The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel
The Church of God Evangel remains the official Church of God magazine, founded more than 100 years ago.
By David Roebuck
When General Overseer A.J. Tomlinson recorded the minutes to the fourth General Assembly in 1909, he reported, “Some more thoughts advanced about a church paper but the Assembly came to no conclusion.” Encompassed within those words was a dream that would be fulfilled the next year in the birth of the Church of God Evangel.
Overseer Tomlinson had long recognized the importance of the printed word in spreading the Gospel. In 1894, he and J.B. Mitchell formed the Book & Tract Company to distribute Christian literature and provide revenue for home missions. Five years later Tomlinson relocated from Indiana to Culberson, North Carolina, as a colporteur and missionary to Appalachia.
The inaugural issue of the Church of God Evangel was published March 1, 1910.
By the fourth General Assembly Tomlinson had already been involved in editing three periodicals. In 1901 and 1902 he published a monthly paper called Samson’s Foxes. The paper featured articles and news from Tomlinson’s mountain missionary work as well as the holiness and divine healing movements. Tomlinson believed that if he could reach the mountain children, then like Samson’s foxes burned the fields of the Philistines, the Gospel would burn the sin out of the mountains.
Beginning in January 1904, Tomlinson and M.S. Lemons launched a short-lived newspaper called The Way with these words of Jesus as their motto: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The Way emphasized salvation, sanctification, and divine healing. But in September 1905, the editors noted they were publishing the final issue of The Way in order to give their time to pastoral and evangelistic work.
Among many publications that emerged in the early Pentecostal movement was G.B. Cashwell’s The Bridegroom’s Messenger, established in 1907. Cashwell had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles and preached in Cleveland, Tennessee, in January 1908. Tomlinson became a corresponding editor of The Bridegroom’s Messenger following Cashwell’s visit to Cleveland.
But Tomlinson’s vision was already looking toward a publication for the Church of God. In January 1910, the fifth General Assembly appointed a committee to draft a recommendation. That committee gave a favorable report, and the Assembly appointed a Publishing Committee.
The first issue of The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel was dated March 1, 1910. Its name was based on the prophet Zachariah’s words “at evening time it shall be light” (14:7), a common explanation at that time for the emergence of the Pentecostal movement. Tomlinson was the editor of this twice monthly publication, which cost 3 cents per copy or 50 cents for a year’s subscription. There were 125 initial subscribers.
The name of the new periodical was abridged to The Church of God Evangel the next year. Editors, format, and frequency of publication have changed from time to time, but the Church of God continues to faithfully publish the light of the Gospel.
(Early issues of the Church of God Evangel are available on two DVD Rom products. Known issues up to 1950 are on the two-disk set Church of God Evangel, 1910-1950. Thousands of pages of early Church of God publications including existing copies of Samson’s Foxes, The Way and the Church of God Evangel are available on the DVD Rom Church of God Publications, 1901-1923. Visit www.cogheritage.org/products/, email [email protected], or call 423.614.8576 for more information.)
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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 March 2009 Church of God Evangel.
