Lewis Bourcey

I am thankful I am not in a drunkard’s grave. After years and years of ridiculing the people of God, He in His mercy found me a brokenhearted drunkard.

One night, after being on a drunk for about two weeks, I heard an old ex-drunkard on the street corner telling the story of his life. It sounded just like mine and I said, “That fellow knows what he is talking about.” I wanted to get out of that life, and had tried in my own strength, but everything failed. I said, “If God will save me I will give Him a trial.” But I didn’t think He would do it for me.

“If God will save me I will give Him a trial.”

My old past came up before me. I had put in time behind the prison bars—I had robbed a store. God let me go on for two weeks. I got to the place where I was on the verge of delirium tremens, but He still strove with my soul. One day I fell at my bedside and said, “O God, if You will save my soul, and take these habits off my life, I will do anything in the world.” It is so wonderful, so marvelous. He put joy and peace in my heart. He made a clean man and a new man of me. I went out of that room with a firm step, not looking for a brace. I had the brace in my soul that has lasted for these many years.

I love to tell the old story of Jesus’ love and power to save the whosoever will. I have been telling it in old San Francisco, California where God delivered my soul. The tears would drop down my face as I would walk those streets, and say, “O God, it was here that You found me when my life was wrecked.” I love Jesus because He is the sinner’s Friend. This Gospel is real.

Memories of Brother Bourcey, written by Edna Crawford

There was a humble brother in Portland, Oregon, in the very beginning of this Gospel whose name was Brother Bourcey as far as I know. I was only 12 years of age when he was preaching as I entered the tabernacle with my father, mother, and three brothers at the time.

He sought earnestly at the altar and fell under the power.

He was a cobbler and worked in the mission there in an old blacksmith shop. Many hungry souls in Portland were looking for Sister Florence L. Crawford to come and preach this Gospel. She stopped on her way to Salem, Oregon, where meetings were held in Rayan’s Gospel Tabernacle. Brother Bourcey came over from Portland and met her there. She said when she saw him that she felt he was “an Israelite indeed” in whom there was no guile.

It was near Christmas, a cold night. He sought earnestly at the altar and fell under the power. The cold wind blew through wide cracks in the floor, and the enemy tempted him that he was keeping the workers up too late. It was after midnight, but he held on to God. And suddenly there appeared a circular cloud of light which grew larger, and the faces of the prophets of old appeared—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all including John the Baptist.  Their faces encircled the light and each was pointing toward the center. He seemed to know each one of them, but He could not find the face of Jesus and he was weeping, when suddenly like a flash, the face of Jesus appeared in the center, and the fingers of the prophets pointing to the center seemed to make a halo of light about Him. Then the power fell on Brother Bourcey and he received the mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost and was also anointed to preach the Gospel. The workers went on to Portland, and a great revival and outpouring of the Spirit began, and has been going on for over thirty years.

. . .and a great revival and outpouring of the Spirit began. . .

Brother Bourcey was preaching at the Mount Tabor Camp Meeting, and some came to him who were married in adultery, and he counseled them and exhorted them to line up to the Word of God and separate. After they had left, he knelt in the straw in his tent and prayed that God would give them grace to take the way.

While he was praying, God spoke to him saying, “Had you not better find out whether your wife’s first husband is living?’ He was startled and answered, “Yes, Lord, but I believe he is dead.” He went to work and sold his furniture and home. Giving the money to his wife, he said for her to go and find out whether her first husband was living. He put her on the train and went to a rooming house that looked so bare and cheerless, got on his knees and told God he would never cease praying till the love for that woman was taken out of his heart. He said, “I have no right to love her if that man is living.”

God did take the love out of his heart, and he said afterward, “I could have told my wife right then, as she was on the train, that the man was still alive.” Many lined up on the adultery question and God has greatly blessed and used it in the salvation of souls. Brother Bourcey was wonderfully used of God in preaching the Gospel till God took him Home to Glory, and his deathbed was the most wonderful we ever saw.

He said, “Unworthy, unworthy to enter the Holiest of all.” He sang with those about his bed, “Close to Thee, close to Thee,” and when his voice failed, his lips still moved, as he tried to say the words, ‘Then the gates of Life Eternal may I enter, Lord with Thee.” It seemed to those about him that they went with him down to the riverside and he was gone.