AGNES SANFORD’s HEALING LIGHT

By Rev . Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

An article for the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

The 20^th century healing revival was encouraged greatly by Agnes Sanford. She mentored and raised up more successors than other healing pioneers. Her spiritual children included Leanne Payne, Francis MacNutt, Tommy Tyson, John & Paula Sandford, Anne White, Ruth Carter Stapleton, and Dennis & Rita Bennett.  Newsweek Magazine described her as one of six people who shaped religious thought in the 20^th century.  Agnes is remembered as the most original healing theologian of that time. The famous author Frederick Buechner commented:

I was deeply influenced by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who in her day was quite famous as a faith healer, which is a term I've always distrusted, because it conjures up charlatanry. She was not a charlatan. She was the real thing, and she had had remarkable healings.

Much of her creativity can be traced back to her early years as an MK (missionary kid) in China.  Agnes Mary White (later Sanford) was born, on November 4, 1897, in China to Presbyterian missionary parents. Her father, Rev. Hugh W. White was resisted by other missionaries who did not want to give leadership to the local Chinese pastors.  He wrote a remarkable book based on his experiences with brand new Chinese believers: Demonism, Verified and Analyzed. 

Like many MKs, Agnes never really felt fully at home in any culture.  She could speak Mandarin, but not read or write it. She saw North America with Chinese eyes and China with North American eyes: “I fell in love with China before I fell in love with a man.”   Agnes first attended the Shanghai American School as a teenager before leaving for the United States to attend Peace College, a Presbyterian women's college in Raleigh, North Carolina.  However, she could not escape the pull to return to China, serving as a missionary teacher before meeting her future husband Rev. Edgar (Ted) Sanford, an Anglican/Episcopalian missionary in China.

Much like Eugene Peterson, Agnes was very poetic, musical, imaginative, and sensitive to other people’s emotional well-being.  She was deeply moved by the ignored plight of a missionary wife struggling with deep depression who later killed herself.

Agnes's initial view of God was that of a distant and demanding taskmaster: “…the window of my own soul was closed, and I could not see Him.  Christianity to me had become to me words –just words – only words.”  After she moved with her husband back to North America, Agnes suffered from severe, recurrent depressions for many, many years: “My family was adept at them (nervous breakdowns).  We are of strong physical heritage, but we excel in having nervous breakdowns.”

She felt like a square peg in a round hole, in terms of her role as a North American pastor’s wife:

I had determined to make myself exactly like Ted’s mother, whom I adored. I would then be, I felt, the kind of wife that he liked. Therefore, I completely denied my original nature and devoted every moment to fruitless endeavor. And so, I reached the depths because I was doing violence to my own soul.

No matter how hard she tried, Agnes felt that she would never be the ‘perfect minister’s wife.’  Her postpartum depression was so deep that her doctor thought that she might kill herself within a year: “…my mind was clogged with resentment and darkness and unhappiness, as a pipeline can be clogged with roots and dirt.” Agnes’ curiosity was stirred when an Anglican priest Hollis Colwell prayed for her young son who was immediately healed.  She finally broke out of her depression after Colwell laid his hands on her head and prayed for her. For the next year, she wrote, she went about her work repeating to herself, hourly and daily, the same prayer: "Lord have mercy on me, and fill me with Your Holy Spirit."

Agnes realized that the real part of her was simply not living, the creative one who longed for children of the mind to be brought forth. She realized that she could no longer see beauty: “when one can no longer see beauty, one can no longer see God.” 

In her autobiography Sealed Orders, Agnes spoke of discovering her call by God to be a writer.  Hollis Colwell deeply encouraged her to put her thoughts onto paper: “Write two hours every day. Those are my orders.”   The very act of writing brought healing to both Agnes and with those whom she ministered.  She eventually dedicated six months a year to writing rather than constantly leading healing missions. Colwell also encouraged her to begin praying for others on her own, rather than just keep sending people to him. 

The basic trouble was that I had forgotten whence I came, and I did not know the sealed orders with which I had been sent to this earth. I sensed my thwarted creativity. I wanted to be a writer, and I could not, for all of my time and thought and attention was upon being a wife and mother.

During World War II, Agnes volunteered through the Red Cross in the local veteran's hospitals, giving her a chance to quietly pray for the sick. Before being kicked out of the hospital for praying, she saw several miraculous healings there. Agnes said Jesus stood in church services all over Christendom with his hands tied behind his back because neither ministers nor people expected him to do anything. She said people who prayed had to expect miracles.

Agnes’ first book Healing Light was rejected by many publishers before several chapters were serialized by Rev. Dr. John Gaynor Banks in the Order of St. Luke the Physician’s Sharing magazine. This led to Glenn Clark, founder of the CFO Camps, to publish it through Macalester Park Publishing Company. Since its 1947 publication, it has sold over half a million copies.  She later wrote many other nonfiction and fiction books on healing.

In 1958, Agnes and her husband Ted began the School of Pastoral Care. It helped train pastors to both receive healing and then pray for other’s healing.  Agnes, like Jesus, healed people out of compassion for lost, hurting sheep: “If you are not moved by compassion, lay it off. It just won’t work.”

Agnes rooted the healing ministry in the sacraments: “My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation.” One of her strategies for spiritual renewal was having twenty-five women come ten minutes early to the church to pray the prayer of forgiveness for anyone whose face irritated them. This, she discovered, released the healing power of Christ.

With the rise of the Jesus movement, Agnes welcomed the youth awakening: “I thank God for the Jesus People rolling up and down Sunset Strip. They have totally changed that place.  Some of the bars have closed because the Jesus People would get in there and give out tracts before they were kicked out.  They closed one dirty show completely, by all standing around and giving a college yell for Jesus (Give me a J!).”

As a pioneer in the healing of memories, she resisted techniques, preferring instead to rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Inner healing for her was about a deeper understanding of forgiveness of sins, what she called the most difficult venture in the world. Resentment and bitterness poisoned our bodies. Restoring our creative imagination brought our souls back to life.  Agnes found deep healing through gardening and drama:

There was also gardening, which is still my joy and delight, for one feels the life of the earth through the hands, and the benediction of God’s love through the sunshine, and the pure joy of the Kingdom through the color and fragrance of the flowers. 

Soul healing for Agnes was deeply connected with experiencing the beauty of the world.  She also encouraged people not to just do spiritual activities but also to receive healing through building bookshelves, taking part in plays, or going fishing.  We need to both pray and play to bring healing to our body, mind and spirit.

May the pioneering of Agnes Sanford continue to help release many into a deeper understanding of forgiveness of sins in every area of our lives.

 

Alexander & Mary Boddy, British Healing Pioneers

 

-an article in the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

From the noisy industrial town of Sunderland in Northern England came unlikely healing pioneers, Rev. AA (Alexander) and Mary Boddy.  Sunderland at the time was the largest shipbuilding port in the world, full of noxious factory fumes and clanging steam hammers. As a spiritual well of revival, Sunderland was visited thirty times by John Wesley. 

Alexander was born on Nov 15^th 1853, the third son of Rev. James Boddy in Cheetham, Manchester.  Mary was a descendant of John Wesley.  As a baby, Alexander was not expected to survive: “But the Lord raised me up again when death seemed certain.” 

After seven years as a legal solicitor, Alexander attended the 1876 Keswick Holiness Convention where he decided to become an ordained Anglican pastor. Like many at Keswick, he believed in personal holiness, pleading the Blood of Jesus for sin and for victory over disease:

As TO DIVINE HEALTH, disease was also dealt with at the Cross. When He crucified the flesh, the old man, we read He bare our sicknesses (Isaiah 53) He separated us from the things of the old Creation, old things passed away (2 Cor. v. 17). But we must believe It and appropriate the separating power of the Blood; for Calvary did it, the Victory was gained for us there.

In 1884, Bishop JB Lightfoot sent Alexander at age 32 to All Saints Church, Sunderland.   The previous pastor had taken to drink and emptied the church. Alexander developed a major ministry to people struggling with alcoholism.

Alexander met his wife Mary in 1890 at one of the parish mission conferences that he often organized. They married in 1891. Mary was supernaturally healed from asthma in 1899:

After many months of prayer, God spoke to me from John 5:39…and as I believed the Word and received Jesus to come into me as my physical life, he did so, and I was made whole.

Afterwards, she regularly prayed with and laid hands on the sick. With her musical gifting, teaching, and gifts of healing, Mary was deeply appreciated as a partner in ministry by her husband. Alexander used a service of Anointing the Sick and taught on the subject of healing.

As a world traveler recognized by the Royal Geographic Society, he wrote five travel books and a devotional Days in Galilee book (1900) on Israel:

Oh, for an outpouring of the Holy Ghost until hearts overflow to one another in love!  There is no other solution of these difficulties but the yielding to the full possession of the Spirit’s power.   

When the 1904 Welsh revival broke out, Alexander visited Evan Roberts in Tonypandy, Wales, to see for himself.  Being most impressed, he started a revival prayer meeting at All Saints Sunderland.  People were said to be aglow for two years afterwards.  Boddy held an interdenominational United Revival Service for 15,000 people at the Sunderland football ground.

In 1907, Alexander invited a British-born Norwegian Methodist pastor, TB Barrett, to lead a parish mission at Sunderland. On 13 September, Barratt wrote "the eyes of the religious millions of Great Britain are now fixed on Sunderland."  The stone in the wall of the Parish Hall still carries the inscription “WHEN THE FIRE OF THE LORD FELL, IT BURNED UP THE DEBT” (there had been a debt on the building). Many people were amazed that the Holy Spirit fell first in England on unlikely Anglicans.

From 1908 to 1914, Alexander hosted an annual Whitsuntide Sunderland Convention, which had people attending from many denominations and nations.  Whitsuntide (or White Sunday) is the British term for the week of Pentecost. He noted in the June 1908 Confidence Magazine:

There was a unity that nothing but the Holy Spirit could give. We were Anglicans, Methodists, Friends, Salvationists, Congregationalists, but ‘denomination’ was forgotten.  All one in Christ Jesus was true. Then we were English folk, Scottish Folk, Welsh folk, Irish folk, Norwegian folk, Danish and Dutch, yet all one in Christ Jesus.

 One of his most famous visitors was Smith Wigglesworth who was seeking a deeper experience of God.  After Mary Boddy laid hands on him, he received a vision of the empty cross and Jesus glorified, and began praying in the Spirit. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit launched him around the world in a remarkable healing ministry: “After this, a burning love for everybody filled my soul.”

With the help of the Boddy’s friend Cecil Polhill, many missionaries were sent from Sunderland to the ends of the earth. Boddy’s motto, “unity is not uniformity” characterizes how welcome he made others feel, regardless of whether or not they were Anglican (Church of England). Boddy had a Kingdom mindset rather than a narrowly denominational mindset.

In the first 1908 edition of the Boddy’s magazine Confidence, the ministry of healing was emphasized. C. Peruldsen from Edinburgh wrote that in her visit to Sunderland,

Not only did the dear Lord fill me with the Holy Ghost, but He healed my body at the same time.  The doctor had been attending me almost daily for six months up to the very day I visited Sunderland.  I could take no solid food of any kind, but now I am able to eat anything.  I have seen my doctor many times since and he is amazed. Glory to God for His great love and kindness to me.

This magazine, which had 141 issues until 1926, was read globally by thousands. In the second edition, Mary Boddy wrote about ‘Health and Healing.’  Alexander taught in the Confidence Magazine about the importance of James 5:14 laying on of hands and anointing with oil for divine healing:  

It is the prayer of faith –not the oil – that saves…The Lord is restoring the gifts of the Church, and many in this land have, in measure a gift of Healing.

Boddy the veteran world traveler ministered extensively in Europe, Canada, and USA. The founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, became Boddy’s good friend, inviting him to preach on Divine Healing in July 1914.

Bishop Dr. N. T. Wright said, “Those who pray for a fresh work of the Spirit on our own day will do well to learn from such earlier events (as the outpouring at All Saints Sunderland).”

Like Alexander and Mary Boddy, may we in 2025 also seek for a fresh outpouring of the healing ministry in Canada.

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors of God’s Firestarters

Dr Jordan Peterson’s Wrestling with God

 

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-a article for the Light Magazine

Why have Dr. Jordan Peterson’s videos been watched by almost a billion people since 2017? Other Canadians rarely have this kind of social media coverage.  His regular 8.56 million subscribers have been closely following his spiritual/psychological journey regarding the meaning of the Bible.  God seems to be using him to soften millions of young people to the gospel and even to do the ‘unthinkable’ -- attending church.  In this book, he throws down the gauntlet to Dr. Richard Dawkins and the new atheism. 

In Peterson’s new book, he has become absolutely fascinated with the Bible and its shaping of western culture:

…the biblical corpus, the compilation of drama that sits at the base of our culture and through which we look at the world… is the story on which Western civilization is predicated.

The biblical stories are maps of meaning.  These maps function at the psychological, scientific, and spiritual levels. True meaning is found in narrative, particularly the biblical accounts.  Being made in God’s image is Peterson’s core theological and psychological starting point.  The Bible reveals a true moral order that can be ignored and subverted at our own peril.  The voice of conscience is very close to the voice of God, the still small voice: “…the possibility of establishing a relationship with God by attending to conscience.”  This will result in people being “in some sense reborn, and become new people.”

The word Israel given to Jacob means wrestling with God.  Peterson sees this wrestling with God as our true destiny that we are wise to embrace.  To refuse this call is to hide our light under a bushel and embrace hellish chaos.

Will Jordan help bring about a revival of biblical marriage instead of living together? This book helps young people realize that marriage is not just a piece of paper but rather is a deep-rooted covenant involving the very core of our social identity. As he says, “why would anyone with any sense not want their sexual relationship consecrated?” To embrace the responsibility of marriage and family is to choose a life-giving adventure.

God appears to approve of sex, if only in the context of consecrated, covenantal relationships—but, of course, why would it be otherwise?

Jordan Peterson speaks of Jesus revealing his divine identity during the Transfiguration. He moves back and forth seamlessly in discussing the Old and New Testament.  The Kingdom of God is a major theme in his book. “Elijah is delivered into the Kingdom of God.”  Christ as King of Kings is “by definition, the spirit or essence of sovereignty, its very embodiment.”

In his book, he uses the metaphor of ‘upward’ for spiritual connection with God and societal transformation. As Jordan mentions, “life is well portrayed as a series of uphill journeys.” Upwards for Peterson is about aim and purpose versus nihilism and despair: “We aim at the upward target we deem central…” Upward represents the Promised Land. Carrying our cross and embracing suffering is the Upward path of adult maturity:

To “pick up the cross”—that means to voluntarily face the reality of mortality and malevolence and to struggle uphill nonetheless.

Aim and character development are deeply connected: “character is nothing more than the habitual embodiment of aim.” Where we aim is all about voluntary sacrifice: “the sacrifice that makes such aim possible…” Without such sacrifice, society becomes ruled by sexual hedonism and tyranny.  Covenantal Kingdom faith is all about upward sacrifice:

This is an act of faith as well as one of sacrifice: faith, because the good could be elsewhere; sacrifice, because in the pursuit of any particular good we determine to forgo all others.

Because Peterson is Jungian, he both embraces the gospel and perhaps redefines it subjectively:

God himself does the same with his son, a sacrifice played out as the Passion of Christ—an offering and transformation that brings about the end of the dominion of death, harrows hell, and reconciles the sinful progeny of Adam to their heavenly Father.

At face value, it looks as if Peterson is affirming Jesus as God’s Son, who sacrificed his life for us on the cross, breaking the power of death and sin.  Does Peterson’s new love for the Bible and Jesus trump his allegiance to Jungian psychology?  Does he believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead?  Has he encountered Jesus in a life-transforming way?  We hope so. If so, he may become the next C.S. Lewis for our very lost generation.

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors of God’s Firestarters

 

A.B. Simpson’s Gospel of Healing

 

Healing Pioneers: AB Simpson’s Gospel of Healing 

by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-published in the January 2025 Light Magazine

A.B. Simpson was a remarkable Canadian pioneer of the healing ministry. Born on Prince Edward Island on December 15, 1843, Simpson was such a workaholic that he destroyed his health: “I carried a bottle of ammonia (smelling salts) in my pocket for years and would have taken a nervous spasm if I had ventured without it. Again and again, while climbing a slight elevation or going up a stair did the awful and suffocating agony come over me, and the thought of that bottle as a last resort quieted me.”

After moving to New York City, Simpson’s medical doctor gave him three months to live.  But after being prayed for by an Anglican physician, Dr. Charles Cullis, at Old Orchard Camp in Maine, he experienced a remarkable healing of his heart.  Simpson made the following pledge: “As I shall meet Thee in that day, I take the Lord Jesus as my physical life, for all the needs of my body until all my life-work is done; and God helping me, I shall never doubt that He does so become my life and strength from this moment, and will keep me under all circumstances until His blessed coming, and until all His will for me is perfectly fulfilled.”

The next day, Simpson was able to climb a 3,000-foot mountain, and successfully pray for his daughter Margaret’s healing from acute diphtheria – the very disease which had earlier killed his son Melville.

Word spread fast in 1881 of these healings. He was besieged by many with pleas for help. By others, he was vilified and ridiculed as another quack miracle worker. Despite such criticism, Simpson received strong support from medical doctors like Dr. Jenny Trout, the first female doctor & surgeon in Canada, Dr. Robert Glover from Toronto, and Dr. Lilian Yeomans, a Canadian-born surgeon living in Michigan. Simpson commented: “Not a few beloved physicians of the highest standing have taken Jesus as their Healer and when their patients are prepared for it, love to lead them to His care.” While he was not opposed to medical doctors, he wanted people first to pray for healing.  

In May 1882, Simpson started Friday-afternoon healing & holiness meetings, which quickly became New York’s largest attended spiritual weekday meeting, with 500 – 1,000 in attendance. These services involved the laying on of hands or anointing with oil, as described in James 5:14-15. On a wall at his Gospel Tabernacle was all the medical paraphernalia that had been discarded by those who had been healed. Because he did not want people to see him as a healer, he would not pray individually with others at the Friday healing service. Instead after preaching a healing sermon, he would go to another room to take part in intercessory prayer. Thousands, said Simpson, were healed: “One of the most remarkable in the early days was a woman who had not bent her joints for eight years, and used to stand in our meetings on her crutches, unable to sit down during the whole service. She had not sat for eight years. She was healed in a moment, as if by the touch of a feather, and all in the house were filled with wonder. Another was cured of spinal curvature. A great many have been delivered from fibroid tumors; and a few cases from malignant and incurable cancers. We have had two cases of broken bones restored without surgical aid. Many cases of the worst forms of heart disease, several of consumption, and some desperate cases of hernia, when it would have been death to walk forth as they did if Christ had not sustained. 

He even turned his own home into a Healing Home where people could come for prayer ministry. Many of the early pastors and missionaries in the Christian & Missionary Alliance had been dramatically healed from many diseases.  The early Alliance history books often recorded dozens of such healings at the back of the books. 

His four-fold gospel emphasized “Christ our Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.” Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance logo uses a pitcher of oil to symbolize divine life and physical healing.  He refused to make healing his only focus: “I have four wheels on my chariot. I cannot agree to neglect the other three while I devote all my time to the one.”  Simpson developed a profound theology of healing that has impacted many denominations even to this day.  He saw that the healing ministry was vital in the fulfillment of the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.  Simpson published over 70 books, edited a weekly magazine for nearly 40 years and wrote many gospel songs and poems.

In his 1890 book The Healing Gospel, Simpson documents 27 case studies of healings in the Bible. These include Job, Naaman, Hezekiah, Peter’s mother-in-law, the Gadarene demoniacs, and blind Bartimeus.  He taught that the healing ministry remained for hundreds of years: “In the second, third, and fourth centuries, fathers as famous as Irenaeus and Tertullian, bear testimony to the prevalence of many undoubted miracles of healing, and even the raising of the dead in the name of Jesus.

Simpson held that the healing ministry only gradually disappeared because of growing worldliness, formalism and unbelief: “the dear Master never contemplated or proposed any post-apostolic gulf of impotence and failure. Man’s unbelief and sin have made it. The Church’s own corruption has caused it. But He never desired it or provided for it.”

The revival of the healing ministry was linked for Simpson to spiritual renewal, a growing openness to the Holy Spirit, and the nearer approach of Jesus’ second coming. Even apart from the physical benefits, healing was seen as valuable because of its aid in spiritual awakening, as it: exalts the name of Jesus, glorifies God, inspires the soul with faith and power, summons to a life of self-denial and holy service, and awakens a slumbering Church and an unbelieving world with the solemn signals of a living God and a returning Master.”

Healing and holiness were closely linked for Simpson: “the spiritual results far outweigh the temporal; and it is one of the most powerful checks and impulses in the lives of those that have truly received it.”

He held that the healing ministry was vital to world-wide evangelism: “The next great missionary movement will and must incorporate this mighty truth.”

Jesus Christ and his healing ministry, for Simpson, was the same, yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8). He rejected the popular doctrine of Cessationism, that the gifts of healing had ceased, being only for an earlier dispensation. Signs and wonders of Bible times continue today: “We are in the age of miracles, the age of Christ, the age which lies between two Advents.” At the heart of the healing ministry was “a presence never withdrawn, a love, a nearness, a power to heal and save as constant and as free as ever, even unto the end of the world.” For Simpson, all the charismatic gifts were still available today, especially overseas where they were most needed. Praying for healing was not always instantaneous, but sometimes more gradual. Simpson knew that healing was a mystery, not a formula. He would not say that a person necessarily lacked faith because he was not healed, died in sickness or died young: “Sometimes the Master is taking home His child and will He not, in such cases, lift the veil and show the trusting heart that its service is done? How often He does! (…)”

A key verse for Simpson was 3rd John 2, which prayed that we may prosper and be in health, even as our soul prospers.  

Simpson cautioned against ‘if it be thy will’ prayers for healing:  “Be fully assured of the WILL OF GOD TO HEAL YOU. Most persons are ready enough to admit the power of Christ to heal. The devil himself admits this. True faith implies equal confidence in the willingness of God to answer this prayer of faith.”

Many Christians disqualify themselves from receiving healing because of their supposed unworthiness.  Simpson encouraged people not to give up: “We never can deserve any of God’s mercies. The only plea is the name, merits, and righteousness of Christ.”

Simpson wanted people to not merely ask for healing but by deliberate faith to receive the gift of healing: “You must take Christ as your Healer-not as an experiment, not as a future, perhaps, but as a present reality.” He expected trials of faith as people chose to trust Christ in this area.  

Simpson rooted his understanding of the healing ministry in the miracles of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. He drew particularly on Isaiah 53:4-5 and Matthew 8:16-17.  Both the finished work of the cross and the resurrection were vital for Simpson’s approach to healing: “It is the resurrection life of Christ in us.”  Healing was seen as the receiving of the very Life of Jesus. Healing for Simpson often went from the inner to the outer and physical: “He works from within outwards, beginning with our spiritual nature and then diffusing his life and power through our physical being. Many persons come to God for healing whose spiritual life is wholly defective and wrong. God does not refuse the healing, but He begins in the depths of the soul, and when it is prepared to receive His life, he can begin to heal the body.”

Many other healing pioneers like Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Oral Roberts drew inspiration from Simpson’s writings and ministry. Also, the official publication of the Assemblies of God, The Pentecostal Evangel, published more than 100 of Simpson’s articles on healing and holiness.  Virtually every denomination is indebted to Simpson’s pioneering healing ministry, far more than they might suspect.  

How might we more intentionally incorporate Simpson’s four-fold gospel insights in our lives and local churches?  

Editor’s note: See also A.B. Simpson, Canadian founder of a global missionary alliance and A.B. Simpson, a Canadian maverick

About Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

Books by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird include God's Firestarters; Blue Sky, a novel; and For Better, For Worse: Discovering the keys to a Lasting Relationship. Dr Ed’s newest award-winning book The Elisha Code is co-authored with Rev. David Kitz. Earlier books by Dr. Ed include the award-winning Battle for the Soul of Canada, and Restoring Health: Body, Mind, & Spirit.

View all posts by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird | Website

William Seymour: Father of the Azusa Street Revival

 

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-an article for the Light Magazine

Who might have imagined almost 120 years ago in 1906 that a one-eyed black preacher in Los Angeles would eventually impact over 800 million people around the globe?

William Joseph Seymour (May 2, 1870 – September 28, 1922) was the second of eight children born to recently freed slaves Simon and Phyllis Seymour in Centerville, Louisiana. His father contracted a fatal illness while serving in the Union army, dying in 1891.  The twenty-one-year-old Seymour became the primary bread winner, growing subsistence crops to help his deeply impoverished family survive. 

His spiritual heritage was a combination of Roman Catholic and Baptist.  At a young age, Seymour felt a call to ministry which he resisted.  He taught himself to read and write. At age 25, he moved to Indianapolis, where he served as a railroad porter and as a waiter in a fashionable restaurant.  During that time, Seymour was infected with smallpox, which almost killed him, and left him blinded in his left eye. He had a deep spiritual encounter with the Evening Light Saints group, a Church of God holiness movement in Cincinnati.

He spent a month at Charles Parham’s bible school in Houston, Texas, where he was taught about the Holy Spirit. Because of Jim Crow laws, Seymour was only allowed to listen to the lectures from the hallway. During that time, he was invited to pastor a holiness church in Los Angeles, founded by Julia Hutchinson who intended to become a missionary in Liberia. 

Seymour’s new pastoral position did not last long, as the door was padlocked on him.  With no salary or place to live, Seymour was invited by Richard Asberry to stay at 214 Bonnie Brae Street. This is where after a month of intense prayer and fasting, Seymour and several others first spoke in tongues. By that time, the overflow of participants caused the front porch to collapse, motivating Seymour to look for a new location.

Initially, Seymour rented a derelict building formerly used by an African Methodist congregation at 312 Azusa Street.  An arsonist had previously set it on fire, destroying the roof which had to be replaced. The building suffered from smoke and water damage.  One newspaper declared it a complete loss. While the earlier congregation met on the second floor, William decided to meet on the first floor which had been used as a church parking lot for horses.  As a result, the horse flies were notoriously painful during the church services, especially in the hot summers.  The dirt floor was covered with straw and sawdust.  The ventilation was so poor in many of the services with Sunday crowds of up to 1,500 people that they would put their head under the pews looking for fresh air. 

The Azusa Street revival was more than anything else a revival of prayer. For more than three years, Azusa Street prayer services occurred three times each day at 10 AM, noon and 7 PM. Seymour himself prayed five hours a day, often with his head hidden under a shoe box. His gift was to prayerfully usher people into the presence of God.  Azusa Street, like most revivals, was also a revival of music.  Their favorite hymn was ‘The Comforter Has Come’ by Frank Bottome.  There was also much spontaneous singing in the Spirit.  Being soft-spoken, Seymour was more of a teacher than a preacher. He was not known as a great orator.  John G. Lake said that Seymour had “more of God in his life than any man I had ever met…I do not believe that any other man in modern times had a more wonderful deluge of God in his life than God gave to that dear fellow.”

A major aspect of the Azusa Street revival was healing, with signs and wonders. They had a wall in which no-longer-needed crutches, canes and other medical aids were featured.  Like in New Testament times, many deaf people could hear again and the blind could see.  Roberts Liardon, who sees Seymour as one of God’s General, spoke of a time when the fire department was called because some people saw fire on top of the Azusa building. There was no fire. Seymour said that the people saw the flames of Pentecost on top of the building. From three or four blocks away, people would feel a supernatural pull to come and attend the services.  

Particularly notable were the racially integrated worship services, which was virtually unheard of in that time period.  Seymour noted that the colour line was washed away in the blood. He did not want an all-black or an all-white church.  The diversity and unity among races and cultures at Azusa Street was unique.  Historian Vinson Synan commented, “From that day, I would say, Pentecostalism has had more crossing of ethnic boundaries than any movement in the world in Christianity.” Yale Historian Seymour Alstrom said “Seymour exerted greater influence upon American Christianity than any other black leader, because of his outreach across the colour line to inspire whites and all other people.” Seymour was one of the greatest civil rights leaders, perhaps a precursor to Martin Luther King Jr. Seymour insisted that in God’s Kingdom, , all God’s children are treated equally and with respect.

The Azuza participants were serious about service and community.  They would come and serve people meals when they were sick, and clean their house.

The newspaper coverage was rarely sympathetic.  A local Apostolic Faith newspaper at its peak had 50,000 subscribers.  The Apostolic Faith editor Clara Lum was offended when William Seymour married Jennie Evans Moore on May 13, 1908. So Lum stole the paper's mailing list and started publishing The Apostolic Faith newspaper in Portland.  She also started a new denomination which forbade marriage. Despite Seymour’s pleading, Lum would never return the mailing list. This greatly hampered Seymour’s ability to communicate with his growing global family. 

Gentleness and humility was a major aspect of the Azusa Street revival. He was not full of himself. He was full of God.  Seymour wanted the Holy Spirit to be in charge.  William H. Durham said of Seymour:

He is the meekest man I have ever met. He walks and talks with God. His power is in his weakness. He seems to maintain a helpless dependence on God, and is as simple-hearted as a little child, and at the same time is so filled with God that you can feel the power and love every time you get near him.

William Durham noted how love and unity permeated Azusa Street like a sweet fragrance.  Seymour emphasized the need for both the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit: “The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God’s love. If it does not bring more love, it is simply a counterfeit.” Seymour remarked: “If you get angry, speak evil, or backbite, I don’t care how many tongues you may have. You have not the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” He went on to say: “Since tongues is not the evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, men and women can receive (tongues) and yet be destitute of the truth. Tongues is one of the signs, not the evidence. No one in our work shall be known as receiving the Holy Ghost simply because of speaking in tongues alone.”

A huge missionary force was raised up in the Azusa Street revival, sending people to every continent. Seymour modelled this openness to missions, saying :

I can’t forget how, kneeling at the old board in Azusa Street, I promised God I would go where he wanted to go and stay where he wanted me to stay, and be what he wanted me to be. I meant every word of it, and God has taken me at my word.

Sixty percent of Guatemalans, 49% of Brazilians, 56% of Kenyans, and 44% of those in the Philippines have been impacted by the historic Azusa Street revival. Yale University has recognized Seymour as ‘one of ten most influential leaders in American religious history.’ In 1999, the Religion Newswriters Association named the Azusa Street Revival as one of the top ten events of the past millennium.

Despite his being used so powerfully, Seymour experienced great suffering, sadness, and pain. He was one of the world’s most successful failures.  At the end, he was virtually deserted and rejected, feeling that he indeed had failed.  After two heart attacks, he died at age 52 in his wife Jenny’s arms.  his last words were "I love my Jesus so." Douglas Nelson said that Seymour died of a broken heart over people missing his vision for world-wide racial reconciliation.

Might we be willing to learn from Seymour how important it is to reconcile with other believers through the power of the Holy Spirit?

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors of God's Firestarters

 

 

John Knox: Father of Presbyterianism

 

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

an article posted in the October 2024 Light Magazine 

John Knox, an unlikely Scottish Reformer, is the most influential Scotsman in Scottish history.  Born around 1515, he went to the University of St. Andrew’s before working as a notary priest who drew up and certified contracts.

It was a wild and wooly time in the beginning of the Scottish Reformation. John Knox said that it was merchants and mariners who first brought the Reformation to Scotland, often in the form of books. In 1528, Professor Patrick Hamilton of St. Andrew’s University was burnt at the stake by Cardinal Beaton. John Knox said: “The reek of Master Hamilton’s burning has infected as many as it blew upon.”

Knox’s first reformation appearance was carrying a two-handed sword as he served as a bodyguard for the Scottish Reformation preacher George Wishart. After preaching to the plague-infested people of Dundee, Wishart became a Scottish hero. In December 1545, Wishart at age 33 was taken by the Roman Catholic Cardinal David Beaton to the Castle of St. Andrew’s where he was condemned and three months later was burned at the stake. Beaton as the most powerful person in Scotland was nicknamed ‘the cruel persecutor’.

After the killing of Cardinal Beaton by five Scottish Lairds, 150 people took over his castle for nearly a year.  Knox’s role was teaching the bible to the children in the castle.  The St. Andrew’s Castle Chaplain, during a sermon, prophetically singled out John Knox, commenting that God called John Knox to be a preacher and a leader of this Reformation. All the people at the Castle congregation said ‘yes, we believe it. John Knox, you are our man.’ Bursting into tears, John Knox ran into his chambers. This was Knox’s turning point when he realized God’s call on his life to preach the gospel and change a nation.  He was a modern-day prophet, a man of strong feeling. Knox’s two passions were justification by faith alone and the call to flee idolatry. If the bible did not specifically allow something, Knox’s default was to reject it as idolatry.

St. Andrew’s Castle was untouchable until the Scottish Queen Mary of Guise called on the French Navy to siege it. John Knox ended up spending eighteen months as a slave rowing on a open-air French galley. Few people survived such back-breaking rowing for long, being totally exposed to the worst of the weather.  While sailing past St. Andrew’s Castle, Knox prophesied in chains that one day he would again preach at St. Andrew’s.  It did not look at all likely. 

Unexpectedly King Edward 6^th rescued John Knox, licensing him to serve as a royal chaplain in Westminster Cathedral and in Hampton Court.  During this time of favour, Knox turned down All Hallows Church the most influential pulpit in London, and also the opportunity to be the Anglican bishop of Rochester. Knox was a very fiery preacher, a white-hot firebrand.  The English Ambassador Thomas Randall said: “the voice of that one man is able in one hour to put more life in us than a thousand trumpets continually blustering in our ears.”  There is in John Knox the spirit of an Old Testament Prophet, like Moses at the Burning Bush. The 19^th century Scottish author Thomas Carlyle said that he saw in Knox: “a sympathy, a veiled tenderness of heart, veiled, but deep and of piercing vehemence, and withal even an inward gaiety of soul, alive to the ridicule that dwells in whatever is ridiculous, in fact a fine vein of humour....”

His suffering in the French galley ship left him with many health problems: kidney stones, insomnia, fever, parasites, and perhaps PTSD. In a March 23rd 1553 letter from Newcastle to his mother-in-law, he said: “My old malady troubles me sore, and nothing is more contrarious to my flesh than writing. Think not that I weary to visit you, but unless my pain shall cease, I shall altogether become unprofitable.” Knox's life shows how God often delights to work most powerfully through people who are most weak in themselves.

Knox lived a rollercoaster life with many ups and downs. There were three painful Marys in Knox’s life: Mary of Guise, Bloody Mary, and Mary Queen of Scots, all who resisted the Scottish Reformation. With intense waves of persecution from the new Queen, Bloody Mary, Knox fled in 1553 to Dieppe in the Netherlands before moving to Geneva.  This gave him a chance to be directly mentored by John Calvin.  Historian Philip Schaff held that Knox became more Calvinist than Calvin.  While in Geneva, he preached three sermons a week to English refugees, each message lasting well over two hours. Though he wrote a five-volume series on the History of the Scottish Reformation, Knox saw himself as more of a preacher than a writer: “I consider myself rather called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, to confirm the weak and rebuke the proud by the tongue and lively voice in these corrupt days, rather than compose books for ages to come.” Knox dreamed of turning Scotland into a nationwide version of Geneva.

Knox had a painful time in Frankfurt where he was ousted from the Anglican Church over the Book of Common Prayer. Then he returned to Scotland where he preached the gospel to working class Scots: “God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.”  The Queen mother, Mary of Guise, was a French aristocrat who appealed to the Scottish elite. Knox dared to disagree with Mary of Guise’s inner circle, speaking truth to the powerful. The thundering Scot had a will of steel.  With the sudden death of Mary of Guise in 1560, the Scottish Parliament passed the Scottish Confession of Faith, all within five days. Knox helped put out the first Book of Discipline for the Church of Scotland.

  When Mary Queen of Scots at age 19 returned to Scotland in 1561, John Knox noted, “She brings with her only darkness and impiety.” She was a great charmer, but nothing worked on Knox who was summoned five times by Mary Queen of Scots.  Weeping, flattering and charm did not move John Knox. He taught: “One man with God is always a majority.” Mary Queen of Scots said that she feared the prayers of John Knox more than an army of 10,000 men. Knox is best known for his prayer ‘Give Me Scotland or I die.’  In 1559, Mary Queen of Scots was determined to kill John Knox, ordering her French army to follow John Knox, and fire on Scottish congregations where he was preaching.  Knox fearlessly preached the gospel, hunched over the pulpit, and thousands were converted to faith in Christ: “By God’s grace, I declared Jesus Christ, the strength of his death, and the power of his resurrection.” In one famous painting, he is portrayed as preaching with wild, tortured eyes at St. Giles Cathedral to Mary Queen of Scots. John Knox was arrested in Oct 1563 by Mary Queen of Scots after criticizing her upcoming marriage to the adulterous Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley.

John Knox saw education as not the privilege of the few, but the right of all.  Education was vital to a population able to read the bible for themselves. Scotland became one of the most literate societies in the world.

Not everyone loved John Knox. He was burned in effigy and almost assassinated on at least one occasion. One hundred years later, his books were still banned by parliament in England, and one of his books was publicly burned. Even in 1739, the famous Great Awakening leader George Whitefield was condemned for allegedly reflecting the doctrine of John Knox. Recently Edinburgh City Council removed Knox’s gravestone, turning his grave site into a parking lot stall #23. Around 75 million Christians today are Presbyterians. It is better known around the world than in the UK.

When he died in 1572, the testimony was given ‘here lies one who never feared any flesh.’ In Arthur Herman’s book How the Scots Invented the Modern World, he showed how John Knox and the courage of his preaching has had lasting impact on western civilization.  Bruce Gore says that the idea of government by the people, of the people and for the people can be traced to John Knox.  His vision for spiritual freedom led to a passion for freedom from political and cultural oppression.

May John Knox’s passion for freedom in Christ inspire each of us to live more fully alive in Jesus.

Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird, authors of God's Firestarters

 

Carson Pue: Characteristics of a good leader

Light Magazine

September 8, 2024 by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird 

Dr. Carson Pue has been investing in Greater Vancouver leaders and many others for 33 years now.  He was inspired by Billy Graham’s brother-in-law, Leighton Ford, to commit his life to making a difference in the lives of leaders. The result has been seen through Arrow Leadership, and how it has refined the mission and ministry of over 1,200 leaders. Pue notes: “Leadership is lonely. Many leaders find that their “toolbox” is empty. Many of these leaders need to be loved, to be appreciated, and be reconnected in their inner life with Jesus.” As a mentor of leaders, Pue’s passion is for iron to sharpen iron in a community context: “We’re trying to practice our unique calling in our distinctive context, following how Jesus discipled people. It was a combination of actions and teachings happening at the same time.”

Character is at the heart of good leadership. Too often Pue has found that gifted speakers are not always people of integrity.  They get limited support and can be, at the same time, prematurely promoted beyond their level of maturity, resulting in increased potential to fail, dramatically crashing and burning.  

With Brenda, his late wife, he formed Quadrant Leadership, based on the sailing metaphor. Both Brenda and Carson were sailors. His passion is to come alongside leaders as they handle the rigours of the open seas, helping them to be led more by Jesus, lead more like Jesus and to lead more to Jesus.  Pue has spent years developing leaders in a wide variety of businesses and not-for-profit charity entities. His expertise is in high demand locally and internationally by prestigious organizations, enterprises, and institutions. He has served on boards and with executives at World Vision, Kurumbuka Leadership Solutions Foundation (Rwanda), Trueface (Atlanta), Opportunity International, The Billy Graham Center, YesTV (Toronto), and Troyer Industries (Oil and Gas sector).

Recently, Pue produced a year’s worth of Mentored Podcast with the late Dr. Martin Sanders, founder of Global Leadership Inc. These online podcast sessions have become a robust resource, sharing with its listeners many themes that highlight effective mentoring of leaders.

Pue is the bestselling author of Mentoring Leaders: Wisdom for Developing Calling, Character and Competency. His upcoming book Leading Like a Saint is based on leadership principles from Saint Patrick.  Known for his masterful storytelling and innovative leadership style, Pue exposes and equips audiences with many remarkable and fascinating untold stories and principles behind what it takes to be a leader. His interests include sailing, public speaking, reading, music, writing, family and all things Irish! He lives in Vancouver with his second wife, Glenda, and their dog, Murphy. Carson takes great joy in spending time with his three sons, their wives – who he affectionately refers to as his “daughters” – and his seven grandchildren.

Pastor Scott Anderson, Lead Pastor of Lambrick Park Church, Victoria commented: “Carson has been personally influential in the formation, renewal, and encouragement of an extraordinary number of leaders in many sectors (health care, relief and development, business, finance, govt, etc). I think it’s fair to say that the church of Jesus Christ is seeing significant fruit today because of devoted leaders like Carson Pue.  I know I am.”

Bob Kuhn, a lawyer, consultant, past president of Trinity Western University and Carson’s longtime friend, recognized the tremendous benefits of Pue’s advice and wisdom when Kuhn asked him to serve on Trinity Western University’s executive leadership team as Special Assistant to the President. While Kuhn sought to lead key growth and creative leadership to the University during the six years of particularly challenging conflict, “Carson was not only a fully grounded, wise and an ideal voice of mission-refinement at TWU, he was strong, caring and totally reliable as he took on roles that required a critical, mission-sensitive but caring skill set. I don’t think I could have taken on the leadership demands of Trinity’s president during those years without him.”

Carson Pue will be speaking at the 39th White Rock/South Surrey Leadership Prayer Breakfast on Friday, Oct 25, 2024, 7 to 9 am at Peace Portal Alliance Church in South Surrey. 

About Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

Books by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird include God's Firestarters; Blue Sky, a novel; and For Better, For Worse: Discovering the keys to a Lasting Relationship. Dr Ed’s newest award-winning book The Elisha Code is co-authored with Rev. David Kitz. Earlier books by Dr. Ed include the award-winning Battle for the Soul of Canada, and Restoring Health: Body, Mind, & Spirit.

View all posts by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird | Website

When Others in Need Come to Mind

This week, as I write, people in the town of Jasper were allowed to “come home” and assess damages. They had a one-hour time frame to be there as the fire still raged some distance away.

Imagine coming back to your town to see your lot empty. No house where it once stood, shiny and clean, but now a grey dusty patch over perhaps a cement foundation. Bare earth where grass once grew. Everything gone! And if you drove as far as the park, the road into it was a charred mess of black sticks, all that’s left of a once beautiful forest.

I watched the online video. Section after section of homes burned to the ground. Some homes and businesses sustained less damage, but the town was rather empty, aside from RCMP and a small contingent of staff.

Interviews with people who’d lived there, or had planned to, showed a mix of people who wanted to come back and start over. Others planned to move somewhere else. One of those people interviewed was a leader in the town, a daughter of a retired writer I know.

Wendy had just started a new job there and her mom wondered how often that kind of job comes around. In our messenger conversation, I said I was glad they got out safely. But what about work? One needs a job in order to live. I promised I would pray for her daughter and family.

My own resources may be limited to a small donation at times like this, but God is bigger. Not diminishing the need for many of these families, I pray that they will get the help they need to get back on their feet and be able to earn a living again. I pray when Wendy and that community come to mind. It certainly isn’t hard, since they are in the news as much as the war in the middle east.

What can we do? Pray! Sometimes it’s all we can do, and let the people know we are praying for them.