J. Roswell Flower

A Brief Biography

Ringer

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498231299
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

J. Roswell Flower was adrift in his late teens. When he surrendered himself to Jesus Christ at age nineteen, his heart found a home in the Pentecostal Movement. Soon his mind was exhilarated by studying the Bible, church history, and theology. Slowly, he began to realize he was called to full time ministry. Attracted by the announcement of a convention to encourage greater cooperation among Pentecostal groups, he went to what proved to be the founding meeting of the General Council of the Assemblies of God. Flower was elected as secretary of the new organization. He loved the Council's guiding principles of unity, voluntary cooperation, and fellowship, which at the same time protected the autonomy of local congregations. They guided his ministry for the next forty-six years as a local pastor, as a district superintendent, and as general secretary. Flower never wavered in his commitment to the classical Pentecostal doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He spent much time in the last two decades of his public ministry teaching the principles and the denomination's position on Spirit-baptism to the new generations of Assemblies of God youth, both in the United States and abroad.

1

Early Life and Faith

We drifted, sometimes going to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, sometimes here and sometimes there; but we more or less drifted until this Pentecostal meeting opened in Indianapolis. That was in January, 1907.

—J. Roswell Flower, “Our Pentecostal Heritage”

Life in Zion City

J. Roswell began school in the city of his birth, Belleville, Ontario, Canada. When he learned to read, he became an avid, excellent, and life-long reader. As a child he took books from the shelves of his father’s general store, read them, and replaced them for sale. The family moved from Belleville to Toronto where J. Roswell completed his required education. Following that, he sat for and passed in 1902 the examination that permitted him to enter a collegiate institute or high school. However, in pursuit of what they hoped were richer spiritual pastures, George and Bethia Flower moved their family to Zion City, Illinois, that summer. They hoped to find in the home city of John Alexander Dowie’s church the kind of holy living, faith in the healing power of God, and beloved community for which they longed. They were deeply disappointed and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana just two years later.

Zion City did give Flower some opportunities. He did not attend high school there. He did join the prize-winning band led by F. F. Bosworth, playing cornet, and took a stenography course with an eye toward finding employment. His training and ability to take shorthand, to write well, and to edit became important aspects of his work in God’s kingdom. The location of Zion City provided opportunity for adventure for the teenage boy. He and a friend, W. O. Boyd, decided to take an excursion down the nearby Plaines River in a rowboat. They traveled several miles before deciding their scheme was ill-conceived and returned home. What the city did not offer the Flowers, and J. Roswell in particular, was a spiritual home. In fact, he became spiritually lethargic. He did submit to water baptism. Later, he referred to the event as a “ducking,” not a genuine baptism.

Disillusioned by the quality of the spiritual life among his followers and Dowie’s claim to be the First Apostle of the Christian Catholic Church, the family moved to Ben Davis, Indiana, a small community outside of Indianapolis, now part of the city. The move to Indiana was not to find new spiritual pasture, but for George to take employment connected to the business of a relative. Once more the family was adrift spiritually. J. Roswell lost interest in religious matters. He did not rebel against his parents. However, he became “worldly,” attending movies, smoking, and irregularly attending church, whichever one his parents happened to be attending at the time. He found it difficult to work, sometimes being fired for the poor quality of his work and more often simply quitting. About 1906 he found employment with a lawyer and decided to pursue the reading of law. That was less satisfying than he expected, though he did continue it, and once more he found himself restless, even as his parents continued to be spiritually restless.

Life in Indianapolis

George and Bethia prospered in their new location. They discovered a small band of hungering disciples among who were two women who had experienced extraordinary healings. Mary Alice Reynolds had been healed on her deathbed in response to the prayer of a Quaker minister. Her Methodist minister silenced her testimony in the church and she sought a fellowship in which her witness would be welcomed. Following her healing she had conceived and given birth to her third child, a daughter, Alice Marie, just two years younger that J. Roswell Flower. Along with others, Mary Alice was leading a prayer group of those seeking a deeper life in Christ. The other woman who received an amazing healing was Anna (Mrs. George) Eldridge; she was healed of advanced tuberculosis. Her husband was a Methodist minister who discovered his wife’s testimony was unwelcomed in the church. After a meeting with A. B. Simpson, Eldridge became the minister of the newly formed Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) group in Indianapolis. All hungering souls—the Flowers, the Reynolds, and the Eldridges—were drawn into the same fellowship.

One man who had earlier been a part of that loose-knit group was Glenn A. Cook. Cook’s spiritual hunger had taken him to the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California, where he received the Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit. Convicted that he had wronged some people in Indianapolis, Cook returned to make amends. He arrived at the prayer group meeting in the CMA building in January 1907 while the Eldridges were absent and testified to his experience. When the Eldridges warned people to stop attending Cook’s meetings and forbade him to use the CMA facilities, those who followed him began meeting in another place. Among those who went to those meetings was Mary Alice Reynolds and her daughter Alice Marie and George and Bethia Flower and their daughter Louisa Bernice, but not their son J. Roswell. Slowly, members of the mission, as they called it, began receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit. On Easter Sunday, sixteen-year-old Alice Marie Reynolds was prostrated under the power of God as she was Spirit-baptized and spoke in tongues for more than an hour. J. Roswell’s parents were with her.

At home, the Flowers talked about the meetings at the mission and gave an account of Alice Marie’s experience. Their son listened but showed no interest in attending. A few weeks after Alice’s Spirit-baptism, Bethia Flower also was baptized in the Spirit. The change in her life attracted her son and challenged him, though his parents had not confronted him about his lifestyle. Soon thereafter, J. Roswell stopped in to a Sunday afternoon meeting as he returned from photographing an accident site for the interurban railroad. He was captivated by what he heard and saw. However, in the end, it was his mother’s changed life that convicted him and brought him to repentance and faith in Christ. Later, he became aware that his water baptism was not genuine. He, Alice Marie Reynolds, and her mother, Mary Alice Reynolds, were all water baptized in the same service by William Hamner Piper at the Stone Church in Chicago, Illinois.

The new convert began attending the general meetings of the mission and also became a regular at the young people’s gatherings. J. Roswell was not working full-time, so he went with the young people on witnessing trips and showed up at social gatherings, especially where there was food and, increasingly, where he knew Alice Marie would be present. The young people participated in two significant forms of witnessing with minimal adult supervision. A number of them, led usually by Alice Reynolds, went to a factory once a week at lunchtime and had a brief service and teaching for the employees. They, also, went out on the streets in the afternoon or evening to conduct services. Some of these meetings were conducted near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the center of Indianapolis. Other meetings were held on the streets of outlying towns near the city. They traveled to these places on the public streetcars, sitting in a cluster when possible and singing hymns and choruses as they went. They did the same thing going to picnics in the parks along the river on the west side of the city. Usually, the adults accompanied them on picnics, chaperoning and providing the food. It was on one of these outings that J. Roswell and Alice Marie shared an extraordinary experience of nature, a mystical sense of being lost in the beauty and goodness of nature. Both of them believed that such contact with nature refined and ennobled them and drew them closer to God.

The worship experiences of the new Pentecostal community growing in Indianapolis were formative for Flower and for Alice Reynolds. From the beginning, adults and youth worshipped together. While the adults generally were in charge, both young and old participated in Spirit-inspired and Spirit-empowered activities. Adults and young people stood together and sang in the Spirit (the “heavenly choir”); both laid hands on and prayed for the sick; both prayed for others at the altars; and both gave messages in tongues and interpreted the messages. Alice Reynolds’s gift of interpretation of tongues was well-known and accepted. Youth were sometimes given opportunity to teach, especially in the home meetings. J. Roswell led some of these Bible study sessions even before he was Spirit-baptized. The community was also moderately integrated racially. Whites went to meetings in black homes. Flower delighted in the fellowship and worship he experienced among the black saints. Prior to his declaring himself Oneness (Jesus Only), the African-American pastor G. T. Haywood was an important leader among Pentecostals in the city.

Growing in Christ

J. Roswell Flower had come to faith in Christ without much emotion; nonetheless, he knew something had occurred in his spirit. Furthermore, he believed there were two subsequent “works of grace” he was to experience. He was saved; now he had to move on to sanctification and baptism in the Holy Spirit. This three-stage holiness model of Christian experience was the accepted standard at Azusa Street; it was the model Glenn Cook had brought from there and the one generally accepted in Indianapolis prior to the influence of William H. Durham’s “finished work” teaching. Not long after his salvation experience, Flower went to the altar at the close of a meeting to seek sanctification. He claimed it by faith and once again had the assurance something had happened in his soul. He then stood up to testify that he was sanctified. As he began speaking, the joy of his full consecration (the word he later came to prefer) came upon him; he shouted, ran two miles home, and went straight to bed for fear the joy would leave him. It did not.

J. Roswell did not assume that being fully consecrated to God necessarily meant he should go into full-time ministry. However, he did become more active in witnessing and helping others in services: he was an altar worker, praying with those who responded to an altar call, a song leader, and sometimes a Bible teacher. At some point, he became convinced he had a call to missionary service in Africa. What was of far greater significance to him, however, was the need for, and his desire for, the baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in other tongues. For many months he prayed both in tarrying services and at home without achieving his goal. Though he sometimes became discouraged, he did not cease active ministry and learning. With two other young men, Fred Vogler and B. F. Lawrence, he launched out into evangelistic and teaching ministry across the midwestern part of Indiana. During these campaigns a stirring in his heart, an aptitude for pastoral ministry grew. His ability to write and edit stimulated a desire to use the printed page for ministry; at age twenty he began publishing a small magazine titled Pentecost in 1908. In the winter of 1909, John G. Lake invited him to come to South Africa to work with him there. This seemed to be circumstantial evidence affirming a missionary call to that field. However, his mother had a dream about this and warned him not to go. He heeded her warning.

Instead of heading for Africa, Flower turned westward with a stop in St. Louis, Missouri in early March of 1909 with plans to journey on to Kansas City where he would work in evangelistic and summer camp efforts with A. S. Copley. The purpose for his stop in St. Louis was to ask Mary “Mother” Moise to write a piece for Pentecost on her rescue work among women in the city. His planned brief stay turned into nearly a month-long visit. As he waited on the Lord during those days, he spent much time in the “tarrying room.” One day as he prayed, he imagined himself on a parallel track to the Lord. If he continued on his course, he would never receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He would have to stop and turn to face the Lord. At that point in his prayer, he physically stood up, turned “toward the Lord,” and said, “There Lord, I face you and take from you definitely the gift of the Holy Ghost.” As he had claimed his salvation and consecration by faith, he now received Spirit-baptism by faith. This was followed by a keen sense that a work had been done in his soul and that the long sought-for baptism was his. There was only one problem—he did not speak in tongues.

Over the next sixteen months, J. Roswell waited for, anticipated, despaired of, and sought for the initial, physical evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Twice he consciously pronounced a few syllables in what he thought was tongues; once he spoke in tongues in a dream; and once he prayed in tongues for another person. He was unaware of the latter instance—others told him later that it had occurred. In the absence of a conscious instance of tongues-speech, he tried to hold on by faith to the conviction that his experience in St. Louis was the baptism in the Holy Spirit. At one point, when he was asked about it, he denied having received Spirit-baptism. Finally, in July of 1910, praying for another person at a summer Bible camp, he became aware that he was praying in tongues as naturally as he prayed in English. He was filled with joy, a joy that intensified as the day went on.

During those months of waiting for the “evidence” of his Spirit-baptism, he was steadily active in ministry. His work with A. S. Copley ended in the fall of 1909. When he left Kansas City, Flower turned over to Copley the Pentecost. For the next several months he poured himself into evangelism at various places in Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Young as he was, others recognized the anointing of God on his life and were open to his ministry of preaching, teaching, intercession, and spiritual counseling. By default, as it were, he was becoming a full-time minister. And just as important if not more so was a growing awareness shared with his parents that they were all finally “home” spiritually. What their hearts had longed for, for so long—solid biblical teaching, vibrant faith and holy living, miraculous workings of God, a loving community of saints, and a deep and intense hope in the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ—was theirs in abundance.

Conclusion

As a child in Canada, J. Roswell had received a solid public education and a broad religious one in various churches and Sunday schools as well as at home. In his early- and mid-teen years, he lost interest in spiritual things and, though he had the educational skills needed to be gainfully employed, he found he had no solid interest in any secular field, even the law. Following his conversion near his twentieth birthday, his interest in spiritual matters sprang to life along with a desire to study the Bible. He felt a “fluttering in [his] brain” during a prayer service that he took to be God restoring his mind. From that point on, he grew rapidly in his knowledge of and understanding of the Bible, of spiritual experience, and of historical and theological writings. Ministry filled his thoughts and time. He discovered that as he poured himself into the service of the Lord, his material needs were supplied. However, these wonderful spiritual blessings did not take away J. Roswell’s longing for a loving, marital relationship with Alice Marie Reynolds with whom he had fallen in love.

2

Marriage and an Epoch Making Meeting

This meeting in Hot Springs is to take up some important subjects, and promises to be an epoch maker should the assembled ministers handle each question presented in the spirit of love and fellowship.

—J. Roswell Flower, Christian Evangel, March 28, 1914

Love for Alice

Kneeling by Alice Marie Reynolds as she lay on the floor speaking in tongues under the power of the Holy Spirit, George and Bethia Flower hoped their son J. Roswell might find a girl like Alice. A...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Early Life and Faith
• Chapter 2: Marriage and an Epoch Making Meeting
• Chapter 3: First Secretary of the General Council
• Chapter 4: Secretary of the Missionary Department
• Chapter 5: The Eastern District Decade
• Chapter 6: Return to National Office
• Chapter 7: Avoiding Sectarianism
• Chapter 8: Historian and Statesman
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Chronology
• A Note on Sources
• For Further Reading