About Harvest Ministries Harvest Ministries is a part of the Church of God of Prophecy, a worldwide organization with some ¾ million members. The following information about the Church of God of Prophecy is adapted from the booklet, “An Introduction to the Church of God of Prophecy,” and can also be found at the Church’s website, worldwide.cogop.org. Our Mission The mission of the Church of God of Prophecy is to bear witness for Christ and His truth and to spread the gospel of the Kingdom in all its fullness and power, so that the rule of God is brought about in the hearts of men. Our Objectives In order to accomplish our mission we will pursue four primary objectives: to worship God, evangelize the lost, equip believers, and prepare for Christ’s return. Doctrinal Commitments From its beginnings the Church of God of Prophecy has based its beliefs on “the whole Bible rightly divided.” We accept the Bible as God’s holy Word, inspired, inerrant, and infallible. We believe the Bible to be God’s written revelation of Himself to mankind and our guide in all matters of faith, therefore we look to the Bible as our highest authority for doctrine, practice, organization and discipline. It was a strong desire to rely solely on the Bible that led the early pioneers of the Church to declare their willingness to be free from all man-made creeds and traditions, to take the New Testament as their only rule of faith and practice, and to give each other equal rights and privileges to read and interpret the Bible as their consciences may dictate. The Church of God of Prophecy is firm in its commitment to orthodox Christian belief. We affirm that there is one God, eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in the deity of Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in the physical miracles He performed, in His atoning death on the cross, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory at His second coming. We profess that regeneration by the Holy Spirit is essential for the salvation of sinful man. We believe that sanctification by the blood of Christ makes possible personal holiness. We affirm the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling we are able to live godly lives and have power for service. We believe in the ultimate unity of believers as prayed for by our Lord Jesus Christ in John 17. We believe in the sanctity of human life and are also committed to the sanctity of the marriage bond, and the importance of strong, loving Christian families. Our Covenant Relationship We have joined ourselves together in Christ as a fellowship of believers by covenanting “to accept the Bible as the Word of God, promising to believe and practice its teachings rightly divided with the New Testament as our rule of faith and practice, government, and discipline, and agreeing to walk in the light to the best of our knowledge and ability.” In joining the Church of God of Prophecy, a covenant of obedience and continued practice in the Word will be publicly affirmed. (1 Cor. 5; Matt. 18:15-17) Our History The Church of God of Prophecy traces its founding back to the New Testament when Jesus “calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach” (Mark 3:13, 14). The Church has a rich heritage rooted in the Protestant Reformation, including the efforts of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others. More particularly it is a legacy of what is called the “radical reformation.” Radical reform groups such as Anabaptists, Mennonites, Baptists, and Quakers contended that the major reformers had fallen short of a complete restoration of God’s Church. The radical reformers, therefore, sought to fully restore the Church on deep spiritual experiences, personal piety, and strict moral discipline. Radical reformers in America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries emphasized experiential salvation, God’s love, and practical holiness. Love and holiness were, to them, the hallmarks of the true Church, in contrast to the complicated and formal creedalism prevalent in their day. Great revivals, some marked by pentecostal manifestations, occurred among the radical reform groups, especially the Baptists and the followers of George Whitefield and John Wesley. Following in this tradition, the forefathers of the Church of God of Prophecy viewed their work as both a continuation and restoration of the Apostolic Church. In the late 1800s, Richard Spurling (1810-1891) and seven other individuals came out of the Holly Springs and Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Churches in Monroe County, Tennessee and Cherokee County, North Carolina and organized what they believed to be a true restoration of the Apostolic church. They called it “Christian Union” and constituted it upon principles remarkably comparable to the sixteenth-century Anabaptists. The group agreed to free themselves “from all (man) made creeds and traditions…to take the New Testament, or law of Christ” as their “only rule of faith and practice, giving each other equal rights and privileges to read and interpret for yourselves as your conscience may dictate,” and to “sit together as the Church of God to transact business…” Following Spurling’s death in 1891, his son, R.G., carried out this vision and established more congregations. In 1895, Benjamin Harding Irwin had come from the Midwest to the region of North and South Carolina, northern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee with his “fire-baptized” message. Spurling’s congregations were swept into this movement, thus moving away from the general characteristics of Baptists to the tenets of this Holiness movement. In the summer of 1896, in Cherokee County, North Carolina, an Irwin-influenced revival broke out. During these meetings, held in Shearer Schoolhouse, some 130 people were baptized with the Holy Ghost and spoke in unknown tongues. W.F. Bryant, a Baptist lay preacher, was drawn into the Holiness movement during this revival. He eventually became the leader of the group in the area of Camp Creek, North Carolina. Great persecution followed Bryant’s group in the succeeding years, however, and by 1902 the little band had dwindled to no more than twenty people. On May 15, 1902 Spurling persuaded Bryant to organize in order for the work to survive. Consequently, the Holiness Church at Camp Creek was born. Spurling was selected by the congregation as pastor and Bryant was ordained as a deacon. The following year, A.J. Tomlinson was attracted to the Holiness Church at Camp Creek. Tomlinson (1865-1943), a Quaker, had experienced salvation and holiness in his personal life and had come to the Appalachian mountains in 1899 as a missionary under the auspices of the American Bible and Tract Societies. Spurling greatly impressed Tomlinson as he explained to him his vision of the Church. On June 13, 1903, after a period of agonizing travail and a personal revelation from God, Tomlinson united with the group. Spurling administered to him a covenant and extended the “right hand of fellowship” which Tomlinson accepted with the understanding that this was the Church of God of the Bible. This event was held sacred by Tomlinson for the rest of his life. Tomlinson’s leadership potential was readily recognized by Spurling and the others, and he was immediately selected as pastor of the Camp Creek congregation. Under his dynamic leadership, the Church rapidly organized several congregations in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, and grew in the next twenty years to a membership of more than 20,000. During an Assembly of all these churches in 1907, the name Church of God was officially adopted. In the 1909 Assembly, Tomlinson was selected to serve as the General Overseer of all the Church of God, a position he continued to fill until his death. Tomlinson, like many in the Camp Creek congregation, leaned toward Pentecostalism even before the turn of the twentieth century. However, it was only after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Charles F. Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas in 1901, and the great interracial revival at Azusa Street in Los Angeles, led by W.J. Seymour, which began in 1906, that the Church of God fully embraced the Pentecostal movement. On January 12, 1908, G.B. Cashwell, the “apostle of Pentecost in the South,” who had been at Azusa Street, preached a sermon in the local church in Cleveland, Tennessee. Following Cashwell’s sermon, Tomlinson fell to the floor and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. He professed to having spoken in at least ten different languages while in the ecstasy, and envisioned a world-wide harvest for the Church through missionary outreach. Since that time, the Church has remained in the classical Pentecostal tradition. The phenomenal early growth of the Church was disrupted in 1923 when it divided over issues ranging from financial matters to the form of government the Church should adopt to serve its ever-growing constituency. The group led by Tomlinson after the disruption of 1923 was by far the smaller of the two groups, but under his leadership gradually gained new strength as the Church of God of Prophecy. During the 1930’s, the Church experienced a tremendous revival and its growth was considerable. Mission outreach flourished as the Church’s ministry began to spread to other countries. Following A.J. Tomlinson’s death in 1943, the Church presbytery selected his younger son, Milton, to succeed his father as General Overseer. Milton Tomlinson served the Church faithfully for nearly 47 years. During his long tenure, he sought to perpetuate and fulfill his father’s vision of the Church’s work around the world. The Church expanded under his leadership into every state in America and more than 90 countries worldwide, with a membership of more than 300,000. In 1990, Tomlinson announced his retirement due to physical limitations, and Billy D. Murray was selected by the presbytery as General Overseer. Under the ten years of Murray’s leadership, the Church expanded from 90 plus nations to 120, and membership grew to more than 546,000. Murray retired from the office of General Overseer effective August 1, 2000, and was succeeded by Fred S. Fisher, Sr., the Church’s current General Overseer. The final chapters of the Church’s history remain to be written. It is our fervent desire to fulfill our God-ordained role in taking the gospel message of Jesus Christ to a lost world, and to be an agent of reconciliation through which our heavenly Father will one day answer the prayer of Jesus that we may all be made one in Him.