HistoricalHistorical selections that will give you a better feel for the times that our authors were part of. Special conditions of the times had a very marked effect upon doctrines favored, approaches taken, as well as results gained.
SIGNS AND WONDERS
Did you know that all Pentecostals are Baptists even though most Baptists fiercely deny they are Pentecostals?
The Pioneer Days of Holiness
America after the Civil War saw revival spread like a prairie fire before a mighty wind. Resisted and persecuted by the established churches, it mostly found expression in summer holiness "Campmeetings". This is a moving courageous tale of sawdust floors and faithful tears in the American Southwest. Certainly this is one of my favorite selections! These people really did the stuff!!!! 15 page PDF by C. B. Jernigan
This is such a tremendous read, you may wish to see the original 131 page original.... Pioneer Days of The Holiness Movement in the Southwest
The Wesleyan Reformation
So you thought John Wesley was a just a busy preacher who went around preaching in the open air? Well, he certainly was that, but apparently his legacy goes much further than this. Perhaps further than any ministry since the times of the apostles!!! a 23 page PDF by T. J. Dodd (1891)
Between the early Councils and the Reformation
This is a capsule summary of Godly thinkers and mystics 662 AD to 1246 AD. (1 page)
Beacon Lights of the Reformation
You might feel alone in your discontent with the church as it is today. Don't. It is a broad tide that has been gradually rising across the church for many decades. Some feel it more than others. Just as it was for the first reformation, today's ongoing reformation needs bold men of God to point the way forward, out of today's sleepy acceptable will of God, and onward into the perfect will of God, resisting the entrenched forces of blinded institutionalized religion at every step. Inspiring lives of 12 stalwarts of the Reformation. 80 page PDF by W. H. Withrow
Trade-Marks of the Holiness Pioneers
Between 1850 and 1900 the sawdust revival gave rise to churches and denominations. A prominent Nazarene leader tells us what he saw in the Holiness Movement. Do you sit in a church pew? If so this is a resounding wake-up call for you. 27 pages
Mr. Wesley’s Faith
So you thought John Wesley was from such an ancient time as to be irrelevant to what we see today? Think again. (2 pages)
Pilgrim Holiness Advocate
Exceptional excerpts from long past editions of the Pilgrim Holiness Advocate -which is the organ of the still-existing Pilgrim Holiness Church. 50 pages by D. Maxey
The first Apostle of American Methodism
Long before the American war of Independence, Captain Web, retired from the British Army and undeterred by severe war wounds from Louisburg, came to be considered the founder of Methodism on the continent of America. This is the colorful story of a truly worthy servant! 12 pages
Robb French
If you have a family; don’t read this one. It will convict you of lack of consecration and fruitfulness as a family! But if you start to read, you will not be able to put down this well-written gripping tale of saintly courage. I was glued to the whole 103 page original. This family had such radically beneficial child-raising practices!! The astonishing fruit!! (31 pages)
What it Takes to Make an Ideal Home
These principles have stood the test of time. 12 pages by H. Robb French
Wesley and Sanctification
A thought-provoking discussion of Wesley's theology in light of the appallingly barbaric conditions of his times, as written by a contemporary Wesleyan scholar. (6 pages)
The Real Faith
This rare work by the early Pentecostal healing evangelist Charles Price, was penned near the end of his life and sums up what he has seen regarding faith and healing after many years of heart-searching: "I think I know the answer! I am sure in my own heart that I have discovered what has been wrong. I can see now where so many missed the way (in the Voice of Healing tent revivals of the thirties and forties). The only thing to do is to ask the Spirit to lead us back to the fork in the road where, because of our blindness, we left the trail. Then once again can we walk on the Kings Highway of grace and prove in heart and experience that the Book is true and that our Jesus never fails. Remember that!". Regrettably, the lusty ministries of the day were too busy to heed his excellent godly counsel....... Mostly deals with the proper way to obtain faith for healing. The difference between "faith" and "belief" must be understood.Chapters 12 and 13 deal with holiness and consecration as related to the above. 58 pages by Charles Price.(1940) .
Have You Heard of John Bunyan? Here is a historical gospel treat for you and yours. Three famous and entertaining fictitious allegories of the gospel plan of redemption from the 1600's that were written in prison. John was a "dissenter" in that the required state Church of England was not enough for him. That earned him ten years behind bars and sometimes being a galley slave.
Those were tough days. Justice or freedom had not yet been fully put into practice in England. To get justice, you escaped to the continent if your accusers were people of influence, because opinions and appearances, not facts or evidence carried the day. Detectives did not yet exist.
Pilgrim's Progress
Grace Abounding
George Fox
The founder of the Quakers who was a wholly sanctified man, although he never found a way to communicate this narrow way to his followers. Enclosed is his story of his struggle a century before Wesley.
People I Have Met
Punchy short testimonies and astonishing anecdotes gathered from a long ministry in the early saw-dust revivals. What a time they had! 12 pages by Beverly Carradine
Revival Incidents
Hilarious! Shocking! Marvelous testimonies and happenings were common during the pre- Civil War spreading of the "Great Awakening" into the American South. This is an entertaining as well as instructive historical read. I would have included it in the testimonies section but there were so many others wonderful stories also. 43 pages by Beverly Carradine
A Short Biography of John Wesley
Like no other work on this website, the pilgrimage of the progenitor of the Holiness Movement is clearly laid out. Pay special attention to the special family life and attention given by his parents, and how this leads to John later giving extraordinary care to the needs of children, especially in their education in that dark and ignorant day. Typically however, this author demonstrates little understanding of the grace of holiness that Wesley constantly preached. 11 pages by Maldwyn L. Edwards
Great Healing Revivalists
These were always the most spectacular ministries of all. Includes a scary study of some who went off the rails. 27 pages by Andrew Strom and Larry Magnello (1996)
Interesting Background of the 1700's
The times of Wesley were not dull. Here is some background of the world that the Wesleys found. The Rome of the day where "Bonnie Prince Charlie" was being prepared as a weapon to bring England back into the bosom of the "one true church". 7 pages
John Owen Put Me Straight
by J. I. Packer -Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"They called it the Victorious Spirit-filled life. You got into it, they said, by total surrender to Jesus Christ (they assumed that no one does this at conversion) and then looking to Him whenever you felt sinful impulses stirring. He would then by His Spirit, douse the desire, and quiet peace and joyful satisfaction would be your portion once again. As described by the gifted preachers under whom I sat, it sounded wonderful. But I could not make it work.
I was a new convert in my late teens. I had kept Christ at bay for too long and was trying to make up for lost time. Like any other introverted adolescent, I was a loner, my emotional life was all over the place, and I was essentially a mixed-up kid. I heard the formula as a way of transcending my less-than-satisfying inner state and labored to follow the instructions, but the mad, bad urges still raged and the quiet peace did not come.
What was wrong? I concluded that my surrender could not have been total and scoured my inside to find what more I could consecrate. Harry Ironside, sometime preacher at Moody church in Chicago, drove himself into a nervous breakdown doing this, and I might well have gone the same way. But I chanced upon a mini-treatise, a set of sermons stitched together by the Puritan John Owen (1616-1663), pontifically titled, “Of The Mortification of Sin in Believers”. And here was God's “chemo” for my cancered soul.
Reaching across three centuries, Owen showed me my inside -my heart- as no one had ever done before. Sin, he told me is a blind anti-God, egocentric energy in the fallen human spiritual system, ever-fomenting self-centered and self-deceiving desires, ambitions, purposes, plans, attitudes, and behaviours. Now that I was a regenerate believer, born again, a new creation in Christ, sin that formerly dominated me had been dethroned, but was not yet destroyed. It was marauding inside me all the time, bringing back sinful desires that I hoped I had seen the last of, and twisting my new desires for God and godliness out of shape so that they became pride-perverted too. Lifelong conflict with the besetting sins that besetting sin generates was what I must expect.
What to do? Here was Owen's answer in essence: Have the Holiness of God clear in your mind. Remember that sin desensitizes you to itself. Watch -that is, prepare to recognize it, and search it out within you by disciplined, Bible-based Spirit-led self-examination. Focus on the living Christ and His love for you on the cross. Pray, asking for strength to say “no” to sin's suggestions and to fortify yourself against bad habits by forming good ones contrary to them. And ask Christ to kill the sinful urge you are fighting, as the theophanic angel in C. S. Lewis's “Great Divorce” tells the man with the lizard to do.John Owen is a famous Puritan preacher of sanctification from the 1600's. He was often called upon to minister to the parliament and King, and write to resolve spiritual problems for them. Owen's writings were very well known, and Wesley was widely read, so that we may assume that Wesley read this:
Does it work? Yes. Sixty years on, I can testify to that.
What was wrong with the Victorious Life teachers? They glossed over sin and so did not tell me half of what I needed to know. Does Owen's book minister to others as it ministered to me? Yes, From prison, just recently, came the following:
“I found this book ... near a toilet on the floor.... immediately after I finished reading Owen's “Mortification of Sin”, I got on my knees on the floor of my cell and asked Jesus to come into my miserable life and redeem me... and for the first time in my entire life I meant every single word that I professed....Thank You, Jesus”!
Owen is one of the dead who still speak." from: Christian History and Biography Magazine, winter 2006
Enclosed is a link to Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website. 77 pp. available in PDF, TEXT, or HTML formats. They levy a small fee.
The Puritans and "dissenters" in the century before Wesley were essentially Anglicans who were resisting the majority to bring their church to become less Catholic, and more godly. Holiness, Sanctification and the Mortification of sin already had a very long history before Wesley. Fletcher and Adam Clarke came along to clarify the topic for us even further. With more clarity, came more effectiveness of guidance into His Rest, but as Packer explains, it already had remarkable power. Earnest Seeker
CLASSICS
The Life and Times of John Wesley
John Wesley was "of a pugnacious spirit". (Pugnacious = "ready and eager to fight" Collins dictionary.) This meant that he aggressively pressed in to find the whole truth. He did not quit until he found it -experientially and intellectually-and then spoke it forth clearly to all... including leaders who did not agree. He was not intimidated, and was patient with their weakness in faith. The trouble was created by his very success. Although they would not accept it, he had entered into much more of His truth and reality than they had. This is never a recipe for peace -consequently Wesley lived in the eye of a spiritual and theological tornado. Wesley was fully at peace, but all around him was swirling in chaos...... Much was set into order, even though the next generations started the return to denominationalized carnality.......
He loved debate and was trained in it as educated men in those days were.
The early years 1739, 1740, 1741 were tumultuous and formative. Ministry and conflict with Whitefield, the Moravians and the Calvinians was unfolding. These years shaped the life and doctrine that became so life-changing for so many. Wesley stood stalwartly against the deceptions about holiness from the past, setting the foundations for long-term success, and our benefit Sections are a daily diary. Includes rare original letters written to and from Wesley.
88 page PDF excerpt. by Rev. L. Tyerman (1870)
But to you worthies who would like to go directly to Wesley since he is the root of all this. You should now read Fletcher's lengthy "Checks to Antinomianism" enclosed below to properly understand where Wesley was going in his doctrinal debates with the all the various brands of Calvinists and plain traditionalists.
And then to work the wrinkles out of Fletcher, you should read the works of Adam Clarke. He is wonderful. Here is a short intro to Clarke
Virtually all of our holiness preachers featured on this website studied all these and more as they had opportunity. But in those rough days opportunity was often astonishingly scarce. The enclosed below are all unedited full-length originals:
The Life and Times of the Reverand John Wesley
Wesley Vol 1
Wesley Vol 2
Wesley Vol 3
While Wesley was on the road proclaiming the Word to all, Fletcher ("the Vicar of Madely") looked after his small parish and translated his messages into devastatingly revolutionary theology. John Fletcher's monumental works including his famous "Checks to Antinomianism" ( a belief in grace without reference to the law or its supernaturally profound righteousness) stand alone. Each of these four scholarly parts is approx.six hundred pages in length........
Fletcher was the most saintly man that Wesley knew. He would have appointed him to carry on his work after he passed on, but Fletcher (1729-1785) went on before he did. Fletcher is first of the long line of Wesleyan theologians.
The Works of the Reverend John Fletcher
Fletcher Part 1(contains his famous "Checks to Antinomianism")
Fletcher Part 2
Fletcher Part 3
Fletcher Part 4
Fletcher on Christian Perfection
Fletcher3 pdf
Books by Adam Clarke
A Letter to a Preacher
Autobiography
Clavis Biblica
Entire Sanctification
Salvation by Faith
Memoirs of the Wesley Family
Adam Clarke's Commentary to the Bible
Gen to Deut
Joshua to Ester
Job to Psalms
Proverbs to Song
Isaiah to Malachi
Matthew to Luke
John to Romans
Cor to Phil
Heb to Rev
Ancillary
Both Clarke and Fletcher worked with the John Wesley.
W. B. Godbey's Commentary
Acts to Romans
Cor to Gal
Eph to Phil
Gospels1
Gospels2
Heb to Jude
Rev
Godbey is much more recent. I use him to help me with questions on a Scripture.
Do you have any questions? Is this library website helping you? Do you have some suggestions? About This Website
Note: Often, you have to keep digging until the Lord reveals. He does the saving!!We Are Here For You
We have been walking in this rare state of grace for over twenty years now. We have stood the test and are seasoned in guiding others into His Rest -each in his own way. But we can only answer questions that make sense. For that reason you must do a fair amount of reading on the website before asking for help. Please be aware that our time is valuable. Tom Plumb: website owner and librarian.
Most of your questions are already answered on the FAQ, "Introduction" and "Central Idea" pages. Also see the prepared question lists in "Pure Love" and "Objections Answered" on the "Entry" page.
For more information on us, see the "Links" page. Our testimonies are on the "Testimonies" page.
Tom Plumb will give you prompt short email answers to your queries. Perhaps a website reference.
Sorry I am now just too old to be any more help.
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