Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 377

Unsold
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(RELIGION.) E.D. Smith. Triumph: The Church of the Coming Kingdom of Christ, What We Believe and Teach. Portrait on page 3. 61 pages. Octavo, 8¼ x 5½ inches, original printed wrappers, worn and detached; dampstaining and wear to contents, some early inscriptions. Indianapolis, IN, [1919?]
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Additional Details

Elias Dempsey Smith (1865-1920) founded this church in 1904. Pages 5 to 11 of this pamphlet describe Elder Smith's spiritual journey from 1897 onward, from serving as an A.M.E. pastor in Arkansas, to a series of visions and direct conversations with God, to a series of healing miracles which Smith performed in Louisiana and Mississippi in 1900, to his establishment as the head of a new church from 1911 to 1913, ending with a call for a conference in Indianapolis on the 20th of July. A photograph at the Library of Congress shows that this event was held on 20 July 1919.

The pamphlet ends with "God's Message in the Earth to Ethiopia": "Hear the voice of God, all ye darker people of the world, Ham's descendants. . . . He is calling for 16,000 leaders of you to come to Indianapolis on the twentieth to the great International Religious Congress. We will be there fifty days and nights--all day and all night--waiting before Him, and He will be present to make known His doings. . . . He gave the Jews two thousand four and the Gentiles one thousand nine hundred to work His problem, and ours begins 1921 lasting three thousand years."

The church remains active today as Triumph, The Church of the New Age in several locations in the United States and Nigeria, acknowledging E.D. Smith as their founder. This pamphlet appears to be the first edition of Elder Smith's writings. None others traced in OCLC or at auction.