In the 1880s, he started to gather large groups of followers by conducting services which included reports of mass healings. He identified himself with Paul Bogle, the Baptist leader of the Morant Bay rebellion, and he stressed the need for changes to the inequalities in race relations in Jamaican society. He reportedly said: “Brethren! Hell will be your position if you do not rise up and crush the white man. The time is coming! There is a white wall and a black wall. And the white wall has been closing around the black wall: but now the black wall has become bigger than the white.”