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Snapshots of a Spiritual Journey
by Harold D. Hunter, Ph.D.
The following article was originally printed in the June 2003 Commemorative Issue of the White Wing Messenger.
I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to the Church of God of Prophecy for marking the centennial of June 13, 1903. I had the good fortune of helping organize the 1998 national centennial of the International Pentecostal Holiness (IPHC). Under the theme “Celebrate the Past, Seize the Future,” the IPHC marked this milestone as an unparalleled opportunity to review its story with a view to navigating the twenty-first century.
The account that follows here will follow the established tradition of viewing the pre-history of a body in the narrative of its founder. Particular attention will be given to the fusion of an ecclesiology linked to June 13, 1903, with a concomitant resolve to work toward racial reconciliation. This unprecedented approach distinguishes the Church of God of Prophecy not only among classical Pentecostals but many denominations in the U.S.A.
The Westfield Years
Having studied at the prestigious Westfield Academy and reared in a moderately well-to-do entrepreneurial family in Westfield, Indiana, provided the young A. J. Tomlinson with forays into the business and political arenas. The Gospel call came to overshadow the serene life one would envision in this large, rural, Quaker community. A. J. would alter course as a result of encounters with Holiness Friends. This group was epitomized in the person of A. J.’s boyhood neighbor, Seth Rees, the “Indiana Earthquaker,” who scorned mediocrity by proclaiming, “Win or die!” Holiness evangelists owed much to nineteenth-century Quakers when they dismissed creeds and rituals, spurned ecclesiastical hierarchy, or acknowledged Holy Spirit inspiration from both male and female, clergy and laity. Meanwhile, the significant African-American community in Westfield meant that among the closest neighbors of the Tomlinsons were two black families. Freed blacks and slaves who escaped through the Underground Railroad participated in “colored” camp meetings held each summer in Westfield, which attracted whites.1
J. B. Mitchell, a graduate of Oberlin, introduced A. J. to the famous revivalist, Charles G. Finney. Founded in 1833, Oberlin College was the first institute of higher education in the U.S.A. to conduct the “joint education of the sexes.” By 1835, race was no longer a barrier to admission, either. In 1894, Mitchell and Tomlinson would found the Book and Tract Company. This colporteur work led to short-term trips to Appalachia but also exposure to more radical holiness figures like Frank Sandford, who published the Tongues of Fire (1894). Stays at Sandford’s “Holy Ghost and Us Bible School” in Shiloh, Maine, account for two water baptisms there, one at the hands of Sandford himself when A. J. wrote in his diary on October 1, 1901: “I was baptized by Mr. Sandford in the Androscoggin River into the ‘church of the living God,’ for the evangelization of the world, gathering of Israel, new order of things at the close of the Gentile age.”2
Appalachia Beckons
The exposure to the Acts 2 commune as practiced by Shiloh, and some awareness of John Alexander Dowie’s Zion City in Illinois, would provide models that A. J.’s family would seek to imitate in Culberson, North Carolina. The family move was complete in 1899 and ultimately accounts for the unexpected interaction with B. H. Irwin’s Fire-Baptized Holiness Association (FBHA). Some of Irwin’s staunch supporters planted what amounted to an emerging national headquarters in a Bradley County, Tennessee, hamlet named Beniah. Tomlinson would launch an eight-page serial, Samson’s Foxes, while simultaneously publishing reports of living on the faith lines like George Mueller in the Pentecostal Herald, God’s Revivalist, and the Evangelical Visitor. Tomlinson projected his Mount Zion Mission Home that opened with an industrial school and orphanage to be a virtual “garden of Eaden.”3
Shades of the FBHA were seen in Tomlinson’s rejection of “tobacco, opium, pork, tea, and coffee.” Yet another like source would be a group of evangelists—Milton McNabb, Joe Tipton, William Hamby, and William Martin—who preached the noteworthy 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse Revival. After the group was banned from the schoolhouse, they met in the home of William F. Bryant. Evangelists either living in or associated with Beniah carried the FBHA message to Camp Creek. Various issues of the FBHA’s Live Coals of Fire (1899–1900) reported on common efforts of William M. Martin, R. Frank Porter, and Stewart T. Irwin, the son of B. H. Irwin.
Bryant’s small group witnessed crosscurrents of various spiritualities like fellowship with R. G. Spurling. Spurling’s roots lay in Landmark Baptists, but his identity was captured in the various Christian Unions. Spurling’s first such effort was the short-lived Christian Union at Barney Creek, Monroe County, North Carolina, in 1886. The ideals that defined Spurling were compiled in his The Lost Link published in 1920 but drafted years earlier.
Another player in the ferment was R. Frank Porter, recently Ruling Elder for the FBHA in Tennessee. The seminal organization of the Holiness Church at Camp Creek on May 15, 1902, was carried out by both Spurling and Porter. Spurling was chosen pastor while Porter would soon thereafter marry Alice Cooke of Cleveland and enter the University of Chattanooga at Athens (1905). Although May 15, 1902, is integral to the identify of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee),4 only one of the first group of leaders, including M. S. Lemons, would remain with the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). This is William F. Bryant, whose service as a state overseer ended in 1918.
June 13, 1903
The circle of those associated on various levels with the Holiness Church at Camp Creek included A. J. Tomlinson, who was destined to transform this group. A diary entry dated June 13, 1903, would say simply, “I was ordained as minister of the gospel of the Holiness church at Camp Creek, N.C.”5 Tomlinson had arrived at Bryant’s house the previous evening and prayed on the mountain the next morning before continuing their discussions.
An expanded version of this event can be found in a significant book published by A. J. Tomlinson in 1913 while General Overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Titled The Last Great Conflict, we are told a “more careful study of the New Testament order” resulted in the work being “revived and taking on a new impetus.”6 Although the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) would later revoke Spurling’s license, at this point he cast a long shadow over the group. Tomlinson had sometimes been received as something of a foreigner, so embracing Spurling’s 1886 contribution would help keep the coalition together. This 1903 turning-point for A. J. Tomlinson manifests itself in a diary now consumed with merciless details of organization in motion. Tomlinson was immediately chosen pastor of the Camp Creek congregation, and within a year he was pastor of three of the four related local groups. He edited, with M. S. Lemons, a periodical titled The Way, which ran an article by R. Frank Porter.
Tomlinson’s rescue and expansion of this loose association helps explain, in part, his 1904 move from Appalachia to Cleveland, Tennessee, and its well-connected train station. Writing in 1939, Homer A. Tomlinson would note “. . . they called themselves an Association, [they] had not yet called themselves the Church of God.”7 A. J. Tomlinson’s first account of the January 26–27 conference—which is counted as the first General Assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)—may be found in a diary entry dated January 30, 1906: “I arrived home about midnight last night from Camp Creek, N. C. We held a Church assembly there, I acted as the ruling Elder and made the minutes of the proceedings.”8 It was not until January 11, 1907, the second such conference, that the group took on the name Church of God. Despite his restorationist impulse, Tomlinson would have known that the name Church of God was first used by John Winebrenner’s Church of God, having done so as far back as 1830. D. S. Warner had also identified with this “Bible name” in Indiana by 1880 and Frank Sandford by 1897. Writing in The Last Great Conflict, Tomlinson continues.
This, however, was not meant to debar the use of the other Scriptural names, such as: “The Church,” “Churches in Christ,” “Church . . . in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” etc.9
This same group would make their final selection of A. J. Tomlinson as General Overseer in 1914 or, as he put it in his diary that is dated November 15 of that year, “until Jesus comes or calls.”10
Pentecost Linked to Reconciliation
Looking back, Tomlinson would say he became “more fully awakened” in January 1907 about the fledgling Pentecostal Movement. The Last Great Conflict would praise “Dr. Seamore”—actually W. J. Seymour, the African-American pastor of the legendary 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles—whose message of Pentecost that washed away the “color line” spread around the world.11 The priority of Azusa Street was obvious when A. J. Tomlinson started The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel and later ran a series on Pentecostal history in The Faithful Standard.12
Tomlinson preached on “The baptism with the Holy Ghost and Fire” at the 1907 Assembly, but his own personal Pentecost did not come for one full year. Tomlinson invited G. B. Cashwell to preach in Cleveland at the conclusion of the fourth Assembly in 1908. A minister with the [Pentecostal] Holiness Church of North Carolina, Cashwell traveled to Los Angeles to experience the Pentecostal outpouring firsthand. Cashwell’s latent racism resisted the message of racial reconciliation that was part and parcel of Seymour’s Azusa Street Mission. However, after praying for deliverance, Cashwell consented to have blacks lay hands on him whereupon he received a fiery baptism in the Holy Spirit with the sign of speaking in tongues. When Cashwell preached in Cleveland on Sunday morning, January 12, 1908, Tomlinson would pen one of the most celebrated accounts of transportation in the Spirit that carried him into countries with ten different languages.13 Here, finally, the flame was lit for Tomlinson himself that would forever change the destiny of many related in one way or another to the Church of God Movements.
Tomlinson would personally carry this flame to many locations, but none more important than the Pleasant Grove camp meeting in Florida. His diary, dated May 22, 1909, announces the first of several visits by Tomlinson to this venue. Among those who received the Pentecostal message here were Edmund and Rebecca Barr. On May 31, 1909, Tomlinson would grant evangelist licenses to both of them. By November 1910, the Barrs would carry the same message to their native Bahamas. It was February 1911 when Tomlinson carried out his first international campaign in Nassau.
During the 1912 Assembly, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) received a congregation of Mexican Americans from Raton, New Mexico. In his diary dated February 27, 1912, Tomlinson reports on a convention he attended in Raton that required the use of a Spanish-speaking interpreter. The Assembly of 1913 would count three Spanish-speaking congregations in New Mexico. Juan B. Padilla, who first assisted T. F. Chávez while pastor of the original congregation in Raton, was ordained a Bishop in 1913 and became pastor of Corrumpa, New Mexico. On July 3, 1936, A. J. Tomlinson would grant ministerial licenses to this same Juan Padilla.14
At the 1915 Assembly, Edmond Barr would begin a two-year term as overseer of the “colored” work in Florida. C. F. Bright was appointed overseer of Pennsylvania in 1919 then New Jersey in 1920. Tomlinson seemed agitated that prior to 1919, blacks were only called on extemporaneously during the Assemblies. A Native American from Oklahoma addressed the 1917 Assembly, and Tomlinson propelled this cause forward in his 1919 annual address by applying the apostle Paul’s “one blood” to affirm a universal humanity.15 African Americans like T. J. Richardson were part of the Council of Seventy and various Assembly committees starting in 1921. The number of blacks present during these Assemblies is unknown, but it is known that they were relegated to segregated seating. While the interracial message of Pentecost at the Azusa Street Revival only lasted at best about ten years in most Pentecostal bodies, A. J. Tomlinson would strengthen his resolve to see this vision put in practice. In an important section of his annual address at the 1922 Assembly devoted to “Our Colored People,” Tomlinson said flatly, “I do not like any separations between nationalities and races. . . .”16
The Church of Prophecy
A. J. Tomlinson’s diary is blank from September 2, 1921, until February 28, 1924, when he writes: “Much has happened since my last writing, and my time has been so taken that I have not had time.”17 This is a considerable understatement with details of the tumultuous era chronicled in the Church of God Evangel, White Wing Messenger, and assorted court documents. Tomlinson was now General Overseer of an alternative faith community that, in 1952, courts would mandate be known as the Church of God of Prophecy. The 1923 impeachment by Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) supreme judges was to Tomlinson a battlefield over theocratic government. For his heirs, the discussion has come to be framed in an emphasis on calling and gifting. In Tomlinson’s 1929 General Assembly Annual Address, he served notice of a fresh look at Church of God origins. Looking back to June 13, 1903, he said only “later on it became clear . . .” what this event would mean to the Church of God of Prophecy.
Writing to the overseers in advance of the 1932 General Assembly, Tomlinson said of the state marches that no one other than the overseer speak “. . . except in states where there are colored representatives or Indians or other races.”18 During this Assembly, Tomlinson would reaffirm that “the middle wall of partition is broken down between the races. . . .”19 He appropriated Jeremiah’s “Speckled Bird” to exhort the union of “. . . the whites, the colored, the browns, the Indians, called the red men, the yellow race—and all under one government, one rule, one faith or doctrine—all one.” That same Assembly featured sermons by Stanley Ferguson, J. R. Smith, and Olive B. Smith, while Francisco Olazábal and Patty K. Scotton led the healing service. Olazábal, dubbed El Azteca, joined the Church of God of Prophecy on September 10, 1936, before a spellbound General Assembly, thus adding to the rolls a reported body of 50,000 Spanish-speaking adherents. This union was never realized though because Olazábal died tragically in a 1937 automobile accident—this despite the courting of Frank Olazábal in New York by Homer Tomlinson and A. J. Tomlinson’s repeated appearances before the Council of Latin American Churches.
In the final years before his death in 1935, R. G. Spurling was credentialed by A. J. Tomlinson. Spurling was present for the 1933 General Assembly during the General Overseer’s Annual Address. During that same year, Tomlinson reflected on the thirtieth anniversary of June 13, 1903. Having said in The Last Great Conflict that church “government” was not adopted until May 15, 1902,20 Tomlinson now writes that this was when the group had been “definitely organized.” He continues:
Then I ventured to ask if they would be willing to receive me into the Church with the understanding that it is the Church of God of the Bible. They were willing, and soon proceeded in regular order. I took the obligation with deep sincerity and extreme sacredness never to be forgotten (Jeremiah 50:5).21
The following year, the White Wing Publishing House published a manuscript by Homer A. Tomlinson under the title Amazing Fulfillments of Prophecy. Here one finds the pregnant observation that the first successful flight in 1903 by the Wright brothers was in North Carolina. The text goes on to point out that at the same time in the same state there was a group “. . . searching the Scriptures for the Mysteries of the Bible Church.” Looking back at Jesus’ prayer in John 17, Homer announced, “The great vision that was born there was that God’s People will be one.”22
I Discovered Today
“I discovered today [June 16, 1939] that the Wright Brothers made their first airplane flight in Dec. 1903. I joined the church on Camp Creek, N.C., June 13, 1903. They in extreme Eastern North Carolina and I in extreme Western North Carolina. This bit of information thrills me because of the prophecy of Isaiah 60:1, 8.”23
Although A. J. Tomlinson certainly knew previously the story of Kitty Hawk, it was Grady R. Kent’s reading of Isaiah 60:1–8 that juxtaposed Kitty Hawk and the June 13 “Arise, Shine.” The remainder of A. J. Tomlinson’s diary [through 1943] would return to no subject more than this one. Before the year was over, Tomlinson began to purchase land that originally housed the home of W. F. Bryant, then the home of J. C. Murphy and the Shearer Schoolhouse. Tomlinson had suffered a stroke in 1937 and soon thereafter turned his diaries over to elder son Homer to write a history.
The erection of makeshift markers is recorded in Tomlinson’s diary on November 15, 1940. One marker at the newly named Fields of the Wood was “Prayed and Prevailed,” and another proclaimed “Arise shine, for thy light is come, June 13, 1903.” Like efforts would culminate in a grand celebration held September 7, 1941. With three or four prototypes of the White Angel Fleet
droning overhead, Tomlinson recounted in detail the proceedings on June 13, 1903. When the group had reached the steepest part of the mountain, they were greeted by a dramatic demonstration of the Great Speckled Bird. The group then sang the old country anthem by the same name as it had been revised by Homer A. Tomlinson and Sarah Dillon.
Tomlinson’s annual address during the 1941 General Assembly would return to the theme of breaking down the “middle wall of partition.” That same Assembly reported on a work among Native Americans in South Dakota and featured a sermon by Ralph C. Scotton on “All Races in One Mighty Church with Christ the Head for All.” Scotton, who attended the inaugural session of Bible Training Camp two months earlier, was appointed Field Secretary number two at this Assembly.
Epilogue
All are invited to rejoin the journey of those who have seen the power of God manifested in transformed lives, amazing miracles, and selfless giving to those in need. One can sense here the intensity of those courageous warriors whose spirituality assumed sacrifice and total transformation. This ethos gave rise to a strategic community full of valor. Their hunger for God overshadowed the misery and pain of being alienated by society. While engaging the plight of others, greatest value has been placed on things of eternal consequences. This passion was rewarded with the outpouring of divine manifestations that had been all but lost in Christianity at large. Here, the cross of Christ is central to a life saturated by the power of the risen Christ. This dedication to the Gospel has enriched the lives of those who travel the paths of righteousness.
On the thirtieth anniversary of June 13, 1903, Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson depicted himself on that earlier day as “. . . a ship at sea with no rudder by which it should be controlled.”24 Today we pause, but for a moment, to reflect on the legacy of this towering pioneer of the Pentecostal Movement who found an anchor. As we look back, may we see the future more clearly.
1For a full treatment of the early life of A. J. Tomlinson, see Roger G. Robins, “Plainfolk Modernist: The Radical Holiness World of A. J. Tomlinson,” Ph.D. dissertation (Duke University, 1999).
2A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, October 1, 1901, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
3A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, April 14, 1902, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
4M. S. Lemons, “History of the Church of God” (c. 1937), pp. 4, 5, 10.
5A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, June 13, 1903, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
6A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict (Cleveland: Walter E. Rogers, 1913), p. 192.
7Homer A. Tomlinson, The Great Vision of the Church of God (Queens Village, NY: published by the author, 1939), p. 6.
8A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, January 30, 1906, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
9A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 193.
10A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 3, November 15, 1914, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
11A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 137.
12See: The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel (March 1 and March 15, 1910): “History of Pentecost,” The Faithful Standard 1:5 (August 1922).
13A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 2, January 13, 1908, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
14Juan B. Padilla, Ministers’ Records, Church of God of Prophecy Archives. J. O. Sandoval, an evangelist in Colorado, wrote A. J. Tomlinson late in 1923 pledging his support. Sandoval’s printed stationary read, “Iglesia de Dios, Officina Principal en Cleveland, Tenn. A. J. Tomlinson, Sobreveedor.”
15Historical Annual Addresses: A. J. Tomlinson, compiled by Perry Gillum (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House and Press, 1970) 1:109.
16Ibid., 1:197.
17A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 4, September 2, 1921, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
18Lillie Duggar, A. J. Tomlinson (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House, 1964) p. 793.
19Historical Annual Addresses: A. J. Tomlinson (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House and Press, 1971) 2:170.
20A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 193.
21A. J. Tomlinson, “I Took the Obligation Thirty Years Ago the Thirteenth Day of This June 1933,” White Wing Messenger 10:12 (June 17, 1933) p. 1.
22Homer A. Tomlinson, Amazing Fulfillments of Prophecy (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House, 1934) pp. 125, 126.
23A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 5, June 16, 1939, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
24A. J. Tomlinson, “I Took the Obligation Thirty Years Ago the Thirteenth Day of This June 1933,” White Wing Messenger 10:12 (June 17, 1933) p. 1.
by Harold D. Hunter, Ph.D.
The following article was originally printed in the June 2003 Commemorative Issue of the White Wing Messenger.I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to the Church of God of Prophecy for marking the centennial of June 13, 1903. I had the good fortune of helping organize the 1998 national centennial of the International Pentecostal Holiness (IPHC). Under the theme “Celebrate the Past, Seize the Future,” the IPHC marked this milestone as an unparalleled opportunity to review its story with a view to navigating the twenty-first century.
The account that follows here will follow the established tradition of viewing the pre-history of a body in the narrative of its founder. Particular attention will be given to the fusion of an ecclesiology linked to June 13, 1903, with a concomitant resolve to work toward racial reconciliation. This unprecedented approach distinguishes the Church of God of Prophecy not only among classical Pentecostals but many denominations in the U.S.A.
The Westfield Years
Having studied at the prestigious Westfield Academy and reared in a moderately well-to-do entrepreneurial family in Westfield, Indiana, provided the young A. J. Tomlinson with forays into the business and political arenas. The Gospel call came to overshadow the serene life one would envision in this large, rural, Quaker community. A. J. would alter course as a result of encounters with Holiness Friends. This group was epitomized in the person of A. J.’s boyhood neighbor, Seth Rees, the “Indiana Earthquaker,” who scorned mediocrity by proclaiming, “Win or die!” Holiness evangelists owed much to nineteenth-century Quakers when they dismissed creeds and rituals, spurned ecclesiastical hierarchy, or acknowledged Holy Spirit inspiration from both male and female, clergy and laity. Meanwhile, the significant African-American community in Westfield meant that among the closest neighbors of the Tomlinsons were two black families. Freed blacks and slaves who escaped through the Underground Railroad participated in “colored” camp meetings held each summer in Westfield, which attracted whites.1
J. B. Mitchell, a graduate of Oberlin, introduced A. J. to the famous revivalist, Charles G. Finney. Founded in 1833, Oberlin College was the first institute of higher education in the U.S.A. to conduct the “joint education of the sexes.” By 1835, race was no longer a barrier to admission, either. In 1894, Mitchell and Tomlinson would found the Book and Tract Company. This colporteur work led to short-term trips to Appalachia but also exposure to more radical holiness figures like Frank Sandford, who published the Tongues of Fire (1894). Stays at Sandford’s “Holy Ghost and Us Bible School” in Shiloh, Maine, account for two water baptisms there, one at the hands of Sandford himself when A. J. wrote in his diary on October 1, 1901: “I was baptized by Mr. Sandford in the Androscoggin River into the ‘church of the living God,’ for the evangelization of the world, gathering of Israel, new order of things at the close of the Gentile age.”2
Appalachia Beckons
The exposure to the Acts 2 commune as practiced by Shiloh, and some awareness of John Alexander Dowie’s Zion City in Illinois, would provide models that A. J.’s family would seek to imitate in Culberson, North Carolina. The family move was complete in 1899 and ultimately accounts for the unexpected interaction with B. H. Irwin’s Fire-Baptized Holiness Association (FBHA). Some of Irwin’s staunch supporters planted what amounted to an emerging national headquarters in a Bradley County, Tennessee, hamlet named Beniah. Tomlinson would launch an eight-page serial, Samson’s Foxes, while simultaneously publishing reports of living on the faith lines like George Mueller in the Pentecostal Herald, God’s Revivalist, and the Evangelical Visitor. Tomlinson projected his Mount Zion Mission Home that opened with an industrial school and orphanage to be a virtual “garden of Eaden.”3
Shades of the FBHA were seen in Tomlinson’s rejection of “tobacco, opium, pork, tea, and coffee.” Yet another like source would be a group of evangelists—Milton McNabb, Joe Tipton, William Hamby, and William Martin—who preached the noteworthy 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse Revival. After the group was banned from the schoolhouse, they met in the home of William F. Bryant. Evangelists either living in or associated with Beniah carried the FBHA message to Camp Creek. Various issues of the FBHA’s Live Coals of Fire (1899–1900) reported on common efforts of William M. Martin, R. Frank Porter, and Stewart T. Irwin, the son of B. H. Irwin.
Bryant’s small group witnessed crosscurrents of various spiritualities like fellowship with R. G. Spurling. Spurling’s roots lay in Landmark Baptists, but his identity was captured in the various Christian Unions. Spurling’s first such effort was the short-lived Christian Union at Barney Creek, Monroe County, North Carolina, in 1886. The ideals that defined Spurling were compiled in his The Lost Link published in 1920 but drafted years earlier.
Another player in the ferment was R. Frank Porter, recently Ruling Elder for the FBHA in Tennessee. The seminal organization of the Holiness Church at Camp Creek on May 15, 1902, was carried out by both Spurling and Porter. Spurling was chosen pastor while Porter would soon thereafter marry Alice Cooke of Cleveland and enter the University of Chattanooga at Athens (1905). Although May 15, 1902, is integral to the identify of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee),4 only one of the first group of leaders, including M. S. Lemons, would remain with the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). This is William F. Bryant, whose service as a state overseer ended in 1918.
June 13, 1903
The circle of those associated on various levels with the Holiness Church at Camp Creek included A. J. Tomlinson, who was destined to transform this group. A diary entry dated June 13, 1903, would say simply, “I was ordained as minister of the gospel of the Holiness church at Camp Creek, N.C.”5 Tomlinson had arrived at Bryant’s house the previous evening and prayed on the mountain the next morning before continuing their discussions.
An expanded version of this event can be found in a significant book published by A. J. Tomlinson in 1913 while General Overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Titled The Last Great Conflict, we are told a “more careful study of the New Testament order” resulted in the work being “revived and taking on a new impetus.”6 Although the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) would later revoke Spurling’s license, at this point he cast a long shadow over the group. Tomlinson had sometimes been received as something of a foreigner, so embracing Spurling’s 1886 contribution would help keep the coalition together. This 1903 turning-point for A. J. Tomlinson manifests itself in a diary now consumed with merciless details of organization in motion. Tomlinson was immediately chosen pastor of the Camp Creek congregation, and within a year he was pastor of three of the four related local groups. He edited, with M. S. Lemons, a periodical titled The Way, which ran an article by R. Frank Porter.
Tomlinson’s rescue and expansion of this loose association helps explain, in part, his 1904 move from Appalachia to Cleveland, Tennessee, and its well-connected train station. Writing in 1939, Homer A. Tomlinson would note “. . . they called themselves an Association, [they] had not yet called themselves the Church of God.”7 A. J. Tomlinson’s first account of the January 26–27 conference—which is counted as the first General Assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)—may be found in a diary entry dated January 30, 1906: “I arrived home about midnight last night from Camp Creek, N. C. We held a Church assembly there, I acted as the ruling Elder and made the minutes of the proceedings.”8 It was not until January 11, 1907, the second such conference, that the group took on the name Church of God. Despite his restorationist impulse, Tomlinson would have known that the name Church of God was first used by John Winebrenner’s Church of God, having done so as far back as 1830. D. S. Warner had also identified with this “Bible name” in Indiana by 1880 and Frank Sandford by 1897. Writing in The Last Great Conflict, Tomlinson continues.
This, however, was not meant to debar the use of the other Scriptural names, such as: “The Church,” “Churches in Christ,” “Church . . . in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” etc.9
This same group would make their final selection of A. J. Tomlinson as General Overseer in 1914 or, as he put it in his diary that is dated November 15 of that year, “until Jesus comes or calls.”10
Pentecost Linked to Reconciliation
Looking back, Tomlinson would say he became “more fully awakened” in January 1907 about the fledgling Pentecostal Movement. The Last Great Conflict would praise “Dr. Seamore”—actually W. J. Seymour, the African-American pastor of the legendary 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles—whose message of Pentecost that washed away the “color line” spread around the world.11 The priority of Azusa Street was obvious when A. J. Tomlinson started The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel and later ran a series on Pentecostal history in The Faithful Standard.12
Tomlinson preached on “The baptism with the Holy Ghost and Fire” at the 1907 Assembly, but his own personal Pentecost did not come for one full year. Tomlinson invited G. B. Cashwell to preach in Cleveland at the conclusion of the fourth Assembly in 1908. A minister with the [Pentecostal] Holiness Church of North Carolina, Cashwell traveled to Los Angeles to experience the Pentecostal outpouring firsthand. Cashwell’s latent racism resisted the message of racial reconciliation that was part and parcel of Seymour’s Azusa Street Mission. However, after praying for deliverance, Cashwell consented to have blacks lay hands on him whereupon he received a fiery baptism in the Holy Spirit with the sign of speaking in tongues. When Cashwell preached in Cleveland on Sunday morning, January 12, 1908, Tomlinson would pen one of the most celebrated accounts of transportation in the Spirit that carried him into countries with ten different languages.13 Here, finally, the flame was lit for Tomlinson himself that would forever change the destiny of many related in one way or another to the Church of God Movements.
Tomlinson would personally carry this flame to many locations, but none more important than the Pleasant Grove camp meeting in Florida. His diary, dated May 22, 1909, announces the first of several visits by Tomlinson to this venue. Among those who received the Pentecostal message here were Edmund and Rebecca Barr. On May 31, 1909, Tomlinson would grant evangelist licenses to both of them. By November 1910, the Barrs would carry the same message to their native Bahamas. It was February 1911 when Tomlinson carried out his first international campaign in Nassau.
During the 1912 Assembly, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) received a congregation of Mexican Americans from Raton, New Mexico. In his diary dated February 27, 1912, Tomlinson reports on a convention he attended in Raton that required the use of a Spanish-speaking interpreter. The Assembly of 1913 would count three Spanish-speaking congregations in New Mexico. Juan B. Padilla, who first assisted T. F. Chávez while pastor of the original congregation in Raton, was ordained a Bishop in 1913 and became pastor of Corrumpa, New Mexico. On July 3, 1936, A. J. Tomlinson would grant ministerial licenses to this same Juan Padilla.14
At the 1915 Assembly, Edmond Barr would begin a two-year term as overseer of the “colored” work in Florida. C. F. Bright was appointed overseer of Pennsylvania in 1919 then New Jersey in 1920. Tomlinson seemed agitated that prior to 1919, blacks were only called on extemporaneously during the Assemblies. A Native American from Oklahoma addressed the 1917 Assembly, and Tomlinson propelled this cause forward in his 1919 annual address by applying the apostle Paul’s “one blood” to affirm a universal humanity.15 African Americans like T. J. Richardson were part of the Council of Seventy and various Assembly committees starting in 1921. The number of blacks present during these Assemblies is unknown, but it is known that they were relegated to segregated seating. While the interracial message of Pentecost at the Azusa Street Revival only lasted at best about ten years in most Pentecostal bodies, A. J. Tomlinson would strengthen his resolve to see this vision put in practice. In an important section of his annual address at the 1922 Assembly devoted to “Our Colored People,” Tomlinson said flatly, “I do not like any separations between nationalities and races. . . .”16
The Church of Prophecy
A. J. Tomlinson’s diary is blank from September 2, 1921, until February 28, 1924, when he writes: “Much has happened since my last writing, and my time has been so taken that I have not had time.”17 This is a considerable understatement with details of the tumultuous era chronicled in the Church of God Evangel, White Wing Messenger, and assorted court documents. Tomlinson was now General Overseer of an alternative faith community that, in 1952, courts would mandate be known as the Church of God of Prophecy. The 1923 impeachment by Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) supreme judges was to Tomlinson a battlefield over theocratic government. For his heirs, the discussion has come to be framed in an emphasis on calling and gifting. In Tomlinson’s 1929 General Assembly Annual Address, he served notice of a fresh look at Church of God origins. Looking back to June 13, 1903, he said only “later on it became clear . . .” what this event would mean to the Church of God of Prophecy. Writing to the overseers in advance of the 1932 General Assembly, Tomlinson said of the state marches that no one other than the overseer speak “. . . except in states where there are colored representatives or Indians or other races.”18 During this Assembly, Tomlinson would reaffirm that “the middle wall of partition is broken down between the races. . . .”19 He appropriated Jeremiah’s “Speckled Bird” to exhort the union of “. . . the whites, the colored, the browns, the Indians, called the red men, the yellow race—and all under one government, one rule, one faith or doctrine—all one.” That same Assembly featured sermons by Stanley Ferguson, J. R. Smith, and Olive B. Smith, while Francisco Olazábal and Patty K. Scotton led the healing service. Olazábal, dubbed El Azteca, joined the Church of God of Prophecy on September 10, 1936, before a spellbound General Assembly, thus adding to the rolls a reported body of 50,000 Spanish-speaking adherents. This union was never realized though because Olazábal died tragically in a 1937 automobile accident—this despite the courting of Frank Olazábal in New York by Homer Tomlinson and A. J. Tomlinson’s repeated appearances before the Council of Latin American Churches.
In the final years before his death in 1935, R. G. Spurling was credentialed by A. J. Tomlinson. Spurling was present for the 1933 General Assembly during the General Overseer’s Annual Address. During that same year, Tomlinson reflected on the thirtieth anniversary of June 13, 1903. Having said in The Last Great Conflict that church “government” was not adopted until May 15, 1902,20 Tomlinson now writes that this was when the group had been “definitely organized.” He continues:
Then I ventured to ask if they would be willing to receive me into the Church with the understanding that it is the Church of God of the Bible. They were willing, and soon proceeded in regular order. I took the obligation with deep sincerity and extreme sacredness never to be forgotten (Jeremiah 50:5).21
The following year, the White Wing Publishing House published a manuscript by Homer A. Tomlinson under the title Amazing Fulfillments of Prophecy. Here one finds the pregnant observation that the first successful flight in 1903 by the Wright brothers was in North Carolina. The text goes on to point out that at the same time in the same state there was a group “. . . searching the Scriptures for the Mysteries of the Bible Church.” Looking back at Jesus’ prayer in John 17, Homer announced, “The great vision that was born there was that God’s People will be one.”22
I Discovered Today
“I discovered today [June 16, 1939] that the Wright Brothers made their first airplane flight in Dec. 1903. I joined the church on Camp Creek, N.C., June 13, 1903. They in extreme Eastern North Carolina and I in extreme Western North Carolina. This bit of information thrills me because of the prophecy of Isaiah 60:1, 8.”23
Although A. J. Tomlinson certainly knew previously the story of Kitty Hawk, it was Grady R. Kent’s reading of Isaiah 60:1–8 that juxtaposed Kitty Hawk and the June 13 “Arise, Shine.” The remainder of A. J. Tomlinson’s diary [through 1943] would return to no subject more than this one. Before the year was over, Tomlinson began to purchase land that originally housed the home of W. F. Bryant, then the home of J. C. Murphy and the Shearer Schoolhouse. Tomlinson had suffered a stroke in 1937 and soon thereafter turned his diaries over to elder son Homer to write a history.
The erection of makeshift markers is recorded in Tomlinson’s diary on November 15, 1940. One marker at the newly named Fields of the Wood was “Prayed and Prevailed,” and another proclaimed “Arise shine, for thy light is come, June 13, 1903.” Like efforts would culminate in a grand celebration held September 7, 1941. With three or four prototypes of the White Angel Fleet
droning overhead, Tomlinson recounted in detail the proceedings on June 13, 1903. When the group had reached the steepest part of the mountain, they were greeted by a dramatic demonstration of the Great Speckled Bird. The group then sang the old country anthem by the same name as it had been revised by Homer A. Tomlinson and Sarah Dillon.Tomlinson’s annual address during the 1941 General Assembly would return to the theme of breaking down the “middle wall of partition.” That same Assembly reported on a work among Native Americans in South Dakota and featured a sermon by Ralph C. Scotton on “All Races in One Mighty Church with Christ the Head for All.” Scotton, who attended the inaugural session of Bible Training Camp two months earlier, was appointed Field Secretary number two at this Assembly.
Epilogue
All are invited to rejoin the journey of those who have seen the power of God manifested in transformed lives, amazing miracles, and selfless giving to those in need. One can sense here the intensity of those courageous warriors whose spirituality assumed sacrifice and total transformation. This ethos gave rise to a strategic community full of valor. Their hunger for God overshadowed the misery and pain of being alienated by society. While engaging the plight of others, greatest value has been placed on things of eternal consequences. This passion was rewarded with the outpouring of divine manifestations that had been all but lost in Christianity at large. Here, the cross of Christ is central to a life saturated by the power of the risen Christ. This dedication to the Gospel has enriched the lives of those who travel the paths of righteousness.
On the thirtieth anniversary of June 13, 1903, Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson depicted himself on that earlier day as “. . . a ship at sea with no rudder by which it should be controlled.”24 Today we pause, but for a moment, to reflect on the legacy of this towering pioneer of the Pentecostal Movement who found an anchor. As we look back, may we see the future more clearly.
1For a full treatment of the early life of A. J. Tomlinson, see Roger G. Robins, “Plainfolk Modernist: The Radical Holiness World of A. J. Tomlinson,” Ph.D. dissertation (Duke University, 1999).
2A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, October 1, 1901, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
3A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, April 14, 1902, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
4M. S. Lemons, “History of the Church of God” (c. 1937), pp. 4, 5, 10.
5A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, June 13, 1903, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
6A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict (Cleveland: Walter E. Rogers, 1913), p. 192.
7Homer A. Tomlinson, The Great Vision of the Church of God (Queens Village, NY: published by the author, 1939), p. 6.
8A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 1, January 30, 1906, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
9A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 193.
10A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 3, November 15, 1914, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
11A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 137.
12See: The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel (March 1 and March 15, 1910): “History of Pentecost,” The Faithful Standard 1:5 (August 1922).
13A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 2, January 13, 1908, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
14Juan B. Padilla, Ministers’ Records, Church of God of Prophecy Archives. J. O. Sandoval, an evangelist in Colorado, wrote A. J. Tomlinson late in 1923 pledging his support. Sandoval’s printed stationary read, “Iglesia de Dios, Officina Principal en Cleveland, Tenn. A. J. Tomlinson, Sobreveedor.”
15Historical Annual Addresses: A. J. Tomlinson, compiled by Perry Gillum (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House and Press, 1970) 1:109.
16Ibid., 1:197.
17A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 4, September 2, 1921, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
18Lillie Duggar, A. J. Tomlinson (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House, 1964) p. 793.
19Historical Annual Addresses: A. J. Tomlinson (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House and Press, 1971) 2:170.
20A. J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, p. 193.
21A. J. Tomlinson, “I Took the Obligation Thirty Years Ago the Thirteenth Day of This June 1933,” White Wing Messenger 10:12 (June 17, 1933) p. 1.
22Homer A. Tomlinson, Amazing Fulfillments of Prophecy (Cleveland: White Wing Publishing House, 1934) pp. 125, 126.
23A. J. Tomlinson, diary, vol. 5, June 16, 1939, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
24A. J. Tomlinson, “I Took the Obligation Thirty Years Ago the Thirteenth Day of This June 1933,” White Wing Messenger 10:12 (June 17, 1933) p. 1.