There was no preacher to
say "Alright we are going to start the meeting; or, "Now, we will
have testimony service." We started testifying when we came in. But later things changed. I was reared in that
little assembly in Illinois. For two years I remained there after I was
called to preach the gospel and received the Holy Ghost. But in a short time
after I left there was an unsaved man promised to build a church house for
them. He went around soliciting money, and helped build the church. I went
down there and did some work on the platform, and built a Bible stand. I told
them myself, "God has always been in this little assembly, and there's
no richer little assembly." And I was right about that. But I said,
"From now on you are going to see a vast change in the worship in this
place. This little assembly isn't going to be blessed anymore like it
was." The first thing they had
to do was have a pastor. They got a church, and a platform, and a Bible
stand, and a chair for the preacher; but they didn't have a preacher. They
said, "We have to have a preacher, and they got a preacher. The first
thing you know they were as dead as any formal church in the world. Brother Sowders never cared
to be in a separate class from the people. Anything I despise is
for someone to say"Meet Rev. Sowders." If
there is a name I despise for them to call me it is "Rev." Another
thing that I despise is that I "preach". I "preach" ? -- I "preach" ?
-- I never did preach! The role of the pastor, and the role Brother Sowders intended for the
Moderator he appointed to succeed him, was to keep the meeting open. He
wasn't to dominate the service, but he was to use his position to unblock
anything which would get in the way of the free flow of the Spirit. He was to
allow anyone and everyone to speak and to participate in the service, and he
certainly wasn't to try to divide the people, to discover enemies. Brother
Sowders let his enemies speak. He wouldn't set someone down for being opposed
to him; but he would occasionally intervene if someone was dragging the
service down, or if someone was talking on and on in a carnal mind. The type
of people who he would let speak were the type of people who, in the next
dispensation, would be thrown out by the Moderator; and the type of people
who he would set down were the type of people who would later come to
dominate the meetings as featured speakers: those who "killed" the
Spirit by the spirit in which they were talking, and by talking on and on.
But, of course, we are learning to do better. The way of the body of Christ
is that we learn by our mistakes. Brother Sowders' first
church was at Evansville, Indiana. He was called to be the pastor there. The
church was already in existence. It seems to have been one of Parham's group. They believed in being sanctified. The previous
pastor was an attorney, possibly, W. Faye Carothers, who is mentioned in
Brother Patton's book. That group was then teaching that any physical
manifestations were of the flesh. This was due to Brother Parham's reaction
to the "excesses" at Azuza Street. The sanctity of the
early Pentecostal movement Again, because we tend to
project later problems back to the beginnings of the movement, these things
have obscured the beauty and the innocence of that first Pentecostal revival.
There was another revival, or rather the same revival, was going on in Wales
over in Great Britain, about the same time. I bring up the revival over in
Wales because it has gotten better press than the revival in the United States,
especially through the writings of Jessica Penn Lewis. She and others tried
to separate that revival from the one going on at the same time in the United
States. It is true that they weren't focusing on tongues evidence in that
revival though there was plenty of speaking in tongues
over there. The Welsh revival actually caused the stores to close down
business. It reduced the crime rate so much that the police were left with
nothing to do. This is well documented. You have heard Brother Giffin preach about the revivals of Mary Woodworth-Etter, and the changes she would bring to the city where
she was preaching. In the United States the revival was scattered all over
the country, but it was mostly in the poor areas of the cities, and the rural
areas of the United States, where the people and churches were more open to
the new revival. There was a tremendous outpouring just as was prophesied in
the book of Joel. The revival planted the Pentecostals all over the world. I remember 35 years or
more ago, that is, referring to men like this for I saw Pentecostal people
before I was converted. I saw manifestations in their midst, and I saw them
do what nobody else did. I told my wife, "That people are more precious
to each other than anybody I ever saw. They carry flour, milk, potatoes to
each other. In their houses every day and night, and stayed almost all
night." Of course, I had bad thoughts about that; but I had to stay two
nights until daylight to get the baptism myself. But it was precious. Then
when I got it, I saw meetings in that little assembly of 25; and those
meetings were rich and glorious, and grand. It was nothing for me to be on
the floor, and not able to stand up. If I did not fall under the power of
God, I was getting nowhere. Yes, indeed, I would fall under the power of God.
Women and men were falling and those who had presence of mind were grabbing
people out of the way to keep them from others falling on them. In the earliest days people
were attracted to the Pentecostal movement simply because light was shining
from the people. Opposition and
Persecution One might think that the
whole world would have rejoiced at the latter day Pentecostal outpouring.
Such was not the case. There was considerable opposition to the revival; and,
ironically, the greatest opposition came from those who were suppose to be
the most religious. This was also the case in the First Great Awakening, and
the Second Great Awakening. Those blessed possessors of the faith will be the
greatest opponents of all new works of God. They had forged weapons from
earlier revivals which they used against the Pentecostals; but these weren't
enough so they had to forge new ones. They wouldn't be much effective against
those who really had the experience; but they could influence those who were
willing to take the judgments of others about the Pentecostals. By the time
that most people got to see the revival, the Pentecostals and their
"Holy Roller" ways had already been described to them. The opposition was mostly
on theological grounds, but to understand these arguments, you need to know a
little bit of the modern history of theological development. Jonathan
Edwards, John Wesley, and the success of the revivals, had done much to
dilute the effectiveness of the antinomian argument, which was so effectively
used against the Quakers and others in the Seventeenth Century. This is an
argument against an interior experience, or against the notion that an
individual today could have a direct revelation or leading from God. You see
this even in the New Testament with the Pharisees, and others asking Jesus by
what authority he had for the things he was saying and doing. Jesus used
Scripture, but he also claimed a direct knowledge of God. He even dared to
declare the provisional aspect of much Scripture, or to add to it: "You
have heard it said, '....'; but I say to you, '...'". The Jews of that
day, for several centuries, had been influence by the Greeks and the Romans.
The most popular pagan philosophy was actually a religion: Stoicism, which
was worship of law. Under their influence some Jews began to call the books
of Moses, "the Law". They began effectively to worship the written
Scriptures; and that is how Paul was trained. The Bible, combined with
the doctrine of sola scripture, was certainly an effective weapon to
use against the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholics were
manufacturing Holy relics, sending pilgrims to sites where saints had been
martyred or where they had performed miracles in order that they would get
some of the merit of these saints; and teaching the miracle of
transubstantiation, by which only an authorized priest could turn the bread
and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Against all this magic and sham,
the Protestants asserted Scripture. In those days it was dangerous enough to
quote Scripture, but if you asserted the Spirit, you would certainly be
burned by the Catholics or drowned by the Protestants. The Anabaptists and
George Fox, who were victims of antinomian charges, knew more Scripture, and quoted
more Scripture, and with this knowledge of Scripture greatly intimidated
those who were persecuting them. The Catholics and Protestants had to say
that the gifts of the Spirit, miracles, and direct communication from God
were only for the apostolic church. They were needed only to plant the
church, or to establish the church; and after that was done, like
scaffolding, they were to be torn down and thrown away. This is the reverse
of the idea of the church falling into apostasy, or going into the wilderness.
It is the idea of the Church becoming victorious when it became the official
religion of the Roman Empire. To them it was victorious when there was no
more Spirit of God left. Let's be careful that we don't rationalize, as some
have done, the movement away from the spiritual freedom of Brother Sowders
day. Some of the Protestants
argued against any presence of the supernatural in the modern world. They
even eliminated the idea that there was such a thing as spirits. This was a
logical development of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. God had
determined everything in the beginning, and all of history was merely the
unfolding of that plan. Of course, they couldn't and didn't deny the Bible
with all the supernatural and miracles which it contained. But all these
miracles in the Bible were predestined in the beginning. All things were
subject to God's laws of nature, which he established in the beginning. Being
predestined, everything could be explained by mechanical principles. Even
human beings were subject to mechanical laws. This view became known as
Deism, and it wasn't just the view of radicals, but of most of the Divines,
that is, the bishops of the Anglican Church. They said there were two books
you could read -- the Bible or the book of Nature, and it didn't matter which
you read, you would come to the same truths as are in the Bible. Since it
doesn't matter, the enlightened man will prefer the book of Nature, the Bible
having been written for the masses, who had no
understanding. Here, of course, was developing modern scientific naturalism
and unbelief associated with that. They eventually did try to explain
everything in the Bible from natural causes -- credulous ancient people,
fortuitous coincidences of comets, earthquakes, etc., historical fiction
which the authors of the Bible used to rationalize their own aims. One could
go on and on. These modernist have not been the main
opponents of the Pentecostals. They have generally ignored us; but, more
recently, they have studied Pentecostals from a sociological and a
psychological perspective, and some of their ways of thinking were used by
the mainline churches in their opposition to the Pentecostals. If you are
secure in your experience, you will really be amused by their analysis and
conclusions. The more they view us as subjects of study, the more sympathetic
they can be; but they believe too much in the modern world to experience what
we experience. So, they will never be able to understand someone who knows
the Lord. During the Great Awakening,
the Old School, or Old Light Puritans challenged the idea that anyone could
have an experience of God. In this they were more extreme even than
the Catholics, who would allow that more recent dead people -- it was
important that they be dead -- who had not seriously challenged the authority
of the church, could have done miracles, but only if these miracles were
substantiated by Church authorities. The Catholics allow inward mysticism,
which affects only the individual, and doesn't result in anything that would
threaten the Church. More recently, the Catholics have even accepted a
revival of the charisma of the early church, so long as the Charismatics fall all over themselves proving that they
are good Catholics, absolutely obedient to the Pope and the teachings of the
Catholic Church. The churches of the Old School Puritans dried up, and almost
all the new churches were either Baptist, Methodist, or of the New School
Presbyterian or Congregationalists. The Old School eventually were forced to accept the New Lights and the New Light
Ministers who were trained in the log cabin schools of the prophets. A
born-again experience became the staple of American religion. |
