Fred francis bosworth biography for kids

Grand Rapids, MI: Revell. Harrell, David Edwin Jr. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. King, Paul L. Perkins, Eunice M. Joybringer Bosworth: His Life Story. Detroit , MI: John J. Reminder: "F. Bosworth History" is now on Twitter. Use the discount code: bosworth Want to know more. Follow the Bosworth Matters blog! You can start right here:.

For more information: Visit the F. Bosworth page here. Questions about the research and commentary on F. For updates on F. Pain coursed through him from his stomach through his throat and into his head. It was excruciating, but in an instant, it was gone. With it went all of the agonizing pain that John had experienced for four years. There was no more lung pain, no more throat pain, and no more wheezing!

Praise the Lord! John called his friends and his mother on the telephone to tell them the amazing news, but none could believe it was he. When the news reached the local newspaper reporters, they insisted on meeting with him, as did Mayor Babcock. Daddy can talk! Jesus made Daddy talk! The Veterans Bureau ordered John to report for tests, after which they declared him well, indeed.

He had to forsake his disability payments, but he had been healed by God and could work now. For years after his healing, he corresponded with F. Bosworth, letting him know how much he enjoyed perfect health in his body and his soul! From his intimacy with Scriptures on divine healing, Fred wrote Christ the Healer in David realized that both the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the body were benefits that belonged to the people of God.

In these Scriptures, the Lord is revealed as a complete Savior who forgives sins and heals diseases. Both benefits are offered equally for anyone would receive them. Bosworth was convinced that these Scriptures clearly revealed the will of God concerning healing. See Romans Finally, Bosworth pointed out that the Greek word for salvation, soteria, implies all the deliverance, preservation, healing, and soundness that Christ promised with His death and resurrection.

Full salvation was in the atonement of the blood of Christ. During the first half of the s, Fred and his brother Burton traveled continuously throughout the nation. Their primary purpose at each meeting was to save souls. Twelve thousand people surrendered their hearts to Christ, and ten thousand people attended the farewell meeting.

The Canadians were so grateful for the powerful message that Christ heals soul and body that five thousand of them accompanied the Bosworth party to their train. They picked up the brothers and carried them on their shoulders all the way to the train station! Yet Fred Bosworth was always careful to give the glory to God and not to take it for himself.

It had been several years since Estelle Bosworth had passed away, and Fred was perfectly content to remain unmarried while serving the Lord. When he was forty-five years old, he met a young lady named Florence Valentine, a post-graduate student a New York campus of Nyack Bible School. When Bosworth met her, he realized that she shared his desire to serve God and preach the gospel.

Florence brought him great joy and was an excellent helpmate during their thirty-six years of marriage. Then, Burton moved on to minister on his own, while Fred and Florence conducted much of their ministry in the Chicago area. The girl was Ruth Peiper, age sixteen. Her mother had died when Ruth was only eight, and her father had refused to provide a home for her.

So, Ruth had been sent to a home for dependent girls. When she was eleven years old, she contracted diphtheria and scarlet fever. Due to those illnesses, she lost hearing in both her ears. She also had to wear a body cast and walked with a noticeable limp due to a severe curvature of the spine. Her doctors had not been able to help her, and her stay in the home became far longer than that of most other girls her age.

Ruth had become a favorite at the home, and one of the volunteers had taken a special interest in her. Ready to do anything that might help Ruth, Mrs. Dixon took her to the meeting. That night, March 2, , Ruth Peiper was completely healed! Ruth came running into the front parlor of the home to tell the Chicago Daily News reporter more of her story.

It was like lightning and thunder in my head. Then there was a ringing in my ears. Riding home on the bus that night with Mrs. Every time someone paid the bus fare and the bell rang, she jumped. The sounds were loud, but they were also wonderful! Without a doubt, F. Bosworth had become one of the most successful of the healing evangelists of the s.

But what sort of man was he? Many of his Pentecostal contemporaries were known for their loud meetings and emotional appeals. Bosworth was different. So, who was Fred Bosworth? Eunice N. A clear, convincing logic ofttimes, for altho uneducated in a worldly sense, he has an unusually bright mind, has studied the cream of Christian literature, and is continually being taught the Word of God, by the Spirit of God.

Moreover, his simple naturalness, or natural simplicity, is delightfully refreshing to all who hear him, while it is, at the same time, more forceful than the most amazing pulpit oratory. Bosworth believed in the living power of the Bible to build faith in the hearts of those who read from its pages or heard it preached. Because he believed so steadfastly in the solid foundation of the Word, he preached with a quiet, firm authority that was uncommon at the time.

When the Bosworth party was conducting a crusade in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Reverend J. Williams reviewed F. Bosworth in the local newspaper.

Fred francis bosworth biography for kids

The preaching was Scriptural and earnest and the truth presented covered the entire Fourfold Gospel, i. Special stress was laid upon the Atonement covering both spiritual and physical needs. It was evident…that each message was taking deep root in hearts…. There was no attempt upon the part of the Evangelist to produce an effect or to urge anyone to hasty decisions by emotional appeals.

The total dependence upon the Holy Spirit for all results was gratifying. The men and women who came to the Bosworth revivals heard the good news of complete salvation in Christ! Fred Bosworth was also acknowledged as a gifted teacher. He believes in the Word of God, and his arguments are amply supported by quotations from the sacred Scriptures.

His language is absolutely free from sensationalism, and is the acme of simplicity. And what is clear to himself, he never fails to make clear to his audience. His sermons show that he possesses in a marked degree the teaching gift. Hence his hearers never fail to be instructed by his presentation of the truth. After ministering with Paul Rader in Chicago for a while, Bosworth had his answer: the radio.

Rader had already begun one of the first Christian radio programs in the nation. The first crude radios had been released for sale in , and people had rushed to purchase them as a welcome addition to their homes. Each morning at 9 a. Soon after, he established the nonprofit organization National Radio Revival Missionary Crusaders to reach the masses with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Bosworths settled in River Forest, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and Fred recorded his radio shows in a studio in his home. The message then traveled ten miles to Chicago by telephone wire and was put on the air from the radio station. Thousands heard the message and wrote to Bosworth requesting prayer for healings or praising God for their salvation.

The successful reports of lives touched by the Holy Spirit poured into his home office. By the time he retired from radio ministry in the s, Bosworth had received over , letters from those who had been touched or healed from his preaching. Thousands still flocked to hear him preach the Word of God with power and to receive their healing. But in the s, the Great Depression made it very difficult to travel far from home, so most of his ministering was done in the Chicago area.

In his years of radio ministry, Bosworth may have reached tens of thousands with the gospel message, but he was largely reserved when it came to his personal life. During this time, Bosworth adopted a controversial view called British Israelism, a concept that gained popularity in the early twentieth century and continues to be accepted by some people today.

British Israelism maintains that Western Europeans, particularly those from Great Britain, are direct descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel who were taken into captivity by the Assyrians. See 2 Kings The belief was most widely upheld in England and the United States. How strongly Bosworth embraced this idea is unknown, but he did resign from the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination for several years because if it.

By the mids, Bosworth had renounced his belief in British Israelism and was reinstated in the church. By , at seventy-one years of age, Fred Bosworth was ready for the next step in his life. He and Florence decided it was time to retire to Miami, Florida. But what would this dedicated man of God do with the remainder of his years? William Branham, an American evangelist from the Midwest, was beginning to move out in his healing ministry and had been invited to Miami, Florida, to conduct a revival campaign.

Branham jumped at the opportunity to be mentored by the older, wiser evangelist, who had forty years of experience in the healing ministry. Beginning in , Fred Bosworth traveled with the Branham team and taught about faith for salvation and divine healing. He spoke at the daytime meetings so that Branham would have time to rest and have enough energy to conduct the larger healing meetings, which were held in the evening.

Joining them in the ministry was W. Fred Bosworth was still very sharp-witted and solid in his biblical presentation of the Word. In , Branham was challenged to a debate on divine healing by W. Best, the pastor of a large Baptist church in Houston, Texas. Best believed that miracles and divine healing had ceased, and that the healing evangelists were frauds.

Branham declined the challenge, but seventy-three-year-old F. Bosworth accepted it enthusiastically. The debate was covered closely by the local newspapers. Best made a point, the Rev. Bosworth would rush to the microphone on stage and dramatically ask those in the audience who had been cured through faith to stand. Each time hundreds would rise.

Bosworth shouted. At least stood up. On November 25, , F. Bosworth was born. When F. Bosworth was about 8 or 9 years old, he accompanied his father to a soldier's reunion, where he first saw a cornet being played. After Bosworth was given a baby pig by his uncle, he raised it, traded a couple of animals, and was eventually able to trade for a cornet.

He became a self-taught musician. He began playing in a juvenile village band; then he played in the senior village band. When Bosworth was around 10 or 11 years old, his parents moved from Utica to University Place, Nebraska a places noted for higher education among Methodists in the region. He became a member of the local band and then played a leading part in the Nebraska state band and local literary societies.

In , at age 16, he left home. In late or early , while at a visit in Omaha, he attended a revival meeting with female friend; she convinced him to become born again. He later described the experience as joyful. Bosworth initially developed lung problems when he was 10 or 11 years old, shortly after his parents moved to University Place, Nebraska.

This occurred when he got overheated in a hot room helping with a friend's operation, then went to the cold outside and got a chill. The lung problems continued for the next eight years, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] getting significantly worse when he was a young man age 18 or 19 , when the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis and said that he would soon die.

Bosworth then went from Nebraska to his parents' new home in Fitzgerald Georgia for a last visit and arrived in a near-death state. While there he attended a religious meeting and was approached by an older Methodist "Bible woman" who "used to walk the hills of Georgia and the Carolinas selling Bibles and preaching the gospel. It says "Miss Perry told him how lovingly ready God was to make him well From that self-same hour Fred began to mend, until, ere many days, his lung trouble was already a thing of the past.

Around , after Bosworth had left home, his parents moved from Nebraska to Fitzgerald, Georgia, where a Union Soldiers colony had been started. Doctors said he did not have long to live, so he took what he thought would be his final trip to see his parents. His mother nurtured his health back to a point where he could get around, and he claimed to have been miraculously healed at a religious meeting in Fitzgerald.

According to Joybringer Bosworth , after his healing Bosworth became an active member of the community in Fitzgerald, buying then operating a barber shop for some time, working assistant postmaster for over a year less than two years , then he was elected as City Clerk a position he held for two years. In Fitzgerald he married at the age of 23 his wife was the daughter of another Civil War veteran , and right after he was married he ran afoul of local politics by supporting someone else who was running on a prohibition platform, resulting in his not being re-elected as City Clerk at an election held shortly after his marriage.

After this he became a bookkeeper, then a teller, at the new bank in the city, then worked for a mercantile company owned by the bank. In Fitzgerald, Bosworth had begun and directed a band, and had gained the respect of the band members to the extent that they tried to apply Bosworth's values to their lives. A year or so after they were married, after seeing copies of Dowie's newsletter, Bosworth and his wife moved to Zion, Illinois then called Zion City , a theocratic, utopian town where modern medicine was banned and only faith healing was allowed.

When he went to Zion City, he began to play his cornet again, this time in John Alexander Dowie 's church, where he was soon made the band director. It appears that he first met John G. Lake at Zion City, and they would be close friends for several years. During Dowie's empire collapsed as millions of dollars went missing and it ended up in bankruptcy under the control of the courts.

With many of Dowie's frauds emerging in the face of lengthy court proceedings, Bosworth gave up hope in Dowie. In September , though, Bosworth and his friend John G Lake were attracted to the Pentecostal message of Charles Parham , who set up a large tent in Zion and tried to attract disaffected Dowieites. Despite being persecuted by Dowie's successor, W.

Voliva, the Perhamites remained intact for about a year. In the late s, Parham was hampered by controversial allegations of Sodomy, said to have been stirred by his Zion city opponent W. The case was later dismissed as lacking evidence. Bosworth and Lake became acquaintances with Hezmalhalch when Lake was seeking baptism of the Holy Spirit. Thereafter, Lake and Hezmalhalch became ministry partners and embarked on a few years of successful ministry together.

Before he went to Indiana, Lake had been led by the spirit of God to dispose his considerable estate to charitable trusts and to trust God for finances. The Pentecostal message met resistance from the administration in Zion City, making it so community facilities were not available for holding meetings. As a result, for weeks they met nightly in the living room of Bosworth's home, as well as in several other homes, with Parham going between the homes, prior to a large tent being erected for services.

From the time Bosworth received his Pentecostal experience, Bosworth felt driven to share the new life he experienced. One early account says he immediately took a job selling pens so he could have an opportunity to testify to others. A group including Bosworth and Lake began preaching on streets of nearby towns such as Waukegan in late where they introduced speaking in tongues.

From there he held meetings in Fitzgerald Georgia, Conway S. Dallas was the final city in his Texas tour, and the meetings there were in the later part of The church began as an independent Pentecostal work which had a loose affiliation with the Christian and Missionary Alliance organization. By , however, the Zion community was in disarray.

Dowie had brought it to financial ruin, and then suffered a stroke. In September, of that year, Parham came to Zion to preach. Due to Dowie's teaching, there was a lot of resistance to Parham. He held a meeting at the local hotel, which evidently impacted the Bosworths, because their house became the new meeting room. Shortly afterwards Bosworth made the acquaintance of Dr.

Kenyon in Chicago. They became good friends and Bosworth included some of Kenyon's material in his writings. He was preaching the Pentecostal message when he was invited to Hearne, Texas. Like many Pentecostal preachers he was willing to preach the gospel wherever he was given an opportunity. While there he spoke to both white and "colored" congregations.

When leaving he was attacked and severely beaten, but praised God for suffering for Christ's name. In he invited Maria Woodworth-Etter to hold meetings at his church. She came and held meetings from July to December and people came from all over the United States. There came a point of disagreement between Bosworth and the Assembly of God organization.

He came to believe that although tongues were definitely a gift, he also believed that not everyone would speak in tongues when baptized in the Spirit.