Pilgrim Bible College
1917-1947
On February 25, 1917, the Nazarene University Church of Pasadena, California, was disorganized. After waiting three months and feeling themselves to be “strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” about 300 people organized the first Pentecost-Pilgrim Church. Within eight months the name was changed to the Pilgrim Church and Pilgrim Bible College was organized, with Seth C. Rees as the founder and president.
The historical collector’s print of the Administration building represents the early years of the college as they built the building with the faith all building debts would be paid, and they were.
A few years prior to 1947 students were being sent to the Holiness Evangelistic Institute on the El Monte campus in California and the Huntington Park Training School, which is now known as Azusa Pacific College. In 1947, Pilgrim Bible College merged with Holiness Evangelistic Institute on the El Monte campus and that campus in turn merged in 1960 with Central Pilgrim College at Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which is now known as Oklahoma Wesleyan University.
