5-A Quick Synopsis

 

I step back for a moment to provide a quick synopsis of the timeline of major events so far. 

In 1906, a small church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California became the scene of a revival known as "The Latter Rain Movement".  From this revival were born several new denominations, the most prominent being Assemblies of God, United Pentecostal Church and the Pentecostal Church of God. The Pentecostal Church of God, which formed at the Sharon Bible School in Saskatoon Saskatchewan Canada, is directly in the birth lineage of the Assembly of the Body of Christ (ABC) denomination. It was this new denomination in Canada that gave rise to the doctrines my father adopted prior to his formation of the ABC.

There were several individuals directly connected with the Sharon Bible School who passed on many of the doctrines incorporated into the Assembly of the Body of Christ (ABC) denomination. The most prominent of these individuals were Derek Prince, James A Watt, and Ern Baxter. These men had been trained by, and taught at, the Sharon school in Saskatchewan Canada and were influenced in their path by William Branham; known also to many as Brother Branham.

The teachings of Branham influenced these men greatly and they began what would later become known as "The Latter Rain Revival" movement. These men envisioned this movement as a renewing of the Azusa Street revival that took place in 1906 in Los Angeles California. They felt then, and even now, this new movement would spread like wildfire through Canada, then to the US, then to the rest of the world.  That did not happen as predicted or prophesied. Some years ago year it was predicted again there would be a revival of the Latter Rain movement in Canada that would then spread to the U.S. then to the rest of the world. This too has not happened as "prophesied" and several of these "prophets" have passed on with no fulfillment of their prophesies. For further study of the Latter Rain Revival movement there is a great treatise at Birthpangs.org which goes into detail about this movement and its doctrines; the ABC being one of its many vehicles.

My father spoke frequently of the Azusa Street happenings throughout my life. He held high regard for the Latter Rain movement and considered himself to be one of those who would bring about this renewal. He envisioned the ABC would somehow play a major role. Below is a picture of one of the ABC tape lists where one can see the teachings of Brother Branham held a prominent place on the list. (Click on Tape List to Enlarge)

 

To encapsulate this further, my father, Ramon A Haas, steeped in the teachings of William Branham and others,  pursued a lifetime goal of becoming a Pentecostal minister when I was very young. To fulfill this goal, he attended two seminaries then teamed with a Pentecostal minister named Donald McGregor in Noti Oregon at the Noti Pentecostal Church. When we left Oregon he then began working with James A Watt in Seattle at Broadway Tabernacle.

We had moved to the Noti Oregon area when I was about age one and  moved away when I was approaching my ninth birthday.  Noti is one of the first moments in my life of which I am personally aware and, even though our days in Noti were ones of extreme poverty and hardship, I remember them as some of the best years of my life. We lived in a series of ramshackle dwellings and survived mostly on what we could grow, government food commodities and donated food. The welfare safety net, present since the Johnson era, did not yet exist. My father rotated from job to job and we got by. 

 

When offered a permanent job in Seattle with American Sterilizer Company he moved us to Seattle and it was in Seattle my father encountered James A Watt on a personal level. He was  immediately attracted to his church because Watt had been taught by Branham, was part of the Latter Rain Revival movement, had been at Sharon Orphanage in the very beginning and was well connected to multiple other religious organizations. I will list some of those organizations in a later post.

James A Watt was directly connected to the Sharon Orphanage, Derek Prince, Ern Baxter and William Branham. This encounter at Broadway Tabernacle was more of a reuniting of my dad with the Branham and Sharon Orphanage teachings as my father had been a follower of Branham in the late forties, prior to my birth, and Branham had directly influenced the formation of the Latter Rain Revival movement. He was quite happy he had reconnected with these base teachings and the Greek Word Study method would come a bit later at Broadway Taberncle.  At this point he still taught a "sinner's prayer" salvation by grace alone doctrine.

My father spoke often of Branham and retold the stories of Branham’s “miracles”.  His favorite Branham miracle story is that of a time when Branham allegedly entered a field, in 1945 in Macon Georgia, and was about to be killed by a large bull. As Branham recounted the story he rebuked the bull, it pacified, then lay down under a tree. Branham could then safely cross the field unharmed. There were no witnesses to this event but Branham followers, and my father, accepted it as absolute truth.  If one researches Branham there is solid evidence of many false miracles.

Shortly after our move to Seattle, James A Watt acquired Broadway Tabernacle from Derek Prince. After a week or two Prince left Seattle for Chicago to start a tape and broadcast ministry and Broadway Tabernacle then became Watt’s new pulpit. Here is a short excerpt from Wikipedia: 

"In 1962, the Princes moved to Canada, and from there to a pastorate at Peoples Church in Minneapolis, becoming US citizens. From here they moved to Broadway Tabernacle in Seattle where he ministered along with James A Watt whom he had met in Canada. During this time Prince was becoming widely known through his cassette-tape Bible lectures, and he became involved with the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International. This led to a move to Faith Tabernacle in Chicago..."

James A Watt and  Derek Prince; both close friends with Ern Baxter;  left the Sharon Orphanage and School about the same time. Their intent was to bring the Latter Rain message first to Vancouver British Columbia, then to Seattle Washington then to the rest of the world. There were also stopovers in Portland Oregon at the church pastored by a man named Wyatt. My father, a previous Branhamite, joined himself to Broadway Tabernacle church in Seattle and once again began to study the Latter Rain and Branham influenced teachings and doctrines under James A Watt's tutelage. 

To this point it can be demonstrated there is a direct lineage tying the roots of the ABC to those of William Branham, Ern Baxter, Derek Prince, James A Watt and the Latter Rain Revival movement at the Sharon Orphanage.  The Latter Rain Revival Movement had ties to the Azusa Street movement in Los Angeles California, which itself had ties to persons and movements all the way back through history.  As stated in Proverbs there is nothing new under the sun and all denominations, including the ABC, have roots in this history and not a single one popped onto this earth from a vacuum.

In my next post I will cover the Broadway Tabernacle days in more detail, then move on to the sudden split between my father and Watt. This split eventually caused the Assembly of the Body of Christ (ABC) denomination to form and it was then patterned exactly after James A Watt's church and Bible study method, but in a home-based setting instead of a brick and mortar church. This move to home-based was an accident caused by the Super Bowl and I will cover this later.

NEXT POST