Frank Sandford

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Frank Sandford

Frank Weston Sandford (born October 2, 1862 in Bowdoinham , Maine , † March 4, 1948 in Hobart, New York ) was an American preacher , spiritual healer , Pentecostal pioneer and founder of the religious community The Kingdom in Durham, Maine .

Life

Frank Weston Sandford was born in Bowdoinham, Maine and turned to the Christian faith at the age of 17. Impressed by the American revival preacher Dwight Moody , he accepted the end-time doctrine of dispensationalism and was pastor of a Baptist church . After touring the Middle East and Asia, he left the Baptists and conducted revival events as a non-denominational preacher. He claimed to have been visited by an angel of God and to hear his voice. In 1895 he opened a Bible school in Durham, Maine and named the place after the Old Testament Shiloh . In addition to studying the Bible, like John Alexander Dowie , he devoted himself to spiritual healing and renounced any form of conventional medicine. Sandford called himself a prophet from 1896 and inaugurated the Shiloh Chapel the following year . His teaching included the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the end times and the return of the prophet Elijah according to Malachi 3:23, with whom he identified himself. His community grew steadily and even attracted Charles Fox Parham , who visited him for several weeks in the summer of 1900. Sandford was a proponent of British Israelism and claimed in December 1900 that the coming century would be the final church age of Revelation . In 1901, in increasing anticipation of the end times, Sandford equated himself with Jesus Christ and taught that only his followers would be part of the imminent rapture . During a stay in Palestine in 1902, he declared himself a descendant of King David and founded his community in Jerusalem . Sandford uses the two sailing yachts "Kingdom" and "Coronet" to advertise more fans around the world. After setting the rapture and subsequent end of the world for September 15, 1909, his community gathered in Shiloh and waited for the return of Christ. When the prophesied end of the world did not materialize, Sandford reinterpreted the date, which, however, did not prevent some followers from abandoning him. A long prison sentence, which he had to serve due to the lack of supplies and deaths within his ship's crews, increasingly reduced the number of his followers, who joined the Pentecostal movement in large parts. From 1917 onwards, increasingly gripped by a religious madness , Sandford equated himself with God. He died on March 4, 1948. His death went relatively unnoticed, but his doctrine of the second coming of the prophet Elijah continues to this day.

literature

James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, 1890-1906 , Pickwick Publications, Eugene, Oregon 2013

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roy Weremchuk, THUS Saith the Lord? , Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2019, p. 522 f.
  2. ↑ The Eau Clair Leader , Eau Clair, Wisconsin, Aug. 21, 1909, p. 2
  3. ↑ Roy Weremchuk 2019, p. 534 f.
personal data
SURNAME Sandford, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sandford, Frank Weston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American preacher and prophet
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Bowdoinham, Maine
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1948
Place of death Hobart, New York