Hannah Whitall Smith Correspondence: Anna Spafford

Anne Tobine Larsdatter Øglende (Spafford) (Mar. 16, 1842-Apr. 18, 1923) was born in Stavanger, Norway. Her carpenter father and Anne immigrated to Chicago in 1846, living the poor life of many immigrant families. On September 5, 1861 the young Norwegian immigrant, now called Anna, married Horatio Gates Spafford, a young Chicago lawyer and devout Evangelical. He was a close friend of Dwight Moody before Moody rose to fame as an evangelist. The young couple rose in wealth and popularity, and soon had a family of four daughters. Their house survived the infamous Chicago fire in 1871, but this disaster began to unravel some of Horatio’s dubious financial speculations. Anna and her daughters were sent to France in November of 1873 aboard the luxury vessel, the S.S. Ville de Havre. In the worst disaster of its day, the Ville de Havre sunk in icy water losing 232 lives including all four of the Spafford’s daughters, the youngest being pulled from her mother’s arms by the waves. Anna was found unconscious floating on a piece of wreckage the next day. Her telegram to her husband read simply, “Saved alone.”

This event radically changed the couple’s life. Anna had not been strongly religious, but even Dwight Moody coming to her side in England after the rescue could not give her the answers she sought. Horatio took a boat to Europe and somewhere near where his four daughters drowned, he composed the famous hymn, “It is well with my soul.” While this hymn became a mainstay in many Evangelical hymnbooks, Horatio was undergoing his own religious trial. He began to develop theological ideas outside the norm of Evangelicalism, including the belief that all would be ultimately saved, including Satan, and none would go to hell. Anna and Horatio became very interested in premillennialism and determined that Christ was to return very shortly in Jerusalem. They began to build a small community known as the Overcomers in Chicago, led by Horatio and his sister, Maggie Lee, who had experienced a form of sanctification in a Methodist Camp meeting, and determined that she was a prophetess. Hannah Whitall Smith visited the group when they were in Chicago, out of a genuine interest in their experience. They later visited her in Pennsylvania and tried to convince her to join them. She wrote about them in her notes on Religious Fanaticism, and chose not to join them, but she retained a keen interest in the Spaffordites.

Led by the prophecies of Mrs. Lee, the teachings of Horatio, and rapidly unraveling financial situations in Chicago, a group of 16 of the Overcomers left Chicago and arrived in Jerusalem in 1881. They believed the Second Coming was imminent, so they did work, lived on borrowed money, and held that they were the remnant of the true believers who would greet Christ on His return. They won the hearts of many Jews and Muslims because they did not try to convert them, but freely and equally shared what they had to help the poor and the sick. By 1888, Horatio died. Negative publicity in the U.S., huge financial indebtedness, along with the enmity of the U.S. Consul in Jerusalem resulted in a huge crisis. The Overcomers buried their dead in a small American cemetery, but with not headstones, since the dead were soon to be raised anyway. Anna now took control of the Overcomers, who were also known as “The American Colony.” Under her guidance, the community began to work, operated as a commune, for a long period of time with chastity as the rule and all marriages disbanded. A large influx of new believers came from Sweden. The American Colony sold items to tourists, used their community as a hotel, and still worked hard in caring for the poor and the sick, winning the friendship of Jews and Muslims alike. Under Anna’s guidance the community thrived and became a vibrant part of the Jerusalem of its day. They stayed through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, World War I, and through plagues and sectarian violence, waiting for the return of Christ.

The American Colony only survived a few years after the death of Anna Spafford, but the descendants of the original community still own the five-star American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem and the Spafford Children’s Center still provides care for both Jewish and Muslim children equally.

Jerusalem
Jan. 17, 1900
(Note: Hannah writes, “This letter is in reply to one I wrote asking about them. I confess I cannot make much out of it.”)

Dear Mrs. Smith;

At the time your letter arrived I was so occupied that I felt I could not reply to it as I wished, so sent you a Postal Card and a few photographs which I hope you received.

I remember very well the time you allude to when several of our company stopped at your house, and also the kind and hospitable spirit in which you received them.

You say “At that time Mrs. Lee seemed to be the leader of the overcomers, but I have since heard that you have taken her place.”

I hardly know where to begin to tell you of the wonderful dealings of God with us. God called us, as I believe He did and has done with many others, to live a holy life, impressing us with the fact that He was a just and real God, and His word just as real as Himself. We were a very blind and stupid people- like children in a kinder garden and He had to take us thro’ many manifestations and object lessons to penetrate us with the reality of His word, so intoxicated were we with the wine of unfaithful worship that, now, as we look back upon the beginning of this call of God to us, we can see how deeply we were in the letter of things without understanding the Spirit of the Father nor His Son, and thinking that God would be satisfied with His Son’s obedience instead of ours, thus releasing us from all fellowship except as by proxy.

God at that time took several of us to represent principles, the principles of the Spirit which must be born out of unity: this was a world perfectly new to us and all we could do was to give God an honest desire and a pure motive for righteousness leaving ourselves as clay in His hands. Thro’ this stage of blind faith and darkness we emerged into light and an understanding of God’s will for man, and the Spirit of His Son which must pervade us, in order that we might have fellowship in the unity existing between the Father and the Son. It was made clear to us that we must have fellowship with the truth in order to realize the deep enmity against it, and thro’ this to understand the deep depravity of the human heart; this we found leveled everything and forever dispelled the assumption of leadership and gave us to understand to the full, the meaning of it’s oft-repeated expression that He was “Son of Man.”

Standing in this place one experiences the different principles of evil in man, which Satan uses to overthrow one, as represented by Judas who would make merchandise of God’s word, and Peter who was ashamed to be connected with the truth, and Thomas, who while he believed that It was from God, disbelieved the power of God to raise the truth after man had so effectually, as he thought, destroyed it, and the Spirit of the Jews who would not give up place or nation to the truth, and of the cruel persecution which followed the Saints after It. Who of us could endure to meet all this? Who could endure to hold to that Holy Spirit of God that convicted of sin and of judgment and of righteousness, until Satan had exhausted all his power upon them? Who of us could endure to be misunderstood and to be called spiritualists and devils and have every device of Satan hurled against them, and many thinking they were doing God’s service to denounce us, until we appeared like the filth of all the earth? Who of us could believe that thro’ all this the truth would rise again? Who of us could endure this to an end until one came into fellowship with the Spirit of It when He said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”? Thus proving that the enmity that came in with the fall was nailed to the cross! This has been the career of this work and we who remain at this day have experienced these things.

You say “I remember at that time the overcomers expected It to come for His Bride very shortly; is that belief still held and, if so, how do you account for the delay?” We do still hold that belief and that when there is a Bride, which is unity, It will come, to us there has been no delay, any more than there was to It who could not go to the Father until He had finished the work which the Father had given Him to do. Abraham could not have explained to his fellowmen the reason why God had called him to be a great nation, he could only say God has promised me a son and he saw no reason why Ishmael could not be taken and God begin at once to make him a great nation, but the point was not the great nation but the faith and patience which would make him an heir, according to God’s order, to the promise, after which he could explain all, having come to understand God’s plan by enduring to go thro’ God’s word.

You say that Mrs. Lee when you met her “was writing a new Bible, under, as she believed divine inspiration.” This was never so. What I have written to you now, and what we have experienced was what God opened to Mrs. Lee at that time. It truly was to us a new commandment, and yet it was the old. I never heard Mrs. Lee call it a new Bible.

God revealed to Mrs. Lee that unless like the kernel of wheat, we fell into the ground and died we remained alone. You may say we all know that. So did we, but when we came to live it and have fellowship with It in it, we tasted of the enmity against the truth, which in no other way could we know, as before stated.

God also revealed to Mrs. Lee how in meeting God in His Word, His righteous requirement would be made manifest and all the world would be brought to Him.

God showed Mrs. Lee at that time that man had rejected the overcoming of chief cornerstone, which must be made the head of the corner.

Mrs. Lee died about 8 years ago. When Mrs. Lee saw what the truth that God was giving her cost, she trembled, but her faith that it was God’s work, was never shaken. She realized that it cost all that we had and feared that few of us would endure to meet it: but those of us who remain, counted the cost from the beginning, and with joy have met the trials of discipline which God sent to perfect us. The U.S. Consul here and our friends united their forces to starve and scatter us, with such relentless persistent that they did not hesitate even to mutilate the remains of our dead. We number today 150 souls.

The Mahometans and Jews respect us and wonder at the power which enables us to live in harmony and peace.

Mrs. Gould, who with Mrs. Lee stayed with you at Germantown, wishes to be remembered to you.

The picture I sent you showing part of the city wall and a section of the houses in Jerusalem shows as the highest house within the walls, one of the houses we occupy.

It is difficult for me to go into details respecting this work, for I could fill volumes. I have tried to give you the principles- if there is any question you wish to ask we will be glad to answer it.

We all send you the salutations of the New Year.

Very sincerely, your friend

Anna Spafford