An excerpt from Messenger: Sydney Elton and the making of Pentecostalism in Nigeria
After serving as a missionary for 16 years in Ilesa with The Apostolic Church mission to Nigeria, Pa S.G Elton was led by God to leave. In his words, “I left them because God said, ‘I have got a bigger ministry for you.’ The prophetic word as I left was: ‘Don’t you deter or delay my servant Elton; I have got a bigger job for him and it will cover the whole country and beyond.”
The decision to leave the Apostolic Church mission while remaining in Nigeria was a major step of faith for the Eltons. Telling the story many years later, no doubt with some nostalgia, Elton did not in any way attempt to downplay the precariousness of the situation - God had to come through for them or they were going to become the laughingstock of many who thought they had made a foolish decision by leaving the mission: “I remember the day, more than thirty years ago, when my wife and I submitted our resignation from any salaried job,” he began. “We told our leaders who were visiting us from England that we would now no longer require any salary. We had finished. We had no income in this country. We had no farm. We had no food in our stock room. But we knew God was leading us.”
In a very rare display of emotion, which further reveals how deeply he felt about the situation, he talked about how two leaders from England (Rosser and Wellings) “who had just left me, who had accepted my resignation and walked away, drove away after being my guests and eating my food in my house; they drove away, leaving me, knowing that I had no source of income, and they hoped that I would soon after pack up and leave Nigeria.” “For months no money came in,” recalled Elton, “We came down to our last five pounds. I had no farm, I had no business. My wife prayed, ‘Lord if we have done the right thing, today in the post there will be a letter from someone in England who is sending us money who has never sent us money before.’ One can therefore imagine their excitement when they went to the post office “and in the post box was a letter from a person we had never heard of before.” Enclosed in the letter was a cheque and a part of the letter read, “We feel that you are possibly facing a crisis and are in need, so we are enclosing a cheque which we hope will meet your need whatever it is.” Elton remarked, “Now, they didn’t know what I was facing, and they didn’t know what I was going to go through.” The money was substantial enough to buy him “a car for transport as an independent person.” As he a later said, “I moved out in faith, believing God would provide and He did so.” And indeed, leaving the Apostolic Church released Elton into his most fruitful years of ministry in Nigeria.
