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Historic Pentecostal Evangel Series Continues: 1930s
By Ken Horn | August 30, 2008
1930s
“What God Hath Wrought”
Almost every issue of the Pentecostal Evangel during the 1930s had at least one article about the desperate world situation—the Great Depression and the rapidly approaching world war. Amidst the gloom and judgment, editors and writers sounded an encouraging note that God was still in control, He was sending revivals, men and women were planting churches and taking the gospel into all the world. Part of that world was in the Latin American District where two Spanish-speaking schools—one in Texas and the other in California—were training Latinos to reach their own people. Latin American Bible Institute president Henry C. Ball told Central Bible Institute about the mission of the school near Saspamco, Texas, as reported in this excerpt from the March 14, 1936, Evangel. The planting of the acorn he described 67 years ago is now a mighty oak numbering 1732 churches and nearly 200,000 members. Latin American Bible Institute—Texas is now in San Antonio, Latin American Bible Institute—California is in La Puente, and Carribean Theological College is in Puerto Rico.
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When I was in Springfield some twelve or fourteen years ago, and spoke to the students, I believe we had some twenty or twenty-five Mexican ministers and about that number of assemblies also. Now the Lord has given us some two hundred ministers on our list and I suppose about the same number of assemblies also. We thank God for this growth. We thank Him for every trial, we thank Him for every hardship.
Many of our Latin-American students will come to me and say, “Have you a little church, a little parsonage, somewhere I can take a pastorate?” And I say, “No, not now. But we have that town, that place, unoccupied. You go out there and open up the field, and the Lord will bless you, and eventually perhaps some day you will be pastor of some church.
When Pentecost came to the little church I started, I did not have to tell a single soul about the service, because those Mexican people shouted and rejoiced and carried on, so that people heard them for miles around. And by the time I left the service and commenced to tell folks what happened, they said, “We know all about it. We heard you folks shouting down there.” It went like wildfire, that Pentecost had come to the Mexican people. In a short time people were coming with babes in their arms, walking twelve, fourteen, fifteen miles to our services.
The Methodist people had said that within six months there would not be anything there; but after six months we had a flourishing church with a real revival going on and people receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
We started our Bible School in a very small way in 1926, and as it grew we did not have very much room to expand. [Miss Alice Luce started the Latin American Bible Institute in California the same year.] Our school grew as far as it could grow crammed in between our publishing house and the local church. We had no campus, no place for boys to play except in the street. The Lord has now given us a farm outside the city of San Antonio.
This year we have 38 students, and I wish you could see them. We are working out in the country near Saspamco, and the Lord is blessing the students as they go out to spread the Word. As you pray, God is going to send us students from Mexico and Central America and South America and the West Indies. When God’s people agonize and pray and get under the burden, God is going to move and bless and save souls.
By Henry C. Ball
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