The Bible and Life

Apostolic Church History

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

The Anointing To Teach

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

THE ANOINTING TO TEACH.

Even though I wasn't a teacher to begin with, I always had the greatest respect for the Word of God, and always was very studious. I spent hours studying and reading, digging things out for myself in my early years as a pastor, but I didn't teach those things. I had no unction or leading to teach.

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I did teach a Bible class in the church, however. That's the custom in most Pentecostal churches. Sometimes Full Gospel, Pentecostal people criticize denominational people for formality and ritualism, yet Pentecostals are bound with customs! They'll fight for their customs. All these things are bad.

I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues in 1937, and in 1939, as I say humorously, I received "the left foot of fellowship" from among the Baptists and came over among the Pentecostals. My wife and I accepted the pastorate of a little Pentecostal church in North Texas.

The people said, "It's a custom that the pastor teach the men's Bible class and the pastor's wife teach the older ladies' Bible class."

"Well," I replied, "I just changed the custom." I hadn't been around Pentecostals too long at that stage, and I thought they were all sprouting wings. I found out later those were just their shoulder blades sticking out. They weren't about to grow any wings.

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And I found out if you start changing their customs, you're in for it. So I had to maneuver and speak softly, but finally I got it over to them that my wife didn't teach. They said, "Well, we'll

tell you what we'll do. We'll just combine the older men and the older ladies and have an auditorium class, and you teach it."

I'd rather have done almost anything else, but I taught it. never was so glad of anything in my life as I was when that class was over each Sunday morning. I'd lay that teacher's quarterly down and say, "Whew, now I can relax for another week."

I so detested teaching that I wouldn't look at the Sunday School quarterly for the whole week. Sometimes I didn't pick it up to study it until just before the class started the next Sunday morning!

I could get by with that because I had developed a unique ability—after I was born again—of being able to read something once and never forget it. I didn't have that talent before I got born again. But afterwards I could read a chapter in my high school history book once and recite it word for word for the teacher. It was because I learned to walk in the life of God.

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Doing that will increase your mentality. I could hardly remember anything before. So I could read the teacher's lesson once from the quarterly and rattle it off. Then I'd say, "I'm glad that's over! Now I can get back to preaching!" And I'd preach up a storm, going like an air hammer, waving my arms like a windmill. (I thought it wasn't preaching unless you did that.) I was a preacher, and I loved it.

I'd have rather preached than eaten. I preached for nine years. All I had was the evangelistic message. I never preached anything else. I didn't have anything else! But I remember one Thursday afternoon at 3 o'clock. (The year was 1943. I had been preaching since 1934.),

I'd been lying down. I walked across the parsonage living room and into the kitchen for a drink of water. As I was coming back across the living room, right in the middle of the room, something dropped down on me and inside me. It just clicked down on the inside of me like a coin drops inside a pay phone. I stopped dead still. I knew what it was. It was a teaching gift. The anointing to teach had dropped inside me. I said, "Now I can teach."

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If I get any gift from God, I prove it out first, and I would encourage you to do the same. Prove what you've got from God,and then you can talk about it. But if it's never proved, proclaiming it won't make it so. I never said a word about having the anointing to teach.

We had a little prayer group of seven or eight women who met Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 4 at the church. People would turn in requests and they would pray over the requests

and pray about the church and the services for a few hours. My wife always met with them, and I usually met with them.

We trained this little group to pray. They became expert prayer warriors. If you didn't want something, you'd better not turn in a prayer request to them, because they'd get it for you!

I suggested to them that we have a Bible lesson for an hour before our prayer time, but I didn't invite anybody else to come.

It wasn't an announced meeting. I started teaching those seven or eight women, and the anointing would come on me. I hadn't known you could stand in one spot and just teach the Word and get that strongly anointed to teach. I thought you were supposed to be hollering at the top of your voice, waving your arms like a windmill, and "spitting cotton," as in preaching.

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But just standing there with a handful, teaching them the Word, the anointing would come on me so strongly I couldn't stand it. I'd have to say, "Lord, turn it off—I can't stand it anymore!"

You talk about getting blessed! It was like getting hold of electric current. That anointing and the Word flowed out to the women. They went home and told their husbands and others.

Still we never announced the Wednesday afternoon Bible study. Nobody was invited to come.

But people started coming Wednesday afternoons in spite of the fact that we had regular Wednesday night services, too. The women's husbands would take off from work to get in on that afternoon service. It wasn't long until we filled the building. We had a bigger crowd Wednesday afternoon than we did Wednesday night!

I proved my teaching gift. It worked. I started out by faith and kept going, and the building filled up in the afternoon. That proved the gift, didn't it? I began to do more and more teaching as a pastor until the ratio was probably about half teaching and half preaching. Now I seldom get the anointing to preach anymore. Thank God for that teaching anointing! It's a little different, but it's still the same Spirit who anoints you for whatever He calls you to do.

- KENNETH E. HAGIN ( understanding the Anointing)

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Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Apostolic Church History

Friday, July 31, 2026

R. A. Torrey

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

R.A. Torrey (1856-1928) was one of the foremost evangelists of his day. He was a great man of prayer who went around the world proclaiming the message of the gospel and helping men receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Even the great Evangelist D.L. Moody after hearing Torrey preach said, “you make my mouth water for Him.”

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The topic that R.A. Torrey struggled with for years was that of Divine Healing. This was due to the ministry of John Alexander Dowie. Dowie was a great pioneer of the healing message, yet was brash, aggressive, and would openly thrash and humiliate anyone who disagreed with his doctrine. After seeing the open feuds between Dowie and Moody, Torrey decided to stay away from the topic of divine healing all together. Yet, something continued to draw him to it over the years. He began to see people healed in his own meetings and at the time Aimee Semple McPherson brought another great wave of healing to the nation.

Towards the end of his life, he felt the need to respond to what he was seeing and published a little book called “Divine Healing.” Within the writings he said, “Does God heal in answer to prayer today? Does He really heal people who are beyond the skill of the physician and beyond all human help? Does he work miracles today?

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To all these questions I reply, He does. Not only does the Bible teach it, but experience demonstrates it." Would Torrey have seen things in a different light if he had not encountered Dowie? Only God knows the answer to that question. Torrey died on October 26, 1928. His remarkable evangelistic campaigns remain, like those of his friend Moody, a hallmark of effective and memorable Christian movements.

Regardless of the actions of other ministers that were hurtful, Torrey decided to go with what God’s word had to say on the matter, and he left a legacy of faith proclaiming that God saves, God fills with the Holy Ghost, and God heals! Let’s all do the same!

KINGDOM GENERALS

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Apostolic Church History Podcast

Friday, May 29, 2026

A Greater Baptism

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

A GREATER BAPTISM

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When the disciples were put into prison, and their lives were threatened, on account of the great power with them, in healing and miracles, they were forbidden to preach in the name of Jesus; for they saw the power came through His name. They came together, and they knew it was the power of God that caused all their persecution.

They knew if they had a form of religion, and denied the power, that they would have no more trouble. But beloved, they said, “We will be true to God. We will preach the word if we die.”

Then they prayed to the Lord, saying, “Lord, behold their threatenings; and grant to Thy servants boldness to preach Thy word, by stretching forth Thy hand to heal, and grant that signs and wonders may be done in the name of Thy Holy Child Jesus.”

You see these ministers needed power to give them boldness to stand up for Jesus, to preach all the words of this life. When they preached they knew they must see the signs in the meeting of the Presence of the invisible Christ, who will be present to confirm the word and their message. Jesus said , “I will be with you all the way, even to the end the age.” Then like Peter, they would say to those present. “This that you see, hear and feel, it is the promise of the father, it is the Holy Ghost.”

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The Lord was pleased with their prayer, and with their faith and courage, and the place was shaken-the building where they were assembled-and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake the word with boldness.

Beloved, see, this was a greater baptism. They needed it to prepare them for the work they had to do. After this they had greater success. God did mighty signs and wonders at the hands of the apostles; great fear fell on all the church, and on all that heard, and saw these things. Multitudes of men and women came flocking to Christ, and were added to the the Lord

SIGNS AND WONDERS,

BY MARIA WOODWORTH ETTER

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Apostolic Church History Podcast

Friday, May 8, 2026

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)

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A GIFT, NOT AN ACHIEVEMENT.

Friday, November 7, 2025

It's A Gift

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

Here is a better understanding that the Gift of the Holy Spirit, is just that, it's a gift.

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The Baptism in the Spirit is a gift, not an achievement. Nobody is superior to anybody else just because God baptises them with the Spirit. There is no room to talk about two classes of Christians, those who have been baptised in the Spirit and those who have not. The gift is for everyone, even if they have not yet collected it. “ God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3). No matter how many sons a rich man has they all sit equally as his sons at the table.

However, we are exhorted to take advantage of what is available. Jesus said we should ask, seek and knock to obtain the Holy Spirit (Matthew 7:7), while Paul encouraged us to “ be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). I like what I see in Acts 1: Jesus told the apostles (v.2) to “wait for the gift the Father promised” (v.4). But by the time we get to 1:15, there are 120 believers who have come together and are filled with the Spirit. They all wanted to get in on the act! Peter didn’t object like Joshua, who objected when some received the Spirit in Moses’ camp. Instead, he said, “ The promise (that is, the Holy Spirit) is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39).

- Reinhard Bonnke ( Baptism In The Holy Spirit )

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Permanent Results

Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!

“PERMANENT RESULTS” Chapter 23 of The “Signs and Wonder” book Part #2

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From Anderson we went to Pendleton, Indiana, to hold meetings in the United Brethren Church for three days. A number were converted and several healed of bodily ailments.

A farmer living near Pendleton was healed in our meeting six years before (1885). He had been in the asylum 3-4 years. He would get a little better for a few days, then be worse than ever.

His friends brought him to the meeting. He was converted and healed instantly. He went home and took charge of his farm. He has been a businessman and a Christian since then. Eternity alone will tell the results of the one week’s meeting at Pendleton nine years ago and this three days’ meeting.

From Pendleton we went to Indianapolis, to visit the Church of God, which we organized nearly five years before. When we arrived at the church, we found the large building crowded. The church was all in harmony and on fire for God. We continued the meeting five days, had two meetings a day during the week and three on Sabbath.

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The house was crowded day and night, and many turned away. The interest was so great we had to request the young people to stay away and give room for the older. The altar was crowded day and night with seekers—some for salvations of the soul, some for the healing of the body, and some for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Lord was present to heal both soul and body. A number of God’s children received the baptism for service.

(This was before the Azusa Street outpouring of people receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues-1891). They obeyed the command of Jesus, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until you shall be endued with power from on high.”

Among those converted were two men 80 years old. One had been afflicted most all his life. He was healed and converted at the same time. There never was a brighter prospect for revival in any place than at Indianapolis. But we were compelled to leave, as our appointments were out ahead.

(That’s probably why she was lead to build her Woodworth-Etter Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1918)

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