This work traces the progress on nineteenth century holiness movements and assesses their importance for the advent of modern Pentecostalism.  It outlines the course taken by Welsh dissenting groups from their inception in the first half of the seventeenth century through the contribution of Calvinistic Methodism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the turn of the twentieth century and the Revival of 1904-5. 

The roles of both Evan Roberts and Daniel Williams are considered, and the work sets out to demonstrate how the Apostolic Church was born from a synthesis of revivalism with Pentecostalism.  The development of Williams’s Church is described from its sectarian origins as a village Pentecostal meeting through its link with the Bournemouth-based Apostolic Faith Church to the severing of relations with Bournemouth in 1916.  Further developments are noted as the Church amalgamated with three other apostolic groups before emerging as an accepted denomination within the Christian Church.  An excursus introduces the beginning of the Elim Pentecostal Church – a concurrent movement in Wales – and shows similarities and differences in the two organisations.  The post World War II desire for reform in Pentecostal churches, and the associated impact of the Latter Rain controversy, is examined.  The Apostolic Church’s interpretation of evangelical and Pentecostal doctrines are surveyed and compared with the beliefs of traditional denominations.  Consideration is given to Apostolic organisation and social teaching: stress is laid upon the Ascension gifts and the importance of the centralised form of church government.  The significance of the ‘Apostolic vision’, which gave rise to the worldwide missionary movement, is examined and the history and progress of early mission fields recorded.  There is a brief life story of Idris John Vaughan without whose contribution much of the information contained herein concerning the early history of the Church and the Nigerian mission would be lost.