Truth in History is a weekly half-hour television program featuring Charles A. Jennings. Teaching the bible without fear or favor.

As any honest student of Scripture would observe when considering the various aspects of the Kingdom God, throughout history God in His sovereignty has divinely hand-picked servants for strategic tasks in order to fulfill His plan at any given place and time. The same has been true throughout the history of the modern Christian church. Each of the Lord’s servants has filled a specific need and performed his own particular service in the furtherance of revealed truth. One such servant of God was Frank Weston Sandford.

Sandford was born on October 2, 1862 in Bowdoinham, Maine and received his primary education at Nichols Latin School. On February 29, 1880, he had a genuine spiritual new birth experience through the transforming power of Jesus Christ. In 1886, he graduated from Bates College and then received one year of seminary training in Cobb Divinity School. With an intense spiritual hunger, he accepted the pastorate of the Free Baptist Church in Topham, Maine.

While pastoring in Grand Falls, New Hampshire in 1890, he accepted the Holiness teaching of Sanctification while attending a Methodist Campmeeting held in Old Orchard, Maine. Not long after that, he embraced the belief in divine healing through his contacts with the Christian Alliance. It was here that he became friends with A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, and his associate, Dr. George B. Peck, a prominent physician who assisted Simpson in praying for the sick and who believed in the Anglo-Israel Message. He also attended summer schools led by Dwight L. Moody in Northfield, Maine. As a result, he became a member of Moody’s Student Volunteer Movement. He soon became intensely interested in world missions. During the years 1893-1899, Sandford founded the Holy Ghost and Us Bible School, held evangelistic crusades, sought greater understanding concerning divine healing and produced a publication called Tongues of Fire. As part of a faith financed project he built a large Victorian structure and named it Shiloh. By 1904, there were some 600 residents in this new community.

Through his ministry, Sandford was instrumental in the training of many Holiness preachers who later became Pentecostal leaders, among whom were Charles F. Parham and A. J. Tomlinson. Parham was pivotal in the early days of the Pentecostal movement and Tomlinson was the central figure in the establishment of the large present day Church of God denomination of Cleveland , Tennessee in January 1906.

Sandford was a man of intense spiritual fervor for his Savior, Jesus Christ. In the fall of 1888 while in Niagara Falls he wrote his life long commitment to the work of the Gospel in order to rescue the souls of men for Christ, he said:

“Oh God, help me to do my part in keeping a poor lost world from the terrible rapids of sin, and that terrible fall which breaks over the edge of time and plunges the sinner into eternity. To this end I solemnly consecrate my every voluntary thought, word and deed. This one thing will I do, subject everything to one all-absorbing purpose – this world for Christ during my lifetime.”

In studying the disciplined life and devoted ministerial work, rooted in his deep spiritual commitment to his Lord, it is evident that Frank Sandford was determined to follow the leading of the Holy Ghost. This he did in spite of misunderstanding from fellow Christians and even open opposition. He was committed in obedience to the teaching of the Holy Ghost even when ‘revealed truth’ was not popular or widely accepted. This was true in regard to his acceptance and teaching of the Anglo-Israel message of the Bible. While in the Holy Land for two weeks in 1898, after much prayer and fasting, Sandford was thoroughly convinced by the Holy Ghost of God’s faithfulness in His promises to His Anglo-Israel people.