CHURCH OF GOD HISTORY PART ONE FORWARD

HISTORY PART ONE FORWARD. This is not an exhaustive study, we will attempt to include as much of our rich history as possible. It has been said, “To unlock the doors to the future, one must go back in history to find the keys.” The beginning of the Church is not found upon any place on earth, Her history actually began before time within the mind of God. From the omniscient mind of God to Her succession through the Garden of Eden to the Church in the Wilderness to the Horns of Kern Hattin to the Apostolic Church to the Nicene heresy to the Reformation Period to the Arise, Shine and beyond, She has always been, and always will be God’s chosen and elect people. We will begin in the year 1886 AD in the state of Tennessee, U. S. A. Richard Spurling (1810-1891), an ordained Baptist minister and youngest son Richard Green (R. G.) Spurling (1857-1935) became frustrated with the prevailing creedalism among many of the Baptist churches. In August, 1886 they rejected and renounced the Baptist organization for them accepting of the “Landmark movement,” which had permeated Baptist congregations in the South, with an exclusivistic view of the Church. Elder Richard Spurling and seven other individuals left the Holly Springs and Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist churches in Monroe County, Tennessee and Cherokee County, North Carolina. They organized what they believed to be the true restoration of the Apostolic Church. However, they decided to call their newly formed church, “Christian Union.” They would agree to be free “from all man-made creeds and traditions, to take the New Testament, or “Law of Christ” as their rule of faith and practice.” But, allowed each other equal rights and privileges to read and interpret the Bible as their conscience would dictate. They further agreed that they would “sit together and transact business as the Church of God. It was as if they could see the Church through the glass darkly, but the time for the Church to arise and shake off the chains and fetters of 1500 years under the bondage of man rule was not yet fully come. In 1891, the elder Spurling died, leaving the younger alone to carry on his father’s vision for the Christian Union. Young R. G. would go about setting in order at least two more Christian Union churches, while the initial congregation at Barney Creek in Monroe County ceased to function. Some of the charter members of that original congregation migrated to the newly formed congregations to help them succeed. In 1895, Benjamin Harding Irwin had come to the South from Iowa, and was traveling through western North Carolina, South Carolina, Northern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee preaching his “fire-baptized” messages. Irwin’s message had a profound impact on the South, including Spurling and his congregations. The Holiness Movement attracted Spurling, and he agreed with the doctrine, but endeavored to modify the fanaticism that tended to characterize Irwin’s movement. The fire-baptized was a radical wing of the Holiness Movement, and those experiencing fire-baptism was difficult to manage. This left young Spurling struggling to control his followers. The following summer in 1896, a Irwin inspired revival broke out in Cherokee County, North Carolina about twelve miles from the Christian Union churches in Monroe and Polk counties in Tennessee. The revival was held in the Shearer School house. Reportedly some one-hundred-thirty people were baptized with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gave them the utterance. The revival was conducted by Methodist, William Martin, and three Baptist, Joseph M. Tipton, Milton McNabb, and Billy Hamby. Each of these men had associated with Spurling and been influenced by him and his ministry. “They preached a clean gospel and urged people to seek and obtain sanctification subsequent to justification. They prayed, fasted, and wept before the Lord until a great revival was the result.” A. J. Tomlinson W. F. Bryant (1863-1949), a Baptist lay preacher (deacon) was drawn into the Holiness movement during this revival and eventually emerged as the leader of the group at Camp Creek, North Carolina. Bryant’s group was quickly met with opposition and persecution. The Baptist churches in the region disfellowshipped all those “harboring the modern theory of sanctification.” They viewed it as “a dangerous heresy.” The persecution would become violent at times which nearly devastated Bryant’s group. By 1902, they had dwindled down to just twenty people. In 1899 an independent Holiness minister, Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson (22 September, 1865-2 October, 1943) with a Methodist home Missionary and convert of Charles G. Finney, named J. B. Michell moved to a small Appalachian hamlet called, Culberson, North Carolina. Here A. J. Tomlinson would lead a small group of followers that included his wife Mary Jane, children, Halcy (b. 1891), Homer (b. 1892), and Iris (b. 1895). They would establish an orphanage “Zion’s Hill,” a grammar school, and missionary center dubbed, “Mount Zion’s Mission Home.” A. J. Tomlinson was born near Westfield Indiana. He was the youngest, and the only son of Milton Tomlinson (1820-1899) and Delilah Hiatt (1826-1909). Milton was a farmer, a road contractor, nonpracticing Quaker, prominent in the local business circles, and very active in the Republican Party. Milton prepared A. J. for the secular world of small-town commerce and civic duty. Little did either realize the plan that God had for A. J. So, A. J. followed in his father’s footsteps. He started a business with a friend that would combine farming with enterprise – a well-drilling business. However, in 1889, A. J.’s life took a turn. On April 24, of that year he married a devout Quaker named, Marry Jane Taylor. Tomlinson’s grandparents Robert and Lydia Tomlinson had organized and was leading a congregation called, the “Chester Preparative Meeting of the Society of Friends,” where the newly-weds began to attend. Here, during one meeting, A. J. experienced a “religious conversion.” Westfield, Indiana was at the time the key center in the Quaker Holiness Movement. This sect of Quakers believed in the doctrine of “entire sanctification – a experience subsequent to conversion and identified with the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” which was to “empower the baptized and free them from willful sin.” Westfield produced some of the Holiness Movement’s most notable and influential evangelists, such as, Seth Cook Rees, Dougan Clark JR., John Pennington, and Charles Stalker. All of these men became well known authors and organizational leaders. This movement attracted A. J., but he did immediately affiliate himself with those caught up in the movement. In 1892, A. J.’s life took another turn, he broke with his father and his own Republican Party and ran for County Auditor as a Populist. He was unsuccessful in winning the election, but the next year he experienced something greater than politics. In 1893, A. J. had experienced sanctification and abandoned politics altogether for holiness. In the Spring of 1898, Tomlinson renounced his membership in the Society of Friends and began to gravitate toward mainstream Holiness figurers such as Seth Cook Rees, George Watson, and Martin Well Knapp. May 15, 1902 R. G. Spurling, W. F. Bryant, Frank Porter, and M. S. Lemons organized the Holiness Church at Camp Creek in the home of W. F. Bryant. Spurling was appointed as pastor of the small congregation. Tomlinson returned to the area working as a colporteur and happened to sell some five-cent Testaments to Bryant’s young sons who introduced A. J. to their “very religious father.” A. J. spent a few months preaching to the congregation at Bryant’s home, and eventually Tomlinson and the group unanimously agreed to begin studying the word of God and see if they could find the Church of God of the Bible. On the morning of June 13, 1903 the sun arose over the hilltops, but something else was about to rise that will one day outshine the sun. On this morning Tomlinson climbed a hill called Burger Mountain that was close-by the Bryant home in an area known as “Fields of the Wood.” Upon it’s summit Tomlinson on bended knees began to travail in intense prayer until he prevailed and received the divine revelation of the Church of God of the Bible. In a moment of time many prophesies were fulfilled by a single man in single place by the act of humbling himself before his God. Such as, S. O. S. 6:13; Is. 60:1; Ps. 102:13; 132:4-6, etc. He descended from the “mountain top” and walked into the home and declared to the group, “If we take this Bible rightly divided that makes us the Church of God.” The group unanimously agreed, and Tomlinson received the covenant and joined the Church of God. Tomlinson was unanimously appointed as the leader of the group, and Bryant and Spurling set about evangelizing the area. The Church was suddenly quickened by the Spirit of God. The meetings would often spill into the wee hours of the morning with hundreds shouting, praising God, clapping their hands, speaking in tongues as the Spirit gave them the utterance, and were frequently cited for disturbing the peace. Tomlinson however would not receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost until five years later in 1908, but was nonetheless God’s chosen and anointed leader of The Church of God. And he humbly accepted his lot, and fulfilled his destiny to the best of his knowledge and abilities. Shortly after the Arise, Shine, Tomlinson moved he and his family to 2525 Gaut Street in Cleveland, Tennessee to be closer to the trains to aid in the missionary work. He quickly went through the area establishing churches, recruiting and teaching leaders in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Within twenty years the Church grew to a membership of over twenty thousand. In 1906 a need was felt to hold an annual assembly to promote a closer union and fellowship among the churches. The first Assembly was held in the home of J. C. and Mellisa Murphy in Cherokee County, North Carolina with 21 delegates on January 26, 27 1906. The year 1906 brought two more significant events. The birth of Milton Ambrose Tomlinson, who would be the final child born to A, J. and Mary Jane Tomlinson. And the “Azusa Street Revival” led by W. J. Seymour. Which saw hundreds of people receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost including a man named G. B. Cashwell. The following Assembly in 1907, the group officially adopted the name the Church of God. At the Assembly in 1909 A. J. Tomlinson was divinely and officially appointed as “General Overseer of all the Church of God,” a position he held till his death in 1943. February 22, 1907 Mr and Mrs J. F. Loomis donated two lots to Tomlinson, Bryant, and M. S. Lemons “for the purpose of building thereon…..” at the corner of 24th and Peoples Street, Cleveland, Tennessee. Construction began in May on what would become the first Church building for The Church of God since Her ascension out of apostasy four years earlier. The building was completed in September with a final cost of $ 1,093.67. It was dedicated on Sept. 29, 1907, and on October 6 a Sunday School was organized with 92 pupils. On Sunday morning January 12, 1908, Gashton Barnabas (G. B.) Cashwell “the Apostle of Pentecost of the South” was invited by Tomlinson to preach at the Cleveland, Church in Tennessee. A. J. received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance. Tomlinson would later proclaim, “I must have spoken in at least 10 languages.” While laying on the floor, having been slain out in the Spirit, Tomlinson received the vision of a world-wide harvest for the Church of God through missionary outreaches and a vision that would cause him to break the law. Along with the vision of a world-wide harvest came the vision of the Great Speckled Bird in Jeremiah 12:9. Tomlinson could see that the Church was to be made of people of all different races. The Church became the first to break the Jim Crow laws in the segregated South. And by 1924 passed a resolution against the Ku Klux Klan. On May 31, 1909 Tomlinson issued Evangelist licenses to Edmond and Rebbecca Barr. The Barrs returned to their native Bahamas, and in February of 1911 Tomlinson held his first international campaign in Nassau. The Church began to expand to countries outside the U. S. and grew numerically, financially, and spiritually. In 1910 The Church of God began publishing the “Church of God Evangel,” and opened a Bible Training School. These were throwbacks to the days of Tomlinson’s missionary efforts in the Unicoi Mountains where he published “Samson’s Foxes” and started a grammar school. In 1911, the Church of God in New Mexico added to it’s numbers a congregation of Mexican Americans in Raton. Juan B. Padilla assisted T. F. Chavez while pastor of the original congregation in Raton. Padilla was ordained as a bishop in 1913 and served from 1921-1922 on the council of seventy. “I do not like any separations between nationalities.” A. J. Tomlinson 1913, A. J. Tomlinson published a book called “The Last Great Conflict.” And Tomlinson himself would have to heed his own words and strap on the armor of God tightly for there was a great conflict brewing within the Church of God. In 1917, Joseph L. Scott became dissatisfied with the direction that the Church was going, and it’s claim that the Church did not exist this side of the Dark Ages until June 13, 1903 when Tomlinson received the Divine Revelation of the Church. Scott believed that the Church actually began with Spurling in 1886, and would break with the church at Cleveland, TN to start what he and his followers called, “The Original Church of God.” By this time the Church had also implemented State Overseers in 1911, and the Elders Council in 1916/1917 with the general council of seventy. The high council of twelve was derived from the Apostolic number of the 12 Apostles, which is believed to have been taken from the number of the tribes of Israel. And the general council of seventy was the Mosaic number of men that Christ appointed in Luke chapter 10. The following year in 1918 the plaque of influenza scourged the nation and this would be the only year in the history of The Church of God since the first Assembly that a general conference would not convene. In 1920 the Church instituted a orphanage program and Lillian Kinsey was appointed as the first Matron of the Church of God Orphanage. 1921 F. J. Lee, J. S. Llewellyn, and M. S. Lemons was appointed to draft a constitution that was initially accepted by the Church, but Tomlinson became troubled over it, feeling that it was a departure from Theocracy. And would renounce it as a made creed. “It was that creed that wrecked us in the year, 1921….let it be with ‘it seems good to the Holy Ghost and us’ as it used to be years back in the Church when all must agree.” A. J. Tomlinson August 8, 1923 A man who served on the council of Elders by the name of, J. S Llewellyn conspired against Tomlinson and had the Church books audited. Tomlinson was charged with misappropriation of Church funds. Tomlinson had used some of the tithes to cover a printing bill, which initially was alright when the Church told him to be sure all the bills got paid. He was just doing as instructed. But on June 21, 1923 Tomlinson was impeached for the false accusations, which led to the Church splintering in two in 1923. Ten of the Elders broke with Tomlinson and the Church to follow after their damnable heresies feeling that a man-made creed or constitution better served the growing congregation than the God ordained government of Theocracy. The majority left with the “Elders group” (around 15,000) and a small remnant (around 6,000) would continue with the Church preserving and maintaining it’s God given government and doctrine. Only the Elders: George T. Brouayer and S. O. Gillaspie would continue on with the Church, and stood beside A. J. Tomlinson during this disastrous event in Church history. On Aug. 8, 1923 Tomlinson moderated “The Called Council of The Church of God” at the residence of H. A. Pressgrove, 2301 Vance Ave., Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among the acts of business passed by unanimous agreement were the appointment of new leaders and the institution of a new Church publication, “The White Wing Messenger” since the Evangel was retained by the Elder Group. The Church having to start over with little more than the shirts on their back rose in the power and determination of the Holy Ghost, and God rewarded them for their unwavering faithfulness. They persevered against tremendous odds and in the 1930’s saw a surge in growth. Revival fires were kindled across the globe as mission outreaches flourished in other countries. On September 10, 1936 “The Great Aztec” Fransisco (Frank) Olazabal led Latin American churches to the Church of God. Olazabal left the Assemblies of God to come to the Church of God bringing with him thousands. He became a well known “faith healer” around the world. And the Church was blessed by the Spirit that was within Him and reaped many souls won to Christ and His Church. In 1933, the Church flag was revealed in fulfillment of Psalms 60:4. Once again, God confirmed that this was (and still is today) the true Church of God of the Bible. And gave them a visible ensign, a banner that it may be displayed because of the truth. A sign to the nations of the world that this is the Church of God and where the uncompromised truth of God’s holy word will be preached and defended. The flag received recognition from the U. S. Patent Office on February 7, 1939. month. In 1939 a young man by the name of Grady R. Kent had conducted a revival in Egan Georgia. The revival resulted in Kent being brutally beaten by an angry mob of protesters. Tomlinson heard of the young man and got in contact with him and was able to bring him into the Church. In 1941 the Church of Prophecy Marker Association (C. P. M. A.) was formed and accepted. !941 Kent was appointed as General Secretary of the C. P. M. A. Soon the Church felt the need to memorialize the place where the Arise, Shine occurred. The Fields of the Wood property (over 200 acres) was procured by the Church. Tomlinson wanted this project to begin with the erection of the worlds largest Ten Commandments with painted white concrete letters feet tall and four feet wide on the mountain side where he “travailed till he prevailed.” However Tomlinson only got to see the Commandments spelled out on the mountainside before he went home to be with the Lord on October 2, 1943.