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• The Latter Rain: Wellspring inherited the Latter Rain vision that God was restoring apostles, prophets, spiritual gifts, and church authority through Norman James’s connection to Bethesda Missionary Temple.

• The Divine Name: Wellspring inherited from Bethesda the Divine-Name doctrine identifying “Jesus” as the divine name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that Jesus-Name baptism was necessary to being born again.

• The Apostle: Founder Norman James claimed to be an apostle and used this claimed authority to shape the theology he inherited from Bethesda into Wellspring’s “Kingdom of God.”​

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Overview: How the Wellspring Theological System Took Shape

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Wellspring’s distinctive theological system did not emerge directly from the Latter Rain revival. Myrtle Beall explicitly rejected making a baptismal formula or tongues the door of entrance into Christ’s body - the church.

 

Myrtle Beall's children later developed a substantially different theological system at Bethesda Missionary Temple that incorporated doctrines and arguments closely associated with Oneness Pentecostalism. They combined divine-name theology, exclusive Jesus-Name baptism, circumcision of the heart, and speaking in tongues into a defined system of requirements for entrance into the new covenant and recognition as members of the church.

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Norman James adopted that system from Bethesda, modified the baptismal formula, and through his claimed apostolic authority enforced it as the required pattern for being born again and entering the “Kingdom of God.”

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1.  Wellspring Church and the Latter Rain Movement

 

Is Wellspring Really the “Last Remaining Latter Rain Church”?

 

Wellspring Church has long emphasized its Latter Rain heritage. Founder Norman H. James repeatedly presented the church as the last remaining Latter Rain church to his knowledge.

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The claim is not without historical basis. Norman James became associated with Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit, one of the most important American centers of the Latter Rain revival that began in western Canada in 1948.
 

The Latter Rain movement emphasized themes such as prophecy, the laying on of hands, spiritual gifts, restored apostolic and prophetic ministries, divine church order, and the belief that God was restoring dimensions of New Testament Christianity that had been lost or neglected. These themes clearly influenced Norman James. He later taught that God was restoring truth and authority to the church and eventually claimed apostolic authority for himself.

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In that sense, Wellspring possesses a genuine Latter Rain ancestry.

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But ancestry is not the same thing as doctrinal continuity.

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By the time Norman James became associated with Bethesda in the mid-1960s, the intense revival phase that began in 1948 had largely passed. The original movement had dispersed into a broad and decentralized network of independent churches, ministries, and later restorationist movements. Norman therefore encountered a later Bethesda tradition shaped by the Latter Rain movement, rather than the original revival itself.​​​​​​

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The Latter Rain Movement Was Not a Jesus-Name Pentecostal Movement​

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The Latter Rain movement should not be confused with the distinctive theological system that later developed at Bethesda Missionary Temple and then at Wellspring Church. In particular, Jesus-Name baptism was not a defining requirement of Latter Rain, nor was Oneness Pentecostal theology.

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Latter Rain crossed existing Pentecostal denominational boundaries and included ministers and churches that continued to baptize converts using the Trinitarian language of Matthew 28:19 - “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

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The difference was recognized even by Oneness Pentecostals at the time.

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Oneness author and historian David K. Bernard records that the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI), an Oneness Pentecostal denomination, responded to the Latter Rain movement at its 1950 General Conference. They condemned “the compromising of the truths of Oneness and water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ,” acceptance of receiving the Holy Spirit without speaking in tongues, and an expansive understanding of the true church that crossed established doctrinal boundaries (A History of Christian Doctrine, vol. 3, pp. 272–273).

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That criticism is historically significant. The UPCI opposed Latter Rain in part because the movement did not consistently maintain doctrines that Oneness Pentecostals regarded as essential - including mandatory Jesus-Name baptism and tongues as necessary evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit.

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Those same doctrines later became defining features of Wellspring’s theological system.

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The historical sequence therefore matters: Wellspring’s distinctive requirements cannot simply be described as a straightforward preservation of original Latter Rain teaching. Some of the doctrines that eventually became central to Wellspring were precisely the doctrines that Oneness Pentecostals at the time believed the Latter Rain movement had compromised.

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“Last Remaining” in What Sense?

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The claim that Wellspring is among the “last remaining” Latter Rain churches raises an important historical question: remaining in what sense?

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This distinction is important because Wellspring’s theological roots cannot be understood simply by tracing its connection to the Latter Rain movement. Its more immediate theological inheritance came through Bethesda Missionary Temple, where Latter Rain restorationism intersected with Jesus-Name and Oneness Pentecostal teachings that later became central to Wellspring.

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The original Latter Rain movement was decentralized and did not possess a single, fixed doctrinal system.

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What Wellspring appears to have preserved most directly, therefore, is not a uniform body of “Latter Rain doctrine,” but the later theological tradition of Bethesda Missionary Temple as articulated in the writings of Patricia Beall Gruits and James Lee Beall. Bethesda assembled and developed this theology; Norman James intensified its expression and enforcement through a self-proclaimed apostolic office.

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Yet Bethesda itself has long been remote from the lived experience of Wellspring members. After Norman James’s relationship with Bethesda ended in the 1970s, there appears to have been little or no continuing institutional contact between the two churches.

 

As a result, generations raised within Wellspring may have heard Bethesda’s name and known of Norman James’s association with it while having little or no direct familiarity with its leaders, congregation, or theology. The theological inheritance remained even as Bethesda and the Beall family receded from Wellspring’s collective memory.

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Wellspring also does not appear to have maintained fellowship with other churches and ministries that shared historical ties to Bethesda. Bethesda’s influence extended well beyond Norman James and his relatively brief time there in the 1960s. Other congregations were founded or shaped by ministers who had been ordained, trained, or instructed within the ministry of Myrtle Beall, James Lee Beall, and Patricia Beall Gruits.

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These connections did not disappear with the passing of the original Latter Rain revival. Bethesda Missionary Temple itself continued, eventually relocating to Sterling Heights, Michigan, and becoming Bethesda Christian Church.

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Other surviving churches preserve even more explicit connections to Bethesda’s ministerial and educational tradition. Calvary Church in Pontiac traces its history to Rev. Rose L. Davis, who was ordained by Myrtle Beall. Mt Zion Church in Clarkston was founded by Loren Covarrubias, who attended Bethesda’s Ministers Candidate School under Patricia Beall Gruits. New Life Temple in Cincinnati records that Ralph Godfrey and members of his leadership repeatedly traveled to Bethesda to receive training in the catechism courses taught by James Lee Beall and Patricia Gruits, which they then incorporated into their own ministry.

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Wellspring’s isolation therefore should not be confused with the disappearance of the wider Bethesda Latter Rain lineage. Other churches with direct historical connections to Bethesda continued to exist, develop, and maintain relationships beyond the particular system Norman James established at Wellspring.​

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To understand the theology that eventually took shape at Wellspring, it is therefore necessary to look behind Norman James to Bethesda Missionary Temple, where the core system had already been assembled before he arrived. It emerged from a Pentecostal world in which competing theological ideas were being debated, adapted, and combined.

 

 

2.  Myrtle Beall and Bethesda Missionary Temple​

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Faith in Christ and the Unity of His Body

Bethesda’s founder, Myrtle D. Beall, was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family and later came under the influence of Methodism. In the early 1930s, she began an evangelistic work in Detroit, starting a Sunday school that developed into Bethesda Missionary Temple.

 

Remembered by many who knew her as a gifted and nurturing pastor, Beall became a strong and influential Pentecostal leader whose ministry reached well beyond her local congregation. She later became an Assemblies of God minister and, in 1948, embraced the emerging Latter Rain revival, becoming one of its most influential early figures.

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Beall provides an important early doctrinal benchmark within Bethesda itself in her 1951 book The Plumb Line.​ 

 

Most significantly, she wrote that “Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour is the only door into the Church which is His body” (p. 29)​ 

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Beall described repentance and faith as bringing people into the Kingdom of God, writing: “There have been many differences which have divided them into various sects, because of the doctrines of men, but the preaching of repentance and faith toward God has brought into the Kingdom of God multitudes of people” (p. 25).

Beall also distinguished being born again from later spiritual experiences. Although she affirmed further experiences of the Spirit and speaking in tongues (pp. 23–24, 30), she described such differences as “experiences received after being born again” (p. 26). ​She stated explicitly: “Jesus Christ Himself and faith in Him alone is the door of entrance and not some form of baptism, or outward manifestation such as speaking in tongues.” (p. 25)

She warned that a person could be baptized into what she called a “Sectarian Spirit,” a spirit of self-exaltation in which believers regarded themselves as more spiritual because they had been baptized in their “one and only way,” separated themselves from other believers, and regarded themselves as “chosen ones” (pp. 22–23).

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Beall went further than simply stating these positions. She acknowledged that Bethesda itself had previously contributed to such divisions. She wrote that the ministers and workers at the Temple had “wept much and asked God’s forgiveness” for their part in dividing the Body of Christ, and asked forgiveness from anyone who had been led astray by teachings in which they had “implied that anything else but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was the door into the Church” (p. 20).

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Beall rejected making baptismal formula the door of entrance: “Let every man be baptized as God has given him understanding. To argue and fuss over the letter of the Word, or just what words to say is childish. Anyone who sets up any certain formula for Baptism as the door of entrance, or the foundation of the Church is in error.” (p. 22) 

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Her baptismal position was non-exclusive. She wrote: “Water baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost according to the command of Jesus in Matt. 28:19, or as Peter baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38) and in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 8:16) is scriptural in each case and is the answer of a good conscience toward God (I Peter 3:21)” (p. 29)​​​​​​

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She applied that principle specifically to Jesus-Name baptism: “To baptize or to believe in baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ according to Acts 2:38 will never sever the Body of Christ. But to say ‘Except ye be baptized some certain way ye cannot be saved,’ is to divide the Body.” (p. 22) 

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In this 1951 publication, Myrtle Beall accepted Jesus-Name baptism without making it exclusive, explicitly accepted baptism according to Matthew 28:19 as scriptural, described faith in Christ alone as the door of entrance into His body, described repentance and faith as bringing people into the Kingdom of God, and treated later spiritual experiences as occurring after a person had already been born again.​​

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Later Bethesda teaching - and ultimately Wellspring’s more exclusive pattern of water baptism, Spirit baptism, and being born again - stood in direct opposition to the position Myrtle Beall publicly articulated in 1951.

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Whatever explanation was later given for Bethesda’s change in direction - whether Myrtle Beall herself had changed or the church had undergone a broader doctrinal shift - this earlier teaching remains significant because it shows that its founder had already recognized, repented of, and rejected the sectarian danger of making a particular baptismal formula or spiritual gift the boundary of entrance into Christ’s body, being born again, or the Kingdom of God.​

 

 

3.  The Divine Name: Bethesda’s Theological Turn​​​

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Patricia Beall Gruits and the Divine Name

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Myrtle Beall’s daughter Patricia Beall Gruits became Bethesda’s Minister of Education in 1952. In 1955 she began teaching a youth catechism class, and the material she prepared for those classes eventually became  Understanding God, first published in 1962. 

 

In Understanding God, Gruits's presentation of Jesus-Name baptism, circumcision of the heart and being born again provided the theological framework that Norman James later carried into Wellspring. Through his teaching, that framework became the lens through which Christianity itself was presented to those raised and trained within Wellspring Church.

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Although Gruits used the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the theology beneath that language moved away from historic Trinitarian definitions and toward a Oneness Pentecostal framework.

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Gruits taught a divine-name theology: the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share one singular divine name, identified as Jesus or “The Lord Jesus Christ.” (Understanding God, pp. 363–364)

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This differs from historic Trinitarian theology, which understands the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three eternally distinct divine Persons, with Jesus Christ being the incarnate Son rather than the personal name of all three. The identification of Jesus as the singular divine name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a foundational claim of Oneness Pentecostal theology.

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Her explanation of the Godhead shows this shift clearly. She described Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three divine and distinct “identities” (Understanding God, p. 25). She then illustrated those identities by saying that one human person can simultaneously be a father, son, and husband while remaining only one person (p. 26). She also described the invisible God as revealing Himself in various “forms” (pp. 26–27).

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Gruits’s adoption of this divine-name argument marked a decisive departure from historic Trinitarian definitions, even as Bethesda continued to identify itself as Trinitarian.

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The issue was not simply which words should be spoken at baptism. It concerned the identity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and whether “Lord Jesus Christ” could properly be understood as the singular personal name of all three.

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Gruits was aware that this interpretation stood at the center of a fundamental divide within Pentecostalism. Immediately before presenting her divine-name conclusion, she asked, “Why is there such controversy about the titles and the name of the Godhead today?” She then described the matter as “a spiritual mystery that can only be solved with the aid of the Holy Spirit” (p. 364).​​

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Trinitarian Christianity confesses one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son, not the personal name shared by all three Persons.

 

Bethesda’s identification of “Lord Jesus Christ” as the singular name of all three therefore represented more than a distinctive baptismal practice; it reflected a fundamentally different understanding of God, particularly concerning the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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From the Divine Name to Exclusive Jesus-Name Baptism​

 

​Gruits applied this divine-name theology directly to baptism. She identified “The Lord Jesus Christ” as the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and presented baptism in that name as the fulfillment of Matthew 28:19 (Understanding God, pp. 363–365).
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This represented a reversal of the position Myrtle Beall had publicly articulated during the Latter Rain revival. In 1951, Beall explicitly denied that Bethesda was “Oneness” or “Jesus Only” (The Plumb Line, p. 30) and affirmed both baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ as scriptural (p. 29). Later Bethesda teaching no longer treated these as equally valid alternatives.

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Gruits instead made Jesus-Name baptism the prescribed pattern and grounded that requirement in the divine-name argument - the very issue at the center of the earlier division between Trinitarian and Oneness, or “Jesus Only,” Pentecostalism.

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The Divine Name and the Authority to Baptize​

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Gruits’s theology also assigned an authorized human minister a necessary role in water baptism: baptism had to be administered by a minister to whom the Holy Spirit had revealed the identity of Jesus Christ and who therefore possessed “the power and authority to use His name” (Understanding God, p. 363).

 

What she meant by this qualifying “revelation” was more specific than the Christian confession that Jesus is the Christ or the Son of God: only a minister who understood and accepted the divine-name theology possessed the spiritual authority to baptize. That minister was then required to administer baptism “in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” the name “by which the power of the Godhead is invoked” (p. 363).

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Within Gruits’s theology, a legitimate baptism therefore depended both upon the minister’s acceptance of the divine-name revelation and upon his use of the required divine name in baptism.​

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In practical terms, this meant that ministers who did not share Gruits’s divine-name revelation were excluded from the authority to administer the prescribed baptism. That baptism, in turn, was the means through which the believer received the circumcision of the heart that Gruits regarded as essential to being born again.

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Significantly, Gruits grounded this human authority in Matthew 16:15–20, appealing to Peter’s revelation of Christ’s identity, the keys of the Kingdom, and the authority to bind and loose (p. 363). This is one of the principal biblical passages historically used by the Roman Catholic Church to ground the distinctive authority of Peter and, through the claimed succession of the bishops of Rome to Peter’s office, the authority of the pope.

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Gruits did not adopt the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession. Instead, she applied the passage in a different way: authority to administer the required baptism belonged to those who had received the correct revelation of the divine name. In both systems, however, Matthew 16 is used to connect revealed truth, church authority, and the administration of access to the Kingdom.

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This created a significant tension with the Protestant insistence that “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Protestant ministers may preach, baptize, and exercise pastoral authority, but they do not function as necessary spiritual intermediaries whose possession of a particular revelation determines whether a believer can receive a valid baptism or be born again. In Gruits’s framework, however, access to the prescribed baptism depended upon such an authorized minister.

 

James Lee Beall Reinforces the Divine Name​

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Myrtle Beall’s son James Lee Beall strongly affirmed and reinforced the divine-name theology already published by his sister, Patricia Beall Gruits. He taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were titles, while “The Lord Jesus Christ” was the singular divine name expressed in baptism. (Rise to Newness of Life, pp. 60-61)​
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In Laying the Foundation (1976), Beall repeated the same theology. He described “The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” as expressing the “tri-unity of God,” saying they were “but titles” (p. 169). Beall was therefore not merely preferring one baptismal formula; he was presenting a theology in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were titles whose singular baptismal name was expressed in the Lord Jesus Christ (pp. 167–169).

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James Lee Beall’s own account shows that Bethesda was fully aware of the theological controversy surrounding this change. In Rise to Newness of Life (1974), he recalled that after Bethesda began baptizing in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church encountered “a great storm of controversy” and was accused of being “Oneness” and “Jesus Only.” Beall explicitly rejected those labels and affirmed his belief in the “tri-unity” of God.

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Yet Beall did not abandon the divine-name argument he shared with Oneness Pentecostalism. In the same chapter, he taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were "but titles" and that their name was fulfilled in “the Lord Jesus Christ,” concluding, “The name is Jesus.” (p. 61) 

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Beall therefore denied Oneness and modalism while retaining the theological premise at the foundation of the Oneness Pentecostal movement itself: that Jesus is the singular divine name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

From the beginning of the Oneness movement, that divine-name argument supplied the foundation for its distinctive doctrine of God, its insistence upon baptism specifically in Jesus’ name, and its broader understanding of what it means to be born again and enter the Kingdom of God.

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In Rise to Newness of Life, Beall described Bethesda’s adoption of Jesus-Name baptism in devotional terms: as a response to the authority of Jesus Christ, prayer, and what he regarded as spiritual revelation. Yet when he explained how baptism in Jesus’ name fulfilled Matthew 28:19, his argument depended on Divine-Name theology.

That devotional language helped explain the practice, but the underlying reason Bethesda required Jesus-Name baptism was still the Divine-Name theology behind it.

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Trinitarian in Identity, Oneness in Doctrine​

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Wellspring has long understood itself not as Oneness Pentecostal, but as a Trinitarian Christian Church that baptizes in Jesus’ name. That Trinitarian self-identification was inherited from Bethesda Missionary Temple, which continued to describe itself as Trinitarian even after adopting divine-name theology, exclusive Jesus-Name baptism, and other doctrines concerning water baptism and being born again that had long been taught within Oneness Pentecostalism.

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Although the divine-name doctrine was presented as one teaching within Bethesda’s broader theological system, it functioned as the foundation for exclusive Jesus-Name baptism and the doctrinal framework that followed.​

 

 

4.  ​Bethesda: From the Divine Name to Oneness Pentecostal Doctrine​​​

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Bethesda’s divine-name theology became the starting point for a broader doctrinal shift, and nowhere is that shift clearer than in its doctrine of being born again and entering the Kingdom of God.

 

The divine-name argument established the necessity of Jesus-Name baptism, while circumcision of the heart became the link between that baptism and being born again. Receiving the Holy Spirit also became integrated into Bethesda’s understanding of Christian initiation.

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Gruits and Beall did not clearly present the full doctrinal framework in a single comprehensive summary. Rather, its components were developed across multiple sections of their writings. The full framework remained largely unstated, even though its underlying doctrinal structure becomes clear when those teachings are read together.​

 

Patricia Beall Gruits: A Three-Step System of Entrance

 

Gruits presented the structure most clearly in Understanding God. She taught that believers enter the new covenant through a three-part pattern corresponding to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection: “We enter into covenant with God by becoming partakers of the death (repentance), burial (water baptism) and resurrection (Holy Spirit baptism) of His son, the Lord Jesus Christ” (p. 181).​

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Gruits connected this theological system directly to the Church's practice of confirmation. In the 1972 preface to the second edition of Understanding God, she instructed that only students who had experienced justification, water baptism, and Holy Spirit baptism as taught in her catechism should be confirmed by the church.

Gruits described the doctrine of baptisms as involving three distinct but related baptisms - water baptism, Holy Spirit baptism, and baptism of fire - which believers “must experience” (p. 180), and later as “one doctrine” with “three necessary and related parts” (p. 185). Within that same framework, she connected water baptism and Holy Spirit baptism directly to John 3:5: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (p. 182).

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Gruits taught that the divine-name argument established the necessity of Jesus-Name baptism (p. 364); that circumcision of the heart was effected through water baptism (pp. 183-184, 358); and that circumcision of the heart was essential to being born again (p. 361).

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She also connected Holy Spirit baptism with speaking in tongues, describing tongues as the believer’s “initial experience” of the Spirit speaking through them (p. 193).

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Taken together, Gruits organized repentance, Jesus-Name baptism, circumcision of the heart, Holy Spirit baptism, and speaking in tongues into a comprehensive initiation system tied to being born again and entrance into the new covenant and the Kingdom of God.​​

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The New Testament contains each of these themes in different contexts, but it nowhere presents Gruits’s particular combination of them as a single required initiation sequence by which a person enters the new covenant or becomes born again.

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Gruits’s system stood in direct contrast to Myrtle Beall’s earlier teaching. In The Plumb Line, Myrtle Beall wrote that “Jesus Christ Himself and faith in Him alone is the door of entrance” and specifically denied that “some form of baptism, or outward manifestation such as speaking in tongues” constituted that entrance (p. 25).

 

Myrtle Beall described speaking in tongues as a “RESULT of faith” and an outward “SIGN,” but “not anywhere said to be the EVIDENCE OR THE PROOF of anything” (p. 23), adding that speaking in tongues “does not make us any more children of God than we were before!” (p. 23).

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Gruits therefore departed from Myrtle Beall’s earlier teaching and Bethesda’s published 1951 position. In its place, she presented a recognizable Oneness Pentecostal pattern, rooted in the divine-name doctrine, in which repentance, Jesus-Name baptism, and Holy Spirit baptism were required components for entrance into the new covenant.​​

 

James Lee Beall: Four Steps to Initiation into Christ

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James Lee Beall developed a closely related framework in Laying the Foundation, although he used the language of Christian initiation and regeneration.

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Beall taught that water baptism was “essential to the new birth” (p. 151), that circumcision of the heart occurred at the moment of water baptism (pp. 153, 178–179), and that this circumcision was “an essential part of salvation” (p. 185).

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He also wrote that “initiation into Christ required four basic experiences”: repentance, faith, water baptism, and receiving the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Beall explicitly equated regeneration with being born again and identified both water baptism and “the Holy Spirit imparting new life” among the agents of regeneration (pp. 190–191).

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James Lee Beall’s own writings also show changes within his own teaching. In Rise to Newness of Life (1974), he explicitly denied that baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary for salvation, stating that he himself had been “saved, a child of God, and sealed with the Holy Spirit” before receiving this later understanding of baptism (p. 70).​​

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By Laying the Foundation (1976), however, Beall described water baptism as “essential to the new birth” (p. 151) and the circumcision of the heart associated with baptism as “an essential part of salvation” (p. 185). Within only two years, his published teaching had moved from explicitly denying that Jesus-Name baptism was necessary for salvation to presenting water baptism and the circumcision of the heart as essential elements of salvation and being born again.

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From Christ as the Door to a Human Test of Entrance

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In 1951, Myrtle Beall drew a remarkably clear line around the basis of Christian belonging. She taught that Jesus Christ Himself, received by faith, was the door of entrance into the Church. She specifically rejected making a formula in water baptism or an outward manifestation such as speaking in tongues the door of entrance (The Plumb Line, pp. 22–23, 25).

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The significance of that position becomes clear when compared to the theology that later developed at Bethesda Missionary Temple. In the writings of Myrtle Beall’s children, Patricia Beall Gruits and James Lee Beall, Christian initiation came to be described through a much more defined sequence of doctrinal requirements.

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Jesus-Name baptism was no longer simply a devotional preference. Speaking in tongues was treated not as a gift of the Holy Spirit, but as the necessary evidence of receiving Him. Both had been incorporated into a doctrinal system by which a person was judged to have entered the new covenant and the Kingdom of God. Bethesda had adopted the same pattern of Christian initiation found in Oneness Pentecostalism, supported by the same divine-name reasoning.

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Wellspring inherited from Bethesda not only its distinctive theological system, but also the broader Latter Rain practice of organizing foundational Christian teaching around Hebrews 6:1–2. At Bethesda, a vast body of teaching was developed around the few brief phrases in that passage and presented as the natural outworking of those “foundation stones.” In practice, however, each phrase was interpreted through the extensive theological framework developed at Bethesda.​​

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Norman James would repeat these Bethesda teachings in his own doctrinal handbook, preserving the theological structure while modifying the baptismal requirement with his own formula.

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For those raised and trained at Wellspring Church, these teachings were not presented merely as one theological interpretation among many in the Latter Rain movement, nor as a doctrinal system assembled at Bethesda by Patricia Beall Gruits and James Lee Beall, subject to examination against Scripture. Instead, they were presented as a restoration of original Christianity through an apostle - the recovery of the pattern taught by the first apostles and subsequently lost or obscured by the wider Church.

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​What had been assembled at Bethesda as the theological conclusions of earlier ministers was thus presented at Wellspring as restored apostolic truth.​​

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5.  Wellspring’s Appeal to Bethesda and other Jesus-Name Trinitarians​

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Wellspring has pointed to Bethesda and other Christians who rejected classical Oneness theology, identified themselves as Trinitarian, and nevertheless baptized in Jesus’ name as evidence that requiring Jesus-Name baptism is compatible with Trinitarian belief.

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That claim, however, can obscure important differences in baptismal theology. Preferring or practicing baptism in Jesus’ name is not the same as requiring it exclusively as necessary to be born again. Calling a church Trinitarian does not mean that its reasons for exclusive Jesus-Name baptism are consistent with historic Trinitarian teaching.

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W. H. Offiler provides an important example. Offiler was baptized in Jesus’ name by the early Oneness evangelist Glenn Cook in 1915. Although Offiler rejected classical Oneness theology, described God as triune, and practiced Jesus-Name baptism, his explanation still depended on divine-name theology.

 

Offiler identified “LORD-JESUS-CHRIST” as the “Triune Name of the Triune God,” teaching that “Lord” corresponded to the Father, “Jesus” to the Son, and “Christ” to the Holy Spirit. On that basis, he argued that baptism in the name of “the Lord Jesus Christ” fulfilled the command of Matthew 28:19 (God, and His Name, p. 86).

James Lee Beall later used a similar construction, treating Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as titles and “the Lord Jesus Christ” as the singular baptismal name (Rise to Newness of Life, pp. 60–61).

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Offiler therefore supports only part of Wellspring’s claim. He shows that some Pentecostals rejected classical Oneness while baptizing in Jesus’ name, but he does not provide a clear example of historic Trinitarian theology mandating Jesus-Name baptism. His justification still depended on the same divine-name reasoning found in Oneness Pentecostalism.

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Offiler also differed from Bethesda in an important respect: he placed water baptism after being born again (God, and His Name, p. 87), whereas James Lee Beall later called water baptism “essential to the new birth” (Laying the Foundation, p. 151).

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The distinction is significant. Offiler demonstrates that Trinitarian self-identification and Jesus-Name baptism could coexist within certain Pentecostal streams. He does not demonstrate that historic Trinitarian theology itself leads to exclusive Jesus-Name baptism, much less to the conclusion that such baptism is necessary to be born again. 

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6.  What Was the Source of Bethesda’s Developing Theology?​

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The surviving evidence does not identify a single source for Bethesda’s developing theology. What can be shown is that several of its later teachings already had clear precedents within Oneness Pentecostalism and circulated within the wider Pentecostal world in which Bethesda participated.

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One important example is G. T. Haywood, one of the most influential early Oneness Pentecostal leaders. Decades before Patricia Gruits, Haywood taught that “circumcision of the heart” was another way of describing being born again. In The Birth of the Spirit in the Days of the Apostles, he connected being “born of water and Spirit” with circumcision of the heart and interpreted Colossians 2:11–13 as joining that circumcision to water baptism and the quickening work of the Spirit.

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The combination later found at Bethesda - Jesus-Name baptism, circumcision of the heart, and being born again - therefore had an established precedent within Oneness Pentecostal theology before it appeared in the writings of Gruits and James Lee Beall.

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Pentecostalism during these decades was also highly networked. Theology circulated through books, periodicals, camp meetings, Bible schools, revival meetings, missionary relationships, itinerant ministries, and personal networks. Bethesda regularly hosted visiting ministers and participated in this wider Pentecostal environment.

 

Robert A. Larden provides one documented example of overlap between the Oneness and Latter Rain worlds. A leader in the Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada, a denomination with Oneness roots, Larden also authored The Manifestation of the Sons of God, a work cataloged by the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center under the “New Order of the Latter Rain” alongside literature from Bethesda Missionary Temple and other Latter Rain figures.

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This does not establish that Haywood, Larden, or any single source directly produced Bethesda’s later theology. It does show, however, that the key doctrinal ideas already existed within Oneness Pentecostalism and that Oneness and Latter Rain networks were not completely isolated from one another.

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The next question, then, is what Norman James inherited from Bethesda, what he changed, and what he ultimately required of those who followed him.

 

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7. From Bethesda to Wellspring

 

​What Norman James Inherited from Bethesda

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For many in the generation that shaped Wellspring, Bethesda and the Beall family carried an almost legendary theological authority. Their writings were treated not merely as influential Pentecostal teaching, but as part of the recovery of truths believed to have been restored to the Church.

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Norman James presented Bethesda as the torchbearer of the Latter Rain movement and himself as the inheritor of that torch. Although he had separated from Bethesda and the Beall family, he continued to claim their theological legacy, presenting Wellspring as the continuation of the restored apostolic truth they had helped establish.

​Within that framework, Norman James’s extensive incorporation of Beall family teachings into his own doctrinal handbook could be accepted as the transmission of restored truth rather than recognized as borrowing from the theological work of earlier authors. He was later accused by some of plagiarism, an accusation that drew attention to how extensively his doctrinal system and writings could be traced to earlier Bethesda sources.

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The theological system James inherited from Bethesda drew upon more than one historical stream.

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From the Latter Rain restorationist tradition came a vision of the church involving restored spiritual ministries, apostolic authority, and the recovery of truths believed to have been lost or neglected by historic Christianity.

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At the same time, Bethesda had adopted a divine-name theology and joined it to a cluster of teachings associated with Jesus-Name and Oneness Pentecostalism that were neither distinctive to the Latter Rain movement nor characteristic of historic Trinitarian Pentecostalism. 

Norman James carried that combination into Wellspring, where he retained the inherited divine-name framework, overlaid it with the explicit Trinitarian language of “God in three Persons,” and further narrowed and formalized the system through requirements of his own.

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How Norman James Affirmed the Trinity While Rejecting Trinitarian Baptism​

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At Wellspring, James continued to require exclusive Jesus-Name baptism while also adding the explicitly Trinitarian confession of “God in three Persons”. 

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Yet the theological continuity with Bethesda remained visible beneath that Trinitarian confession. He frequently used the same father-husband-son analogy found in Patricia Beall Gruits’s teaching: a single person may stand in several different relationships and bear different relational titles while remaining one person. ​This analogy is not Trinitarian in structure: it depicts one person bearing several relational roles, an illustration commonly used in Oneness Pentecostal explanations of God. 

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James Lee Beall had affirmed his sister's divine-name reasoning while also arguing that baptism in Jesus’ name expressed submission to the authority and Lordship of Christ (Laying the Foundation, pp. 167–169). Over time, this second argument came to receive greater emphasis at Wellspring. Jesus-Name baptism was increasingly explained in terms of being baptized under the authority and Lordship of Jesus Christ rather than primarily in terms of identifying “Jesus” as the singular divine name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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This change in emphasis made it easier for Wellspring to present itself as Trinitarian while continuing to require baptism in Jesus’ name. Trinitarian churches likewise affirm God as three Persons and understand references to baptism “in Jesus’ name” as expressing the authority and lordship of Jesus Christ, yet do not require exclusive Jesus-Name baptism.

 

Nothing in these beliefs establishes that baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is deficient or must be repeated. On the contrary, this baptismal formula was commanded by Christ Himself in Matthew 28:19 and stands as one of Scripture’s clearest expressions of the triune nature of God.​

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The unresolved issue remained: why did Wellspring require believers who had already been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be baptized again specifically in Jesus’ name? Baptism “in Jesus’ name” could be understood as baptism under Christ’s authority. But that does not explain why baptism performed according to Jesus’ own command in Matthew 28:19 should be considered invalid or be repeated. That claim requires its own biblical support.

 

Why Rebaptism Still Mattered at Wellspring

The answer becomes clearer when the authority argument is placed back within the broader theological framework that Wellspring Church inherited from Bethesda through Norman James.

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The issue was not simply that baptism should be performed under the authority of Jesus Christ. Within the Bethesda-Wellspring system, the spoken invocation of the divine name of “Jesus” in water baptism was required for the remission of sins and the circumcision of the heart to occur. That circumcision of the heart was in turn treated as necessary for being born again and entering the kingdom of God.

 

This helps explain why circumcision of the heart later became so prominent at Wellspring. In the Bethesda system assembled by Patricia Beall Gruits and inherited by Norman James, circumcision of heart served as the theological link between exclusive Jesus-Name baptism and being born again. James eventually incorporated this teaching into Wellspring’s baptismal practice as part of the required spoken formula.

This meant that a person who had already been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could still be regarded as lacking something essential. If the circumcision of the heart was understood to occur through Jesus-Name baptism, then a Trinitarian baptism was not merely a different wording of the same Christian act. Within that theological system, it had failed to accomplish what the required invocation of Jesus’ name was believed to accomplish. This was the underlying theological claim that made rebaptism necessary.

That is why the later emphasis on Christ’s authority in baptism did not actually resolve the older theological problem. The authority explanation could make Jesus-Name baptism sound compatible with Trinitarian Christianity, but the requirement of rebaptism rested on deeper inherited claims: that Jesus’ command to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was fulfilled by speaking the name of Jesus, and that speaking Jesus’ name in baptism brought about the circumcision of the heart necessary to being born again.

Those teachings, however, are not stated in the New Testament. Scripture speaks of circumcision of the heart but Scripture does not teach that baptism performed according to Christ’s command in Matthew 28:19 is deficient or must be repeated in Jesus’ name. Nor does it establish that the spoken invocation of Jesus’ name in water baptism is necessary for circumcision of the heart to occur. For a fuller examination of this claim, see the circumcision of the heart and water baptism.

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The Trinitarian Problem of Exclusive Jesus-Name Baptism​

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The central Trinitarian problem is not the practice of baptizing in Jesus’ name, nor Wellspring’s appeal to the authority and lordship of Jesus Christ. Trinitarian Christians also understand New Testament references to baptism “in Jesus’ name” as baptism administered under Christ’s authority.

 

The decisive dividing line between the Trinitarian and Oneness baptismal positions is the further claim that “Jesus” is the required name that must be verbally spoken in baptism, making baptism administered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit deficient and subject to repetition.

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Appeals to Christ’s authority, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ, the singular “name” of Matthew 28:19, or Trinitarian self-identification may explain how Gruits, Beall, Norman James and Oneness Pentecostals understood their position. But none of these arguments establishes that “Jesus” is the singular personal name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or that baptism administered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is invalid.

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This precise issue has been examined formally and in considerable detail within Pentecostalism itself. The Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report, published in Pneuma in 2008 after a six-year dialogue, addressed the historic dispute over the Godhead, baptismal formula, salvation, and being born again. The Trinitarian participants rejected attempts to identify the singular “name” of Matthew 28:19 simply as “Jesus,” concluding that such arguments lacked a compelling exegetical basis. They also affirmed that God is not bound by precise baptismal formulas.

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Historic Trinitarian theology confesses the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three eternally distinct divine Persons. Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son; “Jesus” is not the personal name of all three. Baptism “in Jesus’ name” may therefore be understood as baptism under the authority of Christ. It is also possible that early Christians used both expressions in baptism. But neither point establishes that the words “in Jesus’ name” are the required verbal fulfillment of Matthew 28:19 or that baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit must be repeated.​​

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That additional claim depends upon the divine-name argument itself: that “Jesus” is the singular divine name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and therefore the name intended by Matthew 28:19. That argument has stood near the center of the Oneness–Trinitarian Pentecostal dispute for more than a century. It also became central to Bethesda’s theology and, later, to Wellspring’s requirement of exclusive Jesus-Name rebaptism.

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8.  A Kingdom People

 

How Norman James Defined Entrance into the Kingdom of God​

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Bethesda testimony indicates that Norman James was never formally sent out by the church and left after disagreements with its leadership. Yet he carried substantial elements of Bethesda’s theological framework into his later teaching, where he modified, narrowed, and formalized them into a system of his own. His resulting tightly prescribed definition of being born again ultimately became Wellspring’s operative standard for entrance into the Kingdom and full spiritual belonging.

 

Under Norman James’s teaching, Wellspring required three experiences for a person to be considered born again:

1. repentance,

2. water baptism in Jesus’ name with Norman James’s prescribed baptismal formula: “in Jesus name for the circumcision of heart and remission of sin,”

3. receiving the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.

 

James tied his three-step process directly to entrance into the Kingdom of God. In practice, a person who had not completed all three requirements in the prescribed manner was not regarded as born again or as having entered the Kingdom.

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James also drew a distinction between being “saved” and being “born again.” In his teaching, a person could be saved from final condemnation without having completed the three experiences he required for being born again. Such a person could therefore be understood as avoiding hell while still not having entered the Kingdom of God. Entrance into the Kingdom was reserved for those who had completed James’s prescribed pattern.

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This appears to represent an important change from the theology articulated by James Lee Beall. Beall distinguished justification from regeneration, which he identified with being born again, but maintained that “both are essential to salvation” (Laying the Foundation, pp. 190, 192). Norman James instead separated salvation from being born again and from entrance into the Kingdom of God, creating a spiritual middle ground in which a person might be “saved” while not yet being “born again” and not yet having entered the Kingdom.

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That distinction also provided an answer to an obvious historical problem for James’s theology. Christians throughout church history had believed in Jesus Christ without undergoing Wellspring’s three-step process. By separating salvation from entrance into the Kingdom, James could acknowledge such Christians as genuinely “saved” while still maintaining that they had not entered the Kingdom of God. Salvation could therefore extend beyond Wellspring, while the Kingdom remained associated with the “restored” pattern of being born again that James taught.

 

The Kingdom therefore occupied an unusually prominent place in Wellspring teaching. It was presented not simply as the biblical reign of God shared by all who belong to Christ, but as a distinct spiritual realm or standing beyond salvation itself, entered through the “restored” pattern of being born again taught by Norman James.

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​In practice, Norman James's teaching produced a sense of privileged spiritual access: Wellspring believers were not merely Christians among other Christians, but "Kingdom People" who had been shown a "restored" pathway into the Kingdom of God that other believers lacked. Access to the Kingdom of God was thus understood as reserved for those who followed Norman James’s doctrinal framework, reinforcing both the authority of his teaching and the belief that separation from it meant surrendering something spiritually unique.

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The Boundaries of Wellspring's "Kingdom of God"

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That claim to distinctive Kingdom access created an important tension. Wellspring did not maintain fellowship with Bethesda and its related network of churches, even though published Bethesda teaching contained remarkably similar doctrines concerning being born again, Jesus-Name baptism, and the circumcision of the heart.

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Nor did Wellspring establish fellowship with nearby Oneness Pentecostal churches, even though many such congregations taught a strikingly similar understanding of being born again. As one example, Calvary Apostolic Church in Swissvale, a United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) congregation, describes “full salvation” as repentance, water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and baptism of the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues as the initial sign.

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Although Wellspring distinguishes between being “saved” and being fully “born again,” the distinction does not alter the striking similarity in the two systems’ requirements for being born again: repentance, water baptism in Jesus’ name, and reception of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues.​​

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Even Norman James’s distinctive emphasis on the “circumcision of heart” does not substantially separate Wellspring from this broader Apostolic theology. James required the phrase “for the circumcision of heart” to be spoken in the baptismal formula itself, but Oneness Pentecostal theology likewise teaches that spiritual circumcision occurs in water baptism. Oneness theologian David K. Bernard describes water baptism as “a spiritual circumcision” and treats it as part of the born-again experience in his book The New Birth (1984).

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Wellspring nevertheless rejected fellowship with such Apostolic churches on the basis of its own Trinitarian self-identification and rejection of the Oneness label. Even Oneness believers who had already been baptized in Jesus’ name were required to be rebaptized using Norman James’s prescribed baptismal formula in order to join the church.​​

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The result was a remarkably narrow boundary around the restored Kingdom. Possessing substantially similar beliefs was not enough. Neither a shared theological inheritance with Bethesda nor agreement with Oneness Pentecostals on Jesus-Name baptism, being born again, and even the circumcision of the heart was sufficient for fellowship.

 

This raises a larger question: who possessed the authority to define the boundaries of the restored Kingdom and determine what was required to enter it? At Wellspring, the answer increasingly centered on the authority claimed by “the Apostle.”

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9.  The Apostle

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The Authority of “The Apostle” Over the Restored Kingdom

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Bethesda participated in the Latter Rain expectation that apostolic and prophetic ministries were being restored to the church. The surviving record examined for this history, however, has not shown Myrtle Beall, James Lee Beall, or Patricia Beall Gruits personally claiming apostolic office or authority comparable to that later claimed by Norman James. They are consistently described instead as pastors, teachers, ministers, and leaders within the movement.

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Norman James took an important additional step. He did not merely teach that apostles should exist in the modern church; he claimed that office for himself, presenting himself as a modern-day apostle with authority comparable to Paul, Peter, and John.

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The central question is therefore this: Was Norman Harvey James really an apostle of Jesus Christ?

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The significance of that question becomes clearer when the development of Wellspring’s theology is considered. Norman James inherited substantial elements of his theology from Bethesda, but Wellspring’s completed system was not simply Bethesda teaching carried forward intact. What became more distinctly Jamesian was the modification and enforcement of those inherited teachings under his claimed apostolic authority.

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James’s claim to apostolic authority gave that completed system a significance beyond the conclusions of one Christian minister interpreting Scripture. His teaching on baptism, being born again, and entrance into the Kingdom was presented as restored apostolic doctrine, while his claimed office supplied the authority to define and enforce it.

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The consequences for doctrinal disagreement were substantial. If Norman James was merely one minister interpreting Scripture, his conclusions could be examined, challenged, rejected, or revised like those of any other teacher. But if he truly possessed apostolic authority comparable to Paul, Peter, and John, then disagreement with his teaching could be understood not merely as disagreement with Norman James, but as resistance to divinely restored apostolic authority itself.

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Doctrine and authority were therefore inseparable. The same system that defined entrance into the Kingdom also created the structure through which those boundaries were guarded and enforced.

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It is at this point that the history of Wellspring’s theology becomes inseparable from the wounds produced under the authority that sustained it.​​​​​​​​​​