E.M. Bounds is one of the names that graces
the lips of people when great men who sacrificed greatly just so the name of
the Lord will get to the nations. He left his very promising career in Law for
the work of the Lord. This is a little something about the man we all fondly
know as E.M. Bounds.
On August 15, 1835 Edward McKendree Bounds
was born the fifth child of Thomas Jefferson and Hester A. Bounds in
Shelbyville, Missouri, named after the evangelist, William McKendree; the fourth
bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Being one of the original settlers of
Shelby County, Thomas Bounds served as the first Justice of the Peace and later
named County Clerk then appointed as County Commissioner in 1835. At age 14
when his father passed away, he moved with other relatives to Mesquite Canyon,
California in a quest for gold which they gave up on after four years of
unsuccess. He returned to Missouri and studied Law in Hannibal, Missouri and
came out as the youngest practicing lawyer in that state at age 19.He closed
down his Law firm and enrolled in the Centenary Seminary in Palmyra, Missouri
after a revival meeting with Evangelist Smith Thomas which finally convinced
him though he felt the call to Christian ministry in his early twenties during
the Third Great Awakening. At the age of 24 in 1859, after two years of
enrolment, he was ordained by his denomination and named Pastor of the
Monticello, Missouri Methodist Church nearby.
E.M. Bounds was first married to Emma
Elizabeth Barnett from Washington, Georgia on September 19, 1876, a union that
fruited two daughters; Celeste and Corneille Bounds and a son;Edward Bounds.
Twenty months after his wife died in February, 1886, Bounds married Harriet
Elizabeth Barnett; his wife’s cousin and sired three sons viz. Samuel, Charles
and Osborne Bounds, and three daughters viz. Elizabeth, Mary and Emmie Bounds.
He lost two of his sons, one from each of his wives in their early ages of six
years old (Edward) and eight days old( Charles).
Bounds was against slavery but being a
pastor he was added to a list of people who were to take an oath of allegiance
and post a $500 bond which he opposed to and was arrested for it in 1861 by
Union troops and was released a year and half later. After some time, he
pastored the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and established weekly prayer
sessions which later grew throughout the country. For eight years he served as
an Editor for the St. Louis Christian Advocate and moved on to Associate Editor
at The Nashville Christian Advocate which lasted for four years. In Washington,
Georgia he developed the habit of waking up at 4am to pray till 7am. Bounds had
a passion for lost souls and backslidden Christians. In his lifetime, only two
of his books we published, the rest saw the daylight after he passed on. He
well known for his books on Prayer. E.M. Bounds died at the age of 78 on August
24, 1913 and was buried at Resthaven Cemetery.
Resources
BIOGRAPHY OF E.M. BOUNDS by Wikipedia
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