1738
HT: Christian History Institute
James Gardiner was a valiant Scots soldier. After a wild youth, he converted to Christianity in 1719 (he was thirty-one at the time) and showed many evidences of earnest faith. Philip Doddridge, a Puritan pastor, educator, and author, was so impressed he wrote a life of Gardiner.
Seven years after Gardiner’s conversion, he married. On this day 19 November 1738, he wrote a letter to his wife overflowing with trust in God.
“I bless God I was never better in my lifetime, and I wish I could be so happy as to hear the same of you: or rather, in other words, to hear that you have obtained an entire trust in God. That would infallibly keep you in perfect peace, for the God of truth has promised it. Oh, how ought we to be longing ‘to be with Christ,’ which is infinitely better than any thing we can propose here! to be there, where no mountains shall separate between God and our souls. And I hope it will be some addition to our happiness, that, you and I shall be separated no more; but that as we have joined in singing the praises of our glorious Redeemer here, we shall sing them in a much higher key through an endless eternity. Oh eternity, eternity! What a wonderful thought, is eternity!”
1862
The church needs fighting men of God, not “weasel-eyed, jelly spined, four-flushing. . . Christians.” These are the words of evangelist Billy Sunday, a church revival leader in the early l900s. William “Billy” Ashley Sunday was born on this day, November 19, 1862. His father never saw him. A poor farmer and bricklayer, he had left his wife behind on the Iowa prairie to serve in the Union armies where he contracted an infection and died.
Billy’s Beginning
Billy grew up in poverty. A sickly child, he often had to be carried on a pillow. But when he grew stronger, he became as hard a worker as any prairie children. Billy’s mom remarried, but his step-dad was an alcoholic who eventually abandoned the family. Billy wound up in an orphanage. Later he became involved in amateur athletics and attracted the attention of the Chicago White Stockings.
Finding Jesus
After he became a major league baseball player, Billy used to hang out in saloons. Once, when he’d been out drinking, he heard some gospel street singers, and at the Pacific Garden Mission, he asked Jesus to take charge of his life. He began to study the Bible and eventually quit baseball to become secretary of Chicago’s Y.M.C.A. Then he moved on to organize J. Wilber Chapman’s evangelistic services. When Chapman left to be a pastor, Billy took over the meetings.
Flair for the Dramatic
Billy Sunday organized his evangelistic staff like a vaudeville business–with advance men, secretaries, a choir, and local volunteers. He raised expenses in advance of his tent meetings. In 1909 he was joined by Homer Rodeheaver, a song leader and trombone player. Billy’s talent for the dramatic drew thousands to see his antics and hear his rapid-fire delivery and pantomimes of fighting the devil. His message was against alcohol, laziness, apathy and immigrants. He amassed a fortune–sometimes (according to one disgruntled songleader) by not paying his help.
Sunday’s altar call was relatively painless–nothing like the narrow gate that Jesus’ described or the cross Christ said we must take up. Sunday would ask, “How many of you men and women will jump to your feet and come down and say, “Bill, here’s my hand for God, for home, for my native land, to live and conquer for Christ?” Shaking Billy’s hand was his way of signifying getting right with God. Thousands pressed forward to do it.
An Early Evangelist
But what did it mean? Billy’s New York campaign drew a million-and-a-half people and chalked up l00,000 “conversions.” However, many of the converts were uncertain what their step forward meant and few actually joined a church. Nonetheless, Billy’s techniques paved the way for future evangelists who also learned from his failures and developed methods of follow-up.
1910
THE SHIP CLEMENT left New York City on 5 November 1910, bound for Brazil. Two weeks later, on this day 19 November 1910, two American Swedes disembarked from the Clement at Belém, Pará, Brazil. It was a significant moment for the vast Latin American country.
The two men Daniel Berg, 26, and Adolf Vingren, 31 were Pentecostal missionaries. Seven years earlier, in 1903, Vingren had come to Michigan from Sweden. A Christian woman living in Menominee prophesied that he would be used to win souls after the Holy Spirit had come upon him. A group of Pentecostals confirmed his missionary call and said he was to go to Brazil.
Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren
While in preparation, Vingren became a pastor in Chicago. There he met Daniel Berg, who worked at a market. The hearts of the two united with desire to preach the gospel overseas. Olof Uldin, a Spirit-filled man, prophesied that the two were to go to Pará. Neither knew where Pará was and went to a library to look it up. Convinced this was God’s leading, they set their hands to task. The amount they needed for the third-class fare came together.
When they arrived at Belém they had no contacts. A Baptist minister allowed them to live in the basement of his church for two dollars a night. They communicated as best they could while they began learning Portuguese. After they prayed for the healing of a Brazilian woman, she recovered from an incurable affliction and soon after spoke in tongues. Other Brazilians accepted the Pentecostal teaching. The Baptist minister accused them of heresy and excommunicated them.
Numbering nineteen, they formed their own church. They named themselves Apostolic Faith Mission, but seven years later adopted the name Assembly of God, the first church to take that name. Later they affiliated loosely with the Assemblies of God that emerged in the United States.
Not only Baptists but Presbyterians and Catholics in Brazil resisted the Pentecostals. However, they offered hope to the poorest, sickest, and most neglected Brazilians, healing many in the name of Jesus. Consequently, Berg and Vingren saw steady church growth. And when they moved to the large cities and turned over control to indigenous leaders, the Pentecostal denomination took off.
Today the Assemblies of God is the largest Protestant denomination in Brazil. The most conservative estimates agree that they have at least eight million members, but the church claims twenty million. Surely God honored the obedience of the two Swedes.