1899 AZUSA STREET CONTEXT. Reality Magazine - Acts of Holy Spirit in the World

An exceptionally scarce full year of Reality magazine, a direct precursor to the Azusa Street Revival of 1906. There are no examples in the trade, none at auction, and but two institutional holdings. The magazine apparently completely unresearched in Pentecostal studies. 

Long before the 1906 Revival, Los Angeles had already become a hub of heightened spiritual activity in the west. The city was host to a significant number of local ministries and missions centered on divine healing, the fullness of the Spirit, and eschatological expectation. The present periodical is the soil out of which the new movement would grow. it grew out of exactly this milieu.

The combined contents of each of the three years we are offering (separately) of Reality constitute a pre-Pentecostal manifesto. Recurring themes of divine healing, Spirit baptism, the fourfold gospel (Jesus as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King), missionary urgency are precisely the theological streams that fed into early Pentecostalism. Fascinatingly, fourfold banner photographed at the Southern California Christian and Missionary Alliance Convention [in the 1897 issue] appears word-for-word in the Azusa Street framework.

The periodical saw contributions by Joseph Smale, a direct influence on the Revival. He was pastor of First Baptist Church of Los Angeles, traveled to Wales in 1905 to witness the Welsh Revival under Evan Roberts, returned on fire, began holding revival meetings, was eventually forced out of his church, and founded New Testament Church, which became one of the immediate staging grounds for the networks that converged at Azusa in 1906. His appearance here shows he was already embedded in this healing-and-Spirit movement years before Wales.

There is also repeated content by and about Carrie Judd Montgomery, a significant figure in the prehistory of Pentecostalism. She would later become one of the most prominent Pentecostal women leaders after 1906, having already built extensive networks through her own magazine, Triumphs of Faith, and healing home ministry. Her presence in Reality shows how interconnected the West Coast holiness-healing world was.

There is also repeated engagement with the existence of Glossolalia. One article, "Did the Apostles Preach in Foreign Tongues?," issued nine years before Azusa, demonstrates this Los Angeles magazine was already publishing theological reflection on whether the apostles preached in foreign languages at Pentecost — exactly the question that would become explosive in 1906 when Charles Parham's doctrine of tongues as "missionary languages" (xenolalia) and the Azusa phenomenon forced the issue into the open. Someone in this network was already wrestling with it.

Each month includes healing content, both testimony and theological articulation. Includes material from figures like Dr. Finis Yoakum and demonstrates how divine healing functioned as the entry point into expectation of supernatural gifts more broadly. Yoakum himself would later found Pisgah Home in Los Angeles, a major healing and charity ministry that overlapped with early Pentecostalism.

The magazine pulls together the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswick holiness movement, the healing home movement (Charles Cullis's ministry), and West Coast evangelicalism. These were the overlapping networks — not a single denomination — from which Azusa's leadership drew. William Seymour arrived in Los Angeles already embedded in Holiness networks; Reality shows those networks were already mature and locally active. A completely unresearched primary resources that paints a picture of Azusa as a culmination of pre-existing pressures and forces rather than a sudden eruption.

The above note describes the three years we are offering together. Please see the "Contents" under each year.

Contents include: An All Day Grove Meeting by T. Hezmalhalch; The Santa Monica Chinese Mission by Emma E. Sturgess; Physicality Changed; God [the Healer] not Sectarian; Must we "Take" Something [On the Use of Medicine.- He's not a Fan]; The El Bethel Mission at Port Rico; The Divine Power; Saved from the Erotic Passion; The Gift of the Spirit by H. W. Lathe; Charles August Olsen and the Mission to the Mohave Indians [he attributes his accelerated learning of the language to the gift of tongues]; A Demon Period; Our Covenant Rights by J. A. Fraser; Peniel Missionary Convention [Mary Lyons Photo, accounts of messages, etc.]; A Censorious Spirit by G. D. Watson; Brother Warner in Liberia; Divine Healing and the Use of Spectacles; Healing in the Missionary Field; A Word for Doctors; Christianizing the Chinese of Chinatown; Divine Healing of a Cow; "Medical" Missionaries and Divine Healing; Divine Healing or the Victory of Life by A. E. Funk; The El Bethel Mission to the Mohaves; The Divine Power; Not Doctors, Jesus; Miraculously Raised Up; A Spiritual Will by George D. Watson; Visit of Rawei - the Maori Evangelist [Photographs of He and His Wife]; Two Chinese Workers [Chinatown]; Professional Healers; Post-Apostolic Healings; The Power of Satan; Manner of Acceptance of Divine Healing by Kenneth Mackenzie; Sufferings and Joys of the Missionary Life by Howard Taylor of the Missionary Life [at Peniel Hall, Los Angeles]; The Essential Knowledge by Wherahiko Rawei; The Tibetan Pioneer Mission; The [Hudson] Taylor Family [with photograph]; Divine Healing of the Mind; Divine Healing the Lord's Doing; The Supernatural and the Natural and Supernatural Healing by Fannie F. Rowe; the Three "F's" of Healing; Is all Healing Divine Healing?; etc. etc.  

Kellaway, Elder William. Reality. An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Spiritual, Scriptural and Experimental Truth Speaking of the Presence and Acts of the Holy Spirit in the World. Volume III. 1899-1900. Los Angeles. Reality. 288pp.

Very good. Some rubbing on spine and corners, a bit bumped. Very solid, crisp, and clean. Blank ffep detached.