IN SEPTEMBER, 1906, Mr. Robinson sent his wife to Zion City for a visit. Serious trouble had arisen in the church, and Mr. Robinson desired to know the true state of affairs. This, he felt, could be ascertained only by first-hand investigation. Inasmuch as he did not feel free to leave the work in Detroit at the time, he sent his wife “to spy out the land.” In addition to this, it would give Mrs. Robinson an opportunity to visit her mother and sister.
The Zion City to which Martha Wing Robinson returned about the middle of September was a very different city from the one she had left a year before. Then it was a united community, religiously, economically, and politically, under the vigorous leadership of John Alexander Dowie.
Whatever cracks there may have been in that solidarity were scarcely discernible from the outside at least. The inner disaffection, however, had ripened until now both church amid city were hopelessly divided, full of strife and bitterness.
Just a year before, Dr. Dowie had suffered a stroke, as a result of the heavy burdens he had borne, so that he was unable to minister or to conduct the affairs of the city. Financial difficulties which had been developing for some time now came to a head. The local bank failed; the city and its industries went into receivership. Worst of all, the people, for the most part, lost confidence in the man they had loved so dearly, respected so highly, and had followed so obediently. As a result, early in the year, Dr. Dowie had been deposed from his position as head of the church and large numbers had left the church. Thus the seamless robe of unity was rent into many jagged pieces.
Over all the city there hung heavy, dark clouds of discouragement and black despair. Crushed and broken, the people seemed hopeless, for the cherished hopes and dreams of a city of God on earth had vanished. Over all seemed written “Ichabod” — the glory is departed!
God, however, had reserved for His dear people an even greater glory than any they had yet seen or dreamed of. Faint, bruised, and scattering, He beheld them and had a plan “to bind up the brokenhearted.” Unto them that mourned in Zion He would give “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness . . . that He might be glorified.” Over all the chaos the Spirit of God was brooding. “And God said, Let there be light.”
A few days before Mrs. Robinson returned to Zion City, God sent a man anointed of the Spirit of God to preach good tidings — that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is for the people of God today just as on the Day of Pentecost.
Reports of the outpouring of the Spirit in Los Angeles had preceded the arrival of this brother. Consequently, there were many that were keenly interested and ready to hear this man. Therefore, when the manager of the hotel (Elijah Hospice), George Rogers, learned of the message of this evangelist, he made arrangements for him to hold a meeting in one of the large assembly rooms of the place, so that the minister could expound this “new doctrine.” His first meeting was followed by a second one the next afternoon. When, after a little, “the powers that be” learned of the nature of the meetings that were going on, they forbade them to be held in the hotel.
As a result, many homes were opened in various parts of the city where the meetings continued. Attendance at
these cottage meetings steadily grew and increased until the porches and even the yards of the houses were filled with eager listeners. Among these were also the curious and the scoffers, but “many who ‘came to scoff remained to pray’!”
This man’s “good news” came “as cold waters to a thirsty soul,” and it met the longing of their famished, hungry hearts. Hope revived. People began to seek the Lord for the baptism of the Holy Spirit which, they were assured, was for even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” With many, everything else became secondary to seeking God. Some became so desperate that they took off from work to be able to wait on Him uninterruptedly.
“We would go at nine o’clock in the morning and stay all day and far into the night,” recalls one participant. Some did stay all night. Day after day we met to wait upon and to seek the Lord.”
Now when Mrs. Robinson arrived in Zion City this revival was just beginning. The whole city had been stirred by this “new” teaching. Some said it was of God. Others said it was of the devil. Mrs. Robinson made it her business to investigate the meetings firsthand and to search the Scriptures to see if this teaching was correct.
For nine months she had been seeking God most earnestly. The soil of her soul had been plowed and harrowed and now was well prepared for this seed. “I seized the advanced teaching readily,” she said, and soon had “settled it by the Word and my soul with God” that this is that which was prophesied by the prophet Joel, . . . “in the last days I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” She was not, however, immediately persuaded that this experience was for everybody — even her. But whatever questions she may have had about the baptism of the Holy Spirit being for her personally were answered by what she witnessed on the night of October 18.
That night, when most of the people began to leave the meeting, a young woman, Marie Burgess, lingered on, earnestly seeking the Lord. Miss Burgess, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, had been a very successful food demonstrator in Zion General Store. When she began to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit and to invite her customers to the Pentecostal meetings, many of them personal acquaintances and friends, she lost her job because the store was managed by officers of the Zion Church. This left her free to seek the Lord continually. For three days and nights now she had prayed without taking her clothes off. Today, her birthday, she had fasted also, for she desired only one birthday gift — the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now her birthday was almost over, the meeting seemed finished, and she had not received the baptism. Keenly disappointed, she told the Lord of her feelings. In reply, He instructed her how to receive — to thank the Lord for the gift of the Holy Ghost. Suddenly the Holy Spirit began to shake Miss Burgess and continued to shake her for an hour. Then she began to speak in tongues and at the same time had a series of visions which lasted several hours.
Among the few others who remained were Fred Bosworth, the bandmaster of Zion’s rather well-known prize band, and Mrs. Robinson. As Mr. Bosworth saw Miss Burgess receiving her baptism, faith rose in his soul for his own baptism. Soon he, too, was filled with the Spirit. (This was the man who became an evangelist of world-wide fame and blessing.)
All the while that these chosen vessels were being filled, Mrs. Robinson tarried with them, watching and praying. When the Spirit of God had completed His work in Miss Burgess,ⁿ it was nearly five the next morning. As she prepared to go home, Mrs. Robinson remarked to her, “I have seen two wonderful baptisms tonight that have completely convinced me.”
Note: Marie Burgess was to go to New York City three months later and open a mission which became Glad Tidings Tabernacle. Later she married Rev. Robert A. Brown. For more than fifty years Mrs. Brown has faithfully held forth the Word of Life in the great metropolis.
“Having quite settled it that Jesus does baptize with the Holy Ghost, that He wills to baptize all, even me, I accepted Him in this capacity also,” Mrs. Robinson wrote in her diary. She was, however, to have “a period of deep seeking” during which the Lord would teach His child a number of lessons, both for her own good and the good of those to whom she would later minister, before He would baptize her. These lessons are best told in her own words, written a few months later:
“When I first began to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was a bundle of nervous, impatient restlessness. I wanted my blessing so quickly.. .. I did not have doubts to battle against. Everyone looked for me to sweep through into victory quickly. So did I. Therefore, the more other people got their blessing around me, the more positively did I pray and seek and agonize and wonder and get anxious and upset. I went from meeting to meeting. And when the meeting went wrong and Satan seemed to be permitted to hinder, I chafed and rebelled in spirit, feeling I was losing time.
“One day a quiet little German woman said to me, ‘Sister, you have too restless a nature. You need to get still. You don’t stay put. Instead of getting quiet before God, you wait for influences about you to get into the right attitude. You come into a meeting, and if the speaker doesn’t please you, you slip out. If you feel like prayer and there is speaking or testimony, you fret in your spirit. You need to give yourself more over to God, and when you go to a meeting. look for a blessing, but take it in God’s way.’
“This opened my eyes. I saw I was running myself. I determined to give God a better chance to work out His will with me. From that time I endeavored to abandon myself in a meeting to the will of God. It took time to learn the lesson, but I learned it. This abandonment is necessary in a meeting in order to get blessing. In a meeting where there is liberty of the Spirit, there are many things our flesh, until it is brought into subjection, will rise against.
“I objected heartily in the beginning to emotionalism. I could not keep my mind, eyes, nor disapproval off of manifestations about me. I have always been acutely susceptible to peculiarities of speech or manner in others. Satan took pains I should remain so. I had my own pronounced, very pronounced opinions of the way things should be done. One by one God helped me to lay all these things down, to give my spirit up to Him, to rivet my thoughts on Him, and not to feel ruffled or disturbed by any unfortunate turn in the meeting, any unwise testimony, any extreme and perhaps really fleshly emotionalism, any absurd prayer.
“All these things are bound to come into meetings from time to time, and until we can realize that the Lord is quite able and sufficient to care for His own work and overrule anything the flesh or the devil may bring in, we will permit Satan to have the triumph of accomplishing one of the very purposes for which he has introduced these things, that is, distraction of our thought, or disgust with the meeting, or a rebellion of spirit that preclude all possibility of blessing. The ability to sit in a high, sweet calm above the mistakes and vexations is of inestimable blessing in a meeting where all are unitedly seeking God.
“The lesson I had to learn in the meetings has been steadily impressed on me all the way along, until the tendency to ‘run’ other people, to put my hands on God’s work, to carry responsibilities that are not mine, has been gradually more and more eliminated. I realize we carry many burdens God never gave us to carry and that we have no right to carry; in fact, that we presume upon God’s goodness when we attempt to carry them. How much slower we would be with our advice, our assistance, our pushing in to straighten out mistakes, if we could see things as God sees them and stay just where God puts us. This wretched energy of the flesh. How much I have had!
“While seeking during this period I became greatly humiliated. As others of shorter experience and presumably less acquainted with the deeper things of God swept into blessing, I was made to feel my unworthiness in the sight of God. God so permitted this to grow upon me that presently I was right down in the Slough of Despond. I felt that I had had such blessings and so slipped back from and misused them that I had grieved the Holy Spirit away. Satan began to tell me my opportunity was passed by, that I would never get the blessing.
“One day in the midst of the darkness of this experience I shut myself into a dark closet and waited alone on God. While I was praying, I seemed to have a vision of the omnipotence of God. I did not see Him. but His majesty, His glory, His power. Far, far up in the heavens, millions upon millions of miles away, it seemed, He dwelt enthroned in awful, majestic power, eternally calm, eternally distant. Glory and light were around His throne. Peace and purity enveloped Him. No words or pen can ever express even that glimpse of God’s matchless, supreme, majestic authority.
“And then I saw something else. Far, far down, away from the glory of His presence, in the cold and dark of a terrible, impassable distance, was an atom — a tiny, useless atom, tossed hither and thither. And that atom was myself, and the truth that impressed me in the sight was that the atom was not needed, was useless, cast away, and that its immediate annihilation would be no loss to God’s great universe.
“Just as I was sinking under the terrible reality of this picture and the humiliation and hopelessness of the revelation, a change took place. A shadowy light like a path began to show itself between the atom and the great God. Down toward the atom it was dim and indefinite but grew brighter and brighter until it was lost in the glory of that great God. And as I gazed, I was conscious that the Good Shepherd was leaving the glory and coming, all alone away from the Father, down to the darkness that surrounded that atom, my lost self.
“O such an illumination as God gave me of Jesus leaving His throne in Heaven and coming all the way to Calvary for me. A new meaning came to me that has never left —the personal application of the blood of Jesus for my sins,— what it had meant in my life that Jesus died for me, and yea, where I would be today if Jesus had not died for me. It shows me still where every sinner out of Christ is, and that only as the Good Shepherd leads them up to God can they find the way. For this is what seemed done to me — Jesus came closer, closer, and finally gently led me up the path for a little way.
“And then the vision passed, and I saw that that was where I was — just a little way, not yet out of the twilight, up the path of the just that ‘shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day;’ but I was in the Good Shepherd’s care, and the love as well as the power of God was impressed upon my soul.”ⁿ
Note: Mrs. Robinson wrote this account of her seeking for the baptism almost a year afterwards, some time after August, 1907, incorporating it in her journal. After this last paragraph she adds, before continuing the narrative in chronological sequence, the following: “Sometime since my baptism, when wondering at my own slow progress in the things of God, one day while in prayer a sweet peace fell upon me, and for a moment I again saw the picture of this path. It was a blaze of glory up toward the Lord, and I was still down the path, but in a much clearer, brighter light than when the vision was first given me. And God showed me that I was going evenly, steadily forward into greater light continuously.”
The days were slipping by all too quickly. Soon Mrs. Robinson must return to her husband and the work in Detroit. How she longed to receive her baptism before that! Most earnestly, therefore, did she wait upon God during the last two weeks of October. Others tarried with her and sought to encourage her.
“Come on up. The scenery is fine,” said Miss Burgess to her one evening.
“The scenery along the way is fine,” replied Mrs. Robinson.
Yes, “the scenery along the way” was fine. Jesus was becoming even more real and precious, but on November first she left Zion and returned to Detroit — without having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
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Martha Wing Robinson (1874 - 1936)
Martha held meetings which touched people to return to the work of the service of God. The Robinsons opened a "Faith Home" where people would come for teaching and prayer. Like George Muller they depended on God to provide what was needed for expenses. Thousands came through her home and healings were a regular occurrence. Her husband died in April of 1916, but Martha continued in her ministry. She had a very sharp gift of discernment and regularly told people the secrets of their hearts. She often had directive prophetic words for those under her care. Many young people came to the home for training and went into the mission fields and evangelistic endeavours.Martha Wing Robinson died June 26, 1936. Shortly before she died she stated her life's message "Nothing matters but Christ Jesus." Her whole life was spent in the service of God and for the Glory of His Son Jesus. She had seen many healed, saved, delivered, empowered and sent out. She was truly a mother in Israel. In 1962 Gordon P. Gardiner wrote a book about her life called "Radiant Glory" because that is how she lived her life.