Claude Paschal "C. P." Kilgore

Claude Paschal (C. P.) Kilgore was born on July 5, 1888, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to George Washington Kilgore and Sarahbelle (McDonald) Kilgore. C. P.’s mother died when he was only seven, so he and his two siblings were raised by their father, who was a bartender.

C. P. married Ella Lee Donaldson on February 2, 1908, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. They would have ten children, with eight reaching adulthood.

C. P. Kilgore’s early life experiences caused him to question religion. Many of the people he saw in the saloon on Friday as he helped his father would be in the churches on Sunday. Consequently, Kilgore joined the Mormon Church and pledged that he would “die a Mormon.”

C. P. and Ella Lee Kilgore first heard about the Pentecostal experience from Roxie Hughes, an early Assembly of God evangelist. Ella Lee was the first to receive the Pentecostal experience. C. P. Kilgore wrote, “I felt this was what I craved. I went on my knees and God filled my soul. For three days and nights the glory of God was on me so great that I could not feel my feet walking on the floor or ground.” He was baptized by Fred Lohmann about 1918 and joined the Assembly of God organization.

Sometime later, Brother Kilgore testified, “I heard the blessed truth of baptism in Jesus’ name, and willingly I obeyed.” He was baptized in Jesus’ name in 1921 by Henry E. Reed, pastor of the Apostolic Assembly of God in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

After hearing the Apostolic Pentecostal message, Brother Kilgore wrote, “I felt I must leave my job and go tell the world.” He admitted that he “could not quote three verses of the Bible by heart,” and he and Ella Lee had four children to support, yet he said, “I never let this stop me.” His boss offered him a tremendous bonus to stay, but Brother Kilgore knew God has spoken to him.

During their first three years as traveling evangelists, no one asked the Kilgores to preach a revival. Instead, they preached in open fields in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. C. P. and Ella Lee would pray between two and four hours a day, and sometimes longer. He wrote on the windows of his car, “Have you obeyed Acts 2:38?” The couple built brush arbors, sewed tents for tent revivals, and lived in almost unimaginable poverty for the sake of spreading the gospel. One of Kilgore’s homemade pulpits is on display in the Oklahoma District History Center, and a “Kilgore” altar bench is on display at the UPCI History Center.

One of Brother Kilgore’s most noteworthy revivals was held in Cunningham, Texas. During those services, a five-year-old boy who had never walked was miraculously healed. (The boy later became a professor at a university in Corpus Christi.) Another participant recalled being baptized in a pond after Brother Kilgore rebuked the snakes out of the water. According to the story, the snakes never returned. It was such a marvelous meeting that, in the 1980s, community leaders erected a granite marker at the entrance to the city cemetery commemorating the revival as the most significant event in the town’s history.

In a 1934 edition, The Pentecostal Fire reported, “Brother Claude Kilgore just closed a meeting at Hennepin, Oklahoma, baptizing one hundred and fifteen in Jesus’ name and eighty-nine received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” In the same issue, the publication noted that “nearly one hundred were baptized in Jesus’ name and over sixty received the Holy Ghost” at a meeting in Paoli, Oklahoma. Other accounts report one thousand people in attendance at his baptismal services.

C. P. Kilgore’s ministry was accompanied by signs, wonders, and miracles. In Skiatook, Oklahoma, more than one hundred people were filled with the Holy Ghost after an angel appeared over the pulpit in the rented high school gymnasium where services were being held. It is reported that more than fifty preachers eventually came out of this revival. A young man was delivered from alcoholism at a revival in Morris, Oklahoma, in 1932 and eventually became a powerful Pentecostal preacher. The young man’s name was Voar Shoemake, and he would later marry Brother Kilgore’s daughter, Blanche Faye.

The Kilgore’s ninth child, James, also became a noteworthy Pentecostal preacher and a 2002 inductee into the UPCI’s Order of the Faith. James L. Kilgore was the longtime pastor of Life Tabernacle in Houston, Texas, and he served as an assistant general superintendent of the UPCI for more than twenty years.

Records indicate that more than ten thousand people received the baptism of the Holy Spirit during C. P. Kilgore’s forty-four years of ministry. He also baptized approximately that many in Jesus’ name and pioneered at least fifteen churches, including a congregation in Morris, Oklahoma. He was serving as pastor in that community when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1959.

C. P. Kilgore is remembered for both his evangelistic effectiveness and his love of Scripture. He created “The Wheel of Prophecy,” a Bible study resource still in use today. It has become one of the most published pieces of Oneness Pentecostal literature in existence and serves as a tribute to its author’s love of the Apostolic message.