“The valley had been lifted up. Mountains were leveled down and the earth was covered with beautiful flowers and trees and vines. God said: ‘This is the way the Judgment will be executed.’”

  (VISION 4)

  “One evening Reverend Butts Justice and I studied this text: ‘BLESSED ARE THE DEAD THAT DIETH IN THE LORD. THEY SHALL REST FROM THEIR LABOR AND THEIR WORK SHALL FOLLOW THEM.’ We could not adjust what was meant by their works following them. The Lord took me away into a vision. He brought me out into a large field where folks was chopping cotton and plowing corn and so forth. There was one woman who was very mean to her children. She expected them to do as much work as a trained man. She died before the Lord give me this vision, but I saw her in the field on a rocky plain. Her and her children were working as hard as they could. Now and then she would scold her children and threaten to bust their heads open with a hoe.

  “The day got so hot that it was dry. The crops looked green and promising. All at once everything dried up and become powder. I saw this being carried into stores. Folks were selling and buying. Goods turned to ashes, money to running water. I was then carried to flour and corn mills, but nothing came of the grinding. People who did good in their life time was still getting the good. The Lord said to me: ‘Look, and see this is what I mean when I say their works shall follow them.’

  “Then I come out of my trance and was sitting by my friend again.”

  (THE FEELING OF A TRANCE)

  “I feel drowsy, as if something were giving away in me and I drift off from my ownself and (a) start to hear, (b) see things, (c) both at the same time. I awake into normality suddenly and reality comes slowly back. Sometimes it takes a few minutes, sometimes hours.”

  INTERVIEWER: “Do you hold yourself away from the embraces of women?”

  BISHOP JOHNSON: “I can say that I lived holy and free from sin today, but I can’t make no declaration for tomorrow.

  “We all could be judged at our death if our works would cease with our death, but our work lives on in the souls of men from generation to generation.” (Bishop classes himself with the following: 1. John Wesley 2. Roger Williams 3. Martin Luther 4. John Calvin 5. Bishop R. A. R.)

  Communicant Rev. George Washington, 304 Prince Street

  (Family)

  Hugh Washington (24) Saint

  Elise Washington No Saint

  Eloise Washington No Saint

  Carrie Belle Washington Saint

  May Belle Washington Saint

  George Washington Saint

  Rev. Washington is pastor of Commandment Keeper church which has a membership of sixteen.12

  Rev. Washington explained that there are two visions—open and closed, the latter coming in one’s sleep.

  “When I was connected I had a call in the spirit. I had been praying three weeks and four days. During this time I was godly sorry over my sins and the way I have gone in sin. I et no pleasant bread during this period of time. And the four days of this time I et no bread and no water [sic]. And I come [sic] then being happy down in my soul.

  “I saw a great light shining in my room and that lit my whole room up like day, even though it was night and a voice spoke to me, saying: ‘You must preach the gospel.’ And the voice give me the text from the Fifth Galatians and 1st verse: ‘Stand fast in thy liberty, where with Christ hath made me free. And be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.’

  “And I went on and [founded] a Baptist church by the name of Macedonia and I preached as a local preacher for six months; and they called me and give me a church named New Zion.13 I pastored there for nine years.

  “Then I had another call in the spirit to leave that place to go to another city, but some how, or rather I disobeyed the Lord, I didn’t want to leave my home town and my people. The Lord smoted me with a terrible sickness and that sickness the doctor said was consumption.14 I were illing along until the doctor stated one evening that he was going to take a picture of my body. He took the picture and said my right lung was completely gone and just half inch was holding the left lung. They said they couldn’t do me no good and that I would have to die. They said money wouldn’t do me no good and not necessary to go to another hospital. They all said the same thing. So I reached the conclusion that I’d talk to the Lord about this matter. That night lying on my bed I called the Lord in question about my ways. I felt like I had disobeyed the Lord when He told me to go and I refused and I felt like He was the one that smoted me, according to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, and I knowed He smoted me.15 I told the Lord ‘I’m a young man, only 26, and the doctor says I got to die, but Thou, O Lord, you made me and also give the doctor their wisdom.’ That was my prayer. ‘And you can heal me if you will. And you promised a man three scores and ten years and I’m only 26, having a wife and two children, and I don’t want to go now because I have just started life. But if you will heal me just one time—try me—and wheresoever you say go, I will go; whatsoever you say be, I will be; whatsoever you say, I will say.’

  “Then the Lord spoke again. I heard that same voice and knowed it. ‘Don’t take another drop of that medicine, and you get up in the morning at the rising sun.’ He didn’t say He was going to heal me, but I had done made the covenant with Him. Then I begin to wonder deep—was He going to heal me. I had been confined to the bed for three months and was helpless. I couldn’t get up and down excepting somebody helped me.

  “When the medicine hour rolled around I refused to take it from the nurse. She tried hard to open my mouth with a silver spoon handle. I closed my toothes and they couldn’t get it in. She tried even the third time and failed so they give up from trying. They thought I was dying and said it was no use. ‘He’ll be dead soon.’ I laid quiet on the bed all night long and didn’t had to call nobody. The next morning about the rising of the sun, my strength come all at once and I was just as well as I am right now. The first attempt I made to sit up, the nurse tried to make me lay down. I told them I was well.

  “The Lord did come. I wanted them to get my clothes so I could dress myself and walk out. I always keep my Bible near. So I dressed myself and went on the porch that was fronting the east, so that I could see the sun coming up out of the east one more time. Then I began thanking God for healing me through the course of the night.

  “About the third hour the doctors came in—all three together—when they saw me sitting up with my Bible they called to me before they got out of [the] car: ‘This is not the dead man sitting up here.’ (Here Rev. Washington goes into ecstasy saying hallelujah, amen etc.) I said: ‘Doctor, I don’t need you anymore. The Lord has come and healed me last night.’ (Ecstasy again, saying yes Lord, amen etc.)16

  “Dr. Tooten, Dr. Warner, Dr. Fulge, they all three called me in. They took another picture of my body that morning. When they got it, my lungs was [sic] just as clear as their own—made whole again. They pronounced me well and sound and published it in the papers of Augusta, Georgia.

  “So I came on back to Allendale where I was living and running a two horse farm (Glory!) and three weeks later, one evening just before the sun went down, I was walking over the farm by myself alone, and that same voice called to me again and said: ‘You go to Beaufort, South Carolina, and I will show thee what I will have thee to do.’ (Ecstasy—glory hallelujah, yes Lord.) So I stopped for a moment and thought over present conditions. I remember where I was three weeks before then—lying on a sick bed and couldn’t move, I remembered when I were given up to die by three of the best doctors and that the Lord healed me in one night. I said: ‘Lord, I will go to Beaufort.’

  “I come on back to the house and told my wife that I had to go to Beaufort in the morning because there was no train to take me that night. Next morning I boarded the train for Beaufort. On my way I met a man coming from Charleston. We were riding together. I told him my errand and he rented me three rooms in his house for $10.00 unfurnished, at 610 Bladen Street. I paid him in advance and spent one night and returned to Allendale.

  “Two weeks later I moved to Beaufort, turning my farm over to Mother and Brother. I didn’t brought anything only my house furniture. After I arrived here in Beaufort, December 26, 1920, I preached from one church to another, but it seemed like I wasn’t yet doing what God wanted. I felt a hungry thirst deep down in my soul. So I read [the] Bible for consolation. Yet still I wasn’t happy.

  “Three months after I got here I was on my way from [the] Baptist Church called Pilgrim.17 I preached there that night. On [my] way home I heard singing and a man preaching and it all seemed joyful to me. I told Deacon Edward Allen: ‘Let us stop in here.’ So we went in and Dolley Jemison was preaching and he said things that I was looking for. He was preaching on the power of God and I knewed it. He said when he saw me: ‘I see some strange brother.’ I rise on my feet and said: ‘I don’t know what you call yourselves, but I see you have a blessing that I haven’t got and I want it.’

  “That was my call into holiness right there. Then it seemed like they all rejoiced to hear me. Then they told me what I would have to do. I would have to go to the altar and seek salvation from the earnest part of my heart. That night I fell on my knees to seek the Lord. I called Jesus (repeating it until my tongue could say it no more). They sang beautiful songs over me. I didn’t get blessed that night. They held a protracted meeting for ten days. I went every night but failed.

  “I had so many things to give up which was in the pride of life that it took me 34 days and 8 hours before I got the Holy Ghost. When I gave up my wife, children, friends, acquaintances, just the same as if I was going to die, the Lord come in and blessed my soul, speaking in other tongues as the spirit give utterance. (Acts 2:4.)18 My wife went running out of the house calling neighbors to come and see what was the matter with me. It was strange to them. In the spirit, I viewed the beautiful city.

  “In a moment of time He took me in an exceedingly high mountain; seem like it was in the night, a fair, beautiful night with the stars shining bright, like moons. There was a man standing on the right hand side of me who said: ‘Look east!’ When I looked east, I could look way down on the earth and see a city white as the dripping snow, shining so brightly that it sparkled like diamonds. Then the Lord spoke and said: ‘Abraham saw that city. Daniel saw that city. John saw that city.’19 Then I began to thank God that He had let me see that city and in a moment of time He took me back to my place again.

  “From that day on and on I could tell the wonderful story of Jesus. Then the Lord told me: ‘This is the work I want you to do. Cry aloud. Spare not. Lift up your voice.’

  “That is the reason I am preaching this great gospel.”

  (ANOTHER VISION)

  “On the fourth of July I went nine miles from Beaufort to pick huckleberries which were plentiful. I heard a great something under my feet. It was a great big rattlesnake. He hit me in the arm. I turned to run and the snake hit me in the hip. The snake’s tooth hung in my overalls and I run one hundred and fifty feet with the cold snake whipping against my leg. As I was running the spirit spoke to me and said: ‘Read Mark 16:17. Where is your faith?’ I rode the bicycle the ten miles home. I got well without going to a doctor. I know the Lord healed me. This was the second healing of sickness, the first being tuberculosis.”

  Members of church:

  Rev. George Washington

  Izora Robinson (sister) one

  Willie Robinson (her son)

  Reuben Stephenson

  Julian Jones (prophet) two

  Jefferson Bates

  Franke Bates

  Liza Robinson (no relation)

  Carrie Roberts

  Melrose Range

  Georgia Smith

  Hattie Washington (daughter-in-law)

  (CONVERSATION IN CHURCHYARD BETWEEN INTERVIEWER AND CHURCH SISTER, WHILE INTERVIEWER SITTING IN THE YARD)

  SISTER MARY: “I didn’t know that you could get yourself another man and just keep on having children. Sure I would have had more children if I had known that. I would have had forty or fifty—raise up a nation of your own.20

  Communicant Mrs. Julia Jones

  “I live the life and am free from sin. I was born in a sanctified family. My parents told me to be sanctified. When I got to be grown I was told not to marry an unsaved man.” (Those not sanctified are unsaved.) But she married a man of bad havages (habits). She loved him and lived with him a long time.

  “I asked the Lord about him. The Lord told me we were unequally yoked. The spirit told me I was going to be a widow. I finally told my husband that I couldn’t live with him any longer.

  “I sought the Lord and went higher and higher. In my vision the Lord come to me one night and touched me and woke me up. He told me that He give me the gift of prophecy. He told me He give me a new name, Elizabeth, and He give me victory, redemption, higher power and a consecrated life. He gave me the gift of healing, the gift of teaching, the gift of dancing, the dance of the Children at the Red Sea, the gift of preaching and the gift of praying.21

  “Look like to me I seen a high place. It seemed like it circled round and round the world and kept going higher. It was a big circle around the world (like a spherical ramp). People were there. And then He showed me three floors; in the last one it was a room look like. He showed me I was living clean. The symbol was a white pigeon that flew on me. He showed me I was in a room—a place—and the Bible was on that table. The power fell on till it looked like I couldn’t hardly hold that Bible.”

  (LAST VISION)

  “The Lord picked me up and carried me off and set me down in Beaufort. And I knowed [sic] I had to come to Beaufort to preach and prophesy. I was at Miles Mill, South Carolina, before that. He set me down at the corner of Izora Robinson (where she lives). After He put me down there and then He showed me how we was going to travel and carry the word.” (Meaning by we, Izora Robinson, Rev. Washington and Julia.) (She went into Ecstasy for about three minutes.)

  “In a trance things change. Your eyes are changed. You see and hear. The Lord have come to my bed and poured the power out on me. The Lord have showed me some of the most wonderful things I ever seen in my life.

  “I have seen mules in a pen running round. Cows were in my vision also and some of my children would be after them, running them around. (I have five children.) I’ve seen a vision of water. I would be wading and going on across. The water never hurt me. I never feared that it would over-power me.

  “I saw fire raining down and it was Judgment. I saw people running and screaming and hollering. The fire was coming down like drops of rain.

  “Since I been in holiness, the Lord has showed me how I was going to die. I was just going to sleep away. No fear at all. He carried me away in a vision once. It must have been Hell. I was going down the pathway and there was people in all those places. And there was mules. They was in a close place just turning round. The Lord turned me loose—said I was a Sabbath keeper, so He turned me loose. I saw where I come on but I got back up on top of the earth. (The people were in the pit doing various things.)

  “He give me Matthew 10, how to go and heal the sick.22 Then He told me that if I couldn’t forsake everybody, I couldn’t follow Him. So I forsook Him. My children were left with my ex-husband. They’s all about married now. Their names are Ada, Ida, Geneva, Wyman, and Willie Henry.

  “Five years ago holiness come in this part and I heard about it and I humbled myself down and went to seeking holiness. I heard of it from my sister. The Lord stands over my bed for hours. He is a great comfort. (She is a prophet. The prophecy is very important in this ritual. Note the similarity of African witch smelling.)23 The Lord said to me: ‘The harvest have come.’ I asked the Lord what He meant and He said: ‘Harvest means what you sow, it will reap the same way.’ Then He showed me in a vision of some sick folks and showed me they was sick from neglecting to serve the Lord.

  “No pork in my mouth in five years. No saints eat pork.

  “Before the war started my sister and I prophesied that war was coming and we was sent from city to city to warn people. The vision came to both of us at once. She is now in Jacksonville, Florida. Her name’s Mary Jane Dunbar. We was in the same room when it come and we was seeking. The voice come at the same moment. It said: ‘Go tell the people a world war is coming here too. We will hold out a long time, but it is coming.’”

  During the ceremonies, Julia Jones goes first into ecstasy then into a trance, after which she sometimes utters prophecies aloud to the whole congregation. Other times she kneels by various members and whispers prophecies in their ears. Her eyes are half closed and her movements are like a sleep walker.

  There is no appeal from her prophecy. It is the last word. It is to be accepted as the gospel truth. It is not always pleasant to members of the congregation. For instance, she uttered at one time: “I feel hate in here. Hate!! They say that old prophet, she tells too much. She talks too much. They hate the prophecy but the Lord sends the prophecy.”

  There is a suggestion of the African witch doctor smelling out evil doers in this phase.