01.08. Other Mighty Soulwinners
We do not have space here to give accounts of all the great men of God of whom we have a record who definitely claimed that they had a mighty endowment of power from on high, which came to them aside from their conversion to Christ. Let us mention briefly some of them.
Rev. A. B. Earle, D.D., was a Baptist evangelist who began preaching in 1830. He wrote a book, The Rest of Faith, telling of some of his experiences. In the introduction to one of his books, Evangelist Earle said that God had enabled him to lead 157,000 souls to Christ, and Hills in his book, Holiness and Power, says, "A book lies before me which says that ’he had no special power as a preacher before the Holy Ghost fell upon him.’" Dr. Earle came before D. L. Moody, but was a union evangelist wonderfully blessed of God. And he attributed his power to a definite endowment from Heaven, the fullness of the Holy Spirit for soul winning.
Mr. Hills says of A. T. Pierson, "Dr. A. T. Pierson preached eighteen years trusting to literary power and oratory and culture. He then sought and obtained ’holiness and power’ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He afterward testified to a body of ministers: ’Brethren, I have seen more conversions and accomplished more in the eighteen months since I received that blessing than in the eighteen years previous.’" (Holiness and Power, page 336). And those who know the writings of Dr. Pierson will understand that he did not mean that he had had the carnal nature eradicated, nor that he had talked in tongues, but that he received power from on high for winning souls.
How many more greatly used men of God, anointed soul winners, have testified that they had a definite time, in response to earnest prayer for the power of God in soul winning, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. There was Christmas Evans, the one-eyed Welsh evangelist wonderfully filled with the Spirit after three hours of pleading with God. There was Len G. Broughton, Southern Baptist pastor whose ministry was transformed one night as he knelt at an altar and pleaded with God for the fullness of the Spirit and claimed that power and went back to baptize three hundred converts within the year and began a marvelously increased ministry of soul winning. There was "Praying Hyde," the missionary to India. As he sailed from America a friend handed him a sealed note which he later found said, "Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?" He was first angry, then troubled, and then sought God with all of his heart until he was wonderfully filled. Great revivals with the winning of thousands of souls in India resulted. There was Dr. L. R. Scarborough, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who had won twenty thousand souls for Christ and taught in our class on evangelism the need for a definite endowment of power from on high, a fullness of the Holy Spirit, which he himself had definitely received.