1907 PENTECOSTAL BIBLE. Wonderful Bible of Sing Sing Prison Inmate Baptized in Spirit from Azusa Street!

Alright, I love this little artifact of Pentecostal, Azusa Street, and Christian Missionary Alliance history. 

The present Bible belonged to one Jennie A. Lockwood. She was apparently convicted of something meriting 30 years of prison time. In her catalogue of important events, it seems unlikely she would not have mentioned her release from prison. She seems to have been convicted and sent to Sing Sing in 1877. There were only single room cells [caves really] for I believe 60 women. Only the worst of the worst found themselves there. Then, in 1889, she notes that she has been converted and baptized, 1892 consecrated, 1893 sanctified, and [importantly] experiences Pentecost in 1907. 

Consistent with many higher life movements at the time, they were grasping for various ways to describe these fresh experience of the Spirit. There were people who believed in one, two, three, and a few as many as eight to ten distinct works of grace after Salvation. She notes three. One Methodist, one in the language of the Higher Life movements, and then that from Azusa.

In July of 1907, Charles N. Kinney [See Heritage Magazine, 2014], one of A. B. Simpson's leaders in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, along with many others were baptized in the Spirit at the Annual Conference. They spoke in unknown tongues, lay prostrate on the floor for hours; missionaries prayed over maps and were gifted with supernatural tongues, and more. These experiences flowed directly from people who had visited the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. 

Things had already been afoot before this important moment though. T. B. Barratt was in the C&MA Alliance housing in New York at the invitation of Simpson when he received the Baptism of the Spirit, and C&MA Alliance missionaries were routinely having the experience. 

For Kinney, this led him to begin preaching the Pentecostal message at Sing Sing, where he apparently met our Jennie A. Lockwood. She would be one of the very first people in New York to receive Spirit Baptism as a result of the July 1907 meetings. 

A wonderful little tactile piece of very, very early Pentecostal history. 

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated Out of the Original Tongues; and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised. New York. American Bible Society. 12mo.

Original yapp edged morocco binding with moderate rubbing and the blank ffep.  loose.