I’ll Go If God Sends Me: A.J. Tomlinson and the Great Commission”
“This morning I felt a special burden for souls in Central America, and I am not sure yet, but Father may have called me to that field as I was at prayer out in the woods. As the call seemed to come I said, ‘Yes Father,’ and entered into groanings that could not be uttered…. The country and people are unknown to me, but I’ll go if God sends me.” [A.J. Tomlinson (December 17, 1905)]
This pledge of A.J. Tomlinson to go wherever God sent him was more than an exuberant promise recorded in his personal journal. Although Central America never became his mission field, Tomlinson’s ministry demonstrated a life-long commitment to the Great Commission. Born into an Indiana Quaker family, his grandparents had helped organize a congregation near Westfield and actively worked in the Underground Railroad to assist fugitive slaves attempting to secure their freedom. The Westfield congregation emphasized world missions, ministered to Native Americans, and established industrial homes and schools to help the poor.
Tomlinson drank deeply from those wells. Friendship with Methodist colporteur J.B. Mitchell led to forming the Book & Tract Company in 1894 as a means of home missionary ministry to the mountain poor in North Carolina. By 1899 Tomlinson had settled in Culberson, where he founded a school, Sunday school, clothing distribution center, and orphanage.
His vision was not be limited to the Unicoi valleys and mountainsides, however. Ministry successes and a north-south railroad led him to relocate to Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1904. Within two years he had established a congregation in Cleveland and was reaching into neighboring towns.
When Tomlinson was baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1908, he experienced a vision in which he spoke in tongues while traveling the world. This vision intensified his urgency to reach the lost in the last days. Pentecostal fire was for a real purpose—empowering and enabling the church to win the world. Tomlinson wrote, “This was really the baptism of the Holy Ghost as they received Him on the day of Pentecost, for they all spake with tongues. With all I have written it is not yet told, but judging from the countries I visited I spoke in ten different languages.” Of course reaching the world often begins at home, and Tomlinson continued, “Then I came back to Cleveland, and I seemed to be asked if I was willing to testify or speak on the public square of the city. Without any effort my spirit seemed to give consent.”
Evangelism became his mission. On March 8, 1909, Tomlinson wrote, “The Spirit indicated that workers were to go out from this place, north, east, south and west and said, ‘Separate unto me those whom I want for the work whereunto I have called them.’ … The Book of Acts is being reproduced.” In late March and early April he undertook a preaching tour to Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama. Returning home for only a day, he then traveled to Florida and established churches in Tampa and Durant.
Tomlinson’s ministry in Durant brought many into the Church of God including Edmond and Rebecca Barr. Catching Tomlinson’s vision of a world harvest, that November the Barrs traveled to Edmond’s native Bahamas initiating the Church of God’s international commitment to the Great Commission.
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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 December 2009 Church of God Evangel.
