Monday, January 1, 2018

The Humble Beginnings Of Bishop Charles Harrison Mason

By Scott Bennett


Many people know who this many is, but not many have heard the full story of where he came from. This is because it is a long story marked by many accomplishments and years of hard work, and goes to unexpected places. Although many people now recognize him as the founder of one of the largest Pentecostal Holiness churches, Bishop Charles Harrison Mason had a life that was full of many highs and lows.

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.

His first time being a part of a church was in the year of 1879 when he was twelve years old, and it marked the beginning of church influencing his life. This was in Shelby County, not far from the area where he grew up, at a Baptist church. This a very personal and meaningful moment for him because it was his half-brother who performed the baptism.

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.

The first step for any minister to begin the spiritual journey of their career is to become licensed. That is what Mason did in 1893, and it was an important moment and big decision for him since he had decided that it was his personal duty. He was 27 years old at the time, and he then went to Arkansas to a Baptist church.

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.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment