Wind and Flame (Pentecostal Pioneers) by Donald Gee

Author:Donald Gee [Gee, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Revival Library
Published: 2013-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Eastern Europe’s Time of Visitation.

Although the striking advance of the Pentecostal Revival in the British Isles during the years 1925-1935 provides an absorbing topic for the British student of that period, we ought not to neglect the wider history of the Movement, especially on the Continent.

Those years also proved to be a time of great spiritual visitation throughout Eastern Europe among all evangelical bodies. William Fetler, of Latvia, was first used to bring the wide spiritual harvest fields there before the Pentecostal friends in both America and England, but he never maintained full connection with the Movement. Among some of his official co-workers there came into being the fully Pentecostal organisation known as the Russian and Eastern European Mission, and this agency, with Headquarters in Chicago, and branch offices in England and Australia, became responsible for assisting much of the Pentecostal Movement throughout the lands of Eastern Europe.

There were many Russian emigrants to the United States of America who became converted and filled with the Holy Spirit while in America. Foremost among them was Mr. Varanoeff, and this brother, with others, felt impelled to return to the land of his birth to tell them there of the wonderful blessings he had found in Christ. Through remaining in Russia for the Gospel’s sake he finally lost his American citizenship, and became a Russian once more. A great work was accomplished in the Ukraine, and just before the era of religious suppression began in Soviet Russia there were about 350 Assemblies of God, with a large annual Conference in Odessa, and about 80,000 members. In 1930 Varanoeff and others were arrested and suffered much in consequence. Since then it has been difficult to maintain contact with these many Pentecostal friends in Russia.

The Eastern side of Poland became a fruitful field for the Full Gospel, and there were about 500 Assemblies of God there until 1939. Arthur Bergholc, trained in the Hampstead Bible School, London, was the chairman of their Union. Those who have shared in a Polish Pentecostal meeting will never forget its intense earnestness, and deep simplicity. Meeting places would be crowded to utmost capacity for hours, most of the congregation standing all the time. During the summer large baptismal services were often held in rivers and lakes. On one occasion the police, who wished to separate a troublesome element in the crowd from those participating, declared that without any further enquiry they could recognise the Pentecostals by their radiantly happy faces! Various British Pentecostal leaders visited Poland from time to time to conduct Bible courses, including Howard Carter, W. T. Greenstreet, L. Naumann, J. Nelson Parr, the writer and others.

A useful Bible Institute was established on American lines in Danzig, where picked young men, and a very few young women, from the Pentecostal assemblies scattered throughout many different lands of Eastern Europe were given a period of about two years’ training to equip them the better for positions of responsible leadership in the indigenous churches. The Principal was Nicholas Nikoloff, an American citizen of Bulgarian birth.

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