Pentecostal Fire at the 1908 General Assembly
In January, 1907, I became more fully awakened on the subject of receiving the Holy Ghost as He was poured out on the day of Pentecost. That whole year I ceased not to preach that it was our privilege to receive the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues as they did on the day of Pentecost. I did not have the experience, so I was almost always among the seekers at the altar. . . . By the close of the year I was so hungry for the Holy Ghost that I scarcely cared for food, friendship or anything else. I wanted the one thing—the Baptism with the Holy Ghost. –A.J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict
As pastor of the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, A.J. Tomlinson spent the entire year of 1907 seeking the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Although some Church of God members had experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1896, they did not yet have a full understanding of the work of the Spirit. Such an understanding came with experience, prayer, study and reflection during the early years of the twentieth century. Tomlinson himself was an example of how many came to a fuller understanding and experience of the Spirit.
G.B. Cashwell
Toward the end of 1907, Pastor Tomlinson corresponded with G.B. Cashwell from Dunn, North Carolina. Having heard about the Azusa Street outpouring, Brother Cashwell had traveled to Los Angeles and experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. He then preached the Pentecostal message throughout the southeastern United States. Tomlinson learned of Cashwell’s experience and invited him to Cleveland to preach at the third general assembly in January 1908. Cashwell preached on Saturday, January 11. Although the business portion of the Assembly ended on Saturday, the program included worship services on Sunday, and Cashwell preached again on Sunday morning.
While Cashwell was preaching, Tomlinson fell to the floor under the power of the Spirit. According to Tomlinson, “My mind was clear, but a peculiar power so enveloped and thrilled my whole being that I concluded to yield myself up to God and await results…. As I lay there, great joy flooded my soul. The happiest moments I had ever known up to that time. I never knew what real joy was before. My hands clasped together with no effort on my part. Oh, such floods and billows of glory ran through my whole being for several minutes!”
Lying on the floor that morning, Tomlinson experienced a vision in which he spoke in tongues as he traveled the world. Like many early Pentecostals, he believed that speaking in tongues was a miraculous speaking of unlearned human languages. It was not until later that Pentecostals came to understand tongues as primarily heavenly languages. For Tomlinson this experience revealed the urgency of reaching the world in the last days. Pentecostal fire at the General Assembly was for a real purpose—empowering and enabling the church to win the world for Jesus Christ.
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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 August 2002 Church of God Evangel.
