Friday, December 29, 2017

The Humble Beginnings Of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason

By Scott Bennett


This man is honored by many as a prominent religious figure in the Pentecostal Holiness denomination. His many achievements throughout his lifetime of working to preach the word of God have led to many great things that still have resonating effects today. The church Bishop Charles Harrison Mason founded in Lexington, Mississippi has grown to be the largest of its kind.

Mason's life had humble beginnings in a small area in Tennessee habitated by sharecroppers that had not been incorporated into a town. His father Jerry and his mother Eliza has both been slaves before getting their freedom and becoming sharecroppers. His early life did not include a regular education, but rather gleaned all the knowledge he could from his parents' religion.

The first time anyone joins a church is a very special experience, and it can change a person's life. It can be all the more special when the person carrying out the baptism is a relative or someone special in the person's life, and so it was a very special ceremony when Mason's half-brother baptized him. This was in 1879 at a Baptist church, and he was twelve.

There were many diseases in the days when he was growing up that could not be easily cured. This problem was compounded with the fact that white doctors generally wouldn't even see African American patients, and the health centers for African Americans were too poor to be much help. When tuberculosis was going around, both Charles and his father Jerry fell sick, and Jerry died from it.

It can be very difficult to recover from the loss of a loved one. Sharecropping was no longer a possibility for the family, so they had to move to Preston, which is in Arkansas. This was a very hard move on Mason's health, and he was only getting worse when his family all prayed for him to get better, and he did.

While this many devoted almost all of his life to God's Ministry, he did not always want to be a clergyman. When he was young, he told his parents that he only wanted to be a regular member of the church. However, after he was amazingly healed of tuberculosis after his family's prayers, he decided that God had saved him for the purpose of calling him to his ministry.

It was in 1893 that Mason's license to be a minister was acquired. He was 27, and it marked the first step of his career that would last the rest of his life. From there, his work took him to a Baptist church in Arkansas, which would be his first hands-on experience as a minister.

This is a man who is not afraid to speak his mind, and to take actions that reflect his point of view. It takes a lot of courage to decide to leave the first place a person goes to work, but that is what he did after just a few months working at his first Baptist church. By his view, the teachings that were going on at this church were too liberal, and the emphasis was not on God's Word.




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