How Bishop Charles Harrison Mason Got His Start

By Scott Bennett


This man is honored by many as a prominent religious figure in the Pentecostal Holiness denomination. His many achievements throughout his lifetime of working to preach the word of God have led to many great things that still have resonating effects today. The church Bishop Charles Harrison Mason founded in Lexington, Mississippi has grown to be the largest of its kind.

Mason's life had humble beginnings in a small area in Tennessee habitated by sharecroppers that had not been incorporated into a town. His father Jerry and his mother Eliza has both been slaves before getting their freedom and becoming sharecroppers. His early life did not include a regular education, but rather gleaned all the knowledge he could from his parents' religion.

The first time anyone joins a church is a very special experience, and it can change a person's life. It can be all the more special when the person carrying out the baptism is a relative or someone special in the person's life, and so it was a very special ceremony when Mason's half-brother baptized him. This was in 1879 at a Baptist church, and he was twelve.

There was an outbreak of both tuberculosis and the yellow fever that occurred in the area of Shelby Country, where the family went to church, around the year 1880. Acquiring tuberculosis, there was not much the family could do since white doctors wouldn't treat African Americans. Unfortunately, Jerry got sick and passed away.

After the death of his father, this family had no choice but to move. They went to Arkansas to a small town called Preston, and it was a difficult transition since Mason's health had still not returned to him from his bout of tuberculosis. When he was at his very worst, his family desperately prayed for him to get better, and he was healed miraculously.

It may seem like this many has wanted to be a minister since the day he was born, but that would not be quite true. There was a time in his youth when he felt that he would do better as just an ordinary member of the congregation in the church, and that's what he told his parents. However, when God heard the prayers of his family and healed him of tuberculosis, he took it as a sign that he should be a minister.

It was in 1893 that Mason's license to be a minister was acquired. He was 27, and it marked the first step of his career that would last the rest of his life. From there, his work took him to a Baptist church in Arkansas, which would be his first hands-on experience as a minister.

This is a man who is not afraid to speak his mind, and to take actions that reflect his point of view. It takes a lot of courage to decide to leave the first place a person goes to work, but that is what he did after just a few months working at his first Baptist church. By his view, the teachings that were going on at this church were too liberal, and the emphasis was not on God's Word.




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