William Frederick Mullan

Foreword by MICHAEL CASSIDY

Profile by Dr CUTHBERT CHIDOORI

JOHN BOND by Peter Watt

Prologue

Some Personal Notes

My First General Conference of the Assemblies of God

H. C. Phillips

The Congress on Mission and Evangelism held in Durban

W F P Burton and some Congo Missionaries

Nicholas Bekinkosi Hepworth Bhengu
– His Youthful Dreams
– His Preaching

- Bhengu and Education
- Bhengu and Money
- Miraculous Experiences
- Spiritual Happenings
- The Sanctifying Spirit of God
– His Departure

- Mylet Bhengu

Bhengu’s “Isinthunzi”
- Government and Politics
– Some Faults, Virtues and the Burden of His Heart

President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana

Early Days in Durban

The Glad Tidings Assembly

William Frederick Mullan
The Fairview Assembly
Fred Mullan and the Gifts of the Spirit
A Miracle and a Vision
The Revival in Norwood
James E Mullan

Paul O Lange
William Branham in Durban
Oral Roberts in South Africa

Billy Graham in Salisbury and Durban
The American Missionaries from Springfield, Missouri
C. Austin Chawner and the Portuguese Work
August Kast and the Mount Tabor Mission Station

John and Yvonne Stegman

Colin La Foy and the Coloured Leadership
The Work in Zimbabwe
Mauritius and Reunion Island

Special Answers to Prayer – 1
Special Answers to Prayer – 2

A Beautiful Square with Good Vibes
Prayer and the Hippie Revival
The Young Turks
Tensions within the Group
The Split of 1981 – Part One
The Split of 1981 – Part Two

The Beginnings of the Faith Movement in South Africa

The Statement of September 1989
The Charismatic Renewal

The Start of the Pentecostal Revival World Wide and The Swedish Pentecostal Assemblies

Letting Go of the Reins

Epilogue
APPENDIX 1 : How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit

APPENDIX 2 : The National Church by Nicholas Bhengu

APPENDIX 3 : Article from the Argus 5/02/1981

APPENDIX 4 : Pointers to the future of the Assemblies of God in the New South Africa (10/06/94)

The two brothers, James and Fred Mullan each played a decisive role in forming the new movement, the South African Assemblies of God. Fred was the slightly younger of the two. Superficially they differed widely in temperament, but basically they shared many similarities. Both were determined, independent, unyielding in their opinions, undeviating in their vision, dogmatic, but each equally God-fearing and sold out to do the will of God as they understood it to be. Jim was the bolder, more forceful of the two. Fred was the more reticent, more bookish but the more entrepreneurial with more business acumen.

Following his conversion in Ireland, Jim Mullan went to work on Fred, finally leading him to the Lord. Beyond that I know but little of their background, education or upbringing. I do know that Fred became a bank clerk, while Jim spent time during the First World War as a wireless officer on a ship.
They grew up as Irish Protestants, a heritage that left them with a lasting legacy of prejudice against Roman Catholics and indeed against most other churches as well.
Once, walking together on a windy day, they passed a Catholic priest wearing a black flat-crowned hat with a wide brim such as priests sometimes wear. The wind blew the hat off, causing the priest to chase after his head-gear which cartwheeled away from him like a hoop. The two young Protestants were delighted at the inelegant efforts he made to recover his hat. They laughed loudly and rudely at the sight. Their rudeness infuriated the priest. With his Irish heckles well up, he turned on them with cursing. But they thought their Protestant curses were every bit as good as his Catholic ones. They cursed him right back. It was just as well for both boys that they later were converted and their inbred antagonisms at least became controlled if not eliminated.

Jim Mullan went to the Belgian Congo as a missionary. The year 1934 saw Fred Mullan aboard a Union Castle liner travelling to Durban with his wife Gladys, and their baby girl, Joy. He intended to pioneer churches in South Africa. Having a relative in Durban, he decided to commence his mission there. He had no support. He had little Bible training. Nor was he connected with any organisation.
Praying on board ship one day, the Lord brought a Scripture strongly to his heart. It was Psalm 68:31 - “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” The text was prophetic, even though Fred Mullan was not intending to be a missionary in the accepted sense of preaching to black people. He wanted to build up white churches. But he did not know at that stage that before long he would be part of the Assemblies of God, and in fact, General Chairman of the movement. Nor that in the coming years God would graciously give revival to the Assemblies of God, mainly through the ministry of Nicholas Bhengu, the black evangelist. If “Ethiopia” in the Scripture text could be related to Africans generally, Fred Mullan certainly witnessed Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God. His office of General Chairman would involve him intimately in African church affairs even though his pastoral ministry was to white people.

On arriving in Durban, Fred Mullan met Pastor Archibald Cooper of the Full Gospel Tabernacle, a large Pentecostal church. Archibald Cooper persuaded Fred Mullan not to start a new church from scratch as he was intending to do, but rather to join him as assistant pastor of the Tabernacle, for Pastor Cooper needed a young man to help him care for the congregation. Fred Mullan consented.
Archibald Cooper was an Australian who had settled in South Africa. He related to me an interesting account of how he first started the Full Gospel Tabernacle, a church prominently situated on Cartwright’s Flats not far out of the central part of Durban.
He told me how in his early struggles he had conducted services in a small wood and iron hall near the Indian Market in Durban, a hall later used by the Assemblies of God and known as “the little Green Church”. The congregation was small and too poor to pay him much of a salary
He described to me how in his desperation he sat one night on the South Beach, Durban, praying for guidance. He had letters from Australia offering him a pastorate in a large congregation with a good salary. He was strongly tempted to accept the offer. But at length he took from his pocket the few shillings he possessed. He looked down at them glinting in the moonlight in the palm of his hand, and he made a vow. He said to God, “Father, you have provided for me up to this moment in spite of my circumstances. While You continue thus to be faithful to me, I will not go to Australia. I will remain here because this is where I believe you have placed me”.
That happened in 1928. In that same year, Stephen Jeffries, the great Welsh evangelist, came to Durban to conduct an evangelistic crusade under Pastor Cooper’s auspices. Stephen Jeffries was without peer as a revivalist.
On Cartwright’s Flats, Cooper pitched a marquee for Jeffries to hold meetings in. The tent was old and leaky and the rain poured down incessantly, but crowds came to hear the fiery preaching and to witness the miraculous healings that took place. The atmosphere was electric with divine anointing. A friend of mine told how one wet Durban night she sat in the tent listening to Stephen Jeffries preaching. Fortunately she had on a Macintosh, for a dribble of water from a leak in the tent poured onto her shoulder throughout his sermon. But so intense was the preaching, so profound the conviction on her that she actually was afraid to move even a few inches to get out of the stream. She preferred to endure the rainy baptism until the preaching was ended.
By the time Stephen Jeffries left Durban and the marquee was taken down, Pastor Cooper had 80 new converts that formed the nucleus of a congregation. He built a small hall on Cartwright’s Flats which he later extended into a fine auditorium seating 500 people. In the 1930s that was a large congregation. He called the new edifice the “Full Gospel Tabernacle”. It was to this church that Fred Mullan consented to go as assistant pastor in 1934.

Archibald Cooper was a man of spiritual stature with an apostolic gift. It seemed that wherever one went in South Africa in those early days, one would come across Christians converted under Archibald Cooper or under his son, Claude. But the dear brother must have been difficult to work with. His association with Fred Mullan did not last long. Ties were soon severed and Fred Mullan reverted to his original intention of pioneering a new assembly in Durban, working on his own. He started meetings in the Sons of England Hall, a large auditorium in Smith Street. Then he opened a branch work as well which met in Umbilo.
Before these congregations were properly established, he moved to Johannesburg where ultimately he developed a thriving and influential assembly at Fairview. He left the two churches in Durban under the care of associate ministers. Bereft of Fred Mullan’s direct ministry, neither assembly flourished. After some years they both fizzled out.