Fire from Heaven

Seth Cook Rees was raised as a Quaker and was converted at the Friends Academy in Westfield, Indiana, in 1873. Five months later he preached his first sermon, thus launching his lifelong career as a preacher. He held evangelistic meetings in Ohio and Indiana, but began to feel a deeper need. After an extended period of intense seeking, he came to a crisis. “At last, there began to creep into my soul a tranquil feeling… a sweet, placid ‘second rest, and I knew that I was sanctified wholly.” From that time, his primary goal was the proclamation of the message of a heart cleansed from all sin and empowered for God’s service. For decades he pastored and preached in evangelistic meetings across America and around the world, ministered as a missionary to Native Americans, and served as the founding president of the International Holiness Union, which later became the Pilgrim Holiness Church (a forerunner of the Wesleyan Church). He was well known at large campmeetings such as Ocean Grove Camp, and at the renowned camp held in Cincinnati, Ohio founded by his friend Martin Wells Knapp, and at God’s Bible School and Missionary Training Home. Fire from Heaven is a compilation of several sermons he preached, recorded by stenographers in real time, mostly at Cincinnati. His style, mannerisms and phraseology, so expressive of his era, are therefore on full display, as well as his most pressing, urgent message—the salvation of the lost and the sanctification of believers. 

This Schmul Publishing Co. edition is not a scanned facsimile of a used book. It has not been “updated” or edited into modern English, punctuation or grammar, but is accurate to the author’s own style and usage. The text has been carefully proofread for accuracy and formatted for easier reading by today’s readers. Every effort has been made to prevent disordered text.