The Bible and Life: Fred Bosworth's Spiritual Journey

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Fred Bosworth's spiritual journey.

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A resident of Zion City named Mrs. Waldron attended a tent crusade under the ministry of Charles F. Parham and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of tongues. When she brought the exciting news to Zion City, John Alexander Dowie was determined to keep the “tongues movement” out of his community.

However, Bosworth and evangelist John G. Lake, who also lived in Zion City at the time, were hungry for the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. When Parham came to Zion City to preach on the baptism in the Holy Spirit a few years later, the Bosworths welcomed him into their home to hold meetings.

Shortly after this, Fred Bosworth and Lake received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Together, they made a trip to Azusa Street in California to experience the Holy Spirit’s revival there and to seek answers to their questions from the Reverend William J. Seymour concerning this “new” work of God.

After Bosworth received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, he looked back at his early days of nomadic movements from one job to the other and said, “I wish someone at that time had told me about being baptized in the Holy Spirit. I did a great deal of drifting not knowing what the right place was for me.”

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The right place for Fred Bosworth became clear to him almost immediately. During the years that he lived in Zion City, he spoke of his fear that God would call him to preach the gospel. After receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit, however, he became afraid that God would not call him to preach. At twenty- nine years of age, his life had been radically changed.

He began to search the Scriptures on the Holy Spirit, such as Matthew 3:11, “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire,” and Acts 19:2, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” Jesus had promised that the Holy Spirit would come, and that He would be the One to baptize the disciples in the Spirit.

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Bosworth also read some of the writings of A. J. Gordon, who spoke out forcefully on the scriptural proof for the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second and separate experience from salvation. “It is as sinners that we accept Christ; but it is as sons that we accept the Holy Spirit,” Gordon wrote as he expounded on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. “We must withhold our consent from the inconsistent exegesis which would make the water baptism of the apostolic times rigidly binding but would relegate the Baptism in the Spirit to a bygone dispensation.”

Bosworth admired the wisdom of using biblical logic and the Word to defend the good news of the full gospel. It would become a hallmark for him in future debates on the healing power of God on the earth in modern days.

- GOD’S GENERALS ( The Healing Evangelists)