Early Canadian Pentecostalism is entwined with a range of movements, churches, prominent revivalists, and missionaries. One particular example is Herbert Edward Randall (1865–1938) who worked as a missionary, first with the Holiness Movement Church (hmc) and then later with the Pentecostals.1 Randall’s life reflects a range of social and cultural changes in the British Empire as well as religious developments including the Holiness Movement and Pentecostalism. An exploration of his life story shows how early Pentecostalism was linked to events in eastern Ontario among Methodists, Holiness churches, and the emerging Pentecostal movement. As the founding missionary of the hmc in Egypt, Randall also participated in the early stages of the Pentecostal movement in Canada, and then later returned to Egypt as a Pentecostal missionary.2 This chapter will explore Randall’s ministry within the hmc, his motivation for mission as he left rural eastern Ontario to travel to Egypt, his ministry at the turn of the twentieth century, and the transition period between his Holiness Movement second blessing experience and his Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit at the Hebden Mission in Toronto.3 More specifically, this chapter argues that the early movement in Canada is characterized by competing movements with overlapping networks of people, theologies, and organizations, trying to establish a global missionary work. Randall went from rural eastern Ontario in the Dominion of Canada to the churning spiritual environment within the worldwide Holiness and Keswick
1 The Holiness Movement Church
The record of Randall’s aspirations for missionary work is found in the minutes of a “Special Conference of The Holiness Movement (or Church)” held in Ottawa, Canada, April 28, 1896. Randall was 30 years old and unmarried. The record indicates, “Brother Randall feels called to foreign work.”4 It was at this conference of the fledgling hmc that a Missionary Committee was initially formed to send him. From this beginning, Randall’s life proceeded through a series of uniquely interconnecting occurrences on the international stage. Randall and his hmc missionary colleagues were simply educated, with limited worldviews, but with a profound belief in the power of God to transform people from darkness to light, and of the Holy Spirit to provide the resources to sustain that light. It was Randall’s own quest for a greater portion of the Holy Spirit that eventually led him back to Canada in 1906 where, in early 1907, he received a Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Spirit at the Hebden Mission in Toronto, Ontario.5 Leaving behind the hmc, Randall went on to play several instrumental roles. First, he was associated with the controversial Methodist pastor, Ralph Horner, and the founding of the hmc. Second, he was serving as a ministry colleague alongside the Hebdens and McAlisters who were leaders of the Canadian Pentecostal movement. Finally, he returned to Egypt to perform his missionary work as one of the founders of the Pentecostal movement in that country.
In the early 1890s Herbert Randall came to be a part of an emerging Holiness Movement in eastern Ontario led by Rev. Ralph C. Horner. Horner was a
Randall’s compass was set on Horner, an ordained clergyman in the Methodist Church of Canada, who declared in his memoirs, “I was born in a revival.”9 Shortly after his conversion in 1872 Horner experienced a second work of grace, the characteristic doctrine of Methodism. This second blessing “caused him to cry, laugh, and shout.”10 Horner struggled, however, with the ministerial restrictions of the Methodist Church; he did not want to be limited to a single pastoral charge. He was officially designated as a Conference Evangelist and spent several years preaching and conducting revival services throughout the rural communities and urban centres of the Ottawa Valley and eastern Ontario.
According to historian Neil Semple, those who responded to Horner’s message of a radical conversion and deeper spiritual work “were normally farmers or workers who were facing rural depopulation or economic decline. They also felt threatened by aggressive Roman Catholicism and, like other conservative Protestants, they mistrusted liberal theological modernism.”11 Ultimately
Herbert Randall, a Methodist like Horner, was an early convert to this new movement, seeking after the vitality and manifestations exhibited in Horner’s preaching and teaching.14 Randall’s call to missionary work is mentioned in one of the first sets of minutes of the hmc showing a longer connection with Horner’s ministry and his followers. He was also listed as a ministerial probationer, and active participant in the movement’s early deliberations. Conference minutes note that Randall was engaged to be married but set the relationship aside when it was unclear whether his fiancée was suited for ministerial appointment.15 It took a full year, until May 1897, before the newly organized Missionary Committee met and recommended that Randall be sent to Africa, “provided that the Conference decide to send him there.”16 Bishop Horner saw Randall as a key person to help expand the hmc work and considered his appointment after he “had been in touch with a returned missionary from Africa who desired our church to share responsibility with him there.”17
In the meantime, the committee “contacted the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in the United States, and others, to receive all the necessary information concerning the sending of a Missionary to Africa.”18 At the December 1897 Annual Conference in Ottawa, Randall was approved as a missionary to Africa and was ordained Deacon during the same meeting.19 Shortly after the
2 Travelling to Africa and the Second Anglo-Sudan War
Leaving from Portland, Maine in January 1898, Randall arrived in Belfast in February. Along the way he reported that he experienced “various and subtle” testing aboard the ship and “that the enemy tried to use [them] to overthrow me, but I can say I have the victory through Christ and your prayers, and the fire still burns in Pentecostal flame.”21 One wonders about the nature of such testing, but Randall’s language of victory and Pentecostal flame is typical of Holiness literature of this period. He spent time visiting homes in several areas in Northern Ireland where hmc halls were established.
Randall was sent by the hmc as a missionary to Africa, but one wonders to which Africa was he being sent? Did the hmc not have a clear idea of where they were sending Randall? Was he to choose his own location as options became apparent? Even at this time Africa was known to be a vast and varied continent. The timeframe, 1896–1899, also has particular significance in the history of the British Empire, in which Canada and Northern Ireland were key players. It is likely that Canadians of British ancestry (most of the residents of rural eastern Ontario) would be following with great interest the news of the war in Sudan and given the context of that war, this may have been Randall’s destination all along.22
Within the past few weeks this work of healing has been commenced before the eyes of the whole world by the over-throw of the Khalifa and his legions of oppressors, and thus the Central Soudan and Upper Egypt, for more than 2,000 miles down the course of the Nile from the shores of the Mediterranean, have been opened to the Gospel as never before in the history of that ancient land. The flag of a Christian nation now floats over that vast region. how long shall it be ere the banner of the cross wave with every breeze over that once desolate land?26 [emphasis in Roome]
With regard to the foreign field it seems plain that a great and effectual door is opening and we may move forward at once towards the heathen … Things are taking such definite form that any workers who are ready to start for the foreign field at once, may move forward without delay. We ought to have some to leave England for Egypt and the Soudan [sic?] by the first of the year.27
God’s heart is burning with desire to have the salvation of Jesus going on all of these ships on the seas, and reaching every land, penetrating every nook and crevice, wherever a human soul can be found. Let us all do our best for this through the Pentecostal flame.30
3 Missionary Work in Egypt
Randall’s arrival in Alexandria, April 18, 1899 must have provided for a profound encounter between the young man from rural eastern Ontario and the bustling Mediterranean port city. Randall made early contact with the Egypt Mission Band, a small group of university-educated, Keswick-inspired, Irish missionaries.31 It seems likely that Randall’s recent stay in Ballymena, Ireland
the only kind of workers who will be successful here are those who are living in the experience of full salvation as Moslems will not readily give up their religion in which they have great confidence and veneration. They ask the question: ‘Have you anything to offer us better than what we have?’ Answer: ‘We offer a salvation from all sin, outward and inward – the very destruction of sin from the heart, to be engaged in this present world, through Christ Jesus.’35
Randall further states: “To this purity must be added the experience of Pentecostal power through the blessed Holy Ghost, and then we shall see signs and wonders in the name of Jesus.”36
While most of the extant record of Herbert Randall’s ministry in Egypt comes from his own writing, a small booklet, A Brief History of the Holiness Movement Mission (1949) discusses how Randall moved from the Mediterranean coast to upper Egypt. While he was studying Arabic in Alexandria in preparation for
They invited Mr. Randall to go to Asyut to hold meetings. This he did. As the Presbyterian Mission had built a new church, they allowed the company of men who sought Mr. Randall’s leadership to use their vacated church for Sabbath services. This group also secured another meeting place more centrally located where they conducted services nightly. Mr. Randall had all freedom in preaching to them the doctrines of the Holiness Movement Church. He was well received by the Egyptian people and was zealous to see the church organized and reaching out to the villages. This desire he later realized.38
A tall, rather slender young Canadian, clothed in black apparel from head to foot, with a brown beard, walked the streets of Assiout [sic] with Bible and song book under his arm, holding meetings. These meetings were mostly attended by children sitting down on spread mats brought from their homes for the occasion, and ladies looking down from their attics.39
These descriptions and reports show how Randall’s missionary work was developing and the relationships he made that shaped his future work.
There are very few missionaries to carry the Gospel to these benighted millions, who know nothing of the living Christ. The Roman Catholics are pressing into the country. Large churches are being built, even while
there are few or no members. To arms! To arms! Ye children of God. “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” O, for a Church in Egypt as terrible as an army with banners! Believe! God will speed the day, for we feel with Jeremiah “the Lord is with me as a mighty, terrible one.” Hallelujah to our King!40
One special thing which speaks of advancement, is that these dear people have so lost sight of customs, which bind the east, that they have invited our sister missionaries to take their share in preaching in the public services, which had hitherto been withheld.42
I can honestly say that I have kept the interests of the Movement (which is one and the same as God’s cause) at heart and did the best I could during the year: I think I could do better in some ways, if I had it to do over again. My experience was never as good as it is this moment. I am exploring in things Pentecostal under the third blessing, and I seem to realize human frailty more than ever, both in myself and in others, but the power comes sweeping overall and I see that the glory belongs to God above. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. We expect a revival to burst on us; things are now ready for it. Calls are now coming from other towns and villages for us to go and preach … I must tell you that on Sunday, Oct. 7th, we had the Lord’s supper, which I administered in the Arabic language for
the first time and the power attending it was testified to by many and by some who were only witnesses.43
In reports to his Canadian Bishop in 1901, Randall wrestled with issues of financial support for national workers, whether they should purchase a building or land, relationships with the local Coptic Church authorities, and receiving believers who wanted to join the hmc from the Presbyterian work in Asyut.44 Randall personally desired more “enduement” and “soul saving power” so that he could accomplish more work; he reported on small house prayer meetings with Egyptian believers that “seem something like in Canada especially when they would all be at it together.”45
Randall also reported on the team’s increased use of Arabic in their missionary work. Even though other missionaries normally needed four to five years of language study before preaching, Randall said, “the kind of sermons we would preach now would scarcely reach the standard of other missionaries, but if we can get the people blessed this is the main thing, and the more we preach the quicker we will learn the language.”46 In the midst of newsletters couched in spiritual or holiness language that would appeal to his readers back in rural eastern Ontario, Randall reflected continuing self-awareness: “the experience of our work has been to advance a few notches and then something occurs to bring us down a notch and then go forward again, but we shall gain the victory.”47 As new missionaries arrived from Canada, Randall extended the work from their base in Asyut to other villages, and reports of the ministry started to come from other workers there. At the end of 1902 a call was sent back to Canada for more workers: “we need another man, as we cannot let Bro. R. go yet, and his soul is burning to press on to regions beyond.”48
Personally I feel that I am better equipped for this work spiritually, and in every way [more] than I have ever been, and I look for success only by the pouring out upon me of the all-powerful Spirit, and this I experience from day to day. I shout, I leap, I laugh, I sing, I pray and by this process the victory is mine. Hallelujah! Others are beginning to understand these mysterious things, praise God in the highest.50
Randall’s colleagues noted how his spiritual practices had an impact on them and the work they were involved in: “Truly the hand of the Lord is with us. A week ago I was taking charge of a service, but I fell under the glory of God. Brother Randall was present, and he leaped as an hart. The old-time power is coming down.”51 Randall also expanded his theological ideas and practices into his historical understanding of the social context of the hmc in Egypt. In one long letter to his supporters in 1905 he commented on the history of Egypt and the Coptic people (“amongst whom we are specially labouring”), the Muslim conquest of Egypt and the subsequent hardship imposed on the Coptic people, the economic status of the Copts, the influx of Europeans which had drastically impacted the cost of living, the generosity and kindness of the poor, and the realization that “the entrance of the English in 1882, made a great change for the Copts, which literally meant their deliverance from bondage, and they are not slow in expressing their thankfulness to their deliverers.”52
A visiting brother who is noted as a wrestler in prayer, was relieving himself of the explosives which were tearing his insides: his arms flying, and body swaying, and amidst the general roar, I could distinguish words to the effect: ‘We have prayed that God will send a revival to Akhmim,
that He will shake the city; we came here to work for this end. God has heard our cries, and seen our tears; He has given the assurance that it shall be done. The revival is coming, brethren! It may be after we go to our homes, but we shall hear that a mighty revival has visited and burst upon Akhmim!’ I was impressed by the faith evinced in this hurricane testimony.53
In the same issue of The Holiness Era, an Egyptian Christian, Ghali Hanna, wrote a letter which offered some insight into how the Egyptians viewed Randall. Ghali noted that when visiting the church in Nekhaila, “Bro. Randall is not dancing alone” and “When Bro. Motta gets the blessing he often dances, – he might be like Bro. Randall some day. Bro. Henein, who used to say: – ‘Randall no doubt is beside himself and should go to his country soon,’ is now the noisiest and nearly the hottest of all. Hallelujah!”54
Randall must be placed in the historical context of the Holiness missionary movement of his day. Holiness missionaries saw themselves as “converting from ‘the world’ to a new spiritual state, a state linked to a particular body of believers in their community” – their own fellowships of radical holiness believers.55 They did not believe they were converting from one culture’s worldview to another (as in African to Western), but leaving behind the darkness of their own sin, while finding gospel light within their existing cultural frame. Holiness missionaries did not see themselves so much as agents of civilization, but as agents for introducing gospel light to individuals, within any culture.56 The historian Jay Case suggests that “radical holiness missionaries from America, in fact, can be distinguished from their fellow Westerners in their complete disregard for the discourse of civilization.”57 Case says for Holiness missionaries, like Minnie Abrams, a Holiness contemporary of Randall, and associate of India’s Pandita Ramabai, “these intellectual, social and cultural issues simply were not as important as the supernatural actions of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in bringing about world evangelism.”58 As modernity influenced the Western world, Holiness preachers in Canada were amongst those who lived on the rural periphery of the industrializing, materially-oriented world – among those resistant to or, at best, ambivalent to modernity. Randall,
4 From Holiness Church to Pentecostal Missionary
Our missionary (Bro. Randall) when being examined proved to all that he had not lost the real equipment for service, “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire.” Those who had the illumination of the Holy Spirit could see the real crown of Holy Fire upon his head. Some of his words were “I have not flinched in the nine years I have been away, from anything God wanted me to do.” Three times he could be seen somewhere between earth and heaven, with arms extended, and mouth wide open shouting the praises of God. His missionary address Friday night of Conference was very interesting and inspiring to all. The crowded congregation listened with rapt attention while he sang in the Arabic language, and rehearsed many interesting adventures during his labour in the foreign field.64
At the conference Randall was ordained to the ministry of Elder within the hmc. A year later, the 1907 Annual Conference minutes report Randall’s attendance at the roll call, but he did not participate in any of the proceedings and tendered his resignation at the close of the conference.65 In fact, aside from one small reference in a later hmc history, Herbert E. Randall disappears from their records.66
To understand what transpired in this time, we need to examine how he shifted from the hmc to the Pentecostal movement and the impact of that decision on his missionary work. In an early Canadian Pentecostal magazine Randall recorded his spiritual state in this manner:
“My last year in Egypt was one of heart longings for something, I couldn’t tell what, and I think that it was due to this more than anything else that I came back to my native land.”67 In 1906, the Pentecostal message and experience of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” was accepted first in Canada at the Hebden
I feel like I have really lived 24 days, or since the 6th of March, when I was baptized with the Holy Ghost. Before that time I enjoyed much of God’s grace, but now I am simply amazed, the difference is so great, and all I can do is exclaim with wonder and delight, ‘The Comforter has come.’ … and I saw that hitherto I had been cleansed from all sin, and had received many outpourings, or anointings of the Spirit, but had not received the real baptism with the Holy Ghost.71
Several weeks later Randall was present at the April 7, 1907 opening of the Union Gospel Mission in Stratford, Ontario. As Douglas Rudd recounts, Randall, “a returned missionary from Egypt who attended the Hebden Mission and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, was the speaker for the opening of the church.”72 Soon after that experience Randall was involved in establishing new Pentecostal works in Wingham and Simcoe during his time home from Egypt.73
In the fall of 1907 (shortly after his resignation from the hmc)74 Pentecostal meetings began in the town of Ingersoll, Ontario “when missionary and
Pentecost has truly begun in this city in connection with an undenominational [sic] mission. Praise the Lord. A young brother received his baptism last night so beautifully, speaking in tongues, who was, three years ago, dealing out liquor over the bar in Belfast, Ireland. He will no doubt become a flaming evangelist. So you see how we intermingle and touch one another in this glorious work. Hallelujah!78
This early beginning and a further convention at Queen’s Hall in March 1911, in which Randall ministered along with R.E. McAlister,79
From 1907 until his departure for Egypt in late1911, Randall became a close associate of the leading figures of early Pentecostalism in Canada, including James and Ellen Hebden, Robert and Aimee Semple, Charles Chawner (missionary to South Africa), R.E. McAlister, Arthur Atter and H.L. Lawler (both missionaries to China), Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Baker, George Chambers, and A.H. Argue.81 During this time period he travelled to Los Angeles with McAlister and Lawler, with extended stays in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, all early centres in the spread of Pentecostalism.82
Having found the “something” that he was looking for, Herbert Randall arrived back in Cairo, Egypt in 1912 as an independent Pentecostal missionary.83 The Pentecostal Church (also known as the Apostolic Faith Mission) was founded by Randall in cooperation with, among others, C.W. Doney (a former Canadian colleague in the hmc), George Brelsford,84 and A.H. Post (one of the original group at Azusa in 1906,85 and a former missionary to India).86, 87 The most well-known connection with the Pentecostal movement in Egypt
With the advent of World War One in 1914, many missionaries were encouraged to evacuate Egypt as they were seen as foreign targets of protest against the British action of unilaterally cutting Egypt off from its place in the Ottoman Empire (supporters of the German initiative) and making it a British Protectorate in December 1914.89 At that time Randall was in Palestine visiting Pentecostal workers, when he lost communication with his colleagues in Egypt.90 Returning to Canada in 1915, Randall, at age 50, married Faith Proudfoot in Ottawa, Ontario, in a service conducted by his friend Rev R.E. McAlister in September.91 Randall was active in Pentecostal revival work in the United States for a number of years before he and Faith returned to Egypt in 1922.92 Although Randall associated with the Assemblies of God (ag) in Egypt, he is recorded in early documents as a missionary supported by various independent Canadian Pentecostal churches that would, in 1919, form the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (paoc).93 Between 1920 and 1937, H.E. and Faith Randall wrote numerous reports for both The Pentecostal Testimony (paoc) and The Pentecostal Evangel, (ag). Together they published an Arabic magazine, The Morning Star, (initiated in Canada by McAlister) distributed throughout North Africa, and the Levant. Randall died at 72 years of age, in Cairo, Egypt, March 11, 1938.94
5
Randall experienced a profound conversion and a second blessing with Horner’s Holiness Movement Church (hmc) and yet he appeared to be continually seeking for something more. The various associations he had with pastors, missionaries, and churches, impacted his spiritual life and his missionary work. Together these relationships and experiences shaped his personal journey, spiritual self-awareness, the faith communities he interacted with, and the missionary work he conducted. Randall was impacted by a group of disaffected Methodists in the Ottawa Valley who formed the radical hmc, seeking after a deeper spiritual life as a group of missionary colleagues in Egypt, struggling to apply the significance of their radical holiness beliefs in a cross-cultural mission context. Still seeking for something more, Randall found a new home with the early Pentecostals in Canada that transformed his theological views and practices while launching him into a renewed sense of missionary work in Egypt.
Randall’s missionary work was also shaped by the British Empire and its role in the Anglo-Sudan War that opened up a space for him in Egypt. While he initially focused his mission on Muslims, he shifted to Coptic Christians and the message of renewal and the baptism of the Holy Spirit and sanctification as he learned it initially from the Methodists and Holiness preachers, and then later, with Pentecostalism and its particular teaching as empowerment with speaking in tongues. This was the experience and the message that he had to offer to Coptic Christians in Egypt, whom he perceived to be Christian ‘in name only’ introducing them to a message of holiness. This, in fact, was the basic preparation he had received with the hmc in Canada.
At the same time, Randall’s seeking for more was realized in his 1907 Pentecostal experience of baptism in the Spirit with speaking in other tongues at the Hebden Mission. This took him on a new trajectory, leaving behind the hmc.95 Randall contributed to the spread of early Pentecostalism in Canada, when he helped establish new ministries, often preaching and influencing others to join in the Pentecostal work all over the world, including Aimee Semple McPherson. Eventually Randall’s Pentecostal experience and aspirations for missionary work took him back to Egypt where he contributed to the growth
Born July 26, 1865, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada; original baptism record, Methodist Church, Barnston, Quebec.
In its earliest written documentation, the Holiness Movement Church, organized in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, often referred to itself as “The Holiness Movement (or Church),” perhaps suggesting dissatisfaction with limiting itself to an institutional form of organization, as many members were Methodists seeking a greater vitality in their Christian life.
The author’s connection with Herbert Randall’s story emerged after living in Asyut, Egypt in the late 1980s working with the Nahadet Al-Khadessah churches, one stream of Randall’s legacy in Egypt.
Minutes of Special Conference of The Holiness Movement (or Church), Ottawa, Canada, April 28, 1896. Various Holiness Movement Church archives including Minutes, and The Holiness Era (magazine) documents are located at the Free Methodist Church in Canada, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; they are in an unorganized state.
See Adam Stewart, “A Canadian Azusa? The Implications of the Hebden Mission for Pentecostal Historiography,” in Winds from the North: Canadian Contributions to the Pentecostal Movement, eds. Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 17–37.
Jay R. Case, “And Ever the Twain Shall Meet: The Holiness Missionary Movement and the Birth of World Pentecostalism, 1870–1920,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 16 (2006): 130.
See Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 95–100.
Case, “And Ever the Twain Shall Meet,” 131. See also Grant Wacker, “Travail of a Broken Family: Radical Evangelical Responses to the Emergence of Pentecostalism in America, 1906–16,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, eds. Edith Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant Wacker (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 25–26.
Ralph C. Horner, Ralph C. Horner, Evangelist: Reminiscences from his own Pen (Brockville: A.E. Horner, 1926), 11.
Brian R. Ross, “Ralph Cecil Horner, A Methodist Sectarian Deposed (1887–1895),” Canadian Church Historical Society Journal 19 (1977): 94.
Neil Semple, “Ralph C Horner,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, accessed 15 June2022,
Ross, “Ralph Cecil Horner,”101.
Minutes, April 28, 1896.
Randall is listed as a Methodist, living in Ottawa in the 1891 Census of Canada.
Minutes, April 28, 1896.
Report in Minutes of Annual Conference, The Holiness Movement (or Church), Ottawa, December 3, 1897.
Nettie M. Hill and Norma A. Eves, eds. A Brief History of Holiness Movement Missions (Ottawa: Holiness Movement Church in Canada, 1949), 3; This document gives no indication of where in Africa this missionary was serving.
Minutes of Annual Conference, The Holiness Movement (or Church), December 3, 1897.
Minutes, December 2, 1897.
At the time of its merger with the Free Methodist Church of North America in 1959, the Holiness Movement Church in Canada had 632 members, while the Church in Egypt brought in more than 8,000 members; R.W. Kleinsteuber, Coming of Age: The Making of a Canadian Free Methodist Church (Toronto: Light & Life Press, 1980), 49–50. By 2000 the Holiness Movement Church in Egypt had reached 19,500 members. See D.L. Crawford, ed. Yearbook 2002: Personnel, Organization and Statistics of The Free Methodist Church (Indianapolis: Free Methodist Communications, 2002), 54.
Randall, “Correspondence,” The Holiness Era, February 23, 1898, 30.
“The Nile Advance,” The Ottawa Citizen, March 21, 1896, 3. For a further note on the significance of the Anglo-Sudan War and Christian mission see, Heather Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 50.
See William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 103–08.
Lyle Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1977), 170.
W.J. Roome, Blessed Be Egypt: A Missionary Story (London: Marshall Brothers, 1898), 37.
Ibid., 13.
Herbert Randall, “Correspondence,” The Holiness Era, December 14, 1898, 199.
Others with this view included Ian Keith-Falconer and Douglas Thornton; see Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004), 223.
In Constance Padwick, Temple Gairdner of Cairo (London: spck, 1929), 72.
Randall, “Correspondence,” The Holiness Era, May 17, 1899, 79.
The Egypt Mission Band changed their name to Egypt General Mission in 1903, then Middle East General Mission in 1957, merging with several other missions as Middle East Christian Outreach (meco) in 1976. See also a note regarding egm in Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt, 82. The Holiness Movement missionaries maintained a decades-long relationship with this mission and its workers, eventually ceding retreat property in Cyprus to meco in the 1980s.
Randall, “Correspondence,” The Holiness Era, June 14, 1899, 92.
Ibid., 92. Seven years later American Presbyterian leader in Egypt, Andrew Watson, when speaking of mission work in Egypt did not reference The Holiness Movement Church, although he would certainly have been aware of their ministry in Asyut. See S.M. Zwemer and E.M. Wherry, eds. The Mohammedan World of Today (New York: Fleming Revell, 1906), 21–30.
Randall, “Correspondence,” The Holiness Era, June 14, 1899, 92.
Ibid., 92.
Ibid., 92.
Sharkey notes that “the American Presbyterians frowned upon other Americans who trickled into Egypt as members of independent faith missions, including those who later became associated with Pentecostal movements.” Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt, 42.
Randall, A Brief History of Holiness Movement Mission, 5.
Salib Boulos, “A Tribute to H.E. Randall, Master Builder on the Nile,” The Pentecostal Evangel (June 1938), 7.
Cora Van Camp, The Holiness Era, April 18, 1900, 64.
Ibid., 64.
Randall, “Letter,” The Holiness Era, July 11, 1900, 108.
Randall, “Missionary Report,” The Holiness Era, December 26, 1900, 206.
Randall, “Letter from Egypt,” The Holiness Era, February 6, 1901, 24.
Randall, “Letter,” The Holiness Era, June 12, 1901, 92.
Ibid., 93.
Randall, “Letter,” The Holiness Era, September 4, 1901, 140.
W.C. Trotter, “Letters,” The Holiness Era, December 10, 1902, 200.
Randall, “Letter,” The Holiness Era, December 10, 1902, 198. While many in the Keswick stream of holiness missionaries were influenced by pre-millennial eschatology, Randall and the hmc leaders, as former Methodists, may have been reflecting a revivalist postmillennialist view, or perhaps a ‘restorationist’ perspective. See Andrew Porter, “Evangelicalism, Islam and Millennial Expectation in the Nineteenth Century,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24 (2000): 111–18 and Steven Ware, Restoration in the Holiness Movement in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004).
Randall, “Letter,” The Holiness Era, December 26, 1902, 207.
Trotter, “Report,” The Holiness Era, January 7, 1903, 212.
Randall, “From Egypt,” The Holiness Era, October 25, 1905, 339.
Randall, “Letters,” The Holiness Era, February 21, 1906, 64.
Ghali Hanna, “Letters,” The Holiness Era, June 13, 1906, 188.
Case, “And ever the twain shall meet,” 129.
Ibid., 128–29.
Ibid., 133.
Ibid., 133.
The Bridegroom’s Messenger, February 15, 1909, 1.
Padwick, Temple Gairdner, 93.
Randall, “From Egypt,” The Holiness Era, October 25, 1905, 339. See also Case, “a brief survey of holiness missionaries in the late nineteenth century suggests that the movement fared best among societies where modernity had already begun to erode cultural differentiation and weaken traditional religious authority but not among traditional societies where religious identity was strongly tied to a strong religious establishment or systems of deference and kinship structures,” 146.
Padwick, Temple Gairdner, 72.
Randall, “Letters,” The Holiness Era, August 22, 1906, 269.
“Conference Report,” The Holiness Era, Nov. 28, 1906, 382.
Minutes of Annual Conference of The Holiness Movement Church, Ottawa, October 31, 1907.
“Randall came back to Canada in 1906, where he later married. He and his wife affiliated with the Pentecostal Church and returned to Egypt under their auspices,” A Brief History, (1949), 8.
Randall, The Promise, June 1907, 1.
Adam Stewart, “A Canadian Azusa?,” 19.
“Pentecostal Movement,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed August 27, 2009,
Randall, “How I Received the Baptism,” The Pentecostal Evangel, January 30, 1932, 8.
Randall, The Promise, June 1907, 1–2. See Edith Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 75.
Douglas Rudd, When the Spirit Came Upon Them (Burlington, ON: Antioch Books, 1992), 254.
In the inaugural issue of The Promise, which also recorded the beginnings of the Pentecostal phenomenon in Toronto, May 1907, 4. See also, Edith Blumhofer, “Canada’s Gift to the Sawdust Trail,” in Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience, ed. George Rawlyk (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 397, 401.
Randall knew that his experience would not be welcomed in hmc circles as “the new movement had been turned down as unsound doctrine.” See Randall, “How I Received the Baptism,” The Pentecostal Evangel, January 30, 1932, 8.
Blumhofer, Aimee, 61.
Ibid., 61–66.
Ibid., 141.
Randall, Confidence: A Pentecostal Paper for Great Britain, October 15, 1908, 19.
McAlister was one of the founding pastors of Bethel Pentecostal Church in Ottawa (1911–1915) and is regarded as the instigator of Oneness Pentecostalism, see David Reed, “Oneness Seed on Canadian Soil,” in Winds from the North: Canadian Contributions to the Pentecostal Movement, eds. Michael Wilkinson and Peter Althouse (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 191–213. McAlister was a charter member of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada at their inaugural meetings in 1917–1919, and the first editor of The Pentecostal Testimony (1920).
In his early 40s at this point, and an ordained and experienced Christian worker, Randall may have been regarded as a fellow exuberant advocate of the “baptism” and an encouraging older “brother in the Lord” by many of these younger men (McAlister being only in his late 20s).
The Good Report, May 1911, 1–8. Randall, along with h.l. Lawler were in charge of revival meetings in Kinburn, Ontario, the site of the first Pentecostal church building in Canada a few months earlier. Gloria Kulbeck, What God Hath Wrought: A History of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (Toronto: paoc, 1958), 113–14.
Randall, Word and Witness, February 20, 1913, 2.
American G. Brelsford and his wife are the earliest known Pentecostal missionaries in Egypt, arriving in March 22, 1909 and serving for just a year before returning to the USA to recruit more workers. See “The Name of Jesus Honored in the Land of the Pharaohs,” The Latter Rain Evangel, November 1910, 7–11. The Brelsfords returned to Egypt for another period beginning in early 1912, just months before Randall’s return. Brelsford notes Randall as an “experienced missionary in Egypt” in “Encouraging News from Egypt,” The Latter Rain Evangel, May 1912, 10–11.
William J. Seymour, “News,” The Apostolic Faith, December 1906, 3.
Allan Anderson, “Pandita Ramabai, the Mukti Mission and Global Pentecostalism,” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 23 (2006): 40.
Stanley Burgess and E.M. van der Maas, eds. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 6–7. Pentecostal literature of the era 1910–1912 notes numerous other small groups of workers in Egypt variously associated with different strands of the Pentecostal movement, see The Pentecost (Sep–Oct 1910), Confidence, Aug. 1910, The Latter Rain Evangel, Feb. 1911, Word & Witness, Aug. 1912.
Otto Meinardus, Christians in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006), 113–14. Trasher originally went out to Egypt under the auspices of A.J. Tomlinson’s Church of God (Cleveland). Edith Blumhofer, “Women in Pentecostalism,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, eds. Rosemary Kellner and Rosemary R. Ruether (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 405.
See Charles Leonard, “Egypt,” The Christian Evangel, December 26, 1911, 4 and C.W. Doney, “Egypt,” The Christian Evangel, January 23, 1915, 4.
C.W. Doney, “Egypt,” The Christian Evangel, December 19, 1914, 4.
Rev. R.E. McAlister is identified as an Assembly of God minister on the marriage certificate of H.E. and Faith Randall, September 2, 1915.
The Pentecostal Evangel, December 11, 1943, 10.
“The Morning Star,” The Pentecostal Testimony, December 1922, 8.
Salib Boulos, “Tribute,” The Pentecostal Evangel, June 1938, 7, 11. Randall’s wife Faith, remained in Egypt until her own death, November 17, 1943; The Pentecostal Evangel, December 11, 1943, 10.
In reflecting years later, Randall articulated his concern at the time, to not disturb the hmc with his own journey, although he notes that other hmc ministers were sampling the new movement and at least one hmc colleague who got “the baptism” at Hebden Mission shortly after himself, also went on to have many years of Pentecostal ministry. See “How I Received the Baptism,” The Pentecostal Evangel, January 30, 1932, 8.
The Pentecostal Church in Egypt had 134 churches in 2010; cf. Meinardus, Christians in Egypt, 113–14. The Holiness Movement Church (affiliated with The Free Methodist Church, internationally) has roughly the same number of congregations.