General William Booth

On April 9,1865, Lee met Grant in the parlor of a private home at Appomattox Court House.  He surrendered his army and brought an end to four long years of death and devastation called the Civil War. In the same year a 36 year old Englishman by the name of William Booth declared war on the powers of darkness by founding the Salvation Army.

One of the most effective weapons in General Booth's arsenal was fervent prayer. It was not unusual for Booth to hold "an all night of prayer" when he came to preach the Word of God. People would flood the altars every where he went. "The power of God was wonderfully manifest in the meetings . . . people were frequently, struck down, overwhelmed with a sense of the presence and power of God."

The Salvation Army's success at freeing the captives was uncanny, especially when one considers those who it strived to reach. General Booth's battle cry was "Go for souls and go for the worst." The worst of sinners were saved, saloons were closed and entire cities were shaken.  

Booth's success attracted not only supporters but also enemies. Those who served in the Army were pelted with hot coals, sprayed with tar and burning sulphur, beat, stoned and even kicked to death in the streets. The Salvation Army resisted their enemies with a cheerful "God bless you", and a prayer. General Booth, himself was often in the thick of it. When spit on during the Midlands tour, Booth encouraged his fellow soldiers, "Don't rub it off - it's a medal!"

Night after night Booth would come home bleeding and bruised after being attacked for preaching in the slums of England. After such nights of testing he would take his wife's hand and say, "Kate, let me pray with you." After praying with Catherine he would rise from his knees armed with fresh courage and hope. Booth needed all the valor his wife Catherine could inspire in him. She encouraged him, "if we get tired we had better go and be done with, anything is better than a dead church." Despite the grinding pressures of the ministry the Booths had a happily united family. The General had nine children and loved to play and romp with them, especially in their favorite game of "Fox and Geese."

Once while traveling, General Booth's car was detained. He took advantage of the opportunity and exhorted some idle factory workers. He said, "some of you men never pray, you gave up praying long ago. But I'm going to say to you, won't you pray for your children that they may be different?" Within minutes 700 men knelt in silent prayer.

At another time, two Salvation Army officers set out to found a new work, only to meet with failure and opposition. Frustrated and tired they appealed to the General to close the rescue mission. General Booth sent back a telegram with two words on it, "TRY TEARS." They followed his advice and they witnessed a mighty revival.

During the course of William Booths ministry he traveled 5,000,000 miles and preached 60,000 sermons. God help us in this desperate and distracted day in which we live to heed the General's advice. "Work as if everything depended upon your work, and pray as if everything depended upon your prayer." 

James O. Frazer

Some of God's most precious servants have gone through life hidden and unnoticed. Forgotten and ignored by the religious masses, they thrive in obscurity and solitude. Their humble lives seem to sweetly sing those neglected lines of Charles Wesley's hymn, "Keep us little and unknown, Prized and loved by God alone." William Jay, the English preacher wrote, "Many who are great in the sight of the Lord are living in cottages and hovels, and are scarcely known..."

James O. Fraser, of the China Inland Mission, was one of those choice servants of God who was content to labor in almost total obscurity. This gifted man was a preacher, linguist, musical genius and engineer. He came to the Yunnan Province of China in 1910 with a heart longing for the souls of the forgotten Lisu tribal people. As Fraser gave himself to the work of reaching the Lisu, he became somewhat forgotten. For years he lived alone, hidden behind the great mountain ranges of China's far west. Few people really knew James Fraser. There was an air of mystery about this talented man who had chosen a primitive pioneers life over the applause of an English concert hall. Some said that it was wrong for Fraser to waste and bury his gifts on the mission field. Yet, Mr. Fraser was greatly used of God through prayer and loving labor to turn multitudes of Lisu from their slavery of demon-worship to Jesus Christ. After mastering the difficult Lisu language, he developed his own "Fraser Script" and translated the Scriptures into the tribal dialect. By 1916, there was a real move of the spirit among the Lisu, resulting in sixty thousand baptisms within only two years. The Lisu church continued to grow and eventually became one of the largest tribal Christian bodies in the world.

J.O. Frazer's success was not the result of his impressive talents or giant intellect. Mr. Fraser succeeded where others often fail, because he had learned how to touch God through prayer. Isolated and hidden away behind the mountains, he was compelled to seek God for his every need. "To know the real Fraser one needed to hear him in prayer. Prayer was the very breath of life to him, and in prayer he seemed to slip from time into eternity." For many of us prayer is not a first choice, but a last resort. Fraser had learned out of sheer necessity to pray fervently and continuously. "Frequently the mountainside would witness the piercing, importunate pleadings of this man who counted his prayer-time not by minutes but by hours." Fraser was not a man who merely said prayers, he TRAVAILED in prayer. He knew the spiritual necessity of wrestling and agonizing in prayer. He writes, "How much of our prayer is of the quality we find in Hannah's bitterness of soul, 'when she prayed unto the Lord?' How many times have we ever 'WEPT SORE' before the Lord? We have prayed much perhaps, but our longings have not been deep compared with hers. We have spent much time upon our knees; it may be, without our hearts going out in agony of desire. But real supplication is the child of heartfelt desire, and cannot prevail without it; a desire of neither earth nor issuing from our own sinful hearts, but wrought into us by God Himself. Oh, for such desires. Oh for Hannah's earnestness, not in myself only but in all who are joining in prayer for these poor heathen aborigines."

To our shame, some of the most basic spiritual disciplines of our godly forefathers have become strange and unfamiliar to many of us. One of the most effective weapons of the praying saints of old was the discipline of, "praying through." J.O. Fraser both encouraged and practiced this powerful reality. Upon this subject Mr. Fraser writes, "We must be prepared for serious warfare, 'and having done all, to stand,' we must fight through, and then stand victorious on the battlefield. Is not this another secret of many unanswered prayers that they are not fought through? If the result is not seen as soon as expected, Christians are apt to lose heart, and if it is still longer delayed, to abandon it altogether. You know the name they give to places in England when the building (or whatever it is) is abandoned, when only half of it is completed - So and so's 'Folly'. I wonder whether some of our prayers do not deserve the same stigma. Luke 14:28-30 applies to prayers as well as towers. We must count the cost before praying the prayer of faith. We must be willing to pay the price. We must be serious. We must set ourselves to 'see things through' (Eph. 6:18, 'In all perseverance')." Wrestling with demonic spirits is a daily reality of spiritual survival. Spiritual warfare is not learned in our leisure time, but is thrust upon us as we begin to threaten the kingdom of darkness. In 1913-1914, James Fraser went through a time of deep spiritual oppression that forced him to deal with issues many would rather ignore. As Fraser reached out to the spiritually blinded Lisu, he became the object of an intense demonic attack. He found himself slipping into a paralyzing depression and despair. He soon began to question even the very foundations of his faith in God. "Deeply were the foundations shaken in those days and nights of conflict, until Fraser realized that behind it all were 'powers of darkness', seeking to overwhelm him. He had dared to invade Satan's kingdom, undisputed for ages. At first, vengeance had fallen on the Lisu inquirers, an easy prey. Now, he was himself attached, and it was war to the death, spiritually."

Fraser was greatly helped in this spiritual struggle by the timely arrival of a magazine produced by Jessie Penn-Lewis called The Overcome. "What it showed me," Fraser writes, "was that deliverance from the power of the evil one comes through definite resistance on the ground of The Cross. I am an engineer and believe in things working. I want to see them work. I had found that much of the spiritual teaching one hears does not seem to work. My apprehension at any rate of other aspects of truth had broken down. The passive side of leaving everything to the Lord Jesus as our life, while blessedly true, was not all that was needed just then. Definite resistance on the ground of The Cross was what brought me light. For I found that it worked. I felt like a man perishing of thirst, to which some beautiful, clear, cold water had begun to flow. People will tell you, after a helpful meeting perhaps, that such and such a truth is the secret of victory. No: we need different truth at different times. 'Look to the Lord,' some will say. 'Resist the devil,' is also Scripture (James 4:7) and I found it worked! That cloud of depression dispersed. I found that I could have victory in the spiritual realm whenever I wanted it. The Lord Himself resisted the devil vocally: 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' I, in humble dependence on Him, did the same. I talked to Satan at that time, using the promises of Scripture as weapons. And they worked. Right then, the terrible oppression began to pass away."

Toward the end of James Fraser's life, he found himself in another kind of spiritual conflict. He began to feel increasingly dissatisfied with what many considered successful ministry. He recognized like never before the tremendous need for true revival on the field and at home. His heart now longed for a powerful visitation of the glory of God. When God creates a fresh desire within us, we can always be confident that He is getting ready to move. While on furlough, Fraser's longings were confirmed through the opportunity to hear the missionary-revivalist Jonathan Goforth. Mrs. J.O. Fraser describes this important event in Fraser's life. "As the old man of God stood up to preach, an overwhelming sense of the presence of God filled the room, and as he spoke we were all but melted under the power of his words, for Goforth had been endued with a divine unction from God Himself and it was unmistakable. Fraser had heard before of the great revivals, Goforth had witnessed in his work in China, but to hear him speak was unforgettable and left a deep burden on his soul. The big question on his mind was whether we were working with the power God had promised us."

Again Mrs. Fraser writes of her husband's new burden, "He saw the teeming millions of unreached Chinese and the tiny handful of missionaries, but great as was the need for more missionaries there was an even greater need, that those of us who were out there should be endued with far greater power. Somehow Fraser was burdened because the Church both at home and abroad seemed to be making so little real impact on the world. He spent hours in prayer wondering whether we need to turn again to the apostles for our examples and Pentecost for our Power."

It was now the early 1930's, and Fraser was not alone in his desire for revival. The cry for revival was now rising from the hearts of many missionaries and Chinese Christians alike. Suddenly God broke forth, raising up His hidden vessels to usher in a powerful revival in northern China. It was here Fraser found some kindred spirits in the revival laborers, Andrew Gih and John Sung of the Bethel Band. They enjoyed powerful times of prayer together that often lasted into the early hours of the morning. Mr. Fraser described this time as his happiest experience in China. These were the glory days of the Shantung revival with Bertha Smith and Marie Monsen. Anna Christiansen of C.I.M. and Watchmen Nee of "The Little Flock" were also reaping revival fruit at this time. Regardless who the minister was, the message was essentially the same: the exposing of secret sin, a call to thorough repentance, the need for restitution and the hope of total victory through the Blood and the power of the Holy spirit.

"The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the VIOLENT take it by force." Matthew 11:12. James Fraser's life was a living example of this verse. Like Fraser, we must cloth ourselves in humility as we run to wage war in the fight of faith. Our prayers must go beyond mere sentimental and religious rhetoric. What we need is the violent groans and cries of travailing prayer! We must learn how to be violent in prayer with both Satan and our own sinful PRIDE. King Jesus is searching for a people who will be subject to Him in all holiness and humility, and yet stand in bold faith against the powers of darkness. (James 4:7). Humility apart from courageous faith becomes despair, and faith apart from broken humility becomes presumption. True revival VICTORY will finally come when the poor in spirit learn how to walk in the authority and power of the Spirit.

WILLIAM TAYLOR 

God extended the 1958 revival around the world through the ministry of William Taylor, a fire-baptized American Methodist evangelist and later bishop of Africa.  Few people have ever made the world their parish as Taylor did. 

Taylor was converted in 1841 at the age of twenty.  He began Methodist ministry the following year as an itinerant preacher. Taylor evangelized in California during the Gold Rush and then returned to the eastern United States and Canada during 1858 revival.  God called him to international ministry and gave him fruitful evangelism wherever he preached. 

Taylor was continually on the move, but God worked quickly, and the local churches almost instantly experienced revival wherever he went.   In South Africa, God began with a movement of the Spirit and numerous conversions among the English-speaking churches, which subsequently spread to the Xhosa speaking people. 

Taylor preached to the believers in a day service on the verse, Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and in the evening to outsiders on Turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die?   

Taylor traveled from place to place, seldom staying more than a week in a circuit.  His coverts were of every age from ten to sixty, both married land unmarried, and from all social ranks.  In two years, the Methodists increased 40% in membership, and many Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed churches were also blessed. 

Taylors ministry had lasting impact.  J.Edwin Orr summarized:

 Missionaries and national pastors experienced a baptism of the Holy Spirit and went everywhere preaching repentance and faith, pardon and purity, to illiterate and semi-illiterate tribesmen.

 

  
  

John G. Lake

By Liz Godschalk

John Graham Lake was born on 18 March 1870, in Ontario, Canada. And in 1886 moved with his family to Michigan. He was one of 16 children. Along with many of his brothers and sisters, he developed a strange digestive disease. This disease killed eight of them, but he managed to survive.

This overexposure to sickness and sorrow sparked in him a rare and intense desire for the power of God. One day while a young man, he wrote, "God made me aware of my true need when I needed healing from heaven." As a member of the Methodist church, he had only witnessed one healing.

Lake studied for the ministry in the Methodist church and in October 1891, he was appointed pastor of the church in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. But rater than be a pastor here, he chose to go into business and founded a newspaper The Harvey Citizen.

He met and married Jennie Stevens in 1893 at Michigan. This was followed by setting up a real estate business, Michigan. On his first day, he made $2500 and at the end of a year and nine months, he had $100,000 in the bank, $90,000 worth of real estate and a $30,00 paid-up life insurance policy. He also helped start The Soo Times paper, and he also bought a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade.

He was later hired to manage one of the country's largest insurance companies. Part of his job was to manage the company' agents. He found that in his work he preferred to talk about salvation rather than business. He told his partners that he needed a holiday. He had a wage of $50,000 a year to come back to, but chose to leave shortly after, never to return to the business. He was now in full time ministry. It was at this time he also decided to dispose of all his possessions and use the money to meet the needs of others. Later his wife also became sick with a heart disease and tuberculosis. And at this time he still had two members of the family critically ill, (cancer and issue of blood) and one an invalid for twenty-two years.

John Alexander Dowie became a door of hope for Lake. As he began to take his family one by one, he saw them get miraculously healed. It was in this time of stress that he received a revelation of the scripture in Acts 10:38. As he read how God had anointed Jesus to heal all that were oppressed by the devil - it suddenly came alive to him.

Spiritual Awakening Lake later learned a great lesson from John Alexander Dowie when he criticized some of Dowie' methods. Dowie soon told him that when he had had the vision that he has had, shed the tears he has, suffered what he had suffered and in God created a city of ten thousand Christians, then he would be competent enough to criticize.

Lake took to heart what he had heard and began to establish a work in South Africa, which lasted for decades and grew to seven hundred thousand in number in a nation of fifteen million.

His hunger for God continued to grow. After nine months of prayer, fasting and many shed tears, he was finally baptized in the Holy Ghost, whilst in someone else' house where he had gone to pray for a sick lady. His life became more powerful after this; God flowed through him with a new force. And healings were of a more powerful order. To Lake, the baptism of the Holy Ghost was to give the Spirit of God such absolute control of the person that the Spirit will be able to speak through them in unknown tongues. Anything less he classified as being "covered" with deep anointing yet not sufficient to be called a proper baptism in the Holy Spirit. Lake had a revelation of the purpose that God had in mind for the human race. To lift people in life and consciousness to the same level that Jesus himself enjoyed. This is the same vision that stirs our hearts today. A vision of the divine reality of the salvation of Jesus Christ. The knowledge of the relationship between your soul and of the soul Christ. His Ministry John Lake was a strong, rugged character with a loving and winning personality. He was about six feet to six feet two inches tall, and weighed about two hundred pounds. He had clear gray eyes and a hearty laugh. In 1901, Lake and his family moved to Zion City, but three years later left again. On 19 April 1908, he and his family left Indianapolis for a five-year missionary stay in South Africa. Here he founded the apostolic Church and was elected president, with one 125 white and 500 native congregations eventually organized. He returned to the United States in 1912, after his wife died unexpectedly of a stroke.

He never returned to Africa after this. John G. Lake had a deep love for his family. One of the greatest blows to him was the loss of his wife while he was on the mission field. In 1913, he married Florence Switzer of Milwaukee and fathered another five children - giving him twelve children. Then in 1914 he took his family and moved to Spokane, Washington. Here he purchased some rooms in an old office building. Lake transformed these offices into the Divine Healing Institute. This was a place for healing and a place where you could learn how to apply God' healing power to your everyday life. A place where miracles happened.

He saw many miracles in these rooms. One in particular was that of Mrs. Teske, who at thirty-five years of age had developed a fibroid tumor: "A twisted mass of muscle and sinew, arteries and veins, teeth and hair. The most disorganized twisted and jumbled mass that is possible."

This tumor was thirty pounds in weight that would equal the size of four seven and a half pound babies. One day she could no longer stand, nor sit, and out of her agony, she cried out to Jesus for healing. The power of God came on her and she began to twist and crunch, and within three minutes she was totally healed. The tumor had utterly vanished.

Lake had a right concept of God as a loving Father. He also had compassion, holiness, boldness, vision, humility, faith and prayer. All of these points play a part and they are all needed.

John G. Lake died in 1935, he was sixty-five years old.

His Nature and Lifestyle He never refused to answer the call of one who was sick, nor did he turn them away. Even to the point that he went to a strange city in Africa planning to get some rest. Once they knew he was there, they brought the sick, the blind, and the crippled. His compassion went out to them and God strengthened him in his time of need.

Mrs. Lake was also a versatile woman. She never knew when he would bring someone home or give away their groceries. This did not bother Mrs. Lake; she also had a love for His people.

He was very bold when he talked on the things of God. In a conference in Africa they were discussing the tremendous influence of the native medicine men Ôwitch doctors". Lake said to them, "Why dont you cast the devil out of them and get people delivered from their power." Lake reminded them of the scripture "greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world".

He was also called to pray for a man in Johannesburg, South Africa. They had locked him away as he was in delirium tremens (disorder due to heavy drinking) as he had already tried to over power four young men, almost killing them. But again, Lake stood on the promise, greater is he that is in you, and soon this man was delivered and on his knees weeping and praying, he had become human again.

He was a faith man, like all the other men of God. And God supplied his every need. One day he came home and his son told him they had no food, that they had just given the last of it to the younger children. His response, "Ô let us pray" and before breakfast, the next day a vehicle came with food for them.

He was a man who refused to compromise. Nothing would sway him from the word of God.

Lake was a very humble man, he always gave God the glory, and it was His power in him that did the things he did. He said, "his soul was not big enough to carry the wonder of God, nor his heart subdued enough. It was an anointing of power".

Lake was also a man of prayer. He spent time on his knees praying but also like to walk and pray. This was his favorite way of communing with God.

The anointing is given for service, go out and use it; let it use you to destroy the works of the devil. Then you can run and pray, and pray as you run.

Lake had an all round message and understanding of the word. He not only taught on healing, but also on every subject needed to build a good, balanced Christian life. His sermons were twenty to thirty minutes long and he would take a point and develop it with living and real illustrations. They were driving, fearless messages. Yet, in ministering to the sick, he had a marvelous compassion and tenderness.

In finishing, I just want to share a vision given to John G. Lake while pasturing in Portland, Oregon.

"In answer to a cry from Lake' heart, the angel took the Bible and opened to the book of Acts. He called attention to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and then proceeded thorough the book pointing out the great, outstanding revelations and phenomena in it. Then the angel spoke these words:

"This is Pentecost as God gave it through the heart of Jesus. STRIVE FOR THIS. CONTEND FOR THIS. TEACH THE PEOPLE TO PRAY FOR THIS. For this, and this alone, will meet the necessity of the human heart, and this alone will have the power to overcome the forces of darkness."

As the angel was departing, he said: PRAY. PRAY. PRAY. Teach the people to pray. Prayer and prayer alone, much prayer, persistent prayer, is the door of entrance into the heart of God.

(c) Anointed for Revival, 1995, Brisbane, Australia.
Internet: http://www.pastornet.net.au/renewal/
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