Collapse of the Charge against Sister McPherson
The Elim Evangel, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (1 February 1927), pp. 41–42.
In answer to the thousands of prayers which have ascended continually to God, our dear sister, Mrs. McPherson, has been delivered from her persecutors. After suffering the terrible ordeal of kidnapping, her enemies fought her account of what had happened, and succeeded in trumping up a charge against her in the courts. As the result of the preliminary hearing the case was sent for trial last month before the Superior Court. Before the case was heard, however, the Prosecutor withdrew the charges, as the chief witness was found to be absolutely unreliable, and it was evident that Mrs. McPherson's story would be proved to the hilt if the case proceeded further. The devil was defeated, and the gigantic plot failed! The news spread like wildfire through the Elim assemblies. Having suffered with our sister in the months of untold agony and deep affliction through which she has passed, we now rejoice with her in God's mighty deliverance. The following article, written by Sister McPherson while she was passing through the deepest waters, will be of special interest to our readers.—Ed.
No wonder we have made enemies! The Lord has said, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, the world hateth you." When He Himself was accused of being a blasphemer, a man possessed with demons, and even a devil, when they said that He was a wine bibber, a gluttonous man, a friend of harlots and of sinners, when they brought railing accusations and suborned false witnesses against Him, He turned to His disciples and said, "If they have done these in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?" and added, "If ye live godly, ye shall suffer persecution." "But when men revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My name's sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."
Praise God that we of Angelus Temple and of the Church of the Foursquare Gospel have had the joyous honour of being singled out for the greatest tirade of abuse and religious persecution, which has amounted to hysteria and madness, during the past few months! The persecutors of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, gnashed upon him with their teeth. We of to-day have seen our persecutors gnashing with teeth that fairly drip with the hydrophobia of hate, prejudice and malice. No wonder that we have made enemies—a few jealous ministers on the one side, who wrote a letter to the district attorney upon my return from the trying ordeal of my kidnapping, which letter virtually meant "Prosecute! prosecute! prosecute!" even as did the high priests in the days of the Master turn to Pilate and say, "Prosecute! To the cross with Him! Crucify! Away!" On the other hand, are the hordes of the underworld, whose bootlegging, dope peddling, dance-hall tactics, etc., we have assailed fearlessly from our pulpit and over our powerful radio.
No wonder that we have made enemies, as did our Lord before us when His Gospel cut to the heart. We are living in a day of religious coldness, modernism, higher criticism, agnosticism and atheism, and religious fervour is at a low ebb. In the midst of all this we have stood, proclaiming the old-time Gospel, the born again experience, sincere repentance and a turning away from sin. We have preached Divine Healing for broken bodies, the miracle working Christ of to-day, and declared that He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. We have preached the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, with signs following, and the fire and glory of God have rested upon the church. Thousands have been converted and the devil's ranks depleted. Drug addicts have been delivered, in answer to prayer, from their addiction; drunkards have been sobered and made desirable citizens; broken homes have been united, and the devil, generally, has been put to consternation.
The Angelus Temple, the Church of the Foursquare Gospel, has been the centre of one of the greatest revivals of the old-time religion in the world to-day, and history has but repeated itself in that "The cradle of every great religious movement is rocked by the hand of persecution; but persecution makes healthy babies."
When all the lies and innuendo, the false witnesses and planted evidence of this diabolic and absurd attack have died away, the foundations and the four cornerstones of this glorious Gospel shall remain more unshaken and immovable than ever before—yes, even stronger, I prophesy, shall it stand. Even as a tree shaken by the winds of winter thrusts down its roots into the ground, so has this church and so has this people thrust down their roots into God and prayer, into loyalty and love, such depth and quietude of spirit, such confidence of soul, as they shall never lose while the ages roll.
The Foursquare Gospel is like a ship sailing down the mighty Amazon. Little boys, covered with war-paint, may spring out in their birch-bark canoes from every turn of the way and shoot their painted arrows at her gleaming sides; but the arrows shall drop into the waves and the mighty ship ride on, unhampered and unscathed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is preached in Angelus Temple and as I, the founder and pastor-evangelist have preached it, is bigger and greater than personalities. If the Lord permit it, I may be crushed beneath the wheels of political machinery and the machinations of an irate and jealous clergy—not all of them are, thank God! Some of our finest friends are among the ministers of the Gospel, and the really big men of the country, but I refer to those of the smaller class who have never done anything themselves for God and do not want to see others accomplish it. But whether I live or die, whether they crush me or whether God continues to uphold me in His mighty hands as He has, to the wonderment of the whole world, during the past weeks, the banner which I carry must never touch the ground, the flag must be carried on from hand to hand and thrust into the soil of a higher hill.
My prosecutors have numbered in their ranks agnostics, people of unprotestant faiths, and of unchristian religions. The newspapers who have really dictated the policies for the prosecution, have practically run things to suit themselves, ever seeking, regardless of truth, what would be the greatest sensation for the moment, and the blackest and deepest headline. When corrections have come, they have taken usually less than an inch on page sixteen, or thereabouts, for the printing of it.
The absurd, insulting insinuation that I, pastor of this mighty church—that I, editor of a Christian magazine—mother of a handsome son and a charming daughter—that I, stock of a Christian family who for generations have preached and taught the Gospel—that I, who myself for eighteen years have steadily built up a work of which any minister or organiser in the world might be justly proud—that I should, with the sweep of my hand, topple the whole thing over in an insane moment and run away with a former employee to some little seaside village and hide behind goggles and shaded windows! That I should ship about the country a trunk or trunks with circus performers' spangled gowns, and then write love letters to men, is too absurd and too patently a plant and ill concealed forgery of ambitious publicity men, to be dignified by serious answer.
The story of my kidnapping still stands. Whether it was but a part of this diabolical plan to ruin this great religious movement, with its thousands of followers, we do not know, nor do we care. We concern ourselves but with the Master's work, and while He lends us strength and grace and while the breath of life is upon our lips and while the love of God is in our hearts and while a drop of blood throbs in our veins, we shall continue, by word, deed and thought, to preach and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Saviour, the Healer, the Great Physician, the Coming King.
We welcome the trial in the Superior Court which is to come, and desire that it shall take place at the earliest possible moment, assured that naught but complete vindication can result, for truth must triumph and these absurd falsities must fall by their own weight. We shall there be protected by the dignity of a superior court, and the screaming and yelling of denunciations and slanderous insults and the pounding of the tables by an agnostic accuser and prosecutor, will surely not be tolerated, and the dignity of the law will be upheld.
We have endured insult greater, perhaps, than any human being has ever known, and have borne it for a longer time. The blessed Master, whom we love and for whom we would gladly to-day shed every loyal drop of blood in our bodies, was maligned, spat upon, beaten with rods, His beard plucked out. They said to Him, "If Thou be Christ, the Son of God, come down and save Thyself." He suffered insult and heaped abuse.
In our ordeal of suffering, we have prayed, "Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass," but have quickly added, "Nevertheless, Thy will, not mine, be done."
We believe that the day is coming when it will be increasingly difficult to preach the old-time religion. We believe in the second coming of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and that the power of the Antichrist is even now making itself felt in the world. This whole thing is, we believe, a concentrated move on the part of the devil to break down this mighty revival and stop the mouth of the exponent of this fearless Gospel which has been preached without favour to rich and poor alike, and which has brought such glorious results as Christ was lifted up.
Multitudes have marvelled and questioned how and why I could sit all day through the trial and come home at night to preach to the thousands. The answer is simply this—I am innocent of these dastardly charges, my conscience is clean and my heart open before my Lord. I have in my heart no hatred or malice toward my persecutors, who like wolves have bayed hungrily at my heels and leaped with snapping jaws for my throat throughout these past months. But, on the other hand, I have an intense Christian love and a deep, heartfelt pity and a desire that they may come to know the Christ I preach and the Gospel of tender love which saith, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."
Never can I sufficiently express to my wonderful friends my heart-felt thanks for their loyalty and love through this trying ordeal. In the Master's day, they forsook Him and fled. No wonder the heart of Him broke! My heart, too, would probably be broken under those circumstances. But my people have not forsaken, not a friend has fled. So to-day I can go before the world with head uplifted, with faith unshaken, with step firm and purpose true. I take my Bible in my hand and enter my pulpit, where thousands of hungry hearts and where hundreds of sick bodies await, to preach the grand old Gospel of Jesus Christ, with its message of hope and faith and love, to a dying world. I go to dry the tears from weeping eyes; to strengthen the feeble knees of those who faint by the way, to minister to little children and to comfort the widow in her affliction, to point the dying to the Lamb of God; to lay my hands upon the sick and upon the fevered brow, to pray the Great Physician to heal and make them whole.
My faith in God and my faith in honour and justice and in people, will not let me but believe for a moment that all will come right at the end of the trial for which we are held. But if it should be His blessed will that we should still further be permitted to bear the cross, we would but turn to embrace it and consider ourselves the more happy to be counted worthy, for all our lives we have been taught that "the heavier the cross, the brighter the crown."
Our belief in people and in justice, I repeat, makes it impossible for me to conceive of anything but complete vindication resulting from the Superior Court trial. But if it be within the far reach of possibility to conceive, and the desire of our enemies should be wrought upon us, if I know my own heart, I believe that no matter where I should be, even though within a dungeon cell, the first thing I would seek would be a chink in the wall through which I might speak to some suffering heart the story of Jesus and His love, and pray a broken heart to Christ.