Transcript History of Christian Doctrine

Pentecostalism
th
and The 20
Century
The Fire Returns
A History of Christian Doctrine,
Vol. 1-3 by David Bernard
The Holiness
Movement
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There was a strong call to go back to the doctrines and
practices of the apostles in the New Testament church.
In describing this desire, the adjective “Pentecostal”
became common, and a rallying cry was, “Back to
Pentecost.”
Some leaders began to press for the restoration of
spiritual gifts, including prophecy, healing, and
miracles.
A minority of Holiness people, including the FireBaptized Holiness Church, began to seek for the
“baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire” as a third crisis
experience, but again not associating it with tongues.
Three Works of Grace?
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The Baptism of the Holy Ghost originally
thought of as a third work of grace
The common testimony of early
Pentecostals was,
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“Thank God, I am saved, sanctified, and
filled with the Holy Ghost.”
Charles Parham and the Topeka
Outpouring
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Founder and director of Bethel Bible
School on Stone Avenue in a building
named Stone’s Folly in Topeka, Kansas.
He was an independent preacher
associated with the Holiness movement.
Stone’s Folly
Research at Stone’s Folly
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He asked his students to research the bible
to see what was the evidence of the
Baptism of the Holy Ghost. They all
agreed that the initial evidence was
speaking in another language.
They all began to seek God for this “third
crisis experience.”
The Pentecostal Movement
(January 1, 1901)
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In a prayer meeting Agnes Ozman asked
Parham to lay hands on her that she might
receive the Holy Ghost with the evidence of
speaking in tongues.
When he did, she began to speak in tongues.
It is said that Agnes Ozman spoke in Chinese for
three days straight. She couldn't speak in
English at all.
Several other students soon received the same
experience, and on January 3 Parham himself
along with many others also received the Holy
Ghost with the sign of speaking in tongues.
The Apostolic Faith Movement
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Parham called his new group the Apostolic Faith movement, and he
published a periodical called The Apostolic Faith.
The group conducted meetings in Kansas and Missouri but did not
grow rapidly at first.
A significant breakthrough came in the fall of 1903 in Galena,
Kansas. A woman from the town was almost completely blind from
an eye disease. After she was instantly healed in one of Parham’s
services in Eldorado Springs, Missouri, she invited him to conduct
meetings in Galena.
There, more than eight hundred people were baptized in water,
many hundreds received the Holy Ghost, and at least one thousand
people testified that they were healed.
The Apostolic Faith
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From Kansas and
Missouri to:
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Orchard Texas
Houston
San Antonio
Zion City Illinois
By 1906 it was 13,000
strong
By 1908 it was 25,000
people
Charles Parham’s Significance
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In Houston he started a bible school after
an outpouring and one of his students
(informally) was William Seymour.
The Revival in Galena Missouri affected
the life of an atheist named Howard Goss
who would go on to be one of the
founders of the Assemblies of God and
the first Superintendent of the United
Pentecostal Church.
William Seymour and the
Azusa Street Revival
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William Seymour
(1870-1922)
Student of Parham
William Seymour and the
Azusa Street Revival
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Seymour was a Holiness Preacher from
Louisiana living in Houston. After hearing
Parham’s teaching he went to Los Angeles to
pursue a ministerial position.
His first sermon at the church was about the
baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial
evidence of speaking tongues.
The pastor and congregation were offended and
she locked Seymour out the church.
William Seymour and the
Azusa Street Revival
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He continued services in the homes of two
sympathetic families: first in the home of
Edward Lee, where he stayed, and then in
the Asberry home on Bonnie Brae Street.
Bonnie Brae Street House
Before Azusa: Bonnie Brae Street
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At Edward Lee’s home they held a 10-day
fast, specifically seeking the Holy Spirit. A
few days into it, Lee received the Holy
Spirit while getting prayed over for
healing. God also healed him.
Seymour went to the Bonnie Brae St.
service that night and shared the news
and the Holy Ghost fell and many more
were filled.
Bonnie Brae Street
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Seymour's future wife, Jennie Evans
Moore, received another special gift that
night. She had never played the piano, but
that night she was praying, playing the
piano and singing in a language that was
not her native language. She was a pianist
until her death.
The Fear of God
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The house was filled for several days, with
masses of people jamming the yard and Bonnie
Brae Street.
A young person came to the porch and
prophesied about the great San Francisco
earthquake in which 452 people died. The
earthquake happened a few days later.
This brought the fear of God and general
curiosity. Eventually too many people thronged
the porch, the porch caved in, and they had to
find a larger place. That's when they moved to
Azusa Street.
Azusa Street Mission
Azusa Street Mission
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The small group rented an old, two-story building on Azusa Street
in downtown Los Angeles and began services on April 14. The
Azusa Street Mission held services daily for three years, from 1906
to 1909.
Many miracles, healings, and baptisms of the Holy Spirit occurred.
There were documented accounts of the dead being raised. The
meetings were characterized by spontaneous, demonstrative
worship and strong moves of the Spirit.
They were racially integrated, an amazing development in that
segregated, prejudiced time. Frank Bartleman (1871-1936), a
Holiness evangelist and the foremost chronicler of the revival,
wrote, “The ‘color line’ was washed away in the blood.” Blacks and
whites, men and women, served in public leadership and ministry
roles.
Azusa Street Leaders
Significance of Azusa
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Even though Pentecostalism started with Parham, it was
Azusa Street that broadcast it to the world.
In September 1906, Seymour began publishing the news
of the revival in a paper called The Apostolic Faith
Missionaries, ministers, and lay members from across
the United States and around the world flocked to Los
Angeles, received the Holy Spirit, and carried the
message everywhere. Many who could not attend
nevertheless read the news of the revival and sought and
received the same experience for themselves.
The Decline of Parham and Seymour
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Parham came to Azusa Street and didn’t like
what he saw even though he admitted that
people were being filled with the spirit.
He felt the service was too demonstrative, too
overly influenced by blacks and rife with false
manifestations.
Aside from racial issues, there is some
speculation that territorial issues affected his
opinions.
The Decline of Parham and Seymour
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Parham was arrested on a moral charge,
but the charges were dropped.
This forever crippled his reputation. He
was sidelined from the leadership of the
movement that started with him.
There still is a group left in Baxter Springs,
Kansas named the Apostolic Faith.
Name Change
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Since Parham coined the term “Apostolic
Faith,” many people (perhaps trying to
distance themselves from him) started
referring to themselves as Pentecostal
instead of Apostolic.
The term Apostolic would later be used
mainly by Oneness Pentecostals (like us).
Seymour’s Demise
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Florence Crawford (1872-1936), an Azusa
Street member in 1906, started the
Apostolic Faith Mission in Portland,
Oregon, in 1908 as a rival organization to
Seymour’s.
She took Seymour’s mailing list, thereby
shutting down his paper, and she started
her own paper, also called The Apostolic
Faith.
Seymour’s Demise
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Seymour’s struggles with Parham, Crawford, and
William Durham (discussed in chapter 2) eroded his
leadership role.
The revival at Azusa Street dwindled in 1909
Most of the whites left the mission, and in 1915 Seymour
changed the constitution of the church to specify that a
“person of color” must always be the leader.
He also moved away from the doctrine of tongues as the
initial evidence of the Holy Spirit, holding that tongues
did not always come immediately, although it was still
expected as a sign that would follow Holy Spirit
baptism.
Opposition and Persecution
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Holiness groups and Fundamentalists (and
others) typically forced them out, denounced
them…. Calling them:
Holy Rollers
of the devil
the last vomit of Satan
emphatically not of God
wicked and adulterous
anti-Christian
sensual and devilish
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Pentecostal workers were:
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threatened
Beaten
shot at
tarred and feathered.
They were pelted with rocks and with rotten
fruit, vegetables, and eggs.
Tents ropes were slashed; tents and buildings
were set afire. Howard Goss explained:
The Finished
Work Controversy
William Durham
William Durham
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In Chicago, shortly after the great Azusa Street
revival, a prominent Baptist minister named
William H. Durham (1873-1912) began to
question whether sanctification was actually a
separate experience.
He had a conversion experience in 1898.
Because of Holiness teaching, for three years he
sought for a definite experience of sanctification.
In 1901, he had an experience that he identified
as sanctification, and he began to teach
sanctification as a second work of grace.
Durham’s Experience
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Many of the members of Durham’s North
Avenue Mission received the Holy Ghost
under Parham’s ministry in nearby Zion,
Illinois.
In early 1907 he visited the Azusa Street
revival in Los Angeles and received the
Holy Ghost on March 2.
He questioned all of his previous
experiences.
Durham’s Conclusions
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1. The baptism of the Holy Ghost was
different from the experiences that he had
identified as conversion and sanctification.
2. He realized that he could not simply
“claim” the baptism of the Holy Ghost as
did the Holiness people who equated it
with entire sanctification
3. Speaking in tongues was invariably the
initialevidence of this experience.
From Three Works of Grace to Two
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He taught that there was no second work known
as sanctification.
The Baptism of the Holy Ghost was the Second
Work
Instead, sanctification is an integral part of
conversion and an ongoing process.
To be holy, we do not need to seek a second
work of grace, but we simply need to
appropriate the benefits of the finished work of
Calvary.
The Controversy Erupts
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He preaches at a Pentecostal Convention in
Chicago in 1910 and convinces Howard Goss of
the Finished Work Doctrine.
He preaches at the Azusa Street Mission while
Seymour is away and the revival returns.
Seymour did not approve and he locked
Durham out of the Mission.
Seymour started his own services at Seventh and
Los Angeles Streets, and the revival continued.
Those Who Rejected
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The groups who rejected the Finished Work
message and continued to teach three crisis
experiences included
the Apostolic Faith groups of Charles Parham
William Seymour
Florence Crawford
The Pentecostal Holiness Church
The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and
its later offshoot, the Church of God of Prophecy
The Church of God in Christ.
Those Who Accepted
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The Pentecostal groups that accepted the
Finished Work:
The Assemblies of God
The International Church of the
Foursquare Gospel.
Including the United Pentecostal Church
International
The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
The Outcome of the Controversy
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Why did the Finished Work message gain such
widespread acceptance?
1. as the Pentecostal revival exploded, many converts
came directly from a life of sin without claiming a prior
experience of sanctification.
2. many of the men who became leaders in the
Pentecostal movement after 1910 did not come from a
Wesleyan-Holiness background.
3. The Finished Work position has the stronger biblical
support. Holiness people had equated entire
sanctification with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but
when early Pentecostals differentiated the two, there
were no clear examples in the New Testament of people
receiving sanctification as a distinct, instantaneous work.
The Jesus Name
Controversy
The Worldwide Camp Meeting,
Arroyo Seco, 1913
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Pentecostalism was the message of Robert
E. McAlister (1880-1953), a Canadian
preacher who had received the Holy Spirit
at Azusa Street in 1906.
Speaking at a baptismal service, he
explained that single immersion in Jesus
Name was the proper mode for baptism,
not triple immersion as some people
practiced.
Frank Ewart and the Oneness of God
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Another man who was deeply impressed
by McAlister’s message was Frank J.
Ewart (1876-1947)
He started a work in Los Angeles with
McAllister and John Cook.
Frank Ewart and the Oneness of God
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Ewart pitched a tent and began meetings in
Belvedere, California, just outside Los Angeles.
He preached his first message out of Acts 2:38
Ewart was rebaptized in the name of Jesus
Christ.
Then Ewart baptized Cook in the name of Jesus
Christ, and Cook baptized Ewart.
This action was the decisive step in starting
Oneness Pentecostalism as a distinct movement.
The Spread of the Jesus Name Message
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Many missionaries and preachers came to the meetings
and were rebaptized in Jesus’ name. Even more
significantly, Ewart’s periodical, Meat in Due Season,
carried the Jesus Name message and reports of the
revival far and wide.
Missionaries to China, Japan, and India were soon
baptized in Jesus’ name.
During this revival, Ewart endured much opposition
from local church people as well as from a gang of
hoodlums. The latter threatened him and his wife on
numerous occasions, planted “stink bombs” in the
services, and even burned down the tent. The town
constable did nothing to protect them, but the
persecution ended when the gang leader was converted.