Phineas F. Bresee - A Prince In Israel - Media Sabda Org

worshipers who crowded its hall, and knelt at its altars, and listened with rapt attention to the
glowing messages which came from his anointed lips. I was with him when he was persecuted and
driven from the mission. I was with him on that fateful epoch-making day, eight years ago, when,
with that little band of heroes whose deeds are now historic, he organized the First Church of the
Nazarene. Again in that hired hall on Main street, I saw their shining faces, heard their triumphant
testimonies, and joined in their shouts of praise. Through the mystic corridors of my memory they
lived and moved once again, and prominent among them were many of those warriors of the cross
who have been promoted from the Church militant to the church triumphant, whose places in the
serried ranks of the army of Jesus have been filled by the young recruits who have enlisted in such
great numbers in the Nazarene division of the grand army of heaven. I was with him and them again
during the years of hallowed service and holy victory in the old tabernacle, on Los Angeles street,
that birthplace of thousands of souls, that trysting place for the followers of Jesus, from whose doors
troops and battalions of Christian soldiers have marched forth bearing weapons of spiritual warfare,
and pressing the battle to the ends of the earth. I was with him three years ago when he was brought
so close to the boundaries of the holy city, that for weeks, as he lay on a bed of pain, its pearly gates
seemed constantly to flutter in their readiness to open and give his ransomed soul entrance into the
habitations of glory.
"As I sat there in the midst of that blessed anniversary service, these and other scenes of the past
renewed and repeated themselves, and lived again in the chambers of my memory, and I was glad
and wept for joy, and rejoiced in the consciousness that I had played a humble part in the great events
which made the Church of the Nazarene a possibility, brought it into being, and with God's blessing
made it what it is today.
"As I sat there and hung on the words which fell from the lips of our beloved leader, and felt their
pathos, and united with those around me in making the place resound with hallelujahs, I realized that
the influences, human and divine, which had united during the past eight years in making our church
what it was, would grow, not only in power and intensity during the next eight years, but in the scope
and extent of their operations; that much of our work thus far had been done beneath the surface, in
the way of making the foundations deep and strong; but that in the future the Nazarene movement
for it is a movement, and a great movement--would grow and extend in geometrical ratio; that now
its character and identity and distinctive peculiarities were fixed and pronounced, and ready to be
projected and transmitted to the four quarters of the earth.
"As I sat there and thought of these things, I was more thankful than ever before that nearly seven
years ago we started a Church of the Nazarene in Berkeley, the second of the name in the world; that
ever since then we had kept on with the work through good report and bad report, maintaining a
place where the holy fire burned perpetually, and where souls by the scores had been saved and
sanctified wholly; and that now, after much persecution, and many trials and disappointments, our
work there was more firmly rooted and prosperous than ever before."