A large crowd of Elim members from Nottingham ready for the train that will take them to the Easter Monday meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in 1933.,,,
This month the Christian church around the world will once again celebrate what in so many ways is its most defining event – Easter. Fixed historically in the rhythms and remembrance of Passover, Easter is to followers of Christ not merely a festival but the very ‘hinge of history’ which continues to give a powerful opportunity for outreach to those around us.
For the early Elim pioneers, Easter became a central focus for the Movement over its formative years. Some eleven years after the beginnings of Elim in Monaghan, Ireland, the new Movement had spread into England, Scotland and Wales, with the gospel of Jesus Christ as its priority. In the midst of the tremendous pace and activity of growth and expansion, a sudden call from the American evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson to Elim founder George Jeffreys saying she was hoping to hold meetings in London on her way to France caused Jeffreys to book the Royal Albert Hall for the Easter weekend.
From that year onwards, Elim held meetings at the Royal Albert Hall on every Easter Monday until the early 1990s. Elim people flocked in their thousands to London – holding huge open-air meetings at Trafalgar Square in the morning, followed by afternoon and evening ‘rallies’ in the nation’s most famous venue.
Those meetings were intended not just to worship and celebrate, although the programme was filled with inspirational congregational singing as well as soloists, choirs, bands and orchestras from Elim churches and regions across Britain. George Jeffreys had begun to see large meetings as a vehicle for what he called ‘demonstrations’ of Pentecostal ministry and experience. The Royal Albert Hall meetings centred therefore on preaching and testifying to the Full Gospel of Jesus Christ, giving opportunity for thousands over the years to accept Christ as Saviour and Lord and to receive prayer, with many testifying to physical healing.
BAPTISED
In 1928 the national press reported Elim at the Royal Albert Hall as more than a thousand people were baptised, making it one of the largest recorded baptisms in UK history. This extraordinary event meant that the doors of the Royal Albert Hall had to be altered to get the baptism tank inside. By 1939 this emphasis on Easter witness had spread, with 15 other ‘Elim Foursquare Conventions’ being held over Easter across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
As I reflect on those Easter meetings, I am convinced they confirm that at the heart of the call to believe in Christ and follow him is a call to ‘witness’ – to tell the good news of the gospel to the world in the private and public spaces where we live and work. We are called not just to be a celebrating people but a witnessing people, focusing not just on an event but a living experience.
As Easter seems to be receding in the general consciousness and awareness of wider public society, we are called to truly be ‘Easter People’. There is a need to share in fresh ways the unchanging Easter story to generations that haven’t really heard it. The message that Jesus Christ, the only Son of the only God, came as the Saviour of the world, died on a cross, rose from the dead and is coming again, may seem unfathomable and unbelievable within our culture but it is still the only hope for the world. We need more than ever for this to involve fresh stories of changed lives and evidence of the power of God at work in the transformation of families and communities.
I pray that this Easter we will all open our hearts to rediscover the revelation of Jesus the Saviour, take steps to recover the full relevance of his death on the cross for us and respond by receiving the full power of his resurrection life to live with him and for him with courage and confidence wherever we are.
Happy Easter!
From Direction Magazine issue 235
