Transcription
Hey Pastor Steve Waldron, New Life Church, Albany, Georgia. Hope you're having a great day in Jesus. We're going to look at a question, and we're not going to bore down really deep, but we're going to give you general information on how the Assembly of God and the United Pentecostal Church split back in 1916.
Now, we're going to define those terms because it's not as simple as what I just said. Because the United Pentecostal Church technically didn't even come into existence till 1945. But you have, like, Charisma magazine calling this one of the worst divisions in Christendom. People constantly work to heal this division. Springfield, Missouri, headquarters of the Assemblies of God; uh, Weldon Springs used to be Hazelwood, Missouri, headquarters United Pentecostal Church. Just there's always been a lot of affinity there, believe it or not.
And so what ended up happening is at the worldwide camp meeting—I've actually been to the spot—in 1913, you had R.E. McAlister preaching. He just mentioned—he was a Canadian evangelist, and I think he was an evangelist, not a pastor, who may have been both—but anyhow, he was preaching on how the apostles baptized in Jesus' name. So then that night, you had a guy run through the camp—because they were literal camp meetings back then—saying, "I see it! I see it!" And he saw where the apostles baptized in Jesus' name. And there's kind of a corollary doctrine that comes with that: if the apostles baptized in Jesus' name, that the name of the Father, Son, Holiest must be Jesus—all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Jesus bodily. We're completing Him—Jesus: "When you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Father dwelleth in me." So the kind of the Logos theology has to be redefined. Obviously, Logos theology is uh, true if defined properly, that the Logos is the Father. And so—and so I see. And then somebody mentioned that, well, that's the same thing a certain doctor teaches. And so, you know, big men began to see this, and you had two men in particular: Frank Ewart and R.J. Cook. Big R.G. Cook—my father-in-law actually grew up under R.G. Cook's ministry as a boy—said he was a huge guy, but always very, you know, happy and all this. And so they re-baptized one another in Jesus' name there in—was it Belvedere, California?—and then they had a big tent revival again in the 1913 era, and they said everybody—hundreds—got baptized in Jesus' name. And everybody who got baptized in Jesus' name, you know, so many people are getting Holy Ghost, people getting healed; it was like God putting His divine seal on that.
And then R.G. Cook goes east, and uh, one of the future Assembly of God uh, leaders, you know, writes—G.T. Haywood says, "Be careful, R.J. Cook's coming with a false doctrine. Be careful." And G.T.A. was like, "Oops, he's already been here, and I've already seen it. Got baptized in Jesus' name." And G.T. Haywood, that great illustrator, journalist, and an amazing pastor who had—he was a Black man who had a mixed church—200 white or so, 200 Black or so—in Indianapolis in the 1900s, one of the headquarters for the KKK—quite the thing. It's huge trees in town, which French's book on uh, interracial Pentecostalism, you know, is such, you know, around the world, people want to study that book in academia because it's really true—the power of the Holy Ghost and the new birth experience broke down all these various divisions.
Now, the argument—we'll get back to in just a moment—the where the split came in, but a big argument is—we'll see—Oneness Pentecostalism didn't start till 1913. Now, that's demonstrably not true. Even at the time that camp meeting, somebody said, "Well, this doctor teaches it." And you had the Christian Church—Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone—taught Acts 2:38—people going down. You can get like the Millennial Harbinger and other publications from the 1800s—people getting baptized in Jesus' name. And somebody getting beat with 10 lashes in Philadelphia in 1729 for baptizing in Jesus' name. Martin Luther saying there are people who affectedly fight for Jesus' name baptism all the way back when—was that 1521 in the Babylonian captivity? The church—Zwingli saying it's a fact that the apostles baptized in Jesus' name. Church history showing to fact that the first, you know, couple centuries from the apostles onward—baptism in Jesus' name. Stephen, who's now considered a pope in the 250s, advocating for baptism in Jesus' name. And so many, many things. And you know, Tertullian saying the majority of the believers were Oneness in 200 A.D. And of course, be baptizing in Jesus' name. No record of anybody ever baptizing other than in Jesus' name. Pronouncing it—Lars Hartman showing that's biblical. It's just universally acknowledged now among real scholars—not among apologists with a certain particular viewpoint, which can skew their viewpoint—but people just searching for the truth, everybody acknowledges original baptism—it's in Jesus' name, and it was, you know, the the practice of the early church. So again, demonstrably not true. Robert Robinson's uh, Ecclesiastical Researches and History of Baptism showing Jesus' name baptism was ubiquitous in Spain in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries A.D. The Bogomils, you know, of the Eastern Orthodox Empire baptizing in Jesus. And just all kinds. So and you go—I'm very thankful for people studying other Christianities because Christianity we tend to just localize it in the West when Christianity was a worldwide phenomenon for millennia—whether it be Africa, whether it be the ancient Near East, or whether it be the Far East—there was Christianity, and very possibly even in what's known as the New World. Appreciate some Church of Christ scholars having the open-mindedness to study that among others.
So getting back to this. So even at the at the meeting, McAlister was at—somebody else teaching it, you know—and it's like they say the outpouring of the Holy Ghost 1900. We go up—we take our youth group up to North Georgia—and just over the border in North Georgia—North Carolina—there's state, you know, markers saying, "Here was a Holy Ghost outpouring in 1898 of people speaking with tongues." Assembly of God Historical Center has like a pulpit from North Dakota in 1871—Holy Ghost outpouring, speaking with tongues. Wesley's revivals recorded speaking with tongues. Whitefield, Cane Ridge Revival, University of Georgia 1801, 1802 had an outbreak of speaking with tongues. I mean, so this is just the Irvingites in the 1830s. You can just go on and on, and people—very learned scholars like Kalbura and Tom Weisser and Marvin Arnold and others—Dave Bernard go through this in vast details. And uh, even some like George Hunston Williams from Harvard University who got the Holy Ghost, speaking with that. So anyhow, again, demonstrably not true. And even in the early—1902—you had Charles Fox Parham baptizing H.A. Goss in Jesus' name. Many people say Seymour was—even though he never became ostensibly Oneness—at the Azusa Street Mission was baptizing in Jesus' name, and some very concrete evidence in that camp to a certain extent. Anyhow. So anyhow. So going back. So it kind of spreads. And so the Assembly of God had been started at uh, in Arkansas in 1913, just to kind of bring some organization to Pentecostalism because it was just like wildfire. And you had all kinds of even entire organizations like the Church of God getting the Holy Ghost to begin teaching this fire-baptized holiness church and all this. So many of your beginners of the Assemblies of God, such as Ian Bell, such as H.A. Goss, later began to baptize in Jesus' name, and the corollary doctrine began to see the fullness of Jesus Christ in uh, the fullness of God in Jesus Christ—that Jesus, you know, that old question is—Jesus in the Godhead or is the Godhead in Jesus? Colossians 2:9 says the Godhead is in Jesus. So the biblical answer to that is the Godhead is in Jesus. Don't let anybody gasp like you read that scripture—that's what the Bible says. And so it just became—it was called the new issue at the time. Ursion was baptizing people in Jesus' name and Russia 1910, 1911. I think that's what uh, Sea Graves has come up with in his wonderful book in so many ways on Andrew Urshan. And so probably did a really bad review on that, just—but anyhow, it's a long story, but uh, anyhow. And so it just grew and grew, and it threatened to just engulf the Assemblies of God. So the Assemblies of God tried to maintain some unity about it in their 1915 meeting. The 1916 meeting, the leadership had kind of already decided that they were going to come out with what's known—it's still in the Assembly of God manual—called the Statement of Fundamental Truths. And so you had certain imminent theologians in the Assembly of God that went back to church history really and wrote a very strong Trinitarian statement of faith. And basically, not only wrote a strong Trinitarian statement of faith, but at the same time, if you read it—which many of you may have—it really highly indicates that the Oneness of God view is the spirit of antichrist based on First John 2:23-24 and all this. I mean, so it was something that if you were Oneness, you really couldn't stay in the Assembly of God. But like in the Assembly of God, you had like Assembly of God churches in Louisiana—13 of them, I think—12 became one. You had guys like O.F. Foss and the, you know, his book on Pentecostal history is absolutely unreal if you've never read it—the purity of the time. So is Ethel Goss's The Winds of God—absolutely fantastic. You really get a feel for the power of the Holy Ghost, the purity of it at the time. And uh, so almost exactly 25—about 156 ministers left the Assembly of God over that issue. They were quoting the scripture and Isaiah, you know, "Your brethren that hated you for my name's sake, you know, I'm gonna come for your glory and their shame." And um, and while they're in their singing, the people that stayed, you know, "Holy, holy, holy God, Trinity" and all this. Um, and so that's how the Assembly of God and the United Pentecostal Church split. But now it's technically not true of the United Pentecostal Church. It was 156 ministers that left, and they did not immediately form the United Pentecostal Church. Some—PAWs—some—the General Assembly of Apostolic Assemblies—the G.A. of A.A.A.—it was a big deal with World War I going on because conscientious objection—objectors, you know, like Sergeant Alvin York and all this—was a big deal at the time. So to hold ministerial credentials kept you from having to go fight against your conscience. And so again, a big deal had something to do with trains and all of this. And over the course of times—PCI, PA of JC—the Pentecostal Church Incorporated, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ became two of the major church bodies primarily of Caucasian Oneness Pentecostals. The PAW, even though it had a very large Caucasian contingent in it because of segregation at that time, um, they didn't—the Southern ministers didn't like always having to travel to the North for the general conference because obviously the the Northern ministers couldn't come to the South for the general conferences if you were Black because of Jim Crow and all these terrible, horrible, you know, demonic, satanic laws and all this at the time. Sorry if that offends some of you with the Southern heritage—it's just what it is. It was an evil thing. It was an evil time. Forget your Southern heritage—I'm from the South, too. And so um, and so there was a split there. And so in 1945, you had the end of World War II, and kind of the zeitgeist of the age had the United Nations under the communist Alger Hiss and all this being created. And so the PCI, which had a large percentage of ministers who did not believe that Acts 2:38 was necessarily the new birth—they would say that it was very good for you to do it—was biblical, it was Christian, but you were saved before that—combined with the PA of JC, who had a large percentage of ministers that said that Acts 2:38 was essential to salvation—that was necessary for salvation. And that's the reason the first three issues of Pentecostal Herald you could write either—you're saved at repentance or right in favor of the new birth experience. And uh, Brother Johnson has reproduced those three issues. I don't know if you can still get them—best things—get the little CD-ROM—get them all—and you get all kinds of great information out of there. You can see where people uh, got messages like Amnon had a friend—the guy who preached that—so unbelievable—it was actually in the Pentecostal Herald a few years before somebody wounds that never healed preached it uh, because of the time—so amazing—it was actually in the Pentecostal Herald by another person just a few years before. And so you can really get a kind of a feel for interesting errata like that. You can read the King James Version being defended in the Pentecostal Herald in the early 80s around Christmas time and all that. But be that as it may, so that's how the split happened. And so um, you know, I'm not sure that reunification should even be a goal—maybe some do—but I think, you know, the United Pentecostal Church should just continue to believe and teach what it feels—and we very strongly—I mean the United Pentecostal Church feel our biblical doctrines and just, you know, love everybody, of course, be kind, and you know, be the Good Samaritan and everything, but you know, you can't compromise doctrines in this—like in 2001 to 2007 with the Society of Pentecostal Studies—this kind of working group among Trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostals was instituted and to see if there was any basis of reunification and all that. And the Society of Pentecostal Studies actually has had an Oneness leader—Manuel Gaxioligoxiol—and I'm probably mispronouncing that name—not not intentionally—um, just because I've only seen it in print. I've rarely—I've heard years ago people pronounce it, but I've forgotten the pronunciation. So that's how the Assembly of God and the United Pentecostal Church split, and that's a very brief—there's great books on it—Fred Foster's book, 20th Century Pentecostals: Their Story—absolutely unreal on it. I'm sure there's others as well. I'm thinking there's the lady out of the Chicago area, and I can't call her name right now. I apologize, but uh, there's some written from a Trinitarian perspective as well. So God bless. Let's just love truth. Love truth. Organizations are all man-made, but the Church is birthed by God. So organizations are just groups of people who believe the same thing or very similar things to get together because you need more together than apart. And that's all they are—they're not the body of Christ. So God bless. Talk with you later, in Jesus' name.