Rev. David Franklin Gray

On May 6, 1917, David Franklin Gray was born to missionary parents Frank and May Gray while they were living and ministering in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. His older sister Olive had also been born in Japan just fifteen months prior. When the Frank Grays returned to the states in 1919 for medical reasons, they settled in Los Angeles, California, where a third child, Paul, was born.

As a young boy, Brother Gray was filled with the Spirit of God and became an ardent student of the Word and a powerful defender of truth. When he was twelve, the family moved to Baldwin Park and began attending Brother George Farrell's church. Because the high schools in Baldwin Park at the time were considered so bad, the Grays found a Christian school in Watsonville, California, for David and his sister, Olive, to attend.

After attending Monte Vista Christian School at Watsonville, he spent time in Bible training in Stockton, California, and later went on to Harry Morse's Pentecostal Training School in Oakland, California. It was while he was attending the Pentecostal Training School that he met and married Emily Belle Butler on November 22, 1936.

During his years of ministry, he evangelized and pastored churches in Pasadena, Oakland, Turlock, and San Diego, California. His longest pastorate was Revival Tabernacle, which he, along with his wife Emily and daughter Naomi, established in February 1945. They started in a storefront on Seventh Street in downtown San Diego. After moving to several other locations during the next eighteen years, they built a beautiful edifice, patterned after the tabernacle in the wilderness, on six acres rightly referred to as Pentecostal Park. The church, now called the Anchor Church, still exists and thrives at this location. While they were early in their pastorate at Revival Tabernacle, their family increased with the birth of a son, David Samuel, and a short time later, their youngest daughter, Deborah Sharon. Being a man of great and unselfish vision, he helped Revival Tabernacle to mother churches in National City, Chula Vista, El Cahon, Linda Vista, Palm City, Tijuana, San Diego (downtown), as well as three other churches which merged with other existing congregations.

He passed from this life on August 23, 1996, and his voice will be greatly missed among those of us in the Apostolic ranks.