Charles Edward Fuller
Charles Edward Fuller
1887-1968
Charles E. Fuller was born on April 25, 1887, the fourth son of a furniture merchant who later became prosperous as a fruit grower in Southern California. After graduating magna cum laude from Pomona College, he married Grace Payton and ventured into the fruit-packing business.
In 1917 Fuller went to the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles to hear Paul Rader preach. The sermon from Ephesians 1:18 reached his heart, and he was converted to Christ. The next year found him and his wife traveling as itinerant missionaries to the remote villages of the western states. They shared a burden to reach people in out-of-theway places. Soon after, Fuller left the fruit-packing business and entered the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He became a renown Bible teacher in his community and formed a church from a small Bible class which he served for ten years.
From the sanctuary of that church, Calvary Church of Placentia, California, he launched his radio ministry in 1925 over a single local radio station in Santa Ana, California, and later became the director of a program he called The OldFashioned Revival Hour. His purpose was the dissemination of the Gospel by radio to reach vast numbers of people right in their own homes. The broadcast’s format gained immediate acceptance, and interest gave it rapid expansion to other stations. In the early 1940s, it was being carried each Sunday by a major transcontinental network, and was occupying a thousand hours of radio time each week in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and on many islands of the sea.
During the 1940s Fuller also directed a large contingent of evangelists in many parts of North America through the Fuller Evangelistic Foundation. Meanwhile, the Gospel Broadcasting Association continued to expand The OldFashioned Revival Hour’s coverage from North America to almost every spot on the globe. For 15 years, beginning with World War II, the program was broadcast each Sunday afternoon from the Municipal Auditorium in Long Beach, California, where it drew huge audiences. In that enormous hall, many G.I.s found the Lord before being shipped to Pacific and European war theatres, many to die in battle.
At the time of Dr. Fuller’s death, the broadcast was heard on more than 500 stations around the world. He died in March, 1968.