Oneness Pentecostalism

Affiliation

Baptist minister in Canada; assistant to William Durham in Los Angeles; founder of Oneness Pentecostalism

Appears in

Oneness Pentecostalism

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Life

From Australia to Canada

Frank J. Ewart was born in 1876 in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, and grew up in a Christian family. He worked in the bush and as a lay preacher before emigrating to Canada in 1903, where he became a Baptist minister and served a church in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.^†

Pentecost and dismissal

In 1908 he received the baptism in the Spirit and spoke in tongues, and was dismissed by his Baptist church. He moved to Los Angeles in 1911 and became William Durham's assistant at the Seventh Street mission, which had been formed after Durham was locked out of Azusa Street. When Durham died in July 1912, Ewart succeeded him as pastor.

The "New Issue"

In April 1913 a great World-Wide Camp Meeting was held at Arroyo Seco, near Los Angeles, led by Maria Woodworth-Etter. During a baptismal service the Canadian evangelist R.E. McAlister remarked that the apostles had always baptised in the name of Jesus, never with the Trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19. A man named John G. Scheppe, after a night of prayer, ran through the camp shouting that he had seen the power of the name of Jesus. Ewart and others began to study the question.

Ewart concluded that "Jesus" is the one name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that the Trinitarian formula was a later invention. He developed a Oneness doctrine of God: there is one God, who is one Person, manifested as Father in creation, Son in the incarnation and Holy Spirit in regeneration.

The rebaptisms

On 15 April 1914, at a tent meeting at Belvedere, east Los Angeles, Ewart rebaptised Glenn A. Cook in the name of Jesus, and Cook then rebaptised him. They preached that all who had been baptised with the Trinitarian formula needed to be rebaptised in Jesus' name. Cook carried the message east; among those rebaptised were G.T. Haywood of Indianapolis, leader of a large interracial congregation, and several leading ministers of the newly formed Assemblies of God, including its first chairman, E.N. Bell, who was rebaptised in 1915 but later returned to the Trinitarian position. Ewart published his teaching in a paper, Meat in Due Season.

The split

At its General Council in St Louis in October 1916 the Assemblies of God adopted a "Statement of Fundamental Truths" with a strong section on the Trinity. About a quarter of its ministers - some 156 - withdrew, and the Oneness movement organised separately, eventually in bodies such as the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (organised 1916-18 and led for years by Haywood) and, after a racial division in 1924, churches that merged in 1945 as the United Pentecostal Church. Ewart continued as a pastor and evangelist in California for the rest of his life.

Key dates

• 1876 - Born in Australia
• 1903 - Emigrates to Canada; Baptist pastor
• 1908 - Baptism in the Spirit; dismissed by his Baptist church
• 1911 - Assistant to William Durham in Los Angeles
• 1912 - Succeeds Durham as pastor
• April 1913 - Arroyo Seco camp meeting; the "New Issue" begins
• 15 April 1914 - Rebaptism at Belvedere with Glenn Cook
• 1915 - E.N. Bell and other Assemblies of God leaders rebaptised
• October 1916 - Assemblies of God affirms the Trinity; Oneness ministers withdraw
• 1945 - United Pentecostal Church formed
• 1947 - The Phenomenon of Pentecost
• 13 August 1947 - Dies

Teachings and claims

One God, one Person

Ewart taught that God is absolutely one, not three Persons. "Father", "Son" and "Holy Spirit" are titles or manifestations of the one God, not distinct Persons. The fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Jesus (Colossians 2:9), who is the Father incarnate.

The Son as the human nature

He distinguished the divine and human in Christ by saying that the Father is the divine nature, or Spirit, in Jesus, and the Son is the human nature. The Son therefore had a beginning at Bethlehem; there is no eternal Son.

Baptism in Jesus' name

Since "Jesus" is the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:19 is fulfilled by baptising "in the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 2:38). Baptism with the Trinitarian formula is invalid, and those so baptised must be rebaptised.

The new birth

Later Oneness teaching, which Ewart helped shape, held that full salvation requires repentance, baptism in Jesus' name and the baptism of the Spirit evidenced by tongues - a three-part reading of Acts 2:38.

Documented controversies

• The rebaptisms of 1914-16, which divided congregations and families and split the young Assemblies of God.
• The 1916 General Council, where Trinitarian leaders such as J.R. Flower and E.N. Bell insisted on a doctrinal statement; Oneness ministers saw this as a return to man-made creeds.
• Charges of reviving ancient heresy. Critics identified Oneness teaching with the third-century modalism of Sabellius; Ewart and later Oneness writers rejected the label, though they acknowledged the similarity.

Death

Ewart died of cancer on 13 August 1947, aged about 71, shortly after publishing his history of the movement.

Legacy

Ewart is regarded as the founding theologian of Oneness Pentecostalism. The movement today includes the United Pentecostal Church International, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the True Jesus Church in China, and large Oneness churches in Latin America, Africa and Asia; estimates of its size range from twenty to forty million people.^† His The Phenomenon of Pentecost (1947) remains its classic history from the inside.

Measured against the creeds

Oneness teaching is a direct denial of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as confessed in the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed: "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance". The Church rejected modalism - the teaching that Father, Son and Spirit are modes or manifestations of one Person - in the third century, against Noetus, Praxeas and Sabellius, long before Nicaea. The Gospels show the Son praying to the Father, the Father speaking from heaven at the Son's baptism while the Spirit descends, and the Son sending the Spirit from the Father (John 15:26).

Ewart's teaching that the Son began at Bethlehem also denies the Creed's confession of "the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages". His rejection of baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit sets aside the Lord's own command (Matthew 28:19) and the universal practice of the Church from the Didache onward. The four traditions therefore regard Oneness Pentecostalism as outside the historic Christian faith, while recognising the sincerity of many of its members.

Major writings

• Editor, Meat in Due Season (from 1915)
• The Name and the Book (1936)
• The Phenomenon of Pentecost (1947)

Affiliation

Pastor of Christ Temple, Indianapolis; presiding bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World

Appears in

Oneness Pentecostalism

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Life

Greencastle and Indianapolis

Garfield Thomas Haywood was born on 15 July 1880 in Greencastle, Indiana, one of a large Black family, and moved with them to Indianapolis as a small child. He left high school after two years. A talented draughtsman, he worked as a cartoonist for two Black weekly newspapers in Indianapolis, The Freeman and The Recorder. He was active in Baptist and Methodist churches as a young man and taught Sunday school.

Pentecost

In 1908 he attended a small Pentecostal mission in Indianapolis led by Henry Prentiss, a Black preacher who had been at the Azusa Street revival, and received the baptism in the Spirit with tongues. In 1909 Prentiss handed the little congregation to him. Under Haywood it grew steadily, drawing white as well as Black members, and it became one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the Midwest. He also edited a periodical, The Voice in the Wilderness.

The New Issue

In 1913, at the Arroyo Seco camp meeting near Los Angeles, the teaching arose that baptism should be administered "in the name of Jesus" rather than in the triune name, and this grew into the "New Issue" - the doctrine that God is one person who is revealed as Father, Son and Spirit, and that Jesus is the name of the one God. In March 1915 Glenn Cook, one of the teaching's early promoters, came to Indianapolis and rebaptised Haywood, and Haywood in turn rebaptised several hundred members of his congregation. His adoption of the teaching gave it its most influential Black leader.

The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World

When the Assemblies of God, at its General Council of 1916, adopted a strongly Trinitarian statement, Oneness ministers withdrew. Many joined the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (PAW), a small body organised around 1907, and in 1918 the General Assembly of the Apostolic Assemblies merged with it. Haywood became its general secretary and its most prominent figure. For several years it was one of the few genuinely interracial Pentecostal bodies in America, with Black and white ministers holding office together.

Division

The arrangement came under growing strain. Southern white ministers found it difficult to travel to conventions in the North and to accept Black leadership, and Jim Crow laws made interracial meetings in the South hard to hold. In 1924 most white ministers withdrew to form separate bodies, which later became part of the United Pentecostal Church. The PAW reorganised under an episcopal structure in 1925 with Haywood as its first presiding bishop. In 1924 his congregation dedicated a large new building, Christ Temple.

Key dates

• 15 July 1880 - Born in Greencastle, Indiana
• 1908 - Receives the baptism in the Spirit
• 1909 - Becomes pastor of the Indianapolis mission
• March 1915 - Rebaptised in Jesus' name; rebaptises his congregation
• 1916 - Oneness ministers leave the Assemblies of God
• 1918 - Merger forms the enlarged Pentecostal Assemblies of the World; Haywood general secretary
• 1924 - White ministers withdraw; Christ Temple dedicated
• 1925 - Presiding bishop of the PAW
• 12 April 1931 - Dies in Indianapolis

Teachings and claims

The oneness of God

Haywood taught that God is absolutely one, not three persons; that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are titles or manifestations of the one God; and that Jesus Christ is the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9). He set out this teaching in The Victim of the Flaming Sword and Divine Names and Titles of Jehovah.

The Acts 2:38 pattern

He taught that salvation in its full New Testament sense consists of repentance, baptism by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit evidenced by tongues, following Acts 2:38. Many in the movement, including Haywood, regarded baptism in the triune formula as invalid, and taught that the new birth of John 3:5 is water and Spirit baptism together.

Holiness and hymns

He kept the Holiness ethic of the early Pentecostals. A prolific hymn-writer, he wrote songs still sung in Oneness and other Pentecostal churches, among them "Jesus, the Son of God" and "I See a Crimson Stream of Blood".

Documented controversies

The New Issue

His rebaptism of his congregation helped carry the Oneness teaching into a large part of early Pentecostalism and deepened the division of the movement in 1916.

Race

The 1924 split of the PAW along racial lines is often cited as one of the saddest episodes of early Pentecostal history. Historians attribute it both to white ministers' unwillingness to accept Black leadership and to the practical pressures of segregation; Haywood is remembered as having borne it with dignity.

Death

He died in Indianapolis on 12 April 1931, aged 50, after a period of illness, and was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.^†

Legacy

The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World remains one of the largest Oneness Pentecostal bodies, with a predominantly Black membership, and honours Haywood as its founding bishop. Christ Temple continues in Indianapolis. His hymns, his art and his leadership of an interracial church in the age of segregation have made him one of the most respected Black church leaders of early Pentecostalism, even among those who reject his theology.

Measured against the creeds

Haywood's doctrine of God is the modalism that the early Church rejected in the third century in Noetus, Praxeas and Sabellius. The Nicene Creed confesses the Son as "begotten of the Father before all worlds", distinct from the Father as person while one with Him in being; Christ prays to the Father, is sent by Him, and with the Father sends the Spirit (John 14:16; 15:26; 17:5). Baptism in the triune name is Christ's own command (Matthew 28:19) and the universal practice of the Church from the earliest documents; the phrase "in the name of Jesus" in Acts identifies the baptism as Christian, not a liturgical formula replacing the one Christ gave. To rebaptise those already baptised in the triune name denies that their baptism was Christ's.

His defence of Christ's full deity, his preaching of repentance and his refusal to accept the colour line in the Church deserve to be remembered. But on the doctrine of the Trinity, which the creeds confess as the heart of the faith, his teaching departs from it.

Major writings

• The Victim of the Flaming Sword (c. 1913-20)
• Divine Names and Titles of Jehovah (c. 1920s)
• The Finest of the Wheat (collected writings)
• Editor, The Voice in the Wilderness
• Hymns, including "Jesus, the Son of God" and "I See a Crimson Stream of Blood"

Affiliation

Independent Baptist, then independent Pentecostal-style healing evangelist; founder of the "Message" movement

Appears in

The healing revival, 1947-58, and after, Oneness Pentecostalism, The New Order of the Latter Rain, 1948, The modern movements in India

Profile

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Life

A Kentucky cabin

William Marrion Branham was born on 6 April 1909 in a log cabin near Burkesville, Cumberland County, Kentucky, the eldest of ten children of a poor family; his father drank heavily. The family moved to Jeffersonville, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, around 1912. Branham later said that a light had appeared over his crib at birth, and that at the age of seven a voice in a whirlwind told him never to drink, smoke or defile his body because there would be a work for him to do. He had little schooling.

Conversion and the Jeffersonville tabernacle

After working at various jobs, including a spell in Arizona, he was converted in about 1931 and ordained as an independent Baptist minister. In 1933 he held a tent revival in Jeffersonville and, by his later account, while baptising converts in the Ohio River on 11 June 1933, a bright star descended over him and a voice declared that as John the Baptist was sent to forerun Christ's first coming, so his message would forerun the second. Contemporary newspaper accounts of the baptism do not mention the light. ^† His followers built the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville.

In 1934 he married Amelia Hope Brumbach. In 1937 the great Ohio River flood struck Jeffersonville, and Hope and their infant daughter Sharon Rose died of illness soon afterwards. Branham later interpreted their deaths as God's punishment for his having refused, on the advice of his Baptist friends, to minister among the "Oneness" Pentecostals who had invited him. He married Meda Broy in 1941.

The angel and the healing campaigns

On 7 May 1946, by his account, an angel appeared to him in a secret place and told him that he was sent to take a gift of divine healing to the peoples of the world, with two signs: a vibration in his left hand when he touched the sick, which would reveal the disease, and later the ability to discern the secrets of people's hearts. His first great campaign was in St Louis in June 1946, and within a year he was drawing crowds of thousands across the United States.

From 1947 his campaigns were organised by Gordon Lindsay, who founded The Voice of Healing magazine (1948) to promote them, with the healer F.F. Bosworth and others as associates. Branham's meetings - with "words of knowledge" about strangers' names, addresses and illnesses, followed by declarations of healing - set the pattern for the whole post-war healing revival. In January 1950, in Houston, a photograph taken during a debate between Bosworth and a Baptist critic showed a light above Branham's head, which his followers regard as a supernatural halo. He held campaigns in Scandinavia (1950), South Africa (1951), India (1954) and elsewhere, claiming crowds in the hundreds of thousands.

Decline and the "Message"

From about 1955 his campaigns declined as other evangelists - Oral Roberts, A.A. Allen and many more - drew the crowds, and his ministry ran into debt and tax trouble. He turned increasingly to teaching at the Branham Tabernacle, and his doctrine moved away from mainstream Pentecostalism. In 1960 he preached a series on the seven church ages of Revelation, identifying himself, by implication and then openly, as the angel-messenger to the seventh, Laodicean, age. In 1963 he moved to Tucson, Arizona, and preached a series on the seven seals, claiming that seven angels had appeared to him on a mountain near Sunset Peak in February 1963 to reveal them; his followers connect this with a ring-shaped cloud photographed over Arizona that day.

Key dates

• 1909 - Born near Burkesville, Kentucky, 6 April
• c. 1912 - Family moves to Jeffersonville, Indiana
• c. 1931 - Conversion; ordained an independent Baptist
• 11 June 1933 - Ohio River baptismal service
• 1937 - Ohio River flood; his wife and daughter die
• 7 May 1946 - Claimed angelic commission
• 1946-55 - Height of the healing campaigns
• 1948 - The Voice of Healing begins
• January 1950 - Houston "halo" photograph
• 1956 - Tax settlement; campaigns decline; meetings with Jim Jones
• 1960 - Sermons on the seven church ages
• 1963 - Moves to Tucson; sermons on the seven seals
• 18 December 1965 - Car crash near Friona, Texas
• 24 December 1965 - Dies in Amarillo, Texas

Teachings and claims

The healing gift and discernment

Branham claimed that his gift came directly from an angel and that God confirmed it with two signs, the hand vibration and the discernment of hearts. He spoke of "the Spirit of God" or "the angel" standing beside him during his meetings.

The serpent seed

He taught that the original sin in Eden was sexual: Eve had intercourse with the serpent, who was then a man-like creature, and Cain was their offspring. Humanity is therefore divided into two seeds - the seed of the serpent, descending from Cain, and the seed of God through Seth. He drew from this a harsh view of women, whom he blamed for the fall, and strict teaching on marriage and divorce.

God and baptism

He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, calling it a doctrine "of the devil" that came from the Council of Nicaea, and held that the Father, Son and Spirit are three manifestations, or "offices", of one God, Jesus. He baptised in "the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" and taught that those baptised with the Trinitarian formula should be rebaptised.

The end-time messenger

He taught that each of the seven church ages of Revelation 2-3 had its messenger - Paul, Irenaeus, Martin, Columba, Luther, Wesley - and that he was the messenger of the last, the Elijah of Malachi 4:5-6, sent to restore the faith of the apostles before Christ's return. His sermons, his followers believe, are the "spoken Word" by which the bride of Christ is prepared for the rapture.

Denominations as the mark of the beast

He taught that organised denominations were a system of the "harlot" church of Revelation 17 and bore the mark of the beast, and urged his followers to come out of them.

Prophecy and the end

In 1933, he later said, he received seven visions of the future, culminating in the destruction of the world, and he predicted that these would be fulfilled by 1977.

Women and dress

He taught that women may not preach, cut their hair, wear trousers or make-up.

Documented controversies

• Failed healings. Investigations by journalists, doctors and church leaders in South Africa, Canada and elsewhere found that many people declared healed at his meetings were not; one "cripple" was found to have been pretending.

^†

• Tax. The Internal Revenue Service pursued his ministry for unreported income; in 1956 he agreed a settlement, paying a $40,000 penalty.^†
• Race. In a 1963 sermon he spoke warmly of the Ku Klux Klan and opposed racial integration, and he taught that the races should not intermarry.
• Jim Jones. He shared a platform with Jim Jones at Jones's Indianapolis convention in June 1956; Jones later used his methods of "discernment".
• Failed prophecies. His prediction that the world system would end by 1977 failed. His 1965 prediction that Los Angeles would sink into the ocean has not been fulfilled.
• Embellished stories. Historians have found that many stories of his childhood and early ministry grew in the telling and are not supported by contemporary sources.

Death

On 18 December 1965 Branham's car was struck head-on by a car driven by a drunk driver near Friona, Texas, while he and his family were travelling to Jeffersonville for Christmas. He was taken to hospital in Amarillo and died on 24 December 1965, aged 56. His burial was delayed until April 1966, after Easter, and some followers expected him to rise from the dead. A pyramid-shaped monument with an eagle stands over his grave in Jeffersonville.

Legacy

The "Message" churches - independent congregations that treat his recorded sermons as inspired revelation - are found worldwide, with especially large numbers in Africa, Latin America and India; estimates of followers range up to two million or more. ^†

His wider influence was greater still. He set the pattern of the post-war healing revival, and leading figures of that revival, the Latter Rain movement of 1948, and later prophetic movements drew on him; Paul Cain travelled with him, Oral Roberts and others imitated his methods, and Paulaseer Lawrie in India claimed to fulfil his prophecies. His teaching on the "manifested sons of God" and a final end-time company of overcomers fed into the Latter Rain and, through it, into later apostolic and prophetic movements.

Measured against the creeds

Branham's denial of the Trinity, his rejection of baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and his serpent-seed teaching each place him outside the historic Christian faith. The Nicene Creed confesses one God in three Persons, and the Church condemned modalism before Nicaea. The serpent-seed teaching contradicts Genesis 4:1 ("Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain") and, by making some human beings the offspring of Satan, denies that all are made in God's image and that Christ died for all (1 Timothy 2:4-6).

His claim to be the end-time Elijah, whose sermons are the "spoken Word", sets one man's revelations above Scripture and the apostolic faith, which was "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). The four traditions hold, with Christ, that Elijah came in John the Baptist (Matthew 17:12-13). The test of a prophet is whether what he foretells comes to pass (Deuteronomy 18:22); Branham's predictions did not.

Major writings

Branham wrote little; his teaching survives in more than 1,100 recorded sermons, transcribed and published by his followers.

• An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages (1965, edited from sermons)
• The Revelation of the Seven Seals (1963 sermons, published 1967)
• Sermons published by Voice of God Recordings, Jeffersonville