Letwaba, Elias

This article looks at the life, calling, and ministry of Elias Letwaba (1870-1959). Starting with a detailed description of African Pentecostalism, it argues that the Christianity of Elias Letwaba was an African Pentecostalism. Elias Letwaba was raised in an Ndebele Christian home. He felt called by God to a life of evangelism at the age of fourteen. He was baptised in the Holy Spirit under the ministry of John G. Lake in 1908. Letwaba was one of the first black workers in the Apostolic Faith Mission in South Africa. He founded a “Black” Bible School named the Patmos Bible School that taught the fundamental principles of Pentecostalism. He walked hundreds of miles as an itinerant evangelist and had a powerful ministry of divine healing. Read his full biography-PDF file

This biography, received in 2019, is reprinted, with permission, from Scriptura 116 (2017:1), pp. 1-9. The author, Dr. Mookgo Solomon Kgatle, is a senior lecturer of missiology in the Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology, College of Human Sciences, University of South Africa.