Mom Beall and Bethesda

The Latter Rain Movement of 1948 started in Saskatchewan, Canada. The next places it made dramatic impact were Edmonton, Alberta and Vancouver, British Columbia. But it gained its greatest fame in Detroit, Michigan at a church pastored by a woman; it was called the Bethesda Missionary Temple and it was egalitarian before egalitarian was cool.

The woman pastor was Myrtle Dorthea Beall (1894 - 1979). In most of the literature about her she is called M. D. Beall, but to those who loved the ministry of God through her she was known affectionately as Mom Beall.

She was also called Mom Beall because she was recognized as a mother of the Latter Rain Movement. Some even say she was the mother of the LRM. They mean by this that God had given her a sort of matriarchal care of the movement. While the churches that were affected by the revival were never federated in any formal way, many looked to M. D. Beall and her church for leadership and sometimes covering.

Mom Beall became a pastor in an uncommon way. First of all, she never had any formal theological training. She was simply a wife and a mother of three children who knelt down in her kitchen one day and was baptized in the Holy Spirit - that's right, speaking in tongues right there in the kitchen.

The original Sunday School building

When she innocently told others about this wonderful experience some were alarmed and more than once she was made to feel unwelcome in a church. So, she made arrangements to start a Sunday School for her children and others in the neighborhood in a building formerly used by a tire store. That was way back in 1934.

It is a long but interesting story how that Sunday School grew to be one of America's first megachurches. The Bethesda Missionary Temple was a megachurch before megachurches were cool.  Someday I'll get around to telling that story but for right now I'll just tell you how Mom Beall's church became the most well known church in the Latter Rain Movement. (Mom Beall told the entire story in her memoir that was serialized in Bethesda's monthly magazine, the Latter Rain Evangel. The memoir can be read online here.)

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 Bethesda began to pray both for the safety of the young men of their church who were enlisted in the war effort and for revival. God answered those prayers and not one Bethesda life was lost on the battlefields. And seven years to the month later, Bethesda's prayers for revival were answered in a most dramatic fashion.

In late November 1948 Mom Beall traveled to meetings at Glad Tidings Temple in Vancouver. The church was pastored by Reg Layzell and he had invited ministers from the Latter Rain outpouring in Saskatchewan for the special meetings. Historian Richard M. Riss continues the story:

"She travelled 2500 miles by car to attend the meetings in a trip that lasted six days. She wrote:

Mom Beall

"Everything we saw in the meetings was scriptural and beautiful. We left the meeting with a new touch of God upon our souls and ministry. We certainly feel transformed by the power of God. Never in our lives had we ever felt the power of God as we do now and we feel we are carrying something back to our assembly we never had before.

"Mrs. Beall returned to her church to spark revival there, attracting people from all parts of the country ...." (A Survey of 20th-Century Revival Movements in North America)

An article formerly on Bethesda's website added:

"December 5, 1948 was a turning point in the [life] of every Bethesdan. That Sunday morning everyone was gathered for church in the basement building. Opening the service, James Beall asked everyone to stand, and suddenly everyone in the building started singing praises to God in the Spirit .... this continued for about an hour. People were saved, filled with the Holy Spirit and healed in their bodies during this time. As the praise subsided a new song was born.

   'This is the promise of the coming latter rain,
    Lift up your eyes behold the ripening grain.
    Many signs and wonders in His mighty name,
    Drink, oh drink, My people for this is latter rain.'

"Two months after this, on February 13, 1949 the main sanctuary [seating about 1,800] was dedicated. When the doors opened, it was immediately filled and at least 1,700 people were turned away. Services were held night and day for the next three and one half years."

Just as Riss wrote, the happenings in Detroit drew people from all over the country - and eventually the world. Ivan and Minnie Spencer, who founded Elim Bible Institute, were two of the hundreds of Pentecostal ministers who went to Detroit to experience the revival for themselves. In her biography of Ivan Spencer, Marion Meloon tells the story like this:

The Spencers

"Ivan and Minnie had arrived in Detroit and were soon ushered into the basement sanctuary of Bethesda Temple. As they became aware of the hundreds of people on their faces crying out to God in humiliation and brokenness, they knew that God was in the place. Says Minnie, 'The Scripture, 'Break up your fallow ground,' was being enacted before our eyes.' They, too, fell on their faces, and the Spirit wrought a work in their hearts that was new, and made them new.

"In those days spent in the Temple, with little thought of meals and mundane duties, they witnessed marvelous depths of spiritual victory - manifest in conversions, baptisms, healings, deliverances, and impartations of gifts and ministries by the laying on of hands. Holy spontaneity replaced special programs, though there was much teaching. Prayer groups met as early as five in the morning, continuing into the afternoon. And it was easy to pray - one wanted to do nothing else.

"Yes, revival had come beginning in North America with Canada, then moving down the west coast to as far as Los Angeles. Across the country it came as a great toronado, touching down in many cities, but especially making Detroit its focal point. Why? For Minnie, it was exciting to hear Mrs. Beall, pastor of the Temple, describe their revival prayers and radio programming over the past seven years. Why, it was seven years ago that God had laid upon Minnie the ministry of travail for revival! Her heart leaped within her as she sensed she was hearing the cries of the newborn babe, now delivered." (Ivan Spencer: Willow in the Wind)

Riss writes of another prominent leader that came in contact with the Latter Rain Revival in Detroit and who approved of it as the Spencers had:

Stanley Frodsham

"Mrs. Beall wrote a letter to Stanley Frodsham, a pioneer of the early Pentecostal movement at the turn of the century, a leader of the Assemblies of God denomination, and the editor of the Pentecostal Evangel for twenty-eight years. In her letter, Mrs. Beall described what was happening in her church, and Frodsham decided to leave Springfield, Missouri to visit the church in Detroit. He arrived in January of 1949, and 'he was swept away by the revival taking place in Detroit.... He was moved deeply by scenes of people under great conviction of sin, making confession and finding peace.'" (A Survey of 20th-Century Revival Movements in North America)

However, not all Assemblies of God leaders shared Frodsham's opinion of the Latter Rain Revival. Peter Althouse explains what happened:

"In 1949, under pressure from the Assemblies of God, Frodsham retired from ministry and resigned as the editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, the official magazine of the denomination." (Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jurgen Moltmann)

Relationship with the Assemblies of God also became untenable for Mom Beall and Bethesda and they ended their affiliation with the AOG. Assemblies of God historian Gary McGee provides some background:

"'The 'new order' Latter Rain Movement in reality is giving us nothing that is new in spite of the claims of its advocates,' wrote General Superintendent Ernest S. Williams. For Williams and his colleagues, Latter Rain practices pointed backward to problems that had once vexed the stability, unity, and spiritual integrity of the Pentecostal movement. Neither could the proper interpretation of Scripture justify the teachings of the new movement.

"Opinions on the revival's genuineness varied. The new teachings and the (at times harsh) reactions and counter-reactions revealed a growing gap between establishment Pentecostals and grassroots Pentecostals in some quarters. Although believers in the Latter Rain differed in their teachings to some extent, the General Council listed abuses in the movement and condemned them all in 1949. Latter Rain leaders cried foul. Like the historic churches' condemnations of earlier Pentecostals, so now the Assemblies of God had denounced fellow Pentecostals." (People of the Spirit: The Assemblies of God)

Of course, that is just one side of the story. Australian scholar Mark Hutchinson is a student of Pentecostal history and he writes much more favorably:

"Through people such as Reg Layzell in Vancouver, Myrtle Beall in Detroit, Ivan Spencer in Rhode Island {Spencer as noted above was actually from Lima, New York}, Thomas Wyatt in Oregon, and Earl Lee of Los Angeles, the revival spread all over North America. Wherever they went, the new amalgam of methodology, experience and teaching tapped into the lurking dissatisfaction with the class shift American pentecostalism had experienced under the Assemblies of God, and the memories of the 'Latter Rain' outpouring of power experienced at Azusa Street." (The Canadian Fire: Revivalist Links Between Canada and Australia)

Vinson Synan adds a description of the environment that fostered the spread of the Latter Rain Movement:

"The Pentecostal movement was at a low ebb in 1948, with a growing dryness and lack of charismatic gifts. Many who heard about the events in Canada believed that is was a new Azusa Street, with many healings, tongues and prophecies. A large center of the revival outside of Canada was the Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit, Michigan pastored by Myrtle Beale {her name is actually Beall}. From Detroit, the movement spread across the United States like a prairie wildfire." (An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit)

Since December of 1948 Bethesda has been known for, among other things, what Pentecostals and Charismatics call "singing in the Spirit". The beautiful, harmonious strains of a congregation with each member singing their own spontaneous song to the Lord came to be identified by some as sounding like a "heavenly choir".

For her part, Mom Beall's preaching was unique. It was unique for its brevity as she often spoke about 15 minutes (imagine that!) It was also unique for its riveting quality - she was a marvelous story teller. And most importantly it was memorable for its spiritual impact. I remember listening to her preach and at once wanting to cry and wanting to laugh for joy. I felt as though I wanted to burst as the anointing on her words dropped into my spirit like nuclear bombs.

Thousands who heard her preach would say the same. Even Peter Jenkins in his New York Times best-seller A Walk Across America tells about the impact of Mom Beall's preaching. His experience of hearing her preach at the Word of Faith Temple in New Orleans in November of 1975 is alone worth the price of the book. The story is lengthy so I won't share it here, but I must note his description of her:

"Although Mom was over eighty she now looked shot full of the most powerful energy in life."

She was, Peter, she was.

When Mom Beall left this earth in 1979 her son James took over as pastor of Bethesda. During his tenure Bethesda moved from its longtime home on Van Dyke and Nevada avenues in Detroit to the suburb of Sterling Heights. James' daughter Analee Dunn took over as pastor of Bethesda (which is now known as Bethesda Christian Church) in 2004. Bethesda's church plant, which includes a 3,000-seat sanctuary, sits on a 92-acre site. [Pastor Dunn retired on June 12, 2016 and turned over the senior pastorate to Patrick Visger.]

Mom's husband was Harry Lee Beall. Mr. Beall was not a preacher but was supportive of his wife's ministry. "Dad was the builder, mother the pastor," James Beall told the Detroit News in an interview after his mother's death.

Besides James, her children included Patricia Beall Gruits and Harry Monville Beall. Patricia, now 90, is the author of a very popular catechism called Understanding God, as well as the leader of a missions organization in Haiti called Rhema International. Harry was a preacher, soloist, and director of Bethesda's choir and orchestra.

In the video above Mom Beall is seen speaking at 1:46 ... Patricia Beall Gruits is seen at 3:08 ... James Beall speaks at 3:34 ... and Analee Dunn speaks at 7:29 ... Patrick Visger is seen at 5:33.

Sterling Heights sanctuary (photo by Elite Pro Audio, copyright 2016)

Mom Beall's obituary · Fri, Sep 21, 1979 – Page 44 · Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) · Newspapers.com

Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit Free Press 13 Jun 1964, Sat Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) Newspapers.com

Jon Rising · Bethesda Missionary Temple history