Rev. Ralph Gleason Cook

Born to immigrant parents from Northern Ireland and England on September 1, 1899, R. G. Cook entered the world in Boston, Massachusetts.

In the midst of a gathering at Trinity Pentecostal mission, the Holy Ghost fell on him and he began to speak with tongues. He immediately began to feel the call of God for ministry and began by witnessing and participating in street meetings.

At nineteen years old, he met and married a dedicated young lady. It was during the terrible years of an influenza epidemic that swept the eastern United States following World War I that his young wife died along with their new baby girl just one year into their union.

It was during this period that R. G. Cook received the revelation of the Oneness of God and baptism in Jesus' name. He began to travel and speak in small meetings across the United States. His travels reached to the southern states and into the Midwest. During his travels in 1921, he met a young woman evangelist named Nelly Jane Reppond from Louisiana. They married and began holding revival meetings throughout Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. In 1922 at the age of twenty-two, they were named pastors of an assembly in Little Rock, Arkansas, that is still a United Pentecostal Church today. After just one year there, they returned to found a church in the Boston area.

Finding a few believers, they opened a work in Foxboro, Massachusetts. For many years this was the only organized Jesus' Name work in all of New England. While pastoring this work for more than twenty years, he also traveled throughout New England, particularly Maine and New Brunswick, preaching camp meetings and helping emerging works.

In 1945, S. R. Hanby invited Brother Cook to pastor a church that he had founded in Lancaster, Ohio. Brother Cook led this church for twenty-eight years.

R. G. Cook served in many official capacities in organizations throughout his years of ministry. He was a district elder with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. He also served in that role with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ prior to the merger in 1944. When the United Pentecostal Church International was formed in 1945, he was elected as the first district superintendent of the Ohio District and served ten years. He was appointed to the Foreign Mission Board of the UPCI and served nine years until he was elected as the UPCI assistant general superintendent from the Eastern Zone.

He retired in 1972 from his pastorate and from the office of assistant general superintendent. He continued to travel and minister until the time of his death at age eighty-two.

He passed from this life on September 28, 1981.