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The Church Returns to the Upper Room

from the hand of God. (Trasher 1958, pamphlet written for the
Assemblies of God World Missions)

Thousands of Egyptian people were touched by the “Nile Mother”
as she was affectionately called. She was highly respected not only
by the Egyptian government but also greatly admired by many in the
international community. In 1951 Lester Sumrall wrote:

It is true that Lillian has adopted about six thousand Egyptians in
the last forty years, but it is also important that twenty-one million
Egyptians have adopted Lillian! She is not a foreigner in a strange
land, but she has become the Great Nile Mother, possessing a true
Egyptian heart, loving and caring for them with the tenderness
of a saint. The Egyptians know this and reciprocate. They do not
think of Lillian as a foreigner any more, and in many ways reveal
their true love for her. (171)

One marvels at what God can do with just one person filled with the
power of the Holy Spirit and the priority of His mission.

Opposition to the Revival

As it was in the early church, so it was with the coming of Pentecost
in the twentieth century: there was misunderstanding, opposition, and
rejection. What happened in the Christian and Missionary Alliance is
typical of the negative reaction to the Pentecostal movement. In the
beginning, a number of Christian and Missionary Alliance ministers
received the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues as
evidence, and by 1907 some of the camp meetings were scenes of
Pentecostal manifestations.

A. B. Simpson, the leader of the Christian and Missionary Alliance,
asked some of the leading theologians and elders in the fellowship to
evaluate the movement and give him a report. As historian Menzies
notes: “The result of this report was that Simpson published a manifesto
setting forth his position and renouncing the doctrine that all who receive
the baptism in the Spirit must speak in tongues” (71–72). Consequently,
the Christian and Missionary Alliance closed the door to Pentecostals
at this time, and those who felt the teaching was biblical and from God
left the church.

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