Historical selections that will give you a better feel for the times that our authors were part of. Special conditions of the times had a very marked effect upon doctrines favoured, approaches taken, as well as results gained.
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The Pioneer Days of Holiness
America after the Civil War saw revival spread like a prairie
fire before a mighty wind. Resisted and persecuted by the
established churches, it mostly found expression in holiness
"Campmeetings". This is a moving courageous tale of sawdust
floors and faithful tears in the American Southwest. Certainly
this is one of my favourite selections! These people did the
stuff!!!! (15 pages)
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Between
the early Councils and the Reformation
This is a capsule summary of Godly thinkers and mystics
662 AD to 1246 AD. (1 page)
Pre-Pentecostalist
History
From 1790 AD to Azusa Street there was the occasional
forerunner that became the surprising roots of
Pentecostalism. (3 pages)
Trade-Marks
of the Holiness Pioneers
Between 1850 and 1900 the sawdust revival gave rise to
churches and denominations. A prominent Nazarene leader tells us what
he saw in the Holiness Movement. Do you sit in
a church pew? If so this is a resounding wake-up call for
you.
27 pages
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Mr. Wesley’s Faith
So you thought John Wesley was from such an ancient time as
to be irrelevant to what we see today? Think again. (2
pages)
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The Life and Times of John Wesley
At the beginning of his career John Wesley was "of a pugnacious
spirit". (Pugnacious = "ready and eager to fight" Collins
dictionary.) This meant that he aggressively pressed in to find
the whole truth. He did not quit until he found it -and then spoke it
forth clearly to all... including leaders who did not agree. He
was not intimidated, and was patient with their weakness.
The trouble was created by his very success. Although they would not
accept it, he had entered into much more of His truth and reality than
they had. This is never a recipe for peace -consequently
Wesley lived in the eye of a spiritual and theological tornado.
Wesley was
fully at peace, but all around him was swirling in chaos......
Much was set into order, even though the next generations started to
return to denominational disorder..... progress is often
messy! 110
page excerpt in PDF from Rev. L. Tyerman (1870)
The
first
Apostle of American Methodism
Long before the American war of Independence, Captain Web,
retired from the British Army and undeterred by severe war wounds from
Louisburg, came to be considered the founder of Methodism on the
continent of America. This is the colourful story of a truly worthy
servant! 12 pages
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Robb French
If you have a family; don’t read this one. It will
convict you of lack of consecration and fruitfulness as a family!
But if you start to read, you will not be able to
put down this well-written gripping tale of saintly courage. I
was glued to the whole 103 page original. This family had such
radically beneficial child-raising practices!! The astonishing
fruit!! (31 pages)
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These principles have stood the test of time. 12 pages by H. Robb French
Wesley
and
Sanctification
A thought-provoking discussion of Wesley's theology in light
of the appallingly barbaric conditions of his times, as written by a
contemporary Wesleyan scholar. (6 pages)
The
Real Faith
This rare work by the early Pentecostal healing
evangelist Charles Price, was penned near the end of his life and sums
up what he has seen regarding faith and healing after many years of
heart-searching: "I think I know the answer! I am sure in
my own heart that I have discovered what has been wrong. I can see now
where so many missed the way. The only thing to do is to ask the Spirit
to lead us back to the fork in the road where, because of our
blindness, we left the trail. Then once again can we walk on the Kings
Highway of grace and prove in heart and experience that the Book is
true
and that our Jesus never fails. Remember that!".
Regrettably, the lusty ministries of the day were too busy to heed
his excellent godly counsel....... Mostly deals with the proper
way to obtain faith for healing. The difference between "faith"
and "belief" must be understoood.
Chapters 12 and 13 deal with holiness and consecration as related to the above. 58 pages by Charles Price.(1940) . (long- takes a full minute to load)
People I Have Met
Punchy short testimonies and astonishing anecdotes gathered
from a long ministry in the early saw-dust revivals. What a time they
had! 12 pages by Beverly Carradine
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Revival Incidents
Hilarious! Shocking! Marvellous testimonies
and happenings were common during
the pre-Civil War spreading of the "Great Awakening" into the
American South. This is an entertaining as well as instructive
historical read. I would have included it in the testimonies section
but there were so many others wonderful stories also. 43 pages
by Beverly Carradine
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A Short Biography of John Wesley
Like no other work on this website, the pilgrimage of the progenitor of the Holiness Movement is clearly laid out. Pay special attention to the special family life and attention given by his parents, and how this leads to John later giving extraordinary care given to the needs of children, especially in their education in that dark and ignorant day. Regrettably however, this authour demonstrates little understanding of the grace of holiness that Wesley constantly preached. 11 pages by Maldwyn L. Edwards
Great Healing Revivalists
These were always the most spectacular ministries of all. Includes a scary study of some who went off the rails. 27 pages by Andrew Strom and Larry Magnello (1996)
Interesting Background of the 1700's
The times of Wesley were not dull. Here is some background of the world that the Wesleys found. 7 pages
John Owen Put Me Straight
by J. I. Packer -Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"They called it the Victorious Spirit-filled life. You got into it, they said, by total surrender to Jesus Christ (they assumed that no one does this at conversion) and then looking to Him whenever you felt sinful impulses stirring. He would then by His Spirit, douse the desire, and quiet peace and joyful satisfaction would be your portion once again. As described by the gifted preachers under whom I sat, it sounded wonderful. But I could not make it work.
I was a new convert in my late teens. I had kept Christ at bay for too long and was trying to make up for lost time. Like any other introverted adolescent, I was a loner, my emotional life was all over the place, and I was essentially a mixed-up kid. I heard the formula as a way of transcending my less-than-satisfying inner state and laboured to follow the instructions, but the mad, bad urges still raged and the quiet peace did not come.
What was wrong? I concluded that my surrender could not have been total and scoured my inside to find what more I could consecrate. Harry Ironside, sometime preacher at Moody church in Chicago, drove himself into a nervous breakdown doing this, and I might well have gone the same way. But I chanced upon a mini-treatise, a set of sermons stitched together by the Puritan John Owen (1616-1663), pontifically titled, “Of The Mortification of Sin in Believers”. And here was God's “chemo” for my cancered soul.
Reaching across three centuries, Owen showed me my inside -my heart- as no one had ever done before. Sin, he told me is a blind anti-God, egocentric energy in the fallen human spiritual system, ever-fomenting self-centred and self-deceiving desires, ambitions, purposes, plans, attitudes, and behaviours. Now that I was a regenerate believer, born again, a new creation in Christ, sin that formerly dominated me had been dethroned, but was not yet destroyed. It was marauding inside me all the time, bringing back sinful desires that I hoped I had seen the last of, and twisting my new desires for God and godliness out of shape so that they became pride-perverted too. Lifelong conflict with the besetting sins that besetting sin generates was what I must expect.
What to do? Here was Owen's answer in essence: Have the Holiness of God clear in your mind. Remember that sin desensitizes you to itself. Watch -that is, prepare to recognize it, and search it out within you by disciplined, Bible-based Spirit-led self-examination. Focus on the living Christ and His love for you on the cross. Pray, asking for strength to say “no” to sin's suggestions and to fortify yourself against bad habits by forming good ones contrary to them. And ask Christ to kill the sinful urge you are fighting, as the theophanic angel in C. S. Lewis's “Great Divorce” tells the man with the lizard to do.
Does it work? Yes. Sixty years on, I can testify to that.
What was wrong with the Victorious Life teachers? They glossed over sin and so did not tell me half of what I needed to know. Does Owen's book minister to others as it ministered to me? Yes, From prison,just recently, came the following:
“I found this book ... near a toilet on the floor.... immediately after I finished reading Owen's “Mortification of Sin”, I got on my knees on the floor of my cell and asked Jesus to come into my miserable life and redeem me... and for the first time in my entire life I meant every single word that I professed....Thank You, Jesus”!
Owen is one of the dead who still speak." from: Christian History and Biography Magazine, winter 2006
John Owen is a famous Puritan preacher of sanctification from the 1600's. He was often called upon to minister to the parliament and King, and write to resolve spiritual problems for them. Owen's writings were very well known, and Wesley was widely read, so that we may assume that Wesley read this:
Enclosed is a link to Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website. 77 pp. available in PDF, TEXT, or HTML formats.
The Puritans and "dissenters" in the century before Wesley were essentially Anglicans who were resisting the majority to bring their church to become less Catholic, and more godly. Holiness, Sanctification and the Mortification of sin already had a very long history before Wesley, Fletcher and Adam Clarke came along to clarify the topic even further. With more clarity, came more effectiveness of guidance into His Rest, but as Packer explains, it already had remarkable power. Earnest Seeker
In the further transmission of Wesley's message, John Fletcher's monumental works including "Checks to Antinomianism" ( a belief in grace without reference to the law or its profound righteousness) stand alone. Each of these four scholarly parts is approx. six hundred pages in PDF.
Fletcher was the most saintly man that Wesley knew. He would have appointed him to carry on his work after he passed on, but Fletcher (1729-1785) went on first.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
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