(Charismatic Movement) the History of the Pentecostal & Charismatic Movement — Mose Stoltzfus

It is truly a privilege for me to be a part of this. I consider this to be some of the best interaction and fellowship with a group of young people that I would know of in the world today. And I thank you for being here and for having, in general, that testimony.

The History and Influence of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement

All right, this morning we'd like to go into the history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. A portion to this at the beginning may be a little boring to you, as I try and give you some of the facts.

But I want you to try to focus on the history of this movement and where it has gone through the years. And then tomorrow, I'd like to bring you up to date on where it has gone, where it is today, and the powerful influence that it has on 10 ,000s of youth and others, millions across the world.

Shall we bow our heads for prayer? Our loving Father, I want to thank you for the great privilege that I have to be with these young folks and their spirit, their environment, their blessing in so many ways, their fellowship, and the miles that they have traveled to make this possible here this November of 2019.

I pray, dear God, that you would give us depth of understanding, deep, heartfelt conviction that may guide the steps of all of us together into right paths, into the troubled future that we are in and are going to experience, we believe, according to your Word.

So help us to that end today, as we want to exalt you and your Word to guide us and to give us that great pearl of great price, that great pearl of truth that will spare us and deliver us from the deception of our time.

I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, a young lady came to me yesterday. Thank you for that. And said, what does charismatic really mean? And let me tell you that that is not a bad word. When I consider some of my own experience in the deadness of religion in my youth and throughout some of the years, it was pretty exciting, yes, eye opening and an exciting experience for me to see a bit of charisma in church life and preaching and teaching and so on compared to the mundane traditional experience I had in my upbringing.

But the word charismatic comes from the word charisma. And charisma simply means, well, there's a number of definitions in various dictionaries, but one of them that I think is pretty accurate is that it is a compelling charm that has influence in people's lives to guide them and direct them in whatever capacity you have.

It's that way in business. You know, there are some of these speakers that go around and have these power speaking meetings to try to sell you a product and usually to get a man up there with a lot of charisma.

And the charismatic movement has tremendously grown by men like that that have stood in the front of thousands. And due to their charisma or their charismatic presentation of themselves, have drawn multitudes of people to themselves and to this deception that we're speaking of.

So it's a compelling charm or compelling drawing and influence upon the hearts and minds of people that are in the audience for whatever subject that they may have. But the influence of the Pentecostal charismatic movement is so widespread and pervasive that some historians are beginning to speak of it as the great epoch of church history.

Catholicism, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism in Church History

The first two being the age of Catholicism from the early church to 1517 and is still going on today. Even though it has united a bit with more other religions today, they are extremely ecumenical today in embracing, even presently, are trying to embrace Islam and Hinduism and trying to make a one world church from the whole mass.

And the age of the Protestant Reformation from 1517 to the present. Of course, this particular survey that is given ignores some of the smaller pockets of people and some of the great influences of the Anabaptist movement and other, like the Donatists and Waldensians and others throughout church history that have also had a major impact, but never as great as the Catholic, Protestant, and charismatic movements have.

So the survey that we're going to give you, or most of the reports that we're going to give you, comes from America. And what we have seen happening in America, even though much could be said from various parts of the world.

The most recent statistics that I could find indicate that the aggregate number of Pentecostal charismatics in the world in the last one I could find, really, was about 2011. I think it has grown since that and is up around 590 million people.

This makes them the second largest family of so-called Christians, the largest being the Roman Catholic Church. And of course, that is referred to as Christian here, which I don't believe it is. But so that would make them practically the largest so-called, again, Christian organization in the world today.

Of course, there again, there are other religions, like Islam, who is well over a million, maybe like 1 .6, and growing, the fastest growing one in the world today. The roots of the modern Pentecostalism we want to try and share with you today.

Why Church History Matters

This is a very important part, because church history has been a stabilizing effect in my life for most of my Christian life. I was a history lover in school, and I got into Bible school and got converted before that, but got into Bible school.

I followed after church history throughout the years. And to me, I have watched what we were experiencing and seeing in our world today compared to history. And that's what so concerns me with the charismatic movement, ignoring 1 ,850 years, so to speak, of church history, where solid groups were faithful to God and people turned from their sin and from the flesh and the world and gave their allegiance to godliness and true holiness.

And now, all at once, in the end times, they come up here and brush all of that aside and say it doesn't matter. And that's what we're hearing far and wide. And now we have a new revelation, a new concept, a new paradigm, they call it, and are trying to re-educate our minds that that 1 ,850 years, which is really kind of a mundane, boring type of thing.

And what we really need is the activities and the emotional highs and experiences brought to us today by these new movements. Theological foundations of modern Pentecostalism can be traced primarily to Methodism and the thinking of John Wesley.

Vincent Sinon refers to Wesley as a spiritual and intellectual father of modern holiness and Pentecostal movements. But let me explain to you, and you'll see here shortly, some of the things that came out of Methodism and the Wesleys that were not bad.

There are some very good things there. Nevertheless, it is looked to because of his teaching of the second work of grace or the second blessing or the second experience or the baptism of the Holy Ghost as being kind of a forerunner of the charismatic movement, even though it took a drastic turn in the 1900s.

The holiness Pentecostal movement in the United States by Eerdmans will give you that report. Another scholar has stated that Pentecostals are children of Wesley. Methodism is the most important of the modern traditions for the student of the Pentecostal origins to understand.

For 18th century Methodism is the mother of the 19th century American holiness movement, which in turn bore 20th century Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism is primitive Methodism's extended incarnation. That is also given by Eerdmans.

John Wesley, Methodism, and Entire Sanctification

The influence of John Wesley and Methodism. Wesley was born in 1703 and died in 1791 into an Anglican home with a Puritan influence. He was educated at Oxford and taught there for some years. His brother Charles and some friends organized the Holy Club and were dubbed Methodists for their emphasis on methodical Bible study and the pursuit of holiness.

It was Wesley's view on sanctification that contributed most of the latter emergence of Pentecostal doctrine. Let me just clarify. One sad part of Methodism was that they never turned away from infant baptism.

And that's where the whole Wesleyan movement in its beginning is so set apart from anabaptism in that they were baptized people finally upon a confession of faith in Christ Jesus. But the Methodists still accepted, and the Lutherans likewise continued in their infant baptism.

Wesley divided into several stages, each of which represented a different and higher level of salvation through which a believer passes. The first stage is that of perviant grace, which is but the beginning of a deliverance from a blind and unfeeling heart.

This was called assisting grace. The second stage is that of convincing grace, which is properly the first real move to salvation. The evidence of convincing grace is repentance. And that's a good part.

But they believed in repentance from sin, which is totally lost today in the charismatic movement. The third stage is that of entire sanctification. This is a gift of God, whereby one is cleansed from sin instantaneously.

This sanctification, however, they had to admit this, that is not absolute. For perfection pertains only to God, nor does it make men infallible. And there were different definitions or beliefs concerning infallibility.

For the body is still subject to decay and death. They realized the humanity of man there to agree, even though they believed in and preached entire sanctification. It consists, rather, in perfect love and pertains primarily to one's motives.

It is not constitutional. It may be increased and improved upon. But listen to this, it may be lost in diligence if diligence diminishes. Involuntary transgressions due to the imperfections of the body, or the flesh we would say there, are traceable to the mortality and limitations of being a creature and are not properly regarded as sin.

They looked at man and the problems we still have in the flesh as faults and weaknesses and so on. But they couldn't hardly call it sin because they had believed in the total sanctification or eradication of the sin nature.

And therefore, they had difficulty calling it sin. So the people did not live and rise to a higher level of Christianity than other progressive ones that I mentioned yesterday that we had very good evidence of in the Anabaptists and other Baldensians and others who died for their faith triumphantly and faithfully to God and had reached a high level of sanctification without that belief that they were teaching.

The fourth stage of that progressive entire sanctification in which one experiences a continuation of perfection in some of that wording is not very far off to the gradual and progressive sanctification that I described on the board yesterday.

But a deeper development of it. This is growth. They admit it in maturity, amen, until one reaches the final stage. And that brings us to the fifth stage is the final glorification when we go to heaven in perfection.

The Cane Ridge Revival and Physical Manifestations

Now, going back to the 1800s, let me tell you a little bit about the Cain Ridge revival held in Kentucky. The meetings that eventually led to revival were begun in June of 1800 by three Presbyterian ministers, James McCreary, William Hodges, and John Rankin.

By August 1801, crowds of up to 25 ,000 people gathered in the Kentucky countryside for revival meetings. Most meetings were characterized by much of the same sort, that they called motor phenomena, as they were called back then, or physical manifestations as we see today in certain charismatic renewal meetings.

Now, may I just say this. There is much evidence of a lot of babies having been born by the immoral acts of the people, the young people, and so on, as they gathered in the camping together for those Cain City revivals.

That is very, very sad. And there's other strange manifestation and phenomena. People would roll themselves in a ball through the mud holes of a rainy thunderstorm. And if you research it, you can find out that it was a mixture.

There was some revival going on. And people were trying to awaken to reality in their Christian life. And things like that were preached. But behind the scenes or alongside of it, there was just a lot of things that went on that were not good and very sinful and corrupting.

Charles Finney and Emotional Revivalism

Next, we have the influence of Charles Finney, an American revivalist. Finney's contribution was twofold. His personal testimony to having experienced a post-conversion baptism of the Holy Spirit, second work, again, to have it in his memoirs, he discussed the confusion of one of the earlier teachers, Reverend Gale of Presbyterian ministry, on this issue.

And this man, he believed that he had failed to receive that divine anointing of the Holy Ghost that would make him a power in the pulpit, Finney writing this, I believe, in society for the conversion of souls.

He had fallen short of receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which is indispensable to ministerial success. And may I say that Finney's writings have been a point of confusion for Anabaptists also, as they read that concerning the revivalism in upstate New York.

But Finney taught the baptism of the Holy Ghost and especially indispensable for ministerial success. And he was often surprised and pained that there was so little stress laid on the qualification of preaching Christ to a sinful world.

Now, equally important was Finney's evangelistic methodology. Finney justified his deliberate attempts to arouse the emotions of his hearers by arguing that God was found in necessity to take advantage of the excitability there is in mankind to produce powerful excitements among them before he can lead them to obey.

That's an interesting statement that he makes there because the charismatic movement has capitalized on that whole excitability of the people in whooping them up into a frenzy in a lot of meetings and believing that that equips them then for the baptism of the Holy Ghost or a greater experience with God.

And it is very sad to see what happened on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday after a lot of those meetings as people sunk in depression and back to their old ways, did not have power and victory over sin.

And that's because it was not built on truth, but rather on emotionalism. And the same is true today. If you're going to build on emotionalism, you can be whooped up into a frenzy in some of these meetings and make you think you're on cloud nine and you really have met with God.

But on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the power is gone. And that is not the truth. That is not the truth. Men are so sluggish, he writes, that there are many things. There are so many things to lead their minds off from religion and to oppose the influence of the gospel that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles not substantiated by scripture.

You cannot find that Peter, James, John, Paul in the New Testament elevated just excitability for excitability's sake that would have a good effect in your life. Now, I believe in being excited for God and excited about the Christian life.

And I still am today after nearly 60 years of conversion, even though I had periods of my life where I was searching for something more than what I was experiencing. And I believe that is good and right.

But excitability by itself is not the answer. Rather, your progress will be based on truth. And that can be experienced in very quiet ways before the Lord, where the depth of truth resonates and settles deeply upon your heart and will change your life.

But Phinney's influence was great. And like I say, it still is today in some of his writings to somewhat was an influence. I even had a close relative of mine read the books in his teenage years. And it seemed like he was seeking that baptism likewise just from reading his books.

The National Holiness Movement and Its Doctrinal Legacy

Now, a little bit about the National Holiness Movement. From Methodism through American revivalism and the person and work of Charles Phinney, the line is a straight one that leads through the Holiness Movement directly into Pentecostalism.

The Holiness Movement seemed to have arisen from a variety of causes, principle of which there were from the demoralizing after effects of the American Civil War. And that is a sad, sad part of history.

You know, if you ever want to consider the reality of anabaptism versus Protestantism in the Civil War, that those men had relatives on both sides. And when there was a ceasefire or a holiday of fighting, men would cross over the line to each other's tents and visit their friends and relatives.

And when they started shooting again the next morning or on Monday morning or whatever that they had taken a pause from, they slaughtered each other to death, even though they were their friends or relatives.

I want a gospel that will not let me do that. And I hope you do too. But the dissatisfaction of many within Methodist churches with the holiness or the adherence to Wesleyan perfectionism doctrine of the Methodist church and a corresponding concern for the advance of modern liberal views in theology and of wealth and worldliness in the church as a whole, the theological center of the Holiness Movement, true to its name and its Wesleyan heritage, was a second experience of some kind, whatever you call it.

A second blessing, baptism of the Holy Ghost, and so forth. Specifically, a conversion into scripture, holiness, sanctification, or as it was often called, perfect love. That was another one. This center assured the subsequent experience and importance and was later to assume in Pentecostalism.

It was directed directly from the Holiness Movement, for instance, that Pentecostalism adopted the use of the expression, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, for a second or third Christian experience. The movement itself was itself birthed within the Methodist church in 1867.

The first camp meeting was arranged by 13 Methodist ministers in Vineland, New Jersey. July 17th to the 26th. Right signing, little did these men realize that this meeting would eventually result in the formation of over 100 denominations around the world and indirectly bring to birth a third force in Christendom, the Pentecostal movement.

Catholicism, Protestantism, and now we have Pentecostalism, along with Anabaptism in those same years that was in existence in this country, likewise. Some of the influential leaders and authors of this movement were William Boardman, listen to this, The Higher Christian Life, written in 1859, Robert Smith and Hannah Smith, The Christian Secret to the Happy Life, which is still in major circulation in our very circles, I believe.

There were three major contributions in the national holiness movement made to the atmosphere of which modern Pentecostalism would eventually arise. The emphasis on a spiritual crisis experience. They taught, and many today are fallen prey to that, that a person has to have a major crisis experience subsequent to your decision to serve the Lord or repent of your sins and be converted.

Subsequent to initial conversion. The identification of this experience with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And number three, the popularization of speaking in tongues. This varied. Some people thought that was not necessary and was not a true thing.

But others believed that speaking in tongues was the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And I'm sure some of you are running into that this very day. Note well, until now, the so-called second work of grace as taught by Wesley and the Methodist was viewed as that by which one is cleansed from sin.

Henceforth, it came to be viewed as an endowment with power for ministry. And I gave you a little about my Roxbury experience back when I was 16 years of age. I just remember being outside of Roxbury and some of the emotionalism that was taking place there was hard for me to digest.

One woman got up and she was just screaming at the top of her voice and waving her hands like this and walked the whole length of the Roxbury meeting onto the outside and I think made a circle and went back in again.

And I couldn't figure out what was going on. The National Holiness Movement also profited from the influence of several prominent evangelical figures who themselves experienced some form of this second blessing, including among them were AJ Gordon, F .B. Meyer, A .B. Simpson, who founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1887 and eventually in 1907 separated from what is regarded as the fanaticism of early Pentecostalism, especially its speaking in tongues.

And so you have a separation here taking place because when they viewed the extremism and that was going on with the emotionalism of tongues and everything and modern battling, some of these men withdrew and decided it was not of God.

Especially, excuse me, Andrew Murray and especially R .E. Torrey, then president of Moody Bible Institute. Torrey once wrote, and I have really appreciated. I have his old book on doctrines of the Bible and I've really appreciated a lot of his writings.

But here's what he wrote concerning this. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is an operation of the Holy Spirit distinct from and subsequent and additional to his regenerating work. A man may be baptized by the Holy Spirit and still may be regenerated by the Holy Spirit and still not be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit and Acts 2

In our early influence at charity, we had direct influence by speakers concerning that. They taught in the scripture, or he did, especially as one individual, that when Christ breathed on the people and said, receive ye the Holy Ghost, they got the Holy Ghost, which I disagree with.

I thought, I think that was a prophecy of what would come in Acts 2. But then he turned around and taught that Acts 2 was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. You see how they do that? The first work was when Jesus breathed on them.

But Peter didn't act very converted when he denied the Lord. And not all the rest, either, when they wouldn't follow the Lord when he was in trouble with the law and the Jews wanting to crucify him, they all fled.

And I don't think that represents the fact that they had received him. I think it was a prophecy by Jesus when he breathed on them that they would receive the Holy Ghost later on. Every true believer has the Holy Spirit.

But not every true believer has the baptism in the Holy Spirit through every believer. But I just have to say, if you carefully examine the fruits of this thing, you will see the truth in the matter. Always examine the fruits like the scripture says.

Legalism and Practical Holiness

The holiness of the National Holiness Movement was not always what we would call a grace-impaired desire or passion to be like Jesus. It was too often degenerated into a hideous form of legalism. Now, that's what he calls it.

But now I want you to listen. This is pretty interesting. Because I experienced some of this myself in some of my associations, in which one's maturity was measured by the number of activities from which one abstained.

Whereas many in the holiness movement were godly and yearned for Christ-like righteousness, others defined holiness as abstinence. And it's very easy to have an extreme one way or the other here. On the list of taboos was the theater, ball games, playing cards, dancing, lipstick, tobacco, alcohol, all forms of female makeup, the curling and coloring of one's hair, neckties for men, Coca-Cola, chewing gum, rings, bracelets, or any form of worldly ornamentation.

One was prohibited from attending a country fair, lodge meetings, or being involved in political parties or labor unions. Life insurance was seen as a lack of faith in God, and medicine was generally viewed as poison.

Now, isn't that interesting? Now, my own experience was, in my early years, I lived in Ohio for four years. I had served my government 1W service in Ohio, and I stayed two years longer in another community there.

And I was in the construction business, electrical and plumbing and heating and so on, and I worked with Wesleyan holiness people. And they had this form of Wesleyan holiness. And it was very interesting.

When they came to a Mennonite home to visit for a supper, you know, it was our contractor or our fellow worker or whatever, the Mennonite youth were used to playing board games or various other activities like that and didn't think anything of it.

Not so with them. They would tell the host that said, now, our children cannot participate in any of this stuff. They can't have any board games, or you can't have ball games, or you can't. And they were really strict and loyal to some of these things.

The other thing was interesting. They did not cut their hair. They would put their hair up in a bun. They did not teach the covering, according to 1 Corinthians 11. But they had a high level of modesty, and no cut hair, no makeup, or any kind of goings on with their hair.

I remember meeting people and shopping, and you could pick them out. And I think we actually stopped and talked to somebody, and they admitted we're Wesleyan holiness. And some of this was a blessing.

Now, when R .A. Torrey wrote this passage on it, you know, he considered a hideous form of legalism, which a lot of the evangelicals and Protestants considered it that. But there was a emphasis on a practical holiness that I believe should not be thrown out.

There is far too much liberalism and frivolity and fun and games that is coming to the Christian churches today of all kinds. And so I think it might be good to at least check over this list. Now, I believe that if a person is truly a spiritual person, and he goes by the scripture, most of the things written here would not have to be written.

I don't understand. I don't understand, you know, why that has to be mentioned in detail like that. It would seem to me the Holy Spirit should speak to our hearts about it when we start doing these kind of things.

The saddest part I have about this whole matter is the number of students that pass through these near 30 years of our teaching at our Bible school that have departed, and they can't even wear a dress.

And it's not just many of these things that it would seem to me is clearly principled in the Bible. They can't even wear a dress, or they can't even look decently and dress modestly, even if they wouldn't wear a dress.

So anyway, I'd just like to give you that. But out of the emergence of modern Pentecostalism, it has its roots in these sources that I mentioned. But it finally ended up with a man by the name of Charles Partum, who lived in Topeka, Kansas.

Charles Parham and the Doctrine of Spirit Baptism

And that's where the shift came somewhat from the National Holiness Movement into Pentecostalism. This Benjamin Hardin Irwin writes this. He wrote a book called The Fire-Baptized Holiness Church. Irwin was originally a holiness minister who gained fame by advocating multiple spiritual baptisms.

And this is a bit humorous. The most important of which he called the baptism of fire. Well, I agree, there's a lot of people today that need a baptism of fire in their Christian experience and life, and their fire, being on fire for God.

I love that, you know, the expression of that and the reality of it, I would say. And it's accompanying physical manifestation, he wrote, chief of which was a physical sensation of being on fire. So the baptism of fire was actually a physical manifestation that you felt like you're on fire.

Finding that even if this was not enough, Irwin began to teach that there were additional baptisms of fire. These he named the baptisms of dynamite, lydite, and oxidite. The movement lost its momentum when Irwin confessed to moral failure.

His primary significance is that part of him learned from him the doctrine of a separate spiritual baptism following sanctification. Now the Welsh Revival, let's see, a little bit about the Welsh Revival.

Charles Parham, who lived, Parham, lived from 1873 until 1929. And Agnes Osmond, converted at the age of 13, Parham claims to have been healed while in college, thus preparing him for ministry. Now, there's where you see about the first entrance that I know of this whole healing thing that has come to be a major part of the charismatic movement to this day.

He was initially involved in the national holiness movement and traveled as an independent evangelist healer until he arrived in Topeka in 1898. He founded the divine healing mission which was later renamed the Apostolic Congregation of Divine Healing Home in 1900.

But listen to this, and this is very significant. Parham had a terrible reputation for sexual immorality and was eventually excluded from the movement. Many believed him to have been a homosexual even though he vigorously denied that all his life.

And that immorality has followed the main men of this movement, the charismatic movement in the last 40, 50 years. Unbelievable. I could give you a list and many of you know, and even the things going on today where major men are held in question about their moral lives.

Do you understand why we associate this by strong delusion that people believe a lie and they actually don't have, even though they claim the baptism of the Holy Ghost, they actually don't have the power to live an upright moral life.

And never forget that. Never forget that. Because as soon as you get into this high emotionalism, slaying in the spirit, falling over each other, immodestly laying across the platforms of America, Canada, and the world, and all kinds of things start taking place, that is evident the Holy Spirit is not in charge.

Topeka, Speaking in Tongues, and Classical Pentecostalism

In 1900, he established the Bethel Bible Institute where he taught his students that the inevitable result of spirit baptism was speaking in tongues. And here you have it. Even though he had a bit of it here and there through the late 1800s, now finally it was brought to light that this was the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Till now, though, none had experienced it for themselves, although Parham had seen it in others during a trip to New York. 7 p .m. on New Year's Day in 1901, Agnes Osman, one of Parham's students, spoke in tongues.

The evidence marks the beginning of a classical Pentecostal movement. Parham relates what happened. Himself. I laid my hands upon her and prayed. I had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her.

A halo seemed to surround her head and face, and she began speaking in a Chinese language. Listen to this. And was unable to speak English for three days. When she tried to write in English to tell us of her experience, she wrote Chinese copies of which we still have in newspapers printed at that time.

In a short time, news spread of what had happened. Reporters and language experts soon converged on the tiny school to investigate the new phenomenon. Cities throughout Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas also began to experience similar occurrence.

It was like a wave of deception that came out with this thing. The most important development came in Houston, Texas. It should be noticed that what happened in Tobica was by no means the first incident of speaking in tongues in America.

And like I had mentioned, I won't go over that. It actually, apparently tongues even broke out in a D .L. Moody meeting in London, I think, in 1875, although he himself never experienced the gift. Tongues were also present sporadically in the Welsh Revival.

William Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival

Next, we have a man by the name of William Seymour, the Houston Bible Institute and the Isuzu Street Mission in L .A. Seymour was an illiterate black man, was a Baptist pastor turned holiness preacher.

He came under Parham's influence at the school in Houston, founded by the latter. Some blacks were not legally permitted to sit in the same classroom with whites. Seymour was forced to listen to Parham's lectures in the hallway.

He went to L .A. in 1906 to pastor a church that in mid-April moved to 312 Isuzu Street, a shabby two-story wooden building. Scores of people began to fall under the power and to speak in tongues. Seymour preaching of judgment and divine wrath seemed to have significance for the great San Francisco earthquake hit on April the 18th, 1906, in the same month the volcano Vesuvius erupted.

Now that was the eruption in Italy of the volcano Vesuvius, if I'm pronouncing that right, that buried the city of Pompeii. That was so extremely immoral that a friend of mine actually took the tour. They have excavated the city for many years and some of the carvings on the walls are so grossly immoral that you understand why God, like Sodom, destroyed that city at that time.

But many took these events as eschatological signs of the end, if you know that eschatology word from, it's a big word there, eschatological, signs of the end, and flocked to Seymour and his group of disciples.

On April the 18th, 1906, the first news report of the controversial meetings on Azusa Street appeared in the LA Times. The headline read, Weird Babble of Tongues, and reported that meetings are held in a tumble-down shack of Azusa Street near San Pedro Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites and preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal.

Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose of the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshipers who spend hours swaying forth and back in the nerve-wracking attitude of prayer and supplication.

They claim to have the gift of tongues and be able to comprehend the babble. During most of the three and a half years' revival, Seymour rarely preached and spent much of the time with his head covered in an empty packing crate behind the pulpit.

He claimed to be so under the arrest of God, a lot of people have given the report that he had his head in a bucket for most of that time. Now, let me just interject here. I listened to a message just a few days ago that still lifts up the Azusa Street revival and think that it was true and right, and is advocating the repeat of some of these things.

But in my own studies, I wasn't able to pull out some of the things I had read in years past, but I have some evidences of that here. But there were strange occultic phenomena that manifested in that revival.

And I realize whenever there's true revival, there may be a counterfeit revival alongside that may show its face. We experienced some of that in our own history, that strange men would show up and things begin to happen that was of another spirit.

But to promote this as being true, God help us in the delusion and deception of our day. When Jesus says in Matthew 24, take heed, the sign of the end, what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world or the end of the age?

Take heed that no man deceive you. And that's my plea to you today, every one of you. When I consider the departure of so many youth today, take heed that no man deceive you by these kind of charismatic fallacies.

The Azusa Street revival is commonly regarded as the beginning of the modern Pentecostal movement. Although many persons had spoken in tongues in the US in the years preceding 1906, this meeting brought the belief to the attention of the world and served as a catalyst for the formation of scores of Pentecostal denominations.

And directly or indirectly, practically all of the Pentecostal groups in existence can trace their lineage back to Azusa Street. Azusa had its share of critics who were convinced the participants were lunatics.

Additional bad press occurred, listen to this, when spiritualists and mediums, meaning occultic mediums from the occult societies in LA began to attend and to participate in their own special way. C. Campbell Morgan, a highly respected evangelical preacher called the Pentecostal movement the last vomit of Satan, while R .A. Torrey claimed it was emphatically not of God and was founded by a sodomite.