It was the night before May 17, 1898. On board the naval vessel Thor, Johan Oscar Smith knelt down and entrusted his life to God. Smith experienced a radical Christian regeneration. He had grown up in a home characterized by active involvement in free church circles. He himself describes how, even from childhood, he was deeply influenced by God.
A desire for purity
After his conversion, Smith felt a strong urge to purify himself, which he believed was the work of the Spirit of God. He describes this himself in a personal letter:
“Two years after my conversion in 1900, on board the gunboat Sleipner, God’s Spirit came upon me. After that, the Scriptures became much easier to understand than before. But the strange thing was that none of the believers I knew understood me. I became lonely. But then I met different people here and another there on ships and in the naval shipyard. We would come together in the evenings and pray and read the Scriptures.”
Johan eventually began a very active correspondence with his younger brother Aksel. A few years later, Aksel experienced a similar conversion.
The Pentecostal Revival
In December 1906, an event occurred that quickly caused a huge stir and uproar in Norway’s capital, Kristiania. The young Methodist minister Thomas Ball Barratt had returned from the United States. But he had experienced something extraordinary—indeed, something shocking to many. Barratt spoke in tongues.
The inspiration stemmed from a community with origins in a small assembly in Los Angeles. But its roots were biblical. These Christians had revived a Christian tradition from the early church that had lain dormant for centuries. They spoke in tongues, that is, they spoke an unknown, unintelligible language under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Pentecostal revival had taken hold in Norway.
The Smith brothers quickly became part of the new movement. The Pentecostal movement conveyed the message that the power the disciples had received on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, shortly after Jesus’ death, was still available to people today. The same was true of the gifts of the Spirit that the disciples had received at that time.
This quickly grew into a major movement. The Pentecostal movement also quickly gained a foothold in Norway. Many people, especially those from poorer social backgrounds, took the message to heart. Over time, more groups began to form throughout Norway.
A deeper Christian life?
The enthusiasm was great, but Johan O. Smith quickly noticed a trend that gave him cause for concern. The movement attracted many people from a somewhat different background than is typical in Christian congregations. Many of them had rarely attended church and were not particularly well-versed in the Bible either. It was therefore only to be expected that many of them had a quite shallow understanding of Christianity.
What prompted Johan to react was that the movement’s leaders did not respond to this by guiding the new believers toward a deeper understanding of Christian truths. Many had experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecostal revival. But very often, these people quickly stagnated in their Christian life, and many also ended up falling back into their old sins.
As a result, the congregations became more focused on converting ever more sinners, gathering more people, and on the various outward manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing. All of these were, in and of themselves, good gifts from God. But something essential was missing.
For Johan, the answer to this need was obvious, as he also wrote to his brother in the fall of 1909:
“What is needed now in our country and in all of Scandinavia is an effective work directed toward sanctification. We have had enough conferences and conventions. If we are going to have more of that kind of thing, it would have to be a conference on sanctification where we discussed the importance of spreading an understanding of what needs to happen after one has received the power of the resurrection — namely, fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. We also need a paper magazine about sanctification.”
Resistance and gradual growth
As Johan testified in the letter he wrote in 1933, he did not become particularly popular by emphasizing the need for a deeper Christian life. On the contrary. But little by little, a small group of followers emerged who began to understand the importance of what Smith was trying to say. A small group of like-minded people formed. The Smith brothers, Elias Aslaksen, and Theodor Ellefsen formed the core of this group.
The humble beginnings of Hidden Treasures
In January 1912, the “journal of sanctification” was finally published. It was called Hidden Treasures.
“The purpose of the paper is to bring forth the truth that leads to faith and godliness,” writes Johan in the introduction to the first issue.
He could just as well have written that the magazine’s goal was to promote teachings that lead to sanctification. It was this topic that would become Smith’s main focus for the rest of his life. Since the time of Johan O. Smith, this legacy has been passed down through the generations, right up to the present day.
Hidden Treasures was founded in the context of a revival within the Free Church movement in Norway in the early 1900s. Much of what was written during this formative period can be read as polemical contributions to a heated debate with other Christians, concerning those aspects of Christianity that the Smith brothers believed other Christians were withholding or rejecting.
But they also wrote extensively about the true Christian life, how it begins and develops. Of paramount importance was the daily, conscious struggle against sin, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Here, Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:10 were a great comfort to them: ”… always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies.”
Unorthodox theology?
The circle around the Smith brothers faced serious accusations of heretical theology. In particular, their emphasis on “Christ manifested in the flesh””—on Jesus’ true humanity and the fact that he was tempted just as we are—led to accusations that they were attributing sin to Jesus, even though they repeatedly rejected these claims. They maintained that Jesus, even though he was tempted, never sinned.
When reading their doctrinal and theological treatises, one is often struck by how orthodox and precisely formulated they are in relation to the central dogmas of Christianity.
A major reason for this was that in-depth study of the Bible had been a major focus for many years. Johan, in particular, emphasized the importance of spending time on this kind of Bible study.
At the same time, the magazine’s content shows that they also had a deep understanding of Christian history and that they read and studied a wide range of Christian literature, from the Church Fathers of the early Church to the leading theologians of their time. This will be the topic of the next article in the series.