This Week in AG History -- Feb. 5, 1916
Daniel Awrey (1869-1913) was born and raised in Mimosa, Ontario, Canada. He was one of 12 children and came from Irish-German ancestry. His parents were godly people who had family prayer and took their children to church as often as possible. At about age 16, he went to the altar to seek salvation and wept bitterly. This was a turning point in his life because it caused him to ponder deeply about the things of God. At this point he believed he was a Christian, but he felt like he still needed more of God.
In 1887, at the age of 18, he began a three-year contract to learn the milling trade in Hawley, Minnesota. One night when he was oiling the heavy machinery, he lost his footing and nearly went headlong into some great cogwheels about 10 feet below. He saw his whole life flash before him as he narrowly escaped a grave tragedy. He realized that he had unforgiven sin in his life, and he repented fully. No longer content to be a nominal Christian, from that point on he did his best to serve the Lord.
A couple years later while visiting in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Awrey felt an urging from the Lord to “Go, preach My gospel.” At first, he made excuses, and then he told God, “If you can do anything with me, I will go.”
When he returned to Hawley, his pastor encouraged him to do some exhorting. He also began to lead singing. In December 1890, Awrey started attending a college in Delaware, Ohio, arriving there on December 24. He stayed with his pastor’s father, who lived there, and he began reading a book called Perfect Love by J.A. Wood, which described the Christian experience in such a way that it caused Awrey to seek more from God.
On the last night of 1890, Awrey was reading in this book until about quarter to midnight. He felt the Lord speak to his heart and say, “There is another experience for you.”
He was so determined that he told God, “If there is, I am going to have it, and I am going to kneel down here for it, and I will never get up without it.” He expected to be there for several hours. He then felt a strong anointing of the Holy Spirit as the New Year arrived, and a real peace flooded his soul.
The next morning, while conducting family worship in the Samuelson home, where he was living, once again he felt a strong anointing. That night, the first night of the new year, he attended a prayer meeting, and the leader asked for someone to lead in a voluntary prayer.
Awrey reported, “I began to pray and the Holy Spirit prayed through me in another tongue, and by faith the prayer went right up to the throne of God.” He felt like all three persons of the Trinity had come to dwell in his heart and life in a very real way. Awrey spoke in tongues 10 years before the outpouring at Topeka in 1901 and 15 years before the Azusa Street revival of 1906.
Awrey remained at the college until spring and then returned to his home at Mimosa, Ontario, where he began testifying and holding services. In June 1891 he felt prompted to attend some tent meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He ended up staying for three months. When the tent services were idle for a while, Awrey and two others went to another part of the city and began a meeting.
Awrey reported, “I prayed, found a text in the Bible, read some books, and soon felt I could preach for an hour without any trouble.” But once the tent was full of people, and the time came for the sermon, Awrey said, “I got up, and in about five minutes I said all I could think of, and there I stood. I looked at the people and they looked at me.” This was his first experience at preaching. He prayed for help and God answered, and he was able to go forward with a message for the people.
From Grand Rapids, Awrey held meetings in Ransom, Michigan, and in other towns in Michigan and Ohio. In the meantime, he had made acquaintance with Ella Pauline Braseth, a native of Norway, who was working in the house where he lived when he was working at the mill in Hawley, Minnesota. They decided to get married on March 25, 1893. Eventually they became the parents of seven children.
Awrey and his wife lived frugally, trusting the Lord to provide for their needs. Awrey worked some in the corn harvest and in the coal mines to help make ends meet, but his main calling was to preach the gospel. In March 1894, he started on a missionary trip to various small towns in Kentucky and Tennessee. Part of the time he assisted a cousin who was ministering in the Cumberland Mountains. Over a nine-month period he traveled over 1,000 miles on foot.
On Jan. 19, 1895, he was ordained by the Congregational Methodist Church. He held meetings in various places and eventually went to Texas, where he suffered persecution for preaching the gospel. While holding meetings in a schoolhouse near Atlanta, Texas, a man ran up to him and said, “When are you going to leave this town?” Awrey told him that he lived there and did not intend to leave. After that, the man grabbed an old board and began hitting Awrey on the head, shoulders, and back. The man didn’t stop until someone went to get their gun to protect Awrey. Awrey reported that the Lord kept him in such perfect peace and so filled with love that he didn’t even feel any pain in his body. Later the man was fined for the assault, and the mayor called on Awrey and allowed him to share his testimony.
While ministering in Doddridge, Texas, an offering was taken that allowed him enough money to bring his family to Texas, and he continued preaching. He suffered additional times of threats and persecution, but God protected him.
Daniel Awrey became a founding member of the Fire Baptized Holiness Association (FBHA) when it organized in Anderson, South Carolina, in July of 1898. That group had an influence on the founding of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and also the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. In 1899, Awrey made his home at Beniah, Tennessee, where he taught in a Bible school, and about a dozen people received the baptism in the Holy Spirit in a widely publicized set of meetings held there in 1899-1900. During 1899, it is reported that Awrey made a 7,100-mile evangelistic trip through 18 states and two provinces of Canada.
Awrey was conducting a small Bible school in Dudleyville, Arizona, when he heard reports of the Azusa Street revival. He visited the outpouring at Los Angeles and was convinced that the Pentecostal blessings there matched up with his own experience of Spirit baptism from 15 years previous.
In 1906, the Emmanuel’s Bible School was established at Doxey, Oklahoma, and Awrey served as principal from about 1908-1909. This school mentored many members of the Assemblies of God and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Two attendees of the school were A.B. and Dora Cox, who attended the organizational meeting of the Assemblies of God in 1914. The Coxes later pastored Bethel Temple Assembly of God in Dayton, Ohio.
Upon leaving his role as Bible school principal, Awrey saw the entire the world as his mission field. He traveled to South America, India, Asia, Africa, and other places. He felt called to teach on the proper use of spiritual gifts. He also began to emphasize the need to seek for the full restoration of the “fivefold ministry offices” of the Spirit.
During 1909 and 1910, Awrey served as a missionary in Hong Kong, where he helped establish a Bible school in Canton. He also spoke at the Stone Church in Chicago and attended the Pentecostal World Conference in Europe in 1909. He spoke at the Sunderland Convention in England in 1909, 1910, and 1911, where he reported on his missionary journeys and came into contact with a number of important Pentecostal figures. He influenced men and women such as A.A. Boddy, A.H. Post, Cecil Polhill, A.G. Garr, Pandita Ramabai, Carrie Judd Montgomery, T.B. Barratt, and others. During 1910 and 1911 he traveled with Frank Bartleman, a leader from the Azusa Street revival.
Daniel Awrey passed away on Dec. 4, 1913, while ministering to some mission stations in Liberia, West Africa. He became sick with what was termed the blackwater or African fever three weeks after he landed, and he never recovered. His widow and family were living in Los Angeles at the time.
J. Roswell Flower, editor of the Christian Evangel (later called Pentecostal Evangel) knew Daniel Awrey from his visits to Indianapolis. He reported that Awrey ministered in five different continents and traveled around the world three times, ministering in thousands of places.
“He was always free-spirited, pleasant and victorious, and even his enemies will acknowledge that he was never heard to speak in a slighting way of anyone, no matter what attitude they had taken toward him, but that he had a good word to say for nearly everybody,” Flower stated.
As an early leader in the Pentecostal movement, who influenced Assemblies of God leaders and others, he made an outstanding contribution which should not be overlooked. He experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit 15 years before the Azusa Street revival, and he preached about the gifts of the Spirit in his travels all over the U.S. and around the globe.
Read “Daniel Awrey, Ohio and Tennessee,” on page 4 of the Feb. 5, 1916, issue of the Pentecostal Evangel.
Also featured in this issue:
• “Questions and Answers” by E.N. Bell
• “Daily Portion from the King’s Bounty,” by Alice Reynolds Flower
And many more!
Click here to read this issue now.
Pentecostal Evangel archived editions courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center.