A must-have history of the LRM

*** Information on obtaining this self-published book can be found at the bottom of this article.

I produced this website - the more than 30,000 words of it - because the Latter Rain Movement of 1948 (hereafter, LRM) so blessed my life and because much of what I read about it on the internet was misinformed, and sometimes malicious, nonsense.

So it is my pleasure, of course, to promote any materials that tell the LRM story accurately.

Until December, the premier book devoted to a comprehensive historical retelling of the mighty revival the Lord sent beginning in 1948 was Richard M. Riss' book, Latter Rain: the Latter Rain Movement of 1948 and the Mid-Twentieth Century Awakening, which is sadly now out-of-print. But as 2019 came to a close, a new book became available that complements Riss' account, and in many ways surpasses it.

The Latter Rain Revival 1948 - 1952, An Oral History by Walter Willet is an extensively-researched account, that is written both candidly and sensitively (sensitively because, after all, it is a visitation of the Lord that is under discussion). He shows that LRM leaders like George Hawtin and A. Earl Lee had frailties that resulted in damage to lives, while at the same time he thrills readers with accounts of the Heavenly Choir and the restoration of several of the Holy Spirit's gifts to the church.

Despite having researched and written a great deal about the LRM myself, in chapter after chapter I gained information about the revival that brought it into sharper focus. I suppose I am most appreciative for those passages when Willet takes us behind-the-scenes at crucial moments of the revival's development.

He is able to do that because he includes information from interviews that he and others conducted with many of the movement's most prominent ministers (e.g., George Hawtin, Violet Kiteley, James Lee Beall, Charles Green, Reg Layzell, Leonard Fox, and many more). Probing questions were asked and the answers given provide us with a more complete record of the LRM than has ever existed before. If the history of the LRM is of interest to you then this is a book you must have.

I first became aware of Willet when I was reading through Richard Riss' thesis file at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Riss' book (mentioned above) was initially submitted as his master's degree thesis at Regent. The thesis file contains his correspondence with ministers and with other researchers, one of which was Willet.

Walter Willet

Walter was not an outsider peering into a movement; he was first a Latter Rain adherent, sitting under the ministry of A. Earl Lee in Los Angeles, California, and later researched the movement by traveling to places associated with the revival so that he could interview LRM participants.

His involvement with Pastor Lee is recounted in one of the book's seven appendices. It wasn't all pleasant and Walter is candid about that, yet he is even-handed enough to also present Lee as a powerfully anointed minister of the Gospel. The candidness allows us to see Lee's human frailty - and also the grace that should operate between members of the Body of Christ, as Willet extends forgiveness for the wrongs he says Lee did to him.

The book's even-handedness is one of the salient features of this recounting of Latter Rain history. One can tell from the beginning that Willet believes the LRM was a true visitation of the Lord, but less than 50 pages into the book, we read what the author calls a "minority view" about the events that occurred at the Latter Rain revival's initial site - North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

That minority view was provided to Willet by Eric A. Forsgren, who was a student during the revival outbreak. Specifically, Forsgren was not impressed by the prophecies at North Battleford (in particular, an obviously failed prophecy that declared that ministers of the revival would stand before Joseph Stalin and prophesy the Word of the Lord to him). However, even this leads to more even-handedness (by both the author and Forsgren) when we read later that Forsgren humbly admits that he may have been overly critical of the situation in North Battleford because he was immature or because he was envious at not having been prophesied over. (Forsgren later had a positive experience of the LRM at Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit.)

Such candor gives this book authenticity. The people of the revival are presented as having experienced a supernatural visitation of the Living God, but also as having failed the Lord - and each other - at many turns. They are empowered and refreshed - but they are certainly not perfected.

Still, the book is a mostly positive and hopeful account. Willet's issues with Lee are not included as a

A. Earl Lee

matter of score-settling, but as part of an honest account from one LRM participant (in fact, bringing up the disappointing relationship with Lee results in the author telling us of his own failings). And the sins committed by LRM participants (some of them very grave) do not overshadow the great blessing the revival spread in every place it touched on earth - and it was more than just a North American phenomenon. Major LRM centers like Portland, Oregon; Detroit, Michigan; New Orleans, Louisiana; Oakland, California; and Lima, New York still have works (churches and institutions) that are healthy and growing in the Lord, serving their communities well.

I hope the contents of this website have given me credibility enough with readers that when I tell you Willet's understanding of LRM history is solid and his reporting is trustworthy, you will believe it is so.

In fact, his research has pointed up inadequacies in my own understanding of LRM history, some of which involve information I have published on this website that I will have to correct when time allows.

A prime example is the impression I had been given by Riss' book and D. William Faupel's 1989 Ph.D. dissertation, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought, that the ministry of George Hawtin and others at Wings of Healing Temple in Portland, Oregon in February 1949, brought the revival to that church. Having gotten that impression, I printed it on this website because Riss' and Faupel's writings were also well-researched. However, no one gets history perfectly correct.

George Hawtin and others from North Battleford certainly did go to Wings of Healing Temple, pastored by famed healing and radio evangelist Thomas Wyatt, but the Lord had already visited that church in Latter Rain revival showers prior to the Hawtin party's arrival.

Thankfully, Willet has given us a lot of detail about the revival at Wings of Healing Temple, and

Max Wyatt

here I will highlight a quote that dispels the notion that I and others had about how the revival started in Portland. Max Wyatt, the son of Thomas Wyatt and an outstanding minister in his own right, is quoted as saying,

"The Latter Rain didn't come to us from Canada. But when we found out they were in on it, we invited them down. I feel like Paul. Remember after he preached and got his revelation, he went to Jerusalem to see and he said, they didn't add a thing to us. (Galatians 2:6) As far as we were concerned, we never had anything added to us. We were already preaching everything that they brought. Everything they talked about, we were already doing and they added nothing. Fact of the matter is, they brought harm, and they brought confusion instead of help. Afterward, even Dad said he would to God that he'd never called the Hawtins from North Battleford. We [didn't] feel that way about Milford Kirkpatrick. Even Kirkpatrick would tell you that the Lord, finally, just spoke to him and told him to get out of there."

I am thankful for the corrections Willet has brought to my understanding of LRM history, as well as, the gaps of information he has filled in for me.

A sad part of the task for any honest LRM historian is telling the George Hawtin part of the story. Remember, the very first outbreak of the Latter Rain revival occurred at the Sharon Bible College in North Battleford in February 1948.

George Hawtin

George was the president of the Bible college (although Willet relates that George was not, in fact, present on the very first day of revival activity). Shortly after the revival outbreak, he and his brother Ern (and sometimes others from North Battleford) were asked to minister in several places across the United States and Canada. Understandably, he was considered a leader in what was happening.

But, by every account I have read, George was not content to be a leader or merely the leader of the activity in North Battleford. Rather, he was insistent on being the leader of the revival. Willet's book paints him accurately, though, as being given to rage and adultery. His desire to be the LRM leader was rebuffed, and eventually his conduct resulted in expulsion from the ministry in North Battleford.

Willet interviewed Hawtin at his home in August 1976 and Riss communicated with him through the mail. Those contacts were met by Hawtin's characteristic hostility, anger, and bitterness. Still, this part of the story must be told because people like Hawtin do populate heaven-sent revivals, even though we wish it weren't so. We need told to be told about them so that we will not be inordinately discouraged when we encounter them - and so that we will be careful not to become them.

Much more encouraging is the part of the story that concerns M. D. "Mom" Beall, her family, and the church she founded, Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit. Like George Hawtin, Mom Beall was not formally trained for the ministry. But unlike Hawtin, Mom Beall's ministry bore good fruit.

Beall began Bethesda as a Sunday School for children but the work grew and grew as

Mom Beall

the Lord drew people to hear her simple but anointed teachings.

In November 1948, just three months before the burgeoning congregation was to open an 1,800-seat facility, Beall traveled to Vancouver to Glad Tidings Tabernacle (pastored by Reg Layzell) to hear the Hawtins and others speak about the revival that had begun nine months earlier.

Hands were laid upon Mom Beall, and Ern Hawtin gave one of the most memorable prophecies of the early Latter Rain revival, saying, "They shall come to thee from the ends of the earth and shall go forth from thee as lions equipped - as from a mighty armory."

This word was fulfilled dramatically over the next few years. The first Sunday Beall returned home, the revival broke out in Detroit. Folks like Ivan and Minnie Spencer, their son Carlton, and Stanley Frodsham went to Detroit before the month was over and were able to confirm that a real revival was taking place.

When Bethesda dedicated its new sanctuary two months later in February 1949, the revival surged in intensity, so much so, that the church had to have, from that point on, revival services six days a week for three and one-half years!

Willet reports that during that time, ministers that would later have their own significant LRM ministries (like Paul and Lura Grubb, and Bill Britton) went to Detroit to see what was happening. He also writes that Thomas Wyatt and Fred Poole from Philadelphia went to Detroit seeking specifically to be prophesied over. As Vinson Synan has written, "A large center of the revival outside of Canada was the Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit, Michigan pastored by Myrtle Beale (sic). From Detroit, the movement spread across the United States like a prairie wildfire."

I have paid close attention to the LRM virtually my entire life, yet I read in this book stories about Mom Beall and her family, Violet Kiteley, Fred and Sarah Poole, Bill Britton, Percy Hunt, and certainly George Hawtin, that I had never heard before.

The book, however, only gives brief mention of the Pemberton brothers (Garlon and Modest) and Winston Nunes, and all three were major LRM figures. However, no history can contain everything - we are all limited by the scope of our research, our energy, and the need to keep a book's size manageable.

The more serious concerns I have with the book are stylistic. Willet self-published it without professional editing - and it shows. The book does not conform to standards of grammar, quote attribution, and book citation that one expects from serious history. An analogy occurred to me while reading - this book reads more like the notes of a police detective than it does a well-polished crime novel.  (I would say the same of the memoirs of Moses Vegh and Hugh Layzell.)

There is even an unfortunate artistic error where a photo of Max Wyatt is confusingly overlaid on a photo of the Pembertons, which results in the reader not being able to see Garlon at all.

However, that critique aside, I would not want to be without this book. Walter Willet has expended a lot of effort and has undergone great expense to tell us a story that must not be lost in the mists of the past. Even with its several faults, I consider the book to be a treasure.

The chapter and appendix titles are as follows:

PART ONE - BACKGROUND AND HISTORY OF THE LATTER RAIN

• Chapter 1 - Introduction
• Chapter 2 - 1934 - 1947 The condition of Pentecostal churches
• Chapter 3 - 1948 Beginning of the Visitation at North Battleford
• Chapter 4 - 1949 LR flows out to the world
• Chapter 5 - 1950 LR teaching spreads
• Chapter 6 - 1951 and 1952 LR churches proliferate
• Chapter 7 - 1953 and subsequent years
• Chapter 8 - A look back to evaluate the LR Revival

PART TWO - LR DOCTRINES

• Chapter 9 - The Body of Christ and Body ministry
• Chapter 10 - The Unity of the Body of Christ
• Chapter 11 - The Governmental Offices of Apostles and Prophets
• Chapter 12 - Laying on of hands and impartation
• Chapter 13 - Gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially Prophecy
• Chapter 14 - Gifts of the Holy Spirit continued
• Chapter 15 - Worship and Praise
• Chapter 16 - Water Baptism and The Lord's Supper
• Chapter 17 - The Doctrine of Grace
• Chapter 18 - The Manifested Sons of God

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION

• Appendix A - Some highlights on Walter Willet's spiritual journey
• Appendix B - C. L. Thacker profile
• Appendix C - Clovis Cagle's persecution for joining LR
• Appendix D - William Branham quotes and profile
• Appendix E - George Warnock and The Feast of Tabernacles
• Appendix F - Woodworth-Etter and "the Heavenly Choir"
• Appendix G - The false doctrine of Universal Reconciliation

Here's how to get copies of the book:

In the UNITED STATES send a total of $23.50 (that includes the book and postage) to -

WALTER WILLET

2700 Nebraska Ave

#3-102

Palm Harbor, FL  34684

Walter's email address is:  wwillet.ww@gmail.com (your eyes are not playing tricks on you - wwillet.ww has 4 W's and 2 L's)

CANADIAN customers need to write to Walter (or email him), requesting the book which will cost $20.00 (in U. S. funds) plus shipping charges (which he will determine when he receives your order).

*** To significantly reduce the cost, a flash drive option is available. Write to Walter (or email him) for that information, as well.

*** The pricing above has been reduced. Walter says that those who paid the original pricing will receive reimbursement from him.