BOOK REVIEW SECTION

Wayne Warner (ed) Touched by the Fire. Eyewitness Accounts of the Early
Twentieth Century Pentecostal Revival (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International,
1978). Reviewed by D. William Faupel.
Logos Press and editor Warner have rendered Pentecostalism a
great service with this compilation of eyewitness testimony to the early
Pentecostal revival. The collection includes accounts by such well known
names as Smith Wigglesworth, Marie Brown, Lillian Trasher, Alice
Reynolds Flower, E. S. Williams, Mary Woodworth-Etter, A. A. Wilson
and Ralph Riggs. Less well known, but writing accounts of more
historical significance are reports by Arthur Gray, Rachel Sizelove,
Frank Bartleman, David McDowell, Ruth Carter and Albert Notion.
Rachel Sizelove's account, for example, gives a vivid description of the
Azusa Street Mission. More important she notes that when she first
attended the mission in June, 1906, only about 12 people were present,
but when she returned in July people were beginning to come in great
numbers. This confirms my own research that despite the initial out-
pouring in mid-April, 1906, the revival really did not get under way until
toward the end of that summer. The religious press did not pick up on the
revival until that autumn at which time people started traveling to Azusa
from all over the nation. Bartleman's account is an excerpt from his
booklet How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles (presently being reprinted
by Logos Press) which is the most extensive eyewitness report we have
on the Azusa Revival.
It is unfortunate that most of the accounts selected come from the
"Finished Work" tradition within early Pentecostalism. Accounts by
those who held sanctification to be a second definite work of grace, those
who held a "oneness" view of the trinity, and representatives of black
Pentecostalism are all silent here, even though their voices and pens
were very active in shaping the course of the revival. It is also regrettable
from the standpoint of scholarship the bibliographic information for the
source of the accounts are omitted. Despite such deficiencies, this
reviewer applauds the effort to bring these early accounts into print
through this compilation.

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