CRAIG VON BUSECK: You've written a book called "The Century of the Holy Spirit:
100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal." On
January 1, 2001, the Church celebrated the 100th anniversary
of the Pentecostal Movement -- an event in history that
has revolutionized the Church over the last century.
Can you tell us about the earliest days of the Pentecostal
renewal? How did it begin and what caused it to grow?
DR. VINSON SYNAN: The background of it was the Holiness Movement that
had been around for the whole 19th century -- mainly from Methodist
roots. The Methodists had sort of read these people out of the church
by 1894 and there were a lot of people, maybe 100,000 in America, who
were seeking a deeper walk with God in what they called the second blessing
of sanctification, which they also called the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
And so as the new century came on the world, there were people who
believed there would be a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit to usher
in a new century -- a century of world evangelization.
This movement started in Topeka, Kan., in a Bible school led by a former
Methodist pastor, Charles Fox Parham. In a watch night service, December
31, 1900, going over into the very first day of the century, a young
lady by the name of Agnes Ozman asked the teacher and the students to
lay hands on her and to pray that she would be baptized in the Holy
Spirit. She expected to speak with tongues in what they call the Bible
evidence.
Well, she did speak with tongues. They said she spoke the Chinese language.
She was unable to speak English for three days. When they tied speaking
with tongues to the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, that's what created
the Pentecostal Movement. Then not only tongues, but healing, casting
out of demons, prophecy and many other gifts of the Spirit began to
be manifested there in Topeka.
It spread from there down to Houston, Texas, where a black man, William
Joseph Seymour, was brought into the movement by Parham. Then he went
to Los Angeles in 1906 in the famous Azusa Street Meeting. From there
that movement spread all over the earth -- overnight almost. It was
a tremendous beginning for a movement.
VON BUSECK: Church historians have given evidence of times of "tongues
speaking" occurring in different areas and in different times since
the birth of the church on the day of Pentecost. Though speaking in
tongues was manifested at times, no one was taught to seek for the experience
as they were taught to seek for justification, sanctification and so
forth. What was it that inspired Charles Parham to encourage his Bible
students to seek the "Baptism of the Holy Ghost?"
SYNAN: Well, he had studied the teachings of the Holiness Movement,
including salvation, sanctification, healing, and the Second Coming.
And he noticed that there was no standard evidence of receiving the
second blessing -- Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Some people said you
would shout or weep or fall on the floor. The way he tells it, he was
teaching his students the major doctrines of the Holiness Movement at
that time, and when he got to Baptism in the Holy Spirit, he told his
students there are many different ideas of how you know you've received
this. He said, "I'm going on a weekend preaching revival at a Free Methodist
church in Kansas City." And he gave a homework assignment to the students.
He said, "Study the Scriptures and when I get back report on what is
the Bible evidence. How do you know you received the Holy Spirit?"
Well, when he got back, the students said, to tell the truth, when
we study the Scriptures, we see that they spoke with tongues in almost
every case. If you want to know what the Bible evidence is, it has to
be tongues. He said he was astonished at the answer. There are other
people who believe that he already knew what the answer was and that
he was trying to get the students to confirm it.
J. Roswell Flower, the founding secretary of the Assemblies of God,
said, "Agnes Ozman's experience [being baptized in the Holy Spirit]
made the 20th century Pentecostal Movement." After this, millions of
people sought to receive an instantaneous Baptism in the Spirit, expecting
to speak with tongues. That's what made it different from the Holiness
Movement and other movements of the day.
VON BUSECK: As you said, six years after Agnes Ozman was baptized in
the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal Movement was launched to the world
at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. What happened at those meetings
that caused such a tremendous outpouring?
SYNAN: I've studied this for most of my life and there are people writing
books and doing research on Azusa Street. There's nothing, humanly-speaking,
that we can come up with that explains everything about Azusa Street.
It has to be, in my view, a supernatural work of God. Here is a black
pastor born in Louisiana to parents who had been slaves. He had been
to Indianapolis and worked at a railroad station and as a waiter in
restaurants. He had gotten into the Holiness Movement and had learned
about tongues from Parham. He was invited to California to preach in
a little black holiness church. They locked the door on him. He had
not spoken in tongues yet, but he preached that it was the evidence.
Then he started holding prayer meetings in the home of a friend by
the name of Asbury. For maybe two weeks they prayed and fasted. And
then they began to speak in tongues in that prayer meeting in the home.
And the crowds grew so large until he would speak on the front porch
to hundreds of people on the streets.
They had to find a place to meet. They looked around downtown Los Angeles
and found an old AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, which is
now the First AME Church of Los Angeles. It was the first black church
building in Los Angeles. But it had been sold and used as a stable and
a lumber warehouse and all kinds of stuff. It was a broken-down shambles
of a building. It had been burned and it looked terrible. But Seymour
and his followers, made up mainly of black porters, washer women, maids
-- just very poor people -- started a meeting in April of 1906. The
central attraction was speaking in tongues and healing. People came
from all over Los Angeles and then it got into the religious press.
Stories were printed all over the country that people were speaking
in tongues just like the apostles did.
And so there was a lot of curiosity. People came from all over the
country, and even from Europe. That meeting went on for three-and-a-half
years -- three services a day, seven days a week. The pastor was a black
man, but soon the majority of the people were white. And so it was Azusa
Street with Seymour that made this a worldwide movement through Frank
Bartleman, who wrote articles that went all over the world. Soon people
were speaking in tongues in Jerusalem, in Stockholm, in London and Rome
-- all over the world, it just spread like an explosion.
VON BUSECK: Who were some of the most important leaders in the Pentecostal
movement in the first half of the 20th century? Who were the key leaders,
and can you tell us about them?
SYNAN: Well, the leadership changed. Nobody stayed in charge for very
long. In fact, they often say it is a movement without a man. There's
no Luther, there's no Calvin, there's no Wesley who molded the movement
into one church. It exploded and there were many churches starting all
over, everywhere.
The first leader, of course, was Parham. Now he's the leader for about
five years. Then Seymour, for three-and-a-half or four years, becomes
the national leader. Then he drops out of sight because the mailing
list for his paper called "Apostolic Faith" was moved to Portland, Ore.
Then the leadership moves to Chicago -- I call it the Chicago connection.
William H. Durham was the pastor of the First Pentecostal Church in
Chicago. From his church came all kinds of leaders. Italians spread
Pentecostalism all over the world in Italian communities. From Chicago
came Willis Hoover in Chile. He started the first Pentecostal movement
in South America. From the Chicago area came Daniel Bergan Goonivingren,
who went to Brazil and started a mass movement there. Durham was the
founding theologian of the Assemblies of God was in the Chicago area.
In Memphis you have Charles Harrison Mason, who goes to Azusa Street,
is baptized in the Spirit, comes back and turns his church, Church of
God in Christ, into a Pentecostal church. And so Memphis becomes a great
center. That has become the largest Pentecostal church in America with
six million members.
And there were others here and there. In my church, I come from the
Pentecostal Holiness Church, a man from Dunn, N.c., G. B. Cashwell went
to Azusa Street and spoke in tongues. They said he spoke in German.
He came back to Dunn and held a Pentecostal meeting, which they called
Azusa Street east. And there, leaders of four or five different Holiness
denominations came, spoke with tongues, and the Pentecostal Holiness
churches became Pentecostal; through his ministry the Church of God
in Cleveland, Tenn., became Pentecostal. So you see it spreading.
And then it breaks out in Europe with Thomas Ball Berritt; Louise Patros
in Sweden; it goes into Russia with J. A. Voreniov; into Korea -- it
spreads all over the earth in a very short time.
VON BUSECK: Some of the strongest churches and denominations that we
have today grew out of the Pentecostal Movement -- denominations like
the Pentecostal Holiness Church, The Assemblies of God, The International
Church of the Foursquare Gospel, The Church of God in Christ and others
were birthed at that time. Why have these denominations prospered around
the world in light of the fact that many started with very humble beginnings?
SYNAN: The only thing I can say is that they released a tremendous
power -- the power of the Holy Spirit -- and not just tongues, but all
the gifts were released into the church. These people were excited.
They believed Jesus was coming any moment. They had to win the world
before Christ returned. That gave them a big motivation.
I think it was the joy of worship -- the power of praising God, singing
in the Spirit, clapping their hands, dancing before the Lord. It was
a very expressive kind of worship. It attracted poor people, mainly.
But in time, by the middle of the 20th century, it was going into Episcopal
churches, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and even the Catholic Church. But
I think the growth came because very simple people believed God.
In the religious world there were a lot of people who said we see the
power of God working. It was noisy and it was messy. These people shouted,
they danced, but the common people heard this message gladly. The movement
spread like wildfire all over this nation and all over the world.
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