George D. Watson

This faithful preacher by word and pen was indeed an Apostle to the Sanctified.  How many Christians will call him blessed in the Great Beyond because he answered their most poignant questions at critical points in their experience!  He is one of the few who instructs the man or woman who, trusting God for purity and victory, sees much in character that requires attention if God’s greatest glory is to be achieved.  He was convinced that many have dealt with the subject of Christian holiness from man’s side—how to obtain it, what to expect from it, etc.—but scarcely any have shown God’s side.  Few have begun to grasp our Father’s boundless provision, His great desire, His patient pursuit, and His faithful application of providence that we might mature and be pleasing in His sight.

George D. Watson was born in Virginia in 1845.  His parents and grandparents were Methodists.  This, in those days, was a precious heritage.  Family prayer, Sunday School, and many other godly influences were thrown around him.  Frequently a series of special services would be held in his district, but George declared that he was the black sheep of the flock—passionate and self-willed, the worst boy of the whole six in his family.  Of the first operations of God on his heart, he tells us:

My earliest convictions were when I was five or six years old.  One night, father and mother went to church and left us children alone, the eldest being twelve or thirteen years of age.  We sang “Rock of Ages,” and all got under conviction.  I prayed and cried, but did not know what ailed me.  At that early age I was called to preach.  When I was twelve or thirteen, I sought religion.  But my will was not thoroughly broken down.

When the American Civil War broke out, George, at the age of eighteen, joined the Confederate (Southern) Army.  It was while in service that the great turning point of his life took place.  One night during a card game, suddenly, to the surprise of all, he threw down his pack and exclaimed as if alarmed by his own thoughts, “Boys, this is my last game.”  He made his way to a Gospel meeting that was being held for the soldiers and ended up kneeling beside a pine log, calling on God to forgive his sins for Christ’s sake.  He arose transformed.

George Watson soon had ample opportunity to test the reality of the change that had come to him.  His holding of prayer-meetings and his wholehearted service for his new Master excited the enmity of godless mates, some of whom actually knocked the Bible out of his hand.  The realization dawned that, happy though he was with his new-found joy, there was something inside that was capable of being ruffled by such treatment.  Oh, if there had only been some mature Christian available! Such a one, knowing the secret of full redemption, could have shown him the provisions of Calvary to deal with that fallen nature which arose to cause trouble in spite of all his efforts and tears.  How much suffering and waste of time he would have been saved!

Though in poor health after the war, he felt called to preach the Gospel and, after a course at a Biblical Institute at Concord, New Hampshire, he joined the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Church in 1868.  All the time he was seeking for inward heart victory.

The young minister attended a Camp Meeting at Oakington in 1869, and there heard his first sermon on entire sanctification which must have deeply affected him, for he knelt and sought the experience publicly.  He was much influenced by the godly Alfred Cookman, then a member of the same conference.  Such an inward peace was his that he called it “perfect love” and went home to testify to having received the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Ridicule came from the very man who should have been the chief exponent of that wonderful provision for sinful nature.  This presiding elder was joined by others in his opposition of George  who yielded to the pressure and became slack and even cowardly in witnessing to this inner victory.  Though never preaching against the doctrine, he utterly failed to defend it.  Great personal loss was the result!  We are told that he “descended from a restful Christianity to a toilsome Christianity” and lapsed into his old tobacco habit.

Occasionally, the young preacher would enjoy seasons of communion with God.  Preaching was a delight; he seemed to enjoy the excitement of special campaigns and his zeal for his church was unflagging.  Studying was a pleasure and he often felt thrilled with “the harmony and grandeur of Bible truth.”  Philosophy had its attraction also, and these years were a mixture of a reaching out for more of God on the one hand, and an indulgence in the intellectual handling of Scriptural truths on the other.  His labors appeared at times to be not without a measure of success.  But what was that when a deep hunger still gnawed at his heart?

I was having a terrible struggle with myself.  I felt my whole life to be one unending will-struggle.  I suffered more than tongue can tell from melancholy.  An unkind or unfavorable criticism, or an apparent neglect, would often hurl my spirit into deepest gloom.  I grew tired of living in the public eye, tired of routine work, but most tired of myself.  My wife was sick, and I could not bear sickness.  I had a great deal of trouble that others did not see was trouble, and yet it sorely tried me.
In October, 1876, I began to seek holiness again.  I was now filled with all sorts of notions.  I said, “I will grow into it.”  Then I took up the repression theory, then the Zinzendorf theory.  I was like a sailor, first setting his sails one way, then another.
One cannot always tell by the way a man talks, what he thinks.  Three weeks before I was sanctified, I said in a preachers’ meeting, “When God converts a soul, He makes it as pure as it ever will be.”  And at the same time I was seeking holiness!

A local preacher encouraged him to have some evangelists from Cincinnati come for a three-day conference on the Sanctified Life.  Dr. Watson responded willingly and was greatly moved the first night.  But the next day he got angry several times in the home.  Doubtless the Holy Spirit was lovingly allowing him to see his very great need.  His wife added fuel to the flame of desire, by saying she was ashamed of him, remarking, “I am afraid you have not a bit of religion, and you preaching as you do.”  He was deeply ashamed, and alternated between self-defense and crying to the Lord for help.  He can best relate his experience at this time:

But that Friday night I was teachable as I lay on the edge of the bed, with my hand under my cheek and my face toward the door, so as not to disturb anyone.
Then the Lord began to talk to me.  “Will you receive it?”  “Yes, Lord.”  “Will you consent for Me to make your family sick, your wife sick?”  “Yes, Lord; give me the blessing.”  “Will you let Me take your health in My hand?”  “Yes, Lord.  Any time You want me to die, I will consent to go.”  “Will you consent to leave those large appointments you have been having?  Will you consent to take a poor appointment for Me?”  “Yes, Lord, I will take the poorest appointment in Indiana if it is Thy will.” (And there were some poor ones.)
“Will you give up your tobacco that your body may be My temple?”  I had tried several times to give it up but would go back to it again.  I said, “Yes, Lord, I will give it up.  I will do anything.  Give me the blessing.”  When I got through, I dropped to sleep.  I do not know how it was but, when I awoke next morning, I found the appetite for tobacco was gone.  I never have taken back the consecration.
The following Monday, December 4, at noon, I went into my study and began reading the Scriptures with the first chapter of First Peter:  “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. . . . Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit.”  I stopped.  “There,” said I, “that is sanctification.”  “Whom having not seen, ye love.”  “I do love Thee, and I know Thou lovest me.”  “In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”  As I uttered these words, God let loose a Niagara of salvation in my soul.  I walked back and forth shouting, “Glory to God!”  After a time that subsided into a calm.

Dr. Watson never looked back.  But he was a very honest man, and God persistently and lovingly, as he says in one of his books, was using every means to conform him more and more to the image of Jesus Christ.  Now, inwardly satisfied that the inner foe was dealt with by the Cross, he went all out to see others come into the same blessed experience of full salvation.
The task was far from easy for the church of his next appointment was ultra-worldly.  The Lord did save a few, and other Christians experienced a deeper fellowship with Christ, but they were in the minority.  In his exasperation this dear learner at Jesus’ feet, would get rash and speak harshly at times.  He saw so much need that he was much more inclined to strike blows than to encourage.  Reading how he finally became known as such a mellow, self-effacing man, one marvels at the raw material he at first presented to the Divine Designer.

Sometimes I acted wrongly with my wife.  I tried to hurry her along and have her get the experience as I did.  It was not her nature, and it could not be expected she would get it as I did.  Sometimes, perhaps, I would say things to urge her along too fast.  Then I would see I had done wrong and ask her pardon.  Then I would go to the Lord and say, “Put me in the fountain.”
I went to another place and began urging men too fast.  An old man came to me and put his arms around me and said, “You are preaching holiness in the wrong way.” About that time I had a sort of vision.  I thought I saw a large flock of sheep.  I was walking around among the sheep with a club trying to keep them right.  I saw I was wrong.
Then I was in a hurry.  I wanted to be as perfect as Paul in all things, right away.  The Lord has since melted me down and softened my heart.  I love all God’s people.  The devil has tried, on one side, to make me too tame.  I had been too radical and, when I began to be too conservative, the Lord brought me back.  I was like a pendulum—first swinging too far this way, and then the Lord would bring me back.
And now, after suffering many defeats, learning many lessons in this Canaan of perfect love, I praise God for the trials of my faith and for His marvelous keeping power.  I have learned that I must be an uncompromising, unwavering witness to the cleansing power of Christ; that I must not make an idol of holiness or holy people; that I must not lean upon my emotions, but must walk by faith, and sometimes in seasons of darkness; that Satan tempts and tries me more directly and boldly than ever before; that I must often be dead to things and plans that are in themselves innocent; must sow and reap, or sow and let others reap.
A sense of utter nothingness is growing upon me, together with an increasing sense of the merit of Jesus.

During subsequent years, George Watson burned with a passion to show God’s children the nature and possibility of full salvation or scriptural holiness.  Leaving his pastorate to become an evangelist, he was able to reach the largest number of Christians possible with the message.  He avoided the danger into which many fall, of glorifying the crisis experience alone, real though it was to him.  He also recognized other perils incident to the higher life, such as a temptation to spiritual pride, censoriousness, self-righteousness, smugness which nestles in the pleasing sentiment of “having attained,” exclusiveness, religious legality, and a resting in an experience rather than in the great Giver.

He was a teacher of the sanctified, and very searching and to the point are his books and articles as may be seen by several of his chapter headings in his book, Soul Food, entitled:  “Lukewarmness,” “Fretting over Ourselves,” “Loquacity,” and “Praying for an Enemy.”

His various books are inspiring, honest, and exhaustive in exploring the possibilities, problems, prospects, and perils of the crucified and Spirit-filled life.  Any seeker after God’s best can profit much by reading and digesting as many as possible of his works such as: Love Abounding, Soul Food, A Pot of Oil, God’s Eagles, Our Own God, White Robes and Spiritual Feasts, Pure Gold, Bridehood Saints, and Heavenly Life.

It is no mystery why George Watson, in his writings, brings us into so many of God’s secrets.  To him, communion was the most natural as well as one of the most prized of his possessions through Christ.  He taught that “God is our nearest relative.”  Our Heavenly Father can therefore understand us better than a husband can comprehend the deepest secrets of his life-partner.  Conversely, given right relationships and conditions, we are capable of knowing God better than we can understand the closest of human beings.  More than most modern Christians, this teacher seems to have approached the status of an Abraham or a Moses in being favored with the revelation of divine secrets.

In one of his books, Dr. Watson gives a most moving description of how God knows and loves us as individuals.  He reminds us that He Who knows the number of the hairs of our head and Whose “eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth,” can describe us so minutely that his angel messengers can identify any one of us by how we weep or smile, or by any one of a number of personally identifying marks.

A constant traveler, Mr. Watson says that he became so accustomed to the motion of trains that he could tell when brakes were being applied, or more steam was being generated for a special pull.  He could know by his system of balance, when they were rounding a curve.  He pictures an intimacy with God’s leadings, promptings, and providences as the “Divine Pull.”  He writes:

This sensitiveness to the motion of a train should be realized in the spiritual life.  If we keep in a very humble and crucified state of mind, and in unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit, the interior sensibilities of the soul will be just as keen as those of the body.  We can detect the least slackening of speed, or the least veering to the right or left, and, blessed be God, we can be conscious when the heavenly Engineer turns on more spiritual pressure.
It will often happen in secret prayer, when all the faculties of the soul are open to the sway of the Spirit, that we can feel a divine pull upon our hearts, a sudden yearning of the soul after God stronger than hitherto; a deep, sweet passion for Christ takes hold upon the fountains of desire; a longing, an intense craving to be just like Jesus, pervades the whole mind. . . .
When the Spirit gives us such gentle pulls to Himself, we should open the throttle-valve of the heart to its uttermost; let the tears flow; let hours, if need be, glide away unheeded, even if it is midnight; let the Divine nature open its great, sweet splendors to our mind; let us push our way at such times into the very bosom of Jesus; let us take the hint of His drawing, and make deep and passionate love with Him.  At such times, let us spread before Him all our unselfish longing for the salvation of souls, special petitions for relatives and friends and foes, for great revivals, for mission-fields.  Many a season of prayer is without fruit because the “Amen” is said just about the time the blessed Spirit is getting His fingers on the heart-strings for a heavenly pull.1

It is fascinating to read of the divine coordination and timing that was the frequent experience of this man who seemed to press so deeply into the knowledge of God.  During one season of special trouble and concern, Mr. Watson would often be awakened at about 3.00 a.m. and pray out his need.  Imagine how it must have strengthened his faith to receive a letter from a woman across the sea, in Nottingham, England, telling of a great burden placed upon her heart and an enabling to pray mightily for him, the very same petition that he was making on his own behalf.  To add to this, a very dear minister who walked very closely with God, visited him and told how he had been awakened at 3.00 a.m. to pray for him.  Following this, a letter from a devoted couple in Canada arrived saying “that they had been strangely awakened several times at 3.00 a.m. to pray for him.”

All this drew forth this observation: “I saw, in a stronger light than ever before, that the Holy Spirit, as an infinite personality, enveloped the human race as a tender, watchful ocean of love; I saw an extraordinary proof of His compassion and interest in me, an infallible proof that He would answer the prayers which He had so marvelously prompted.”

At another time when many things were pressing sorely upon his heart, he prayed that the Lord would lay this prayer burden on some other souls.  Four days later he received three letters on the same post, from three different parts of the country.  Each writer said that on a certain day, the day of Dr. Watson’s agonizing prayer, that he or she had been strangely burdened in prayer for him!

At still another time, he was in financial straits resulting from the complete failure of the orange groves in Florida, due to frost.  He had vital interests in these crops.  Pressing obligations had to be met by a certain date in November.  During the last week in October, he received a letter from a poor but sanctified widow fifteen hundred miles away, who had never seen him, stating that she had been powerfully impressed to spend a whole day in prayer for the supply of Mr. Watson’s temporal needs.

And one day as he was praying, a voice said, “Money is nothing to Me; it is only My wrapping paper, and is inexhaustible; just give Me continually your warmest love and perfect obedience, and I will attend to your finances.”  He knew that moment that his prayer had been heard.  That very day before the money must be to hand, he received a letter from a dedicated business man several thousand miles away, saying that a strange impulse had come to him to send a check for more than two hundred dollars.  This sum was ample to pay off the debt after a tithe for the Lord had been subtracted.

We desire to include a quotation from Dr. Watson’s works, revealing God’s ultimate purpose for each individual life.

Before God can launch us out into the breadth and sweetness of His service, and entrust to us great things for Himself, we must be perfectly subdued in every part of our nature to His will and disposition of His mind.  We must be subdued in our hearts, in our wills, in our words, in our tempers, in our manners; subdued through and through so thoroughly that we will be flexible to all His purposes and plans.  We must be subdued that harshness, severity, criticism, sluggishness, laziness, impetuosity, and all wanting our way, even in religious matters, must be subdued out of us.
Conversion will not finish this work, and perhaps, in not one case out of a thousand will the second work of grace produce this complete condition of teachable subjugation to God’s will.  Being able to preach strong sermons on sanctification will not do it, or having charge of camp-meetings, or conventions, or Bible Schools, or the writing of books and editing of papers on Christian holiness will not prove adequate for this.

We must be subdued, not merely in our own opinion, not merely think ourselves subdued, not only subdued in the esteem of our friends and fellow-workers, but subdued so perfectly that the all-seeing eye of God can look us through, and the Omniscient One know that we are subdued; God must conquer the man that He can trust with His great thoughts and plans.
The Holy Ghost must saturate us with a divine conquest before He can use us to conquer other souls.  The Lord will begin to subdue us with gentle means, and if we sink lovingly and promptly into His mind, the work will be done; but if we have flint or iron in our nature and it is necessary, He will use heroic means and put us between the millstones and grind us to powder until He can mould us without any resistance to His purpose.  The greatest difficulty in the way of God using His servants, even His zealous and oftentimes sanctified servants, is that they are not perfectly, universally, and constantly subdued under the power of God.
We must be subdued as to stop meddling with other people’s matters that God has not entrusted us with, so subdued as not to be calling God’s servants hard names, and thrusting at Christians who are doing what they can in various fields for the Master; so subdued that we can hold our tongues, and walk softly with God, keep our eyes upon Jesus, attend to our own work, and do God’s will promptly and lovingly, glad to have a place in His kingdom and to do a little service for Him.
Oh!  It is grand to be absolutely conquered by the Holy Ghost, and swing out a thousand miles from everybody and everything into the ocean of God’s presence, and work with Him in humility, without stumbling over others, without religious peevishness, and bend with every plan God gives us.
When we are subdued in the sight of God, He will work miracles in us and power in experience, in healing, in finance, in service, in gentleness and in sweetness of the inner heart life— miracles of grace that will astonish us and surprise our friends and utterly amaze our enemies when they come to know the magnitude of what God has wrought.  Let us get subdued in every way, in everything; so subdued that we can keep still in God and see Him work out the great, bright thoughts of His eternal mind in our lives.

This devoted servant and friend of Christ was spared to labor all over the States and also to make occasional trips abroad in the interest of vital Scriptural Holiness.  He ministered in Britain several times and also visited the Far East.  Though frail in body during his last years, the inner spirit was unquenchable.  In 1923, he passed to be forever in the presence of Him, Whom he had sought so constantly to know and to serve on earth.