Full Gospel Church Of God:manse, Pretoria

In the year 1860, as a direct result of a call to prayer that was published in the Kerkbode of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, the Holy Spirit was poured out in the Dutch Reformed Church in Worcester in the Cape, and later in other congregations as well.

This "revival" was echoed in the Zoutpansberg in Northern Tvl. in the late 1870's and spread to all sections of the population in that area. It appears that the D.R.C. could not comprehend or adapt to some of the manifestations of that revival and we hear very little of it again. Nevertheless, there were families that received salvation at that time and a generation later, at the end of 1890 and early in the 1900's we find born again believers who were experiencing the baptism with the Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues.

In the year 1909 George Bowie came to South Africa as a missionary sent from the Bethal Pentecostal Assembly, under the leadership of Minnie Draper, Newark in New Jersey, U.S.A It was in the month of April 1910 that the Pentecostal Mission was started, and this Pentecostal Mission was to become The Full Gospel Church of God in Southern Africa, a bilingual Church.
The initial vision of George Bowie was to Evangelise the indigenous inhabitants of South Africa. This vision never faded and the Church extended the preaching of the gospel to many areas in South and Southern Africa, as far as the Belgian Congo. As early as 24 June 1915, W.F.R. Burton and James Slater were certificated by the Executive Council and opened the Congo to the Gospel. The whole of South Africa, Mozambique, South West Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and the then Rhodesia and further north to the Equator, heard the Gospel through many under the banner of the Full Gospel Church.