Pioneer Days of the Holiness Movement

 This 21 page selection provides you with essential insight to the rough and tumble world of the Holiness outreach to the Southwest USA in the civil war aftermath. You must read this to gain an appreciation of what the various authors in this website were up against, as well as the courage and faith they used to so abundantly overcome! I personally consider this selection as one of the most entertaining on the website.

The rugged faith they exhibited was an honest response to their rugged environment. "These are the men and women of blood and fire, with the real call of God on their hearts, and an experience that burned in their bones till it was "preach holiness or burn." They had the martyr spirit; they did not ask, "How many are the enemy?" but "Where are they?" They did not question the financial ability of the people, but "Do they need holiness?" They had the Pentecostal experience with Pentecostal results following. They were missionaries, both home and foreign. They formed bands of workers, and if something did not turn up, they went out and turned something up.

They went to places where they were not wanted, and stayed until the people thought they could not get along without them. In the summer months they preached under green trees, brush arbors, cloth tents, and schoolhouses. When winter came they rented halls in large towns and did city mission work, visiting in the afternoons, while they stayed in and studied in the mornings. They preached on the streets, in the jails, and wherever they could get a hearing. These people carried with them the spirit of Elijah in the court of Ahab, and John the Baptist in the palace of Herod. No place was too hard, and no people could terrify them. They preached "holiness or hell," and God honored such ministry, and great revivals broke out. If the services were not free, they would fast and pray until the "fire fell."

They would sometimes fast for days at a time, but somehow they always had victory. Scarcely a meeting in those days when there were less than one hundred people converted or sanctified, and many times two or three hundred. People often ran screaming to the altar, or sometimes fell like dead men into the straw, and lay for hours, to come through shouting. Like Paul before the Jewish mobs, or Martin Luther before the diet at Worms, or John Wesley beside his father's tomb, they would proclaim, "The world is my parish." Nothing short of this will bring results and the preacher who has not reached this place had as well surrender his credentials, and go back to his plow."
 

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