About the Book
"Freedom And Law" by Randi Rashkover explores the tension between freedom and law in religious and political contexts. The book examines how different religious traditions and philosophical perspectives approach the relationship between individual freedom and legal constraints. Rashkover argues for a nuanced understanding of freedom that reconciles individual autonomy with communal responsibilities and legal obligations.
Maria Woodworth-Etter
Maria Woodworth-Etter’s Early life
Maria’s early life was plagued with tragedies. Her father died of sunstroke when she was 11 years old leaving her mother with eight children to provide for. She married at 16 but fought a continual battle with ill-health, losing five of her six children. During her sickness she had visions of children in heaven and the lost suffering in hell.
She promised God, that if He would heal her, she would serve Him completely. She asked God for same apostolic power He gave the disciples and was gloriously baptized in the Holy Spirit. “It felt like liquid fire, and there were angels all around.”
The call to preach
Despite her personal struggles with ‘women in ministry’ and the prevailent hostile attitudes to female preachers, she felt compelled by God to accept the invitation to preach in the United Brethren in Christ (Friends) in 1876 and later associated with the Methodist Holiness church.
Evangelism with signs and wonders
Though simply evangelistic in the early days she was unusually successful and in 1885 supernatural signs began to accompany her ministry. Her ministry resurrected dead churches, brought salvation to thousands of unconverted and encouraged believers to seek a deeper walk with God.
She descibes one of her meetings
She described an 1883 meeting in Fairview, Ohio: “I felt impressed God was going to restore love and harmony in the church..… All present came to the altar, made a full consecration, and prayed for a baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. That night it came. Fifteen same to the altar screaming for mercy.
Men and women fell and lay like dead. I felt it was the work of God, but did not know how to explain it or what to say. I was a little frightened . . . after lying for two hours all, one after another, sprang to their feet as quick as a flash with shining faces and shouted all over the house. I had never seen such bright conversions or such shouting….
The ministers and old saints wept and praised the Lord …..they said it was the Pentecost power, that the Lord was visiting them in great mercy and power …..(they) experienced visions of heaven and hell, collapsed on the floor as if they’d been shot or had died.” Subsequently, thousands were healed of a wide variety of sicknesses and diseases and many believers, even ministers, received mighty baptisms of the Holy Spirit. She soon became a national phenomenon.
1,000 seater tent
In 1889, she purchased a tent that could seat eight thousand people and set it up in Oakland, California. “The power of God was over all the congregation; and around in the city of Oakland. The Holy Ghost would fall on the people while we were preaching. The multitude would be held still, like as though death was in their midst.
Many of the most intelligent and best dressed men would fall back in their seats, with their hands held up to God. being held under the mighty power of God. Men and women fell, all over the tent, like trees in a storm; some would have visions of God. Most all of them came out shouting the praises of God.”
She declared that if 19th-century believers would meet God’s conditions, as the 120 did on the Day of Pentecost, they would have the same results. “A mighty revival would break out that would shake the world, and thousands of souls would be saved. The displays of God’s power on the Day of Pentecost were only a sample of what God designed should follow through the ages. Instead of looking back to Pentecost, let us always be expecting it to come, especially in these days.”
Her views of Pentecostalism
Initially she had grave concerns about the burgeoning Pentecostal movement, mainly because of some unbalanced teaching and reported extremism. Soon she came to believe it was an authentic move of the Holy Spirit and was enthusiastically welcomed within its ranks. She became both a model and a mentor for the fledgling movement. This association elicited another wave of revival between 1912 and her death in 1924 as she ministered throughout the country and her books were read across the world.
Etter Tabenacle
In 1918, she built Etter Tabernacle as her home church base and affiliated with the Assemblies of God. In her closing years she still ministered with a powerful anointing despite struggling with gastritis and dropsy. On occasion she would be carried to the podium, preach with extraordinary power, then be carried home again!
Her demise
Her health continued to decline and she died on September 16, 1924. She is buried in a grave in Indianapolis next to her daughter and son-in-law. Her inscription reads “Thou showest unto thousands lovingkindness.”
In conclusion
Without doubt Maria Woodworth-Etter was an amazing woman blessed with an astonishing ministry. Rev. Stanley Smith – one of the famous “Cambridge Seven” and for many years a worker with “The China Inland Mission” wrote this about her autobiography:
“I cannot let this opportunity go by without again bringing to the notice of my readers, ‘Acts of the Holy Ghost,’ or ‘Life and Experiences of Mrs. M. B. Woodworth-Etter.’ It is a book I value next to the Bible. In special seasons of waiting on God I have found it helpful to have the New Testament on one side of me and Mrs. Etter’s book on the other; this latter is a present-day record of ‘the Acts’ multiplied.
Mrs. Etter is a woman who has had a ministry of healing since 1885, her call as an evangelist being some years previous to this. I venture to think that this ministry is unparalleled in the history of the Church, for which I give all the glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, as Mrs. Etter would, I know, wish me to do. This ministry should be made known, for the glory of the Triune God and the good of believers.”
We agree and pray that such an anointing will rest upon God’s end-time people so that ‘this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world before the end comes!’ Matthew 24:14
Tony Cauchi
As for Me and My House
If you are a Christian man, I know something about you. I know you want more. You want more thrill in your walk with Jesus. You want more life, more wakefulness, more awe and wonder, more heavenly ambition, more consistency, more urgency, more sin lying slain at your feet. You want more of an inbreaking sense of God’s utter immensity, his total majesty, his relentless love for you by name. You want fewer clichés and unrealities, and more of the real thing. You want to live for more, with more power and purpose. And if you have a family, you want more skill to lead them to Christ. You want to live in a world of worship and mission with them. You want your wife to increasingly blossom as she beholds more of Jesus. You want to hear your kids singing to Jesus. You want to pray real prayers together, and face difficulties as a family, saying as Jehoshaphat did to God: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). And you want to see him answer mightily. In other words, you want true, living, family religion that spills into your neighborhood and your local church. But is it possible? This desire, perhaps now neglected and starved, only visits with whispers of guilt as you look around at what your life is really like: a fight for survival. Maybe you have conceded to a listless and half-living expectation: just get through the day, enjoy a little entertainment in the crevices, sleep, and then repeat. But just as you want more for yourself and your family, God wants and promises more too. Family Alive to God Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your household, both physically and spiritually. Such a privilege was long foretold, given not just in the cultural mandate (Genesis 1:28) but in the great command to God’s covenant people: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9) “Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your homes, both physically and spiritually.” This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God. God raised the ultimate banner, “Love the Lord with everything,” which is to fly in the wind over everyday life. He meant for all facets, every corner of family life, to be inscribed with reminders of God and his unchanging worth. He meant to be supreme in all things for the joy of all his people and their families. Parents diligently passed this passion along to the next generation, praying that God would give new birth. The truth that made one wise for salvation was to be repeated, again and again, as a man strikes a blade repeatedly to sharpen it, in hopes that God would fashion children who also love him with their all. More than simply passing truths along, however, we see how a faithful man creates an atmosphere into which he draws his children. The home stood as a place where discussions of God continue: as you sit down as you walk by the way when you lie down when you rise up When at home, or when traveling away from home — from the early morning to the laying down at night — conversation was to revolve around God. Israel even decorated themselves and their world with physical reminders of God’s word: “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,” and, “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” I tremble myself to write this to you in Christ: Not a day should pass when God’s ways, God’s gospel, and God’s return should go uncontemplated and unspoken in our families. Men with Burning Hearts The point is that this vision for family religion wasn’t something to check off a list; it was a lifestyle. Not merely a devotional squeezed in the cracks, but a consistent disposition to worship. The God worthy of our all devotion fills the believer’s sphere, especially his household. A vision that matches the secret desire. If you are a Christian man, you especially bear the responsibility of this — and again, you desire it, heavy as it is. How do I know? Because the text says so. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. “This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God.” You will be convinced — Christian father, Christian son, Christian brother — to give yourself to cultivating a world full of God, whether or not you have your own family yet. And not because you read an article or good book, but because God has inscribed his great blazing commandment on your heart. No one needs to twist your arm to want to live for Christ to greater and greater stature. “For they shall all know me” (Jeremiah 31:34). Does Your Spirit Burn? In the old covenant, getting the commandments on one’s heart entailed memorization, meditation, prayer, obedience. In the new covenant, these means are likewise employed but from a very different starting place: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33) Does your spirit not burn within you? You may feel guilt for past laziness, you may feel convicted about current neglect, you may need to fall to your knees and beg God’s forgiveness for leaving him forgotten in the attic, but one thing is sure if you know Christ: You long to provide spiritual blessing to your home. Perceive the Lord Jesus extending more grace and providing fresh opportunity. No longer resist plunging into this promised sea of blessing: “those who honor me I will honor” (1 Samuel 2:30). If you are real, brother, his law is already etched on your heart: You want to care for your family. You want to put away trivialities and live for Christ. You want to build your home and fill it with great thoughts and loving deeds. You want Bethlehem’s star resting above your roof, indicating the King’s presence. You want to provide spiritual meat and everlasting drink to those you love most. You want to truthfully and continually say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Article by Greg Morse
