Introduction
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church is a predominantly African American Pentecostal Holiness denomination of Christians.
Their organizational type of church government is Episcopal. Their highest church officials are the Bishops and they are a head of the dioceses. Women can be licensed to preach and serve as pastors.
The headquarters and schools for the Fire Baptized Holiness Church are located in Greenville, South Carolina.
History
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church was founded by the leadership of Benjamin Hardin Irwin from Lincoln, Nebraska in 1895. Irwin was a Baptist lawyer who was converted to the Wesleyan Holiness Theology.
Irwin was saved in a Baptist church and left the law practice, then became a Baptist minister. He came in contact with the Holiness teachings through the Iowa Holiness Association after his ordination. He studied the scriptures, after his sanctification, as well as the teachings of John Wesley and John Fletcher.
It was the study of John Fletcher who influenced him the most. Fletcher, a follower and colleague of John Wesley, taught an experience following sanctification called the “baptism of burning love”. Fletcher claimed this term “baptism of burning love” as the same as “the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire.” Fletcher taught that the people who were baptized with fire were empowered from on high.
Irwin claimed he had received a “baptism with fire” followed by his conversion and then had the experience of sanctification. He started a movement in Iowa stressing the third blessing he called the “fire”.
The conversion and sanctification experiences were already taught by the Holiness movement and the majority of the Holiness movement rejected his teaching about the fire baptism. The Holiness movement believed the second blessing of sanctification was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. They believed that both were characteristic of the same experience. Therefore the third blessing was rejected and the doctrine was viewed as heresy.
Irwin began preaching in the rural Midwest and South and gained large numbers of followers from the holiness movement, many who were involved with his healing ministry. It was because the leaders of the National Holiness Movement rejected the teaching of “baptism with fire” as a third blessing in the church, that Irwin started organizing the Fire Baptized Holiness Association around the nation in Olmitz, Iowa, in 1895. This belief was the precursor to the the Azusa Street Revival movement in 1906. His organized church quickly spread to Oklahoma and Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and then into Canada.
He left the movement in 1900. He confessed to “open and gross sin” and this brought reprimand from the church. The Fire Baptized Holiness Church starting teaching immediate conversion through the new birth, immediate sanctification as the second blessing, immediate baptism in the Holy Ghost fire, immediate divine healing through prayer, and the immediate pre-millennial second coming of Jesus Christ in the 1900. It was June of 1902 the name was changed from Fire Baptized Holiness Association to The Fire Baptized Holiness Church.
William Edward Fuller, Sr., a twenty three year old member of the African American New Hope Methodist Church, attended the newly founded body in 1898. Both Blacks and Whites were equally admitted to this newly formed body of Methodists. Fuller resigned his office with the church and joined the Fire Baptized Holiness Church.
Bishop Fuller was the Assistant General Overseer of the Fire Baptized Holiness Church in 1905. He was afraid of the trend toward segregation and he led over five hundred members to organize the Colored Fire Baptized Holiness Church in Greer, South Carolina in 1908. June 8, 1926 the name was changed to Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas.
Belief
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believes Jesus Chris shed His blood for the remission of sins that are past. They believe Jesus shed His blood for the regeneration of penitent sinners, and for salvation from sin.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe in the doctrine of justification by faith alone through the blood of Jesus Christ. They believe it was the shedding of blood by Jesus that completely cleansed the justified believer from all indwelling sins.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe sanctification is the work of grace, obtained only by faith on the part of the justified believer and that the sanctified believer must have the Pentecostal Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire. The initial evidence of the sanctified believer is speaking with other tongues as the spirit gives utterance. The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believes in divine healing as in the atonement.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe in the imminent personal premillennialism. They believe that Jesus Christ will return to earth for the Last Judgment just before the one-thousand-year reign of peace.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism should be performed in a Christ like manner as they were practiced by the Holy Apostles and Fathers of the early church. They believe the ordinances are the washing of the saint’s feet, matrimony, and burying the dead.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church belief opposes the teachings of Christian Scientists, Mormons, Unitarian Universalism, and Spiritualists.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe false teachings can be found in the teachings of the Seventh Day Adventists, and the false teaching of the Jehovah Witness. They believe Roman Catholicism, and the belief systems and the practices of all teachings of the Occult, all sorcery and witchcraft are false teaching. They also believe in the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked and the doctrine of conditional immorality. They do not believe that Christians are bound by established laws, especially moral laws, but should rely on faith and divine grace for salvation. They do not believe in the teachings of absolute perfection, any teachings against organized churches, the Resurrection of life, or the redemptive glorification of the body in this life. They believe it is false teaching that a believer is not born of God until we they are sanctified wholly.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believes Numerology, the New Age teachings and practices, psychics, and the Psychic phone lines are against the teachings of Jesus Christ and therefore are false churches.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe the need for a deepening of spiritual life to allow members to reach every Christian believer to seek the highest Christian experience possible in this life.
The Fire Baptized Holiness Church believe all ordained Elders, Pastors, Missionaries, Deacons, Teachers and Evangelists are divinely called. They believe they are set apart according to their gifts and their calling and are expected to teach what the Fire Baptized Holiness Church believes.
Cite Article Source
MLA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne “Fire Baptized Holiness Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library Jan 2006.<https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2751,>.
APA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2006, January) “Fire Baptized Holiness Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library. Retrieved from https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2751,.
Chicago Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2006) “Fire Baptized Holiness Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library (January), https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2751, (accessed).