2008 Heritage hot off the press

The 2008 annual edition of Assemblies of God Heritage magazine is hot off the press and will shortly be mailed to all credentialed Assemblies of God ministers. Additional copies may be ordered online or by phone: 877.840.5200 (toll free).

Download selected free articles from the 2008 edition from the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center website. If you like what you read, consider ordering the entire 2008 edition of Heritage for yourself, or as a gift for your friends or relatives. We think you will agree that Heritage magazine is a keepsake!

The 2008 edition features the following articles:

Dr. Charles S. Price: His Life, Ministry and Influence
This Oxford-educated pastor became one of the most noteworthy Pentecostal evangelists of the twentieth century.
BY TIM ENLOE

Teen Challenge: 50 Years of Miracles
What began as an outreach by David Wilkerson to the gangs of New York City has developed into one of the largest and most successful Christian drug-treatment programs.
BY DAVID BATTY AND ETHAN CAMPBELL

Conflicted by the Spirit: The Religious Life of Elvis Presley
The “King of Rock ‘n Roll,” the most famous Assemblies of God Sunday school prospect from the 1950s, experienced an all-too public struggle between his religious upbringing and the temptations of the world.
BY JAMES R. GOFF, JR.

Rev. B. V. Robison to celebrate 100th birthday

On February 2, 2008, Rev. Bernice Vance (B. V.) Robison will achieve something that few Assemblies of God ministers can claim – he will celebrate his 100th birthday. Reared in the Waurika and Terral areas in Oklahoma, Robison later moved to Texas, which became his home state. In 1927, at the age of 19, he began traveling with Floyd Hawkins. Together, they held revivals in towns and communities across Texas, bringing the Pentecostal message to many people for the first time. Numerous Assemblies of God churches were organized as a result of their efforts.

In 1929 Robison married Lillie Mae Holdridge. Following a 1930 revival campaign held in Freeport, Texas, he remained to pioneer a church, which became First Assembly of God. In the early days of the Assemblies of God, most pastors were bi-vocational, and they were expected to be competent in multiple skills. Robison’s natural building abilities meant that, in each of his pastorates, he would erect a church building.

After a hurricane destroyed the first building he erected for the Freeport congregation, he built a second one. To date, five Assemblies of God congregations have been birthed from the Freeport church. In 1935 he moved to Sherman, Texas, to serve as one of the early Assemblies of God pastors in that city. In 1939 he returned to south Texas to pastor the assembly in Cuero. His first project there was to build a new church building. The congregation worshiped in that building until 1993.

In 1942, again feeling the call of God to a city without an Assemblies of God witness, Robison moved 28 miles to Victoria, Texas. World War II was raging,

Christmas testimonies from beyond the grave

In the West, Christmas has become a symbol of excess. For most Christians in other times and places, however, Christmas has been a reminder that God came down to meet each one of us at our point of need.

The following Christmas testimonies are from some of our Assemblies of God saints who blazed the trail that we now tread. Listen to how they celebrated Christmas, compare it with your own celebrations, then reflect about how God met each one of these dear saints at the point of their need. You will see that God didn’t always meet needs with provisions; sometimes He provided lessons.

C. M. Ward was the voice of the Revivaltime radio broadcast from 1953 to 1978. He and his fiancée, Dorothy, set their wedding date for Christmas Day, 1929. Of course, one month before their wedding, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Ward couldn’t afford to buy a wedding ring, much less presents, for their first Christmas. He later learned that times of deprivation like this birthed one of two things: either desperation or despair. Desperation spurred people to work hard and be creative, while despair caused people to simply give up.

Daniel W. Kerr was the primary author of the 1916 Statement of Fundamental Truths. One of the early parsonages he and his family lived in was actually an abandoned log chicken house that Kerr made into living quarters. One Christmas, his two children each received one penny in their stockings. And for Christmas dinner — they boiled potatoes. With our material prosperity, we sometimes forget that many go without. When God does provide for our needs, but not our wants, do we express gratitude or do we grumble?

John Kolenda was a German District pastor and missionary to Brazil. His daughter, Graceann, recalled that “Dad always practiced and taught us to put God first, others second, and ourselves last.” She explained that, to her and her young sibling, “This seemed entirely wrong.” Two days before Christmas, Kolenda took his children aside and said that — absent a miracle — there would be no Christmas presents that year. After providing for the needy children in the Sunday school and for other people, he explained, there was nothing left to give his own children. Graceann recalled that her parents prayed in an unusually fervent manner that evening. The next day an unexpected check arrived in the mail, which provided for a memorable Christmas. When the situation seems hopeless — do we still pray to God to intervene?

Dan Betzer on the blessing of Heritage

Dan Betzer, one of the most recognizeable people in the Assemblies of God, has served as pastor of First Assembly of God (Fort Myers, Florida), since 1987. He is also the assistant district superintendent of the Peninsular Florida District of the Assemblies of God.

He followed C. M. Ward as speaker on the Assemblies of God’s flagship radio program, Revivaltime, broadcasting from 1979 to 1995. Our younger readers will know him as the voice behind the Dan and Louie Bible stories that they grew up with.

He currently hosts “ByLine with Dan Betzer,” a two-minute program heard weekdays on radio stations nationwide. He also hosts the 60-second weekday ByLine Television commentary, which is aired around the world on over 900 television stations. Here is a reprint of his “ByLine” radio message from July 17th.

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“ByLine with Dan Betzer” Program # 3597
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
“The Blessing Of Heritage”
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Hello again, this is Dan Betzer. In our fellowship, the Assemblies of God, we have a periodical called Heritage. To us nostalgic types, the magazine is a blessing. We read stories and see pictures of the great men and women of the past who shaped our fellowship, heroes in the truest sense of the word. I think I have every issue ever printed. They are bound in huge volumes so they are easy to pick up and read.

Amanda Benedict remembered after 82 years

Participants at the Amanda Benedict memorial service (l-r): Assistant Archivist Glenn Gohr; Rev. Hubert Morris of Central Assembly; FPHC Director Darrin Rodgers; Dr. James Bradford, pastor of Central Assembly; General Secretary George Wood; Jewell Woodward, adminstrative assistant to George Wood; National Prayer Center Director John Maempa; and Archivist Joyce Lee.

Front of marker

Back of marker

Photographs by Sharon Rasnake

As part of the celebration of 100 years of Pentecost in Springfield, Central Assembly chose to honor one of the early leaders in the church, Miss Amanda Benedict, who is remembered as a fervent prayer warrior.

Educated in New York, her home state, she later conducted a rescue home for girls in Chicago and was connected with a faith home for children in Iowa. She moved to Springfield, Missouri, sometime before 1910 and met Mrs. Lillie Corum while working as a door-to-door salesperson. The two ladies and others began praying together regularly, and soon Amanda Benedict received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. She had a burden for lost souls and that God might bless the gospel work in Springfield, Missouri.

Sister Benedict would fast and pray for days on end, until a burden was lifted or victory came. Often, like Napoleon, she would say, “There shall be no Alps!” She had a tremendous burden that God would make Springfield a center from which his blessings would flow to the ends of the earth. At one point she felt led to fast and pray for Springfield for one entire year — living only on bread and water.

Central Assembly of God in Springfield, MO: 100 years of ministry

This past weekend Central Assembly here in Springfield, Missouri (Pastor James Bradford), held an all-church banquet on June 1, 2007 and special services on Sunday, June 3rd. The banquet commemorated to the day, the 100th anniversary of the church. It was during the wee hours of the morning of June 1, 1907 when Lillie Harper Corum was baptized in the Spirit in her living room in Springfield, after praying with her sister, Rachel Sizelove, an evangelist who had come from the famed Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles.

Further details of this testimony and much of the early history of Central Assembly is contained in a book produced by the Corum Family called The Sparkling Fountain. The book is still available for those interested. (See the Seen in Print section of the FPHC website.)

FPHC Director Darrin Rodgers and Assistant Archivist Glenn Gohr sold copies of The Sparkling Fountain, and Central Assembly sold copies of its new history book, Windows Into Central’s 100 Years of Ministry: Ordinary People God Used to Build an Extraordinary Church. This brief history contains vignettes of some of the former pastors and important families in the church as well as a time line of significant events in the church’s history. Central, now located on the block south of the AG Headquarters, became the mother church for several of the 30 AG congregations now in Springfield.

Celebrating 100 years of Pentecost in Springfield, Missouri

Farmhouse where Lillie Corum was baptized in the Spirit in 1907

June 1, 2007 marks 100 years of Pentecost in Springfield, Missouri.

Just after the Azusa Street revival broke out in Los Angeles in 1906, Evangelist Rachel Harper Sizelove began writing glowing reports to her sister, Lillie Corum, who lived in Springfield, Missouri. Mrs. Corum started reading copies of William Seymour’s Apostolic Faith paper, and she earnestly began seeking and praying to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The next May, Rachel Sizelove traveled from Azusa Street to Springfield to visit her sister and family. And in an all-night prayer meeting, Lillie Corum was baptized in the Spirit at her farmhouse in the wee hours of June 1, 1907. She is credited with being the first person in Springfield to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And soon afterwards, the Corum family, rejected by their Baptist pastor, began holding prayer meetings in their home. This was the beginning of Central Assembly of God, the mother church in Springfield, Missouri.

Top Pentecostal history books in libraries

Next to Assemblies of God Heritage magazine the Bible, what is your favorite reading material? Do you have a top ten list of your all-time favorite books?

We thought it would be interesting to see which Pentecostal history books are most popular in libraries. So, we logged onto FirstSearch (aka WorldCat or OCLC, which is available at your local library) and searched for books with the following terms in their subject headings. The top ten books for each term, in terms of the numbers of libraries holding each book, are below.

Pentecostal history
1. Heaven Below : Early Pentecostals and American Culture / Grant Wacker (Harvard University Press, 2001) 878 libraries
2. Reinventing American Protestantism : Christianity in the New Millennium / Donald E. Miller (University of California Press, 1997) 847 libraries