Sanningens vittne

Sanningens vittne (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1911-1939  Browse the title

Sanningens vittne trons härold (Chicago, Ill.) 1939-1949  Browse the title

Sanningens vittne (the Witness of Truth) was a Swedish-language Pentecostal Christian religious periodical published in Minneapolis, Minnesota between 1911 and 1939. The free paper was published and edited by Andrew August Holmgren. Holmgren was born in Lycksele, Västerbotten, Sweden in 1866. He converted to the Baptist church in 1886 and began preaching. In 1893 Holmgren came to the United States, where he served as a Baptist minister in Minnesota and Iowa. He also published two Baptist newspapers in Minneapolis, Ungdomens tidning (1898-1901) and Baneret (1902-1911).

Starting around 1906 the Pentecostal movement began spreading among Scandinavian Baptists in the United States. Holmgren became an early adherent, and was a founder and longtime secretary of the Scandinavian Independent Assemblies of God, a fellowship of independent Pentecostal churches. He founded Sanningens vittne in May 1911 to serve as a voice of this organization.

Holmgren published Sanningens vittne from his home in Northeast Minneapolis, near the suburb of Columbia Heights, Minnesota. Initially printed monthly, with four pages of four columns each, it contained devotional articles, readers' letters and testimonies, missionary reports, advertisements for religious publications, and church notices. The paper was expanded to eight pages by mid-1912, and reduced to bimonthly publication sometime between January 1914 and January 1920 (no issues are extant for this period). Monthly publication resumed sometime between mid-1924 and the end of 1926.

In September 1939, Holmgren retired from journalism and sold Sanningens vittne to the Philadelphia Swedish Pentecostal Church of Chicago, Illinois. Publication was moved to Chicago beginning with the October 1939 issue, and editorship passed to the church's pastor, Joseph Mattson. The next month, Sanningens vittne was merged with Trons härold (Herald of Faith), the church's existing Swedish-language publication, under the name Sanningens vittne trons härold. The sixteen-page, three-column monthly magazine included church and missionary news and reports, devotional content, church notices, and general advertisements.

In June 1949 Sanningens vittne trons härold ceased as a separate publication and became an optional Swedish-language insert inside the Philadelphia Swedish Pentecostal Church's English-language magazine, Herald of Faith. The inserts continued to be published until at least 1952.