Dr Reverend Sandra Moses

The Ministry of Maria Woodworth-Etter

Posted: Repost of 28 August, 2015, - 7 January 2016

Sandra Parker shared Grace and Truth Ministries's post.
August 28, 2015
The Mantle of Maria Woodworth-Etter-Grandmother of the Pentecostal Movement

Maria Woodworth-Etter Grandmother of the Pentecostal Movement-various compilations

Maria (pronounced as if it was spelled Mariah) was born on July 22, 1844 to Samuel Lewis and Matilda Brittain Underwood. Her parents weren't Christians and therefore she had no religious education until her parents joined the Disciple church in 1854. Her first loss occurred in 1857 when her father went out to the field to work but was carried back to the house with a severe case of sunstroke. Her mother was left with eight children and no support. Her mother and all the children old enough had to work to support the family.
When Maria was thirteen she heard the story of the cross at a Disciples meeting and was converted. Soon after she was converted she heard the voice of God tell her to "go to the highways and hedges and gather the lost sheep". This was confusing to her as the Disciples did not allow women workers. She thought that perhaps if she married a Christian man they could do missions work together.
A few years later she married her Philo Harris Woodworth. They attempted to farm but it was a failure. She had a son who died at a very young age. Maria then had another boy, Fred, who died, and she herself came close to dying. Georganna (Georgie), the second girl, was seven years old and she also became ill and lingered in terrible pain for several months, before she also died. Three weeks before Georgie died a little girl named Nellie Gertrude (Gertie) was born. However she only lived four months before she also died. Maria herself struggled with poor health and many times thought that she herself would die. There was one remaining boy and girl left to the Etters. Willie, the seven year old boy, became ill and died within a few days. All told within a few years five of the six Etter children had died leaving them in great grief and sorrow. Elizabeth Cornelia (Lizzie), the oldest girl, was the only child left to them.
The entire time she felt that God was calling her to preach to the lost. Finally a way was opened for her to speak at a Friend's meeting. When she got up to speak she was given a vision of the pit of hell and people not knowing their danger. She cried out for people to follow God and choose to be saved. Although she felt called to continue she did not know how to do that. She thought she would study but she had a vision where Jesus told her souls were perishing and she could not wait to get ready. Day and night she felt the need to call sinners to repentance. She finally started in her local area and began to see many conversions. The power of God would fall and sinners would run to the front in repentance. Eventually she held nine revival meetings and started two churches locally.
Due to the failure of the farm, Maria and her husband decided to start a traveling ministry. Maria preached wherever God called and moved through the Midwest where she gained a great reputation for the power of God coming into her meetings. Not long into her ministry she felt God calling her to pray for the sick. She was resistant to doing so because she feared that it would distract from the evangelistic call. Jesus assured her that if she prayed for the sick more people would be saved. She agreed and began praying for the sick. Her meetings were characterized by great power, healings, visions, and trances. In 1884 she was licensed as an evangelist by the Churches of God Southern Assembly, which had been founded by John Winebrenner. Some of her meetings had over 25,000 attendees. She traveled with a tent and set it up where God gave her opportunity.
1890-1900 were tough years for Maria. The dramatic occurrences in her meetings and life made her ministry highly controversial. She had resistance from both the religious and secular community. She was arrested in Framingham, Massachusetts for claiming to heal people, but was released when many came forward with their testimonies. In St Louis, Missouri she had some of her most dramatic meetings in 1890 and 1891, but local psychiatrists filed charges of insanity against her for claiming that she saw visions of God. In one of Etter's meetings in 1890 an man named Ericson prophesied that San Francisco and Oakland would be devastated by an earthquake and tidal wave on April 14th. This created quite a stir and the group was given extensive (negative) media coverage. April 14th came and went without the promised destruction and Ericson was institutionalized for his prophesy and the Etter group left town. (It is interesting to note that when a major earthquake did occur in San Francisco on April 18, 1906 Etter and many of her supporters felt that they had been vindicated about the 1890 prophesy.) In 1891 Maria divorced her husband for infidelity. He was bitter and threatened to write a critical book about her ministry if she did not pay alimony. He died within a year of the divorce. Maria continued her ministry with friends and associates. Even her own denomination struggled with what was happening in her meetings and she came under considerable pressure to stop. In 1900 she finally bowed to the pressure and gave up her Evangelist's license inthe Southern Eldership of the Church of God. She was on her own.
Maria traveled extensively and met Samuel Etter in 1902 in Arkansas. They married and worked together for next several years. It is clear that Maria knew about the Azusa Street meetings and later talked about her approval of the power of God shown there. In 1912 she and Samuel ministered at a five month long meeting in Dallas, Texas for F. F. Bosworth. This meeting was widely reported in Pentecostal circles and her ministry blossomed from that point on. In Pentecostal circles many of the unusual things she'd experienced caused her to be considered a forerunner in experiences with the Holy Spirit. She was well known by John G. Lake who called her "Mother Etter" in his sermons. She continued to travel and minister, but Samuel became ill and eventually died in August of 1914. The strain of her husband's illness and then loss, coupled with a grueling three meeting a day ministry schedule caused Maria to become ill herself with pneumonia in November 1914. At 67 she was feeling herself close to death but God gave her a vision of Himself as the conqueror of death and disease. He showed her she wasn't done yet. By the end of January 1915 she was back on the road ministering again.
When the Assemblies of God came on the scene in 1914, there were few questions about where the Fellowship stood on the often divisive subject of signs and wonders. And one who helped keep that subject on a positive note with her dynamic preaching and remarkable faith was the legendary evangelist Maria B. Woodworth-Etter.
By 1914 the 70-year-old Mrs. Etter had grown hoarse from preaching scores of tent meetings coast to coast, but she was hardly ready to slow down. She was not yet ready to turn over her weather-beaten tent and railroad discount book to newcomers such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Smith Wigglesworth.
Because of the open-arms acceptance of Assemblies of God congregations and others, Maria would keep preaching right up to her death in 1924. But before she gave her mantle to another, she established what is now Lakeview Temple in Indianapolis. Throughout early Pentecostal history, we see Maria Woodworth-Etter's footprints from coast to coast. All who have studied Assemblies of God history know that the organizational meetingplace was in the old opera house in Hot Springs, Arkansas, April 1914. What is not generally known, however, is that some of the founders—including E.N. Bell, Howard Goss, and D.C.O. Opperman—sponsored evangelist Etter in revival meetings in the same opera house during the fall of 1913, drawing big crowds of people who came because of the promised signs and wonders.
Reports of the meetings in the Word and Witness and the Christian Evangel (nowPentecostal Evangel) gave credence to her ministry and sparked invitations to such widely scattered places during the next 10 years as Meridian, Mississippi; Atlanta; Chicago; Fremont, Nebraska; Cincinnati; San Francisco; Dallas; Sikeston, Missouri; Ottumwa, Iowa; Topeka; Los Angeles; Kansas City; Denver; and Phoenix.
The 1915 Topeka meeting saw a dramatic healing of 10-year-old Louis Romer who, at the age of 92, is still around to tell about it. Suffering with what was known as St. Vitus' dance (chorea), Louis shook so badly he couldn't feed himself, and his toes bent under his feet, preventing him from wearing shoes. He had little hope outside a miracle, for life expectancy of chorea victims in that day was only 13.
Louis, who now lives in Lowell, Oregon, remembers that August camp meeting as if it happened only yesterday. "Sister Etter laid her hands on my head, and I felt a cooling of my nerves as a tingling warmth went through my body."1
Then his hands and feet straightened. "I felt so good I cried," Louis said. "All of this happened in less time than it takes to tell it."2
Mrs. Romer knew it was a miracle. She and Louis went shopping for a pair of shoes. Even the Topeka Capital was caught up in the healing when they referred to Louis in a headline as "Boy Cured by Miracle." He was never afflicted with the shaking again and seemed to be attracted to challenging work and hobbies that require a steady hand: marksman, sailor, electrician, and lapidary.3
In the Vanguard of the Pentecostal Movement
Evangelist Woodworth-Etter in 1880 began her dynamic ministry—despite the fact that she had little formal education and didn't start preaching until she was age 35. She had a husband who didn't share her call to the ministry and wanted nothing more than to stay on their Ohio farm. Even though few women were in the pulpit at the time, Maria didn't doubt her call.
She had gone coast to coast at least three times by 1894. In her earlier ministry she emphasized conversions and was very successful in meetings sponsored by Methodists, United Brethren, Churches of God (Winebrenner), and other groups. Then in 1883 people in her meetings began going into trances similar to what happened in the Early Frontier meetings.
She was soon dubbed the "Trance Evangelist," though she believed the experience was the baptism in the Holy Spirit or "receiving the power." During an 1883 meeting in Fairview, Ohio, Maria wrote that the people confessed sin and "prayed for a baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire."4 Fifteen people came to the altar screaming for mercy and fell over in trances. Even at that early date, Maria called it "the Pentecostal power," adding that "these outpourings of the Holy Ghost were always followed by hundreds coming to Christ."5
In a huge meeting in Alexandria, Indiana, Maria reported that the power of God took control of about 500 of the 25,000 people, causing many to fall to the ground. "The Holy Ghost sat upon them," she wrote. "I was overpowered."6
By 1885 she had developed a theology that included salvation, holiness, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, healing, and the imminent return of Christ. She was also big on prophecies—part of the excitement that helped fill an 8,000-seat tent from city to city.
An 1887 newspaper quoted Maria in an Illinois meeting, giving her a powerful voice before the beginning of the Pentecostal movement.
"The power which was given to the apostles in their day had never been taken from the church. The trouble was, the churches had sunk to the level of the world and were without the unlimited faith that will heal the sick and make the lame to walk. She prayed for the return of the old days and more faith in Christ among the people."7
The power demonstrated in her 1889-90 Oakland meeting was nothing new, she claimed. A San Francisco Examinerreporter wrote, "The evangelist described in a fervid manner the Day of Pentecost and claimed that the power that caused her converts to act as drunken men was the same today as in that wonderful day."8
Ten years before Charles F. Parham's Pentecostal experiences in Topeka, Kansas, Maria wrote about a meeting she conducted there. The city was stirred, sinners were converted, and "a number of bodies were healed of different diseases, and a number laid out as dead under the power of God."9 Then during the winter of 1893-94 she conducted a meeting in Los Angeles. Here is a summary of that meeting as published in her 1894 book:
"While we stood between the living and the dead, preaching the gospel on the apostolic line, earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, proving to the people that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, according to the Lord's promise, He was with us, confirming His Word with mighty signs and wonders following."10
When she held a meeting in Louisville during the summer and fall of 1888, the Courier-Journal reported, "Fifteen persons asked to be prayed for preparatory to fully receiving the Holy Spirit." In commenting on a meeting she held in Indianapolis in 1891, Maria wrote, "A number of God's children received the anointing for service. They obeyed the command of Jesus, 'Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye shall be endued with power from on high.' "11
If 19th-century believers would meet God's conditions, as the 120 did on the Day of Pentecost, Maria often preached, they would have the same results.
"A mighty revival would break out that would shake the world, and thousands of souls would be saved. The displays of God's power on the Day of Pentecost were only a sample of what God designed should follow through the ages. Instead of looking back to Pentecost, let us always be expecting it to come, especially in these days."12
It is difficult to determine just when Maria Woodworth-Etter found her place in the Pentecostal movement, but we know she was very active by 1912.
In the beginning she said she held back because of what she felt was false teaching in the Movement. In her opinion, some of the people went to extremes on speaking in tongues, and others wanted the Holy Spirit to work their way, not His. She said her rule was simple: "Let the Holy Ghost work in any way that agrees with the Word of God."13
Apparently Maria was able to work out differences with other Pentecostals as most of them warmly accepted her the rest of her life. She looked at the Pentecostal movement as the greatest thing to happen to the church since the Day of Pentecost. Without a doubt, her 19th-century campaigns helped prepare the way for the 20th-century outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
After a rather quiet period between 1904–12, Maria hit the sawdust trail with the vigor she demonstrated in her 1880s campaigns. The role Maria played between 1912 and her death in 1924 is unique, providing a veteran "name" evangelist for the young Movement. Pentecostals called for her from all over the country. Others around the world read her books that reported high-powered meetings, remarkable conversions, healings, and a great number of church plantings. In addition, Maria used books to publish her sermons.
One of the calls she accepted came from Fred F. Bosworth, a young pastor in Dallas, who later became a well-known evangelist himself. Despite the fact that the 1912 meeting proved to be a key Pentecostal meeting, the Dallas newspapers practically ignored the thousands who were meeting daily and nightly for almost 5 months. Bosworth, however, kept the news flowing into Christian publications around the world.
R.J. Scott, a Christian businessman associated with the Azusa Street Mission, traveled to Dallas to check out Maria's Pentecostal ministry. He liked what he heard and invited her as the main speaker for the Worldwide Camp Meeting he was planning for the spring of 1913 at Arroyo Seco, near Pasadena.
The Arroyo Seco meeting became another key Pentecostal gathering in the early years of the revival. Evangelist A.C. Valdez, Sr., was a teenager at the time of the Arroyo Seco meeting, and when he was in his eighties he fondly looked back to the meeting. Maria was sickly herself and sometimes had to be carried to the crude platform. But Valdez added, "There was nothing sickly, pale, or weak about her ministering. Once her equally ill husband joined her, she raised her small hands and the power of the Holy Spirit electrified us all."14
Two children who never forgot Arroyo Seco became well-known Pentecostal evangelists, Watson and Zelma Argue. They were filled with the Spirit in a children's service, and Zelma wrote that Maria was insistent that those who received prayer lift their hands to praise and give glory to God. And when they did, she added, the power came down.15
G.T. Haywood, a well-known and influential black Pentecostal, published a report in his paper about the Worldwide Camp Meeting. He cited the many who were healed during the meeting "through the instrumentality of His humble servant, Sister Etter.... On one occasion many were healed as Sister Etter raised her hands toward heaven while she was leaving the tent."16
The Woodworth-Etter train rolled into Chicago late in 1913, and several Pentecostal missions cooperated with the Stone Church in a campaign. Anna C. Reiff, editor of the Latter Rain Evangel and former secretary to John Alexander Dowie, described the meetings as Chicago's "mightiest visitation of the supernatural she has ever known." Evangelist A.H. Argue echoed that remark, stating it was the "mightiest visitation from God of these latter days."17
A great number of people in the early years of the Pentecostal movement looked at Maria as a saint. Historian Carl Brumback said she "looked just like your grandmother, but who exercised tremendous spiritual authority over sin, disease, and demons."18
M.M. Pinson praised Maria in a 1913 article published in Word and Witness, stating that she was not trying to build up a "one-man" organization but is "trying to spread the full gospel as recorded in the Book of Acts. She takes her stand with other leading Pentecostal preachers against false manifestations, which is right, and she takes her stand for the real Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit with the signs following.... God is healing people in answer to prayer by this woman."19
Another early Pentecostal leader, Robert J. Craig, pastor of Glad Tidings Temple, San Francisco, and cofounder of what is now Bethany College, Scotts Valley, California, wrote a report on Maria for the Weekly Evangel. He urged ministers to use her life and ministry as an example. "If the Pentecostal ministry would study her life and count on God, expecting the supernatural to be revealed in each meeting, what a mighty agency ours would be in the hands of God."20
Despite the accolades, Maria was aware that if some men in the Pentecostal movement could get their way, she and other women would have been behind the scenes and given little authority. David Lee Floyd, who attended Maria's meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1913, told me that the local leadership—which included E.N. Bell, D.C.O. Opperman, and Howard Goss—appreciated Maria's ministry but was careful not to give her "too much authority."
Many who read Maria's colorful journal-type books put them next to the Bible in importance. Fred Bosworth, for example, helped spread her fame and credibility by wishing that "all the saints in the Pentecostal movement had a copy of Sister Etter's book. It is such a help to faith! There has been no such record written since the 'Acts of the Apostles' recording such continuous victories by the Lord in our day over sin and sickness."21
Stanley Smith, a member of the famous Cambridge Seven missionary group, which included C.T. Studd, wrote a testimonial about Maria's Acts of the Holy Ghost, which was reprinted in her 1916 book, Signs and Wonders. "It is a book I value next to the Bible," he wrote. "I venture to think that this ministry is unparalleled in the history of the Church."22
Apparently many other people valued Maria's books "next to the Bible." W.J. Mortlock, a minister and editor for Maria, wrote in her 1922 Marvels and Miracles that her big books had sold 25,000 copies from about 1912–21. And that was during the beginning years of the Pentecostal movement.
But that's not all. Abridged editions and other book portions were published in French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Egyptian, Hindustani, and other dialects of India and South America.
A Swiss woman, Mlle. Biolley, translated Signs and Wonders into French in 1919. Robert Label, a French Pentecostal minister who wrote the preface to the 5th edition, commented that the Pentecostal revival in France can be attributed in a certain measure to the ministry of Maria's books.

Finally in 1918 God called her to start a church in Indianapolis. She used it as a conference center, and often traveled from there to minister and preach in the mid-west. Her health declined, and she died on September 16, 1924, honored as a woman of God. She is buried in a grave in Indianapolis next to her daughter and son-in-law. Her inscription reads "Thou showest unto thousands lovingkindness." At least one granddaughter and her husband, Beulah O. and Earl W. Clark, who were also ministers in Pentecostal circles, survived her.