The Glad Tidings Assembly, Durban
Profile by Dr CUTHBERT CHIDOORI
My First General Conference of the Assemblies of God
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
Bhengu’s “Isinthunzi”
- Government and Politics
– Some Faults, Virtues and the Burden
of His Heart
President Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana
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
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
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 Glad Tidings Assembly was always a small congregation, never exceeding a membership of about four score. But in its number were some choice souls who proved faithful in the most trying circumstances. Wharton Sayer, the pastor, was a gifted young man, but in the end he let us down very badly. Had he not resigned when he did, he would have faced being excommunicated from the Assemblies of God. He anticipated that probability by resigning, to the mystification of the assembly members who didn’t know that he had a problem.
Enid
& Beryl
For several years
I had been posted by Barclays Bank, for whom I worked, to Stanger, a
town 50 miles north of Durban. At weekends I used to journey to Durban
by train to worship in the assembly. Before Sayer left he called a business
meeting to discuss arrangements for the assembly. I was invited to assume
a temporary role as pastor of the assembly for three months. After that
I was to be sent to Bible School and a permanent incumbent would fill
Sayer’s place. As it turned out, I never did go to Bible School.
The temporary appointment of three months was protracted to six very
difficult years in which I had to nurse the assembly through the shock
Sayer left for us. I stepped into that situation without any Bible School
training, having preached but three sermons in my whole life. One marvels
at the patience the assembly showed in putting up with such inexperience.
But God helped me. Those six years proved to be my “Bible School” in
which I acquired some of the arts of preaching and learnt to trust God
in facing problems that could well have crushed a fledgling minister.
During the course of those six years I proposed to Enid. Miraculously
she accepted me. I have never ceased to wonder that she did, for never
did a bride launch into marriage with fewer prospects than I had to offer
her. The blessedness we have enjoyed together for more than 50 years
is a testimony of God’s goodness and faithfulness to His children.
After leaving us, Sayer found a place in the Baptist ministry and then
in the Anglican priesthood. He married money and ended his days as
Anglican rector in a country parish in Natal where he enjoyed a squire-like
comfortable existence until he died a few years ago.
During World War II the Glad Tidings Assembly enjoyed a high-light of revival
in ministering to the British troops who periodically debouched on Durban
from troop ships visiting the port for victuals. The citizens of Durban
grew accustomed to waking up of a morning with the streets thronged by
tens of thousands of Tommies. Sometimes they would be stationed in Durban
for weeks. Many went from Durban to such theatres of war as Crete and Greece.
Thousands perished in the hail of bullets they met in those places. Ships
were torpedoed and men drowned in their hundreds only a few miles out from
Durban.
In the assembly were a small group of young women in their early twenties,
among them Enid who became my wife. They became burdened for the souls
that were passing by like ships in the night. God poured out His Holy Spirit
on them as they prayed for the soldiers.
They then began a ministry of tract distribution. At first they used to
approach a group of Tommies mooching aimlessly about the streets and ask, “Are
you doing anything tonight?” The men would brighten on the instant
and respond, “No!” Then the girls would say, “Then won’t
you come to Church with us?” A few would accept but most would click
their fingers and ‘remember’ that they had forgotten an urgent
appointment for that night which they simply had to keep.
After a little while the girls decided on a more ethical approach, frankly
asking the soldiers without preamble, “Would you like to come to
Church with us tonight?” Hundreds replied positively. Whenever there
was a convoy of troop ships in port, our little assembly hall would be
jam-packed with soldiers. Invariably nearly every single one of them would
respond to the altar-call. Enid and others of the girls (now elderly matrons)
received letters from the men and from their relatives in England. The
conversions were real.
I must say that Sayer’s preaching in that period was riveting in
its power. He was a Britisher reared in County Durham in England, preaching
to conscripts from his own country. He told us that as a Bible student
in London, a prophecy had gone out over him, predicting that he would preach
the Gospel to his own people in a foreign land. This was it! One struggles
to understand how a man can be so marvellously used yet still backslide.
Is that why Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us from the evil one”?
We called that time ‘the girls’ revival’. But I must
not omit a significant detail. Among the saints in our congregation was
an elderly widow, a Mrs Farren. Mrs Farren was partly blind, but she never
missed a meeting. At the commencement of the war she had a vision of The
Great White Throne Judgement of Revelation 20. She didn’t see the
Lord, or even the throne, but she saw lines of soldiers in khaki coming
up for judgement. She looked upon every countenance as judgement was passed.
The expressions of horror on each face as man after man was consigned to
the lake of fire never left her. I believe many of the conversions in ‘the
girls’ revival’ were the fruit of Mrs Farren’s ministry
of intercession born out of that vision.
The population of Durban reacted to the presence of the Tommies in an outpouring
of hospitality. Mrs Pearla Siedle, a leading citizen of Durban, made it
a practice to stand on the quayside and sing to the troops over a loud-hailer
when the ships departed. She used to dress in a white gown, so she became
known as the Lady in White. Everybody felt a rapport with the soldiers,
not least did I. I even wrote a verse about them which was published in
the Natal Mercury, the Durban newspaper. May I repeat it here:
WE THANK THE TOMMIES
We found them grateful, well-behaved, polite
With hearts responsive to the little things,
Delighted not to be blacked-out at night
Amazed to find we had no rationing.....
The sad thing is that just as we were learning
To love the heart, the manhood they displayed,
They left us to their crowded ships returning
Saying “Farewell” though they had rather stayed
Leaving for us just memories and a yearning
After brief passing friendships we had made.
Though the latter details have little to do with the Assemblies of
God as such, they do reflect something of the climate in which
our beginnings
took place.
There is another incident that happened in the Glad Tidings Assembly.
It occurred a few years after the war at the time of the Suez crisis
in 1956. We had determined to hold a week of open-air meetings for evangelism
held on
the steps of the Durban Town Gardens, opposite the post office. In preparation
for this we gathered one Thursday night for intercessory prayer. There came
an
utterance in tongues with interpretation that at the time seemed incomprehensible
and even fantastic. It was about ‘boots’, all with eyes, ears and
faces. We were enjoined to preach to them. The utterance vaguely reminded us
of the war-time visits of the Tommies to Durban.
The next night we sallied forth for our open-air meeting. To our surprise, the
boots were there all right, shuffling over the pavements, creating an atmosphere
reminiscent of the convoys during the war. The Suez Canal had been closed and
a troop ship to the Middle East had been diverted to call in at Durban. The troops
were allowed time off to visit the town and so we could preach to them. We understood
then the import of that utterance the night before. It was tongues and interpretation
with a word of revelation floating on the flow of it as a rowing boat floats
downstream on a river. In giving the utterance, the Holy Spirit was assuring
us that our little open-air campaign was not simply a good idea conceived in
our own minds, but something that He was presiding over.