Pentecostal Fire at the General Assembly (1907)
On Saturday, January 12, Pastor A.J. Tomlinson preached a message entitled “The Baptism with the Holy Ghost and Fire,” at the second General Assembly held in this Union Grove church in Bradley County, Tennessee.
“Glorious results. Speaking in other tongues,” wrote the travel-weary A.J. Tomlinson as he returned home to Cleveland, Tennessee, on June 14, 1907. Tomlinson and fellow minister M.S. Lemons had participated in a week of revival services led by evangelist M.M. Pinson in North Birmingham, Alabama. Tomlinson hungered to know more about the Pentecostal revival that was sweeping the world. He had been seeking this experience since January—longing for the day he too would be baptized with God’s Spirit.
In 1907 Tomlinson was pastor of the Church of God in Cleveland. The Church of God movement had begun as the Christian Union in 1886, changed its name to the Holiness Church in 1902, and adopted the name Church of God at its second assembly in January 1907.
Particularly important to the history of the Church of God is the 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse revival in the community of Camp Creek, North Carolina, where evangelists preached the doctrine of sanctification as a second blessing. Following that revival about 100 people were baptized with the Holy Spirit and many experienced divine healing.
This outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Camp Creek was several years before the better-known revival at Azusa Street in Los Angeles, and one of many sporadic outpourings signaling that God was doing a new thing in the last days. According to historian Dr. Charles W. Conn, although the lives of the Camp Creek believers had been transformed, “it would be somewhat later that even those baptized would understand the doctrine, person, and nature of the Holy Spirit.” Most scholars rightly regard the Azusa Street revival as the beginning of the contemporary Pentecostal movement because of its international influence as well as its advanced understanding of speaking in tongues as the Bible evidence of Spirit baptism.
It was his quest for understanding and for a personal baptism of the Spirit that had led Pastor Tomlinson to the Birmingham revival. It was a quest that shaped his ministry throughout 1907. For that entire year he preached and sought for “the third blessing.”
Indeed, as the year 1907 began, delegates at the second Assembly had sought for the fullness of the Spirit baptism experience. According to the minutes of the meeting, H.C. McNabb exhorted on the gifts of the Spirit during the Saturday morning service. He taught that the gifts were for today and that believers should “covet earnestly the best gifts.” Other speakers were in one accord and “all spoke freely with the power and demonstration of the Spirit.” The minutes reported that “the Spirit fell” and was accompanied with “shouts, handshaking, tears and glory in our soul.”
That evening Pastor Tomlinson preached a sermon on “The Baptism With the Holy Ghost and Fire.” Following his message, the altar was “quickly filled with earnest seekers for this Baptism. Some tarried until late.”
Although Tomlinson himself did not receive his blessing that night, he refused to give up his quest. Throughout 1907 he preached that the experience was for believers today. By his own testimony, he was often a seeker in the altar. For Pastor Tomlinson, it would not be until the next Assembly in January 1908 that he would personally experience the fire of Pentecost.
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This article was written by Church of God Historian David G. Roebuck, Ph.D., who is director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center and assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University. This “Church of God Chronicles” was first published in the June 2002 Church of God Evangel.
