The Winds of God
The Story of the Early Pentecostal Movement (1901-1914) in the Life of Howard A. Goss
Covering the early 20th century Pentecostal movement (1901-1914) in the life of Howard A. Goss, “The Winds of God” affords the reader insight into many of the issues and situations that were instrumental in molding the Pentecostal movement.
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⇒ Recommended reading by Curry Blake, John G. Lake Ministries.
“The Winds of God” is one of the earliest written personal experience of one of the first converts to the Pentecostal message,
Covering the period of 1903 until 1914, we are given a detailed look at how the earliest Pentecostals lived out the message that changed their lives and the lives of millions since.
This is not some polished, politically correct, “puff piece”, it is a gut level account of what it meant to be part of a fledgling movement within Christianity. The early Pentecostals went through extreme persecution and privation to spread the message of the infilling and I dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
All the excitement, all the hardship and all the power experienced in the early days of Pentecost are recorded herein.
By reading this book you will be inspired and amazed at the level of consecration and dedication demonstrated by the people called, “The Pentecostals”. You will see that the devil has no new tricks. His tactics today are the same as they were over one hundred years ago, but you’ll also find that God is the same and His power and willingness to help mankind are also the same. You will see that God’s power is available to any and all that will seriously and diligently pursue all that God has them.
This book will change your prayer life and how you relate to God.”
Source: https://john-g-lake-ministries.myshopify.com/products/the-winds-of-god?_pos=1&_sid=221249903&_ss=r
The Twentieth-Century Pentecostal Revival
By David K. Bernard
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:2, 3
In December 1900, Charles Fox Parham, the founder and leader of Bethel Bible College, asked the approximately forty students to search the Bible to determine the sign or evidence that occurs when a person receives the Holy Ghost. After three days, the students assembled with their answer: the initial evidence of receiving the Holy Ghost is speaking with other languages as the Spirit gives the utterance.
Parham was surprised by the answer, and he was also surprised when on January 1, 1901, one student, Agnes N. Ozman, began speaking with tongues when he laid hands on her in prayer. Two days later, on January 3, 1901, Parham found twelve other students, including his wife, praying and speaking with tongues. Parham, sensing a holy presence, knelt in prayer and soon received the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with tongues.
During the next few weeks, the experience spread among the other students and into the community. On January 21, Parham and some of the students held their first public evangelistic service in Kansas City. Newspapers in Topeka and Kansas City reported on the “new sect,” with front page coverage in Kansas City.
Revival in Texas
In the spring of 1905, Parham held a meeting in Orchard, Texas, a small community about forty miles west of Houston. Parham stated that before he arrived only a few people in Orchard professed to be Christians, but before the meeting ended almost the entire community was converted. In July Parham moved his group of workers into Houston, holding meetings in the Brunner Holiness Church and in Bryant Hall. W. F. Carothers, the pastor of Brunner Holiness Church, accepted the Pentecostal experience as did his congregation.
In the fall of 1905, Parham opened a short-term Bible school in the downtown area of Houston. About twenty-five workers from Kansas came to help him in Texas, most of whom attended the Bible school. Howard Goss was among these workers.
Azusa Street Mission
One student who attended the Bible school in Houston, William J. Seymour, a black Holiness minister living in Houston, went to Los Angeles, California, to preach in a Holiness church on Santa Fe Street. Although Seymour had not received the Holy Ghost, his sermon on the first Sunday morning, February 24, was taken from Acts 2:4. He preached that the initial sign of receiving the Holy Ghost is speaking with tongues.
The pastor, Julia Hutchins, did not agree with his doctrine, so she locked the door to keep him from preaching in the church. A family from the church, however, invited Seymour to stay at their house, and another family opened their home on Bonnie Brae Street for prayer meetings.
On April 9, Jeannie Moore, a young lady who later married Seymour, and several other people received the Holy Ghost during the prayer meeting. Three days later, on April 12, Seymour was filled with the Holy Ghost. On April 15, Miss Moore gave her testimony at a local church, and soon large crowds filled the house and overflowed into the yard and street.
By April 18, the group moved to an old two-story building on Azusa Street in the downtown industrial area of Los Angeles. By the end of that summer, hundreds of people had been filled with the Spirit, and the Azusa Street revival was ready to spread across North America and around the world.
Holiness ministers who came to the Azusa Street Mission to receive the Holy Ghost returned to proclaim the Pentecostal experience to their churches, cities, and communities. Many church congregations and several entire Holiness organizations came into the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals became missionaries to Africa, India, China, the Mideast, South America, and Europe. Several missionaries from other church organizations visited Azusa Street to receive the Holy Ghost, and they took the news back to their fields of ministry.
Early Pentecostal Leadership
From 1901 to 1907, the Pentecostal movement, known at the time as the Apostolic Faith Movement, was led in a general way by Parham. Seymour was the recognized leader of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, and for a brief moment he enjoyed widespread influence. One of the earliest leaders whose influence continued for several decades was Howard A. Goss.
After Goss received the Holy Ghost in the spring of 1906, Parham appointed him to be the field supervisor of the work in Texas. Parham also appointed W. F. Carothers to be the general field supervisor, and Carothers signed Goss’s first ministerial license, issued on August 26, 1906. Parham’s effort to organize the Pentecostal movement in Texas crumbled in 1907.
Goss, however, remained a leader among the Pentecostals in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and other midwestern states. During the years from 1907 to 1914, he established Pentecostal churches in Texas and Arkansas, and he evangelized in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa. He met William H. Durham and preached at the church he pastored in Chicago. In 1908, he met E. N. Bell, to whom he turned the pastorate of the large church he had pioneered in Malvern, Arkansas. He also turned the paper he edited, The Apostolic Faith, to Bell, who merged it with the Word and Witness in 1910.
Goss was the prime individual behind the organization of the Assemblies of God in 1914. Earlier, in 1910, he worked out a temporary arrangement with C. H. Mason to obtain and issue license in the name of the black organization Mason founded, the Church of God in Christ. In 1912, Goss became acquainted with H. G. Rodgers and his group in Alabama and solicited his support. In late 1913, he persuaded Bell, D. C. 0. Opperman, and others to sponsor a call for an organizing conference of interested Pentecostal ministers. The conference, meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Goss was the host pastor, formed the Assemblies of God. Goss, Bell, and Opperman were among those chosen to be top officials in the new organization.
Howard Goss- The Winds of God
January 14, 2017, By Lois
Howard A. Goss was part of the Pentecostal movement since the very early 1900s. He helped to organize the Assemblies of God. He became the General Superintendent of the Pentecostal Church Incorporated, which later merged with another organization to form the United Pentecostal Church. Goss became the first General Superintendent of the UPC in 1945.
In the late 1950s, his wife, Ethel E. Goss, wrote a book with his input on the early years of the Pentecostal movement from 1901 to 1914. It is called The Winds of God.
There are many people involved in Oneness Pentecostal churches who are yet unaware of how things were different in the earlier days of their movement. There wasn’t the same emphasis on outward standards and there were differences in beliefs concerning when a person was saved. Goss himself believed that both Trinitarians and Oneness believers were saved and believed that water baptism was performed after a person was saved.
In regard to outward standards, below is what Mrs. Goss wrote on page 69 (of the revised version and page 38 of the original version):
We did not wear uniforms. The lady workers dressed in the current fashions of the day…silks…satins…jewels or whatever they happened to possess. They were very smartly turned out, so that they made an impressive appearance on the streets where a large part of our work was conducted in the early years.
It was not until long after, when former Holiness preachers had become part of us, that strict plainness of dress began to be taught.
Although Entire Sanctification was preached at the beginning of the Movement, it was from a Wesleyan viewpoint, and had in it very little of the later Holiness Movement characteristics. Nothing was ever said about apparel, for everyone was so taken up with the Lord that mode of dress seemingly never occurred to any of us.
Galatians 2:4 came to mind as I posted this quote. While it may not fully fit, to me it does at least in part: “But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.” (NASB) Could it be that a reason why so many today are now overly concerned with the outward is because they may not be “so taken up with the Lord”?
Source: http://blogs.spiritualabuse.org/2017/01/14/howard-goss-the-winds-of-god/
Franciscus M. Dartee
Grow in Faith | Walk in Power
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