The Holiness People

Transcribed and edited from audio – May 5, 2015

Hello, I’m Doyle Davidson, servant and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, ministering locally to the Body of Christ in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and sent by God to your house. I’m doing this audio from my house in Plano, Texas. Good evening.

I want to share some things with the Body of Christ that I’ve observed during my eighty-three years in religion. I was born and raised in John Wesley Methodism. The Davidsons were Northern Methodists and they weren’t even saved. And sometime in 1900s my Aunt Neva Dodson, who was Luther Albert Davidson’s oldest daughter, went to a revival meeting and was saved. This I’ve heard her share and my Dad told me several times. I knew Aunt Neva well, I loved her, she was a beautiful woman and she commanded great respect when she spoke. Her very presence brought attention to her; that was not the best thing for her. That was a spirit with her that someone should have cast the devil out of. She ended up in a wheelchair for about the last twenty-five years of her life. I believe she went to heaven at age seventy-nine, thereabout and her husband Claud Dodson, lived to be 100 years of age. I knew Uncle Claud well; I think both of them are buried in Dudman Cemetery west of Reeds, Missouri.

I did not know when I opened my mouth what I was going to speak, of what I was going to say and I’m still not sure. I am receiving much opposition.

The Holiness people, so called—the church was formed in the 1890s in southeast Kansas; most of them were Methodist Episcopal. Now they were for the most part, white. I do remember one or two or maybe three, black people, but they were mostly white. Most of them were wealthy farmers or ranchers in southeast Kansas, except Luther Albert Davidson, my grandfather. We lived in Jasper County which bordered Kansas and Oklahoma. Luther Davidson was the son of James Madison Davidson, a very wealthy, respected land owner, cattle breeder and had 100 acres of strawberries on his 240 acres. James Madison was the President of [The Sarcoxie Gandy Fruit Growers Association*] in Jasper County.

I was born in a house on a forty-acre farm, that joined James Madison Davidson’s 240 acres on the northwest. That house is still standing and I think there might be a picture on my website. Amen. I was born in 1932 but I want to back up a bit. My father and mother were married in 1928. And they came out of a very prosperous century, pardon me, decade, seemed like a century, and in 1929 my oldest sister Dorothy Eileen Davidson was born and April 1, 1932, Doyle Eugene Davidson, the one speaking, was born. By that time there was the beginning of the great depression. It increased during the next ten years.

In 1924, Redwood Church was built by my grandfather, Luther Albert Davidson and his four sons and his three son-in-laws. I knew him well. He died August 2, 1946 and I was fourteen years old. He was a man I loved much and he seemed to love me much. He was a man of faith, a very successful highway road builder. You can find where he received *steel bridges on rail in Sarcoxie, I think in 1911 and they assigned them to him because he was building through bridges. That’s the kind of man that Luke was. He was my size, my build—only more bone and more muscle and a lot stronger. A man of love, a man I greatly loved and admired because of his courage and integrity.

He built Redwood Church himself, along with help, but he was the one that led it, the second church, I’m not sure if at that time the organization was called The Fire Baptized Holiness Association, but sometime they took that name. And they were the most, not all—some, were the most self-righteous people bunch of people I ever met in my life—sanctimonious, more spiritual than everyone. Luke, my grandfather was not that way, not that way, at all. His wife was much that way. My grandmother, Georgia Anna, I loved her; she barely recognized me as a grandson. Oh she’d say “Hi, hello,” just to be nice, because self-righteous people are nice, but they’ll stab you in the back. So I was the least loved, or liked of the Davidson grandchildren by her, but not by Granddad. My oldest sister, born in 1929, my grandmother loved her with her flesh. My grandmother loved my sister with her flesh and she took my sister Dorothy over, and made my sister just as self-righteous as she was. I really don’t think my sister needed any help.

We’re not talking about an illiterate sister, one without intelligence, because she was. She has a son today, Galen Mitchell, M.D., neurologist, Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh staff, plus he has his own private practice. You can read about Galen on the website of University of Pittsburgh. He is an outstanding physician and he’s Dorothy’s son and I knew him –I saw him a few days after he was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in April 1952. I love him. My sister who is now in heaven was influenced, needed no influence, but was born a very self-righteous woman. And she thought her brother, number two in the family, was a nobody. She thought that I was a black sheep. She thought, said it, if I didn’t get saved, I would become an alcoholic. I don’t now she ever figured that one out. She could have thought if I didn’t get saved I would go to hell. Well that’s where non-saved go, right? But this group formed in the 1890s and the Davidsons joined them in the twenties, I think my Aunt Neva joined them in 1919.

Aunt Neva became a pastor. She was a very influential woman, she became a pastor and she exercised authority over men. Women pastors, you need to repent and get out, and get out now. God didn’t put you there, I don’t care who you are. Co-pastors, women with a man—no. Get out now. Do yourself a favor, repent now, because my Aunt Neva spent twenty-five years in a wheelchair. I talked to her in 1956, after I came home from the Navy. I went to visit her in Independence, Kansas, and Uncle Claud. Look up her history, (Currier will post this for you). My heart is grieved about the self-righteousness of some of my family, grieved. Amen, thank God.

These people got so self-righteous that some in the thirties, I can remember, so it had to be in the thirties or forties during the war; their dress became so essential to them that they could not allow one drop of a woman’s flesh be exposed, anywhere, publicly, I suppose. They must have been exposed at home with their husband because they had children. Amen.

I remember my mother, thank God for Alba Sarah. She said, “This is nonsense, this is nonsense.” They all would dress in thick clothing where no flesh would be exposed. I recalled from my mother, oh how I loved my mother, how I respect my mother; and she said, “I will not cease to wear nylons, stockings, fleshly colored, I will not.” Oh, my oldest sister she was so self-righteous she followed after them. But my mother said, “No way will you cause me to be this way, I will dress the way I think is appropriate.” And my mother happened to be one that said to the Lord when she was young, “You give me a son and I will give him back to you.” And I’m the son. I’m eighty-three and very much alive and well and I thank God for Mother.

I thank God for the faith of some of the Holiness people: Granddad, Dad, Elliott Hodge; I don’t know about others, but I know about those three.

And I am so grateful to talk to Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and California, wherever, Pennsylvania, wherever you people existed. My friends, oh, especially Springfield, Missouri, I know you people. Joplin, Missouri, I know you people. Your righteousness, is self, not of God. not of God. I grew up with you, I know you. You’re holier than thou, sanctimonious people. Oh you aspire to be more righteous than even God.

Well, I think for this moment, this audio is finished. I love you, everyone of you, you self-righteous people and by the way, you atheists, who are real self-righteous, who thinks there’s no God. Now consider that folks, that think you’re greater than anyone else spiritually, but atheists don’t even need a God, so they say.

I love you, God bless you. I’m closing this for now.

This is Doyle Davidson speaking from his office in Plano, Texas.

God bless, good day.

Note: In the book Doyle purchased, "The History of the Bible Holiness Church" by Cecelia Luelf Douglas and Ruth Smith Taylor, there is photo of Luther Albert Davidson and his family on page 256. We do not have permission to include the photo. -Kathy Currier

You can listen to the audio by clicking on this link:
http://www.dedavidson2.com/_media/doyle_audio/05-04-15_The_Holiness_People.mp3

The Faith of Doyle's Parents - Transcribed Broadcast

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