Acts20.com

Interesting reading. I read several pages of it so far. It looks like he constantly ministered.http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005947717

Thanks for posting! It will be hard to get any work done today

Thanks Link for posting - interesting indeed, and I agree with Wayne; I love to read about early Church of God history! UncleJD, you're right - no work today. I have been reading Volume I all day. But, that's what you can do when you're 73 - maybe I'm already 74 going on 75! I remember my mother and father talking about those early days. When he was overseer, he had several of the Lemons preachers come and hold what I remember as a three day/night seminar on Church of God history. David and Frank did most of the seminar. It seems to me that George and John joined them for part of it. David and Frank taught in a morning and afternoon session all three days and then George and/or John preached at night. I do remember Brother Frank Lemons telling about the revival in 1908 that lasted for 10 weeks. I think he said he was about 6 years old. He told how they had meetings in a tent, a church, and a house. He said that it seemed that church went on all day and all night. According to him, it was so crowded at the church and at the house that he would have to stand on some type of wooden box and look through the windows. He told how it changed the city of Cleveland forever. Both of them had great admiration for Brother A.J. Tomlinson and only had kind things to say about him. They knew him and his family personally. I remember one of them saying that Brother Tomlinson worked so hard that many of the problems of the 1920s came about because he worked so much and simply was overcome by all the demands he placed on himself as well as expectations from others. After reading Brother Tomlinson's diary, I can now understand why they said that. He seemed to work non-stop.

Not far in - he says he disfellowshipped 9 for disorderly walks.I would love to know their transgressions...what constituted a disorderly walk

I noticed that about disfellowshipping. I hope they did it for real sins.He sure travelled and preached a lot in the section I read. It sounds like he went nonstop

An interview with him before he died.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C kRX1ecR10

I was hoping it wasn't for something like that. That seems rather extreme. Nowadays, two fornicators can be shacking up and find plenty of churches who will say nothing. There is a right balance somewhere in the middle

The editorial notes and publishing was done by Homer A Tomlinson.

Talk to some of the old, old timers ---- couldn't drink Root Beer because it had beer in the title, wouldn't think of drinking Coke, or coffee! (I'm not sure if the church actually preached against these, but I believe we did.)I heard one of our former general officials tell how his wife was brought before the Church and Pastor's Council because one of her dress sleeves came above her elbow while praying with someone at the altar!

OTCP,Good news! He may have crowned himself King of the World, but I can't find where he used the title Doctor. The goal of the editorial notes in the three volumes that Homer added was to claim that he was the proper heir to the leadership of the COG(OP) instead of his brother Milton. Homer was well educated, for the time, compared to most COG/Pentecostal ministers. He was a prolific writer who understood and used the media of the day, including radio and newsreels, as well as newspapers and late in his life TV. His service in WWI may have been a causal reason why the COG changed its teaching about Members Not Going To War, which was a pacifist holdover from A. J. Tomlinson's Quaker roots. The diary should be read with a focus on A. J. Tomlinson, not Homer, and in the context of the development of the Pentecostal Movement in that era. There is much to learn, much to overlook and much to laugh about. There was a certain dynamic in the development of the movement that we today would dismiss as foolishness (though the movement might look at us today and not see Pentecost).So Homer crowned himself King of the World while sitting on his throne (lawn chair) while wearing a choir robe. Sister Amie (4 Square) wore angels wings and flowing robes while some in the movement said they would rather have a snake around their neck than wear a worldly tie. That was a different age, but what of those who say they are Arch-Bishop today, and who sit on a Cathedra in their metal building while wearing a robe in our times? What of the self named Apostles and Prophets who wear robes today and claim authority over churches they have nothing to do with? Or of the bogus Doctors in their robes? Have they published and traveled as much as Homer? Did they take the message of Pentecost to leaders of around the world? He may not have been a doctor, but he sure was a king of promotion (self-promotion)! About 20 years ago I when to the Library of Congress and requested to view the diaries of AJT that Homer had placed there. What struck me was not the actual books, but the foresight Homer had in placing them there. While it is easy to discredit the dead, seeing as they have no change to learn, what of the living?