Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.

Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)

M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.

Optional Honors (choose three)

Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.

The Master's textbook test: read The Apostolic Faith (1906–1907): A Documentary Reader, then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.

The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.

Honors option: Complete any three of the five readings below. These readings supplement the course and do not replace its units or examinations.

On this site: Each of the five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, with nothing to download. Each card names the work its digest is made from.

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Reading 1 · From Topeka to Los Angeles

The Pentecostal Baptism Restored

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 2, October 1906, p. 1

The second issue of Seymour’s paper tells the movement’s own origin story: a “partial Gospel” restored through Luther, Wesley and Cullis, a faith school in Topeka where Agnes Ozman and twelve students were said to speak in tongues, Parham praised only weeks before his break with Azusa, and brief reports of missions, missionaries and healing claims read with care.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Pentecostal Baptism Restored: From Topeka to Los Angeles

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the lead editorial and mission reports of the second issue of The Apostolic Faith, and how the Azusa paper told the story of its own beginnings

A CTS digest of a primary source: “The Pentecostal Baptism Restored,” with adjacent unsigned reports, The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 2, October 1906, page 1. The original issue (1906) is in the public domain in the United States; CTS quotes it here only briefly, for study and commentary.

Topeka
Primary source
1901–1906
Divine healing

A word before you read. In October 1906 the second issue of the Azusa Street paper opened with an unsigned editorial, “The Pentecostal Baptism Restored.” It tells the movement’s story as its own people understood it: a gospel slowly restored across church history, a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, and a revival now spreading out from Los Angeles. Around it the paper printed short reports of missions, missionaries and healings. This reading walks through the editorial and those reports. Keep two things in mind as you read. The healings and tongues described here are the claims of participants, not examined findings. And the CTS selection leaves out a short first-person prayer attributed to Charles Parham and one other quotation.

1.“A Partial Gospel”

The editorial begins with a sweeping view of history: “All along the ages men have been preaching a partial Gospel.” Some truth, it says, survived the “dark ages,” and from time to time God raised up men to bring lost truths back to the church. The paper names three. Martin Luther restored “justification by faith.” John Wesley established “Bible holiness,” the teaching that God can make the heart pure. Dr. Charles Cullis (1833–1892), a Boston physician who opened homes where the sick were prayed for, brought back “the wonderful doctrine of divine healing.” Now, the writer announces, God “is bringing back the Pentecostal Baptism to the church.” Historians call this a restorationist reading of church history: the belief that the church lost the fullness of the apostolic faith and that God is restoring it piece by piece in the last days. Early Pentecostals often linked it to the “latter rain” of Joel 2:23, a final outpouring before Christ’s return. But the scheme shows how these believers saw themselves. They did not think they were starting a new religion. They believed they were the newest chapter in a long story of renewal, standing in line with Luther and Wesley.

2.A Healing Story and a Faith School

The editorial next tells the story of a boy. According to the paper, God healed a “little crippled boy seven years of age” of disease but left him walking on the sides of his ankles. At fourteen, called to preach, he prayed while reading his Bible and, the paper says, was instantly “made whole,” leaping and praising God like the lame man at the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3. Only later does the writer name him: Charles Parham (1873–1929). CTS presents this as the paper’s claim about Parham’s life, not a verified medical history, and the short prayer the original prints at this point is left out of our selection. Parham, once a Methodist supply pastor and later an independent holiness evangelist, opened Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, in October 1900. The paper calls it “a faith school”: students paid no tuition or board, money came in through prayer, and “the Bible was the only textbook.” Parham, the paper says, became convinced that no school measured up to Acts 2, and near the end of 1900 he set his students to search the Scriptures for the Bible evidence of that baptism.

3.The Praying Tower and Agnes Ozman

The students kept up “continual prayer in the praying tower.” The school met in a large, unfinished mansion, and in one of its towers small groups took turns, each praying for three hours before another took its place. Then, the paper reports, on New Year’s night Miss Agnes N. Ozman (1870–1937) became convinced she needed “a personal Pentecost.” For years she had known what the paper calls “the anointing that abideth” (1 John 2:27), which it says she had mistaken for the baptism. Shortly before midnight she asked that hands be laid on her, and during prayer, the paper says, she “spoke with other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance,” the words of Acts 2:4. Historians differ over the exact hour and date; most place the event on 1 January 1901, and Ozman’s own later accounts do not agree in every detail with Parham’s. What all agree on is its importance. Ozman’s experience is usually treated as the moment when speaking in tongues was first explicitly taught as the expected sign of the baptism in the Spirit. That link, more than tongues itself, became the distinctive teaching of classical Pentecostalism.

4.Twelve Students and “Different Languages”

Ozman’s experience, the paper says, “made all hungry.” Scarcely eating or sleeping, the school waited on God, and on 3 January 1901, while Parham was away preaching, “twelve students were filled with the Holy Ghost” and began to speak in tongues. When he returned, the writer reports, the room seemed filled with a “white sheen of light,” and the students were “talking in different languages.” The paper adds that Parham knelt to pray and soon spoke in another language himself; CTS summarizes rather than quotes his words. Notice the claim behind the phrase “different languages.” Parham taught that tongues were real human languages given for missionary preaching. The paper shares that hope: it says he preached in other languages, that people of those nationalities came to the altar, and it calls him “an apostle of the doctrine of Pentecost.” These are claims, not tested linguistic facts. When early missionaries went abroad expecting to preach in local languages, many found they could not, and most Pentecostals came to understand tongues chiefly as prayer and praise in the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:2). The paper’s praise of Parham did not last either. Seymour had first heard his teaching in Houston in 1905, though segregation forced him to listen from the hallway. The paper expected Parham in Los Angeles “in a few days.” When he came that autumn, he condemned the Azusa worship as disorderly and objected to Black and white believers mingling at the altar. The mission refused his leadership, as Reading 3 shows, and the two men’s paths divided for good.

5.“The Fire Is Spreading”

The editorial then turns to Los Angeles, where the message had “burst out in great power.” At Azusa Street, it says, meetings ran “from morning till late at night” with about three altar services a day. The paper says it kept no record of numbers, but notes that one brother counted about fifty people baptized with the Spirit in a single week, a figure to read as a participant’s estimate. Four holiness preachers are said to have received the experience; one, Brother William Pendleton, was turned out of his church with his congregation and now held meetings at Eighth Street and Maple Avenue. That detail is a reminder that the revival brought division as well as joy, as holiness churches closed their doors to the new teaching. A band from Los Angeles, including Brother and Sister Evans and Sister Florence Crawford, had spent five weeks in Oakland, and the paper reports sixty-five people baptized with the Spirit there. It adds that eight missionaries had already left for foreign fields and about thirty workers had gone out. One short report shows how wide the circle already was. Rev. Adolph Rosa, a Portuguese-speaking minister from the Cape Verde Islands, raised Catholic and converted in a Portuguese Methodist church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, had received the experience in Oakland and was now preaching in Los Angeles. The paper’s harsh word “Romanism” reflects the anti-Catholic language common among Protestants of that time; CTS does not share that tone.

6.Healing Reports, Read with Care

The rest of the selection is a series of brief healing reports. A man at Elysian Heights, blind for a year and a half, is said to have received his eyesight. Mrs. J. Kring, the paper reports, was healed of “cancer of the lungs” after her doctor had given her up. A young man who had suffered for years from epileptic fits was prayed for by Brother Batman, a worker called to Africa, who asked God to cast out “the demon power.” A handkerchief sent by a sick brother in the East was prayed over by Sister Sallie Trainor and sent back, and the brother, the paper says, was healed at once. Pentecostals believe that God heals in answer to prayer (James 5:14–15), and CTS shares that confidence in a God who hears. But these are one-paragraph testimonies, not examined medical cases; we do not know the diagnoses or what happened later. The language also needs care. In 1906 many Christians read epilepsy as a sign of demons. Today we know it is a medical condition of the brain that can usually be treated. CTS does not offer these reports as medical guidance. If you or someone you love is ill, pray in faith, and also see a doctor and follow qualified medical care.

7.What a Pastor Takes from It Today

What does a pastor in Jalisco, Lagos or Manila take from an editorial printed in a Los Angeles mission hall in 1906? First, that every movement tells a story about itself, and pastors should tell theirs honestly. The editorial’s “partial Gospel” scheme helped early Pentecostals feel part of God’s long work, but it left out many faithful believers of other ages. Second, that seeking God in Scripture and prayer comes first: the Topeka students studied Acts and prayed in shifts before anything else happened. Third, that claims about tongues and healings deserve both openness and care. The early hope of instant missionary languages did not hold up, and Pentecostals grew wiser by learning from it. Fourth, that a revival depends on God, not on any one leader. The man the paper praised as an apostle in October was refused as a leader by December, and the movement went on. Fifth, that faith and medicine are not enemies. A church can pray boldly for the sick and also urge them to see a doctor. These are not merely historical observations. They are a pastoral checklist for any church that prays, as Topeka and Azusa did, for the power of the Spirit.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The editorial saw the Pentecostal baptism as one more truth God was restoring to the church. What story does your church tell about its own beginnings, and is it fair to the Christians who came before? The Topeka students searched the Scriptures and prayed for days before they claimed an answer. How does your church test new experiences by the Bible? And how can you pray boldly for the sick while also encouraging them to seek good medical care?

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Reading 2 · Worship at Azusa

Bible Pentecost

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 3, November 1906, p. 1

A guided tour of the Azusa meetings in November 1906: no instruments, collections or advertising, but the Holy Ghost as leader; a Methodist layman glad it began in a barn; altar calls, long testimony meetings, Quaker-like shaking and children testifying; and a welcome in which no one was rejected for color, dress or lack of education.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Bible Pentecost: Inside the Azusa Street Meetings

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — how the first Pentecostals described their worship, their altar, their testimony meetings and their welcome to people of every color and nation

A CTS digest of a primary source: “Bible Pentecost” and “Gracious Pentecostal Showers Continue to Fall,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 3, November 1906, page 1. The original issue (1906) is in the public domain in the United States; CTS quotes it here only briefly, for study and commentary.

Worship
Testimony
Interracial fellowship
Primary source

A word before you read. By November 1906 visitors were arriving in Los Angeles from across the country, and many more were writing to ask what the meetings were like. This article is the mission’s answer: a guided tour of a day at Azusa Street. It is our best early description of Pentecostal worship from the inside. It also uses some words about race and religion that sound dated or harsh today; this digest explains them as they come up.

1.A Revival Without the Usual Machinery

The article begins with the news that Los Angeles is being visited with a “rushing mighty wind from heaven,” the phrase Luke uses in Acts 2 for the coming of the Spirit. Then it makes a striking claim: the reasons for this revival are “the very opposite” of what people usually think a big revival needs. American revivals of that era were often carefully organized, with advertising, trained choirs, famous evangelists and offerings for the campaign. Azusa Street, the paper says, had none of it. “No instruments of music are used, none are needed.” There was no choir, though some said they had heard angels singing “in the spirit.” “No collections are taken.” No posters advertised the meetings, and “no church or organization is back of it.” Instead, “the Holy Ghost is the leader.” This does not mean that early Pentecostals thought musical instruments or offerings were sinful; within a few years most Pentecostal churches used both, and today Pentecostal worship is known around the world for its music. The point was about dependence. The writer wanted readers to understand that this work did not rest on human machinery but on the presence of God. That conviction, that the Spirit Himself leads the meeting, became one of the deepest instincts of Pentecostal worship.

2.“Holy Rollers” and “the Colored Church”

Next, the article imagines a traveler arriving in the city and asking the way to the Apostolic Faith Mission. Locals might answer, “O, you mean the Holy Rollers,” or “It is the Colored Church you mean?” Both labels need explaining. “Holy Rollers” was a mocking nickname for holiness and Pentecostal believers, because some fell to the floor in worship; it was meant as an insult, and Pentecostals have rarely used it of themselves. “Colored” was the ordinary polite term in 1906 for African Americans. It is dated and can be offensive today, and CTS uses it only when quoting. The fact that outsiders called Azusa “the Colored Church” tells us that the city saw it as a Black congregation, led by a Black pastor, even though people of many races attended. The paper then describes the neighborhood: a tombstone shop, stables and a lumber yard, which it calls “a fortunate vicinity because no one complains of all-night meetings.” The building is a “two-story, white-washed old building.” One would hardly expect heaven to visit such a place, the writer says, “unless you remember the stable at Bethlehem.” The image is deliberate: the Christ who was born among animals was again choosing a humble place to show His glory.

3.A Methodist Layman’s Witness

The longest testimony in the article comes from an unnamed Methodist layman of Los Angeles; because he cannot be identified, CTS gives his words in summary rather than quotation. For years, he says, he had led a praying band at the First Methodist Church, asking God for Pentecost to come to the city. He and his friends had hoped it would begin in their own church, but God did not begin it there. Then comes his remarkable conclusion. He thanks God that it began in no city church but in a barn, where everyone could come and share in it. If it had begun in a fine church, he explains, poor Black people and Spanish-speaking people would not have received it. By “Spanish” people he almost certainly means the Mexican and other Spanish-speaking residents of Los Angeles, many of them poor laborers; Mexican believers such as Abundio and Rosa López testified in the paper’s first issue. The layman sees in this the fulfillment of Joel’s promise, quoted by Peter, that God will pour out His Spirit “upon all flesh.” His testimony is honest about class and race. Respectable churches, he recognizes, would not have welcomed the poor and the darker-skinned on equal terms. God chose a place where they could. He ends by warning his fellow Methodists not to interfere with this work.

4.The Altar, the Word and the Testimony Meeting

The meetings, the article says, ran “from ten o’clock in the morning till about twelve at night.” Their center was the altar. When it was announced that the altar was open “for seekers for pardon, sanctification, the baptism with the Holy Ghost and healing of the body,” people rose and came forward. “There is no urging,” the writer insists. What brought them was not clever technique but “the simple declaring of the Word of God,” preached with such power that people “are shaken on the benches.” Many fell “prostrate under the power of God” and rose speaking in tongues. Before the preaching came the testimony meetings, which “often continue for two hours or more,” with people standing and waiting their turn. Those baptized with the Spirit testified that they had first received “a clear evidence of sanctification,” the holiness experience described in Reading 1. Hundreds, the paper says, testified to speaking “in a new tongue that they never knew before,” and some to the gift of interpretation. Here we see a core Pentecostal conviction: ordinary believers, not only preachers, have something to say about what God has done. Testimony was not a filler between songs. It was a form of preaching by the whole congregation, and it gave a voice to people who had none elsewhere.

5.Shaking, Singing and Children at the Altar

The writer is careful to describe what the worship looked like, perhaps to answer critics who imagined wild disorder. “The demonstrations are not the shouting, clapping or jumping so often seen in camp meetings.” Instead there was “a shaking such as the early Quakers had,” which “the old Methodists called the ‘jerks.’” The comparison places Azusa within a long line of revival history: the early Quakers took their nickname from trembling before God, and the camp meetings of the American frontier around 1800 were famous for bodily “jerks.” Under the power of the Spirit, hands were raised and people spoke in tongues; while one sang “a song learned from heaven,” tears ran down other faces. The singing was free. Every day the people sang “The Comforter Has Come,” along with “Heavenly Sunlight” and “Under the Blood,” and often someone would sing a familiar hymn “in a new tongue.” Many received the Spirit through the laying on of hands, “as they did through Paul at Ephesus” (Acts 19). Children took part as well: boys and girls from eight to twelve stood on the altar bench and testified, and in the children’s meetings “little tots get down and seek the Lord.” The revival was for families, not only for adults.

6.“How Free All Nationalities Feel”

Perhaps the most quoted lines of this article concern the welcome given to people of every nation. “It is noticeable how free all nationalities feel.” If a Mexican or German cannot speak English, the writer says, “he gets up and speaks in his own tongue and feels quite at home.” The Spirit, the writer says, “interprets through the face,” and the people say amen. Then comes a sentence that summarizes the spirit of early Azusa: “No instrument that God can use is rejected on account of color or dress or lack of education.” In a city and a nation sharply divided by race, language and class, this was radical. It is worth adding, as historians do, that this unity was not perfect even in 1906 and did not last unchanged; Reading 3 and Reading 4 will show some of the tensions. The article also describes the upstairs rooms. Seekers for healing were “taken upstairs and prayed for in the prayer room,” and the paper reports that “many have been healed there”; students should read that as the testimony of participants rather than a medical finding. A larger room upstairs, furnished with chairs and “three California redwood planks,” served for Bible study and was called “the Pentecostal upper room.” The article closes with “the loving harmony” among the churches the revival had touched, and with the editors weeping over the letters of seekers.

7.What a Pastor Takes from It Today

This article remains a mirror for Pentecostal churches more than a century later. It asks, first, whether our worship still depends on the Spirit or has come to depend on our programs, sound systems and publicity. None of those is wrong, but the paper reminds us which is the root and which are the branches. Second, it treasures the testimony of ordinary believers. Many churches today have lost the testimony meeting; this reading invites pastors to give the congregation a voice again, with wise guidance. Third, it holds together freedom and order. The writer insists the meetings were Spirit-led, yet he is careful to describe them as reverent, centered on the Word, and free from mere excitement. Fourth, it challenges every congregation on welcome. Would a Mexican, a German, a poor worker or an uneducated believer feel “quite at home” in our church, free to pray in his own language? For CTS students in Mexico, Cuba and beyond, it is moving to remember that Spanish-speaking believers were present at the very beginning of the Pentecostal story. Finally, it gives a fair warning. The lack of formal organization that the paper celebrates would soon make it hard to resolve conflicts, as later readings show. Spirit-led freedom still needs faithful, accountable leadership.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. What in your church’s worship depends on the Spirit, and what depends mainly on human arrangement? When did your congregation last hear ordinary believers testify to what God has done? Who might feel like an outsider in your services because of color, dress, language or lack of education, and what would it take for them to feel “quite at home”?

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Reading 3 · Origins and Leadership

Seven Months of Pentecostal Showers

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 4, December 1906, p. 1

The mission tells its own beginnings: a praying band that sent for Seymour from Houston, the fire falling on Bonnie Brae on April 9, Lucy Farrow’s arrival, a gentle but firm refusal of Charles Parham’s leadership, no pope or “Dowieism,” a humble pastor under Christ the great Shepherd, and the joy of the “latter rain.”

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Seven Months of Pentecostal Showers: Origins, Leadership and Belief

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the Azusa mission tells its own story: the praying band, Seymour’s call, Bonnie Brae, Lucy Farrow, the break with Parham, and the shape of its early leadership

A CTS digest of a primary source: “Seven Months of Pentecostal Showers. Jesus, Our Projector and Great Shepherd,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 4, December 1906, page 1. The original issue (1906) is in the public domain in the United States; CTS quotes it here only briefly, for study and commentary.

Origins
Seymour and Parham
Church leadership
Primary source

A word before you read. By December 1906 people were asking two questions about Azusa Street: how did it start, and who is in charge? This article answers both. It tells the story of the revival’s first months, publicly declines the leadership of Charles F. Parham, the man whose teaching had shaped Seymour, and sketches how the mission understood pastors, doctrine and fellowship. It is a short text, but it marks one of the first turning points in Pentecostal history.

1.“The Lord Was the Founder”

“Many are asking how the work in Azusa Mission started and who was the founder.” The answer comes at once: “The Lord was the founder and He is the Projector of this movement.” The word “projector” sounds strange today, but in 1906 it could mean the one who plans or designs a project, its originator. The article then tells the human story. “A band of humble people in Los Angeles” had been praying for a year or more for greater spiritual power, longing for the salvation of “lost and suffering humanity.” They did not know exactly what they needed, the writer admits, but they knew one thing: people “were not getting saved and healed as they desired to see.” So they continued to hold “cottage prayer meetings,” small gatherings in homes, for several months. This is worth noticing. The revival did not begin with a famous preacher or a planned campaign. It began with ordinary believers, many of them African American working people, who were honest about the weakness of their churches and kept praying. Historians often stress Seymour’s leadership, and rightly; but this article wants the reader to see that he was invited by a praying community that was already seeking God before he arrived. The Pentecostal story begins with prayer.

2.A Call from Houston

Then, the writer says, the praying saints “felt led of the Lord to call Bro. Seymour from Houston, Texas,” and they sent him his fare. The article compares this to the angel telling Cornelius to send for Peter in Acts 10. Other sources fill in the background. Seymour had been attending a short-term Bible school in Houston led by Charles Parham, where he learned Parham’s teaching that speaking in tongues is the Bible evidence of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Under the segregation customs of Texas, many accounts say, Seymour was made to listen to the lessons from the hallway. A Los Angeles woman named Neely Terry heard him preach in Houston and recommended him to her small holiness congregation. When Seymour arrived he told the believers about the baptism with the Spirit, and that “every afternoon at three o’clock” they would pray for “the enduement of power.” Then comes a striking admission: he “did not have the Pentecost but was seeking it.” Seymour preached what he had not yet experienced, and he said so openly. Some in the group believed they already had the experience; others did not, “because the signs were not following.” The article is candid that, for a time, “hardly anyone was getting saved.”

3.April 9 and Lucy Farrow

“There was a great deal of opposition,” the writer continues, but the group kept fasting and praying “till on April 9th the fire of God fell in a cottage on Bonnie Brae.” This was the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry, where the believers had moved after Seymour was shut out of the holiness mission that first invited him. “Three days after that, Bro. Seymour received his Pentecost.” The article then names two co-workers from Houston who arrived just before the outpouring. One of them was “Sister Lucy Farrow,” who had “received her personal Pentecost” and said the Lord had sent her to join them. Farrow deserves to be better known. She was an African American holiness preacher, born in Virginia, who had pastored a small holiness mission in Houston and had worked in Parham’s household. It was she who first introduced Seymour to Parham’s teaching, and she had already spoken in tongues before Seymour did. At Azusa she became known for praying for people to receive the Spirit, and before the year was out she had set off as a missionary to Liberia. The article praises her for coming “with love and power, holding up the blood of Jesus Christ in all His fullness.” Women like Farrow were among the revival’s first and most trusted workers.

4.“He Is Not the Leader of This Movement”

The most important paragraph historically is the answer to another question: is Dr. Charles F. Parham the leader of this movement? “We can answer no.” The paper admits that it had earlier named him its leader “before waiting on the Lord,” and explains this as the haste of spiritual infancy: “We are just like a baby—full of love.” Now the mission has settled down and seen “that the Lord should be our leader.” Behind this gentle language lies a painful break. Parham, the founder of the Apostolic Faith movement in Kansas and Texas, came to Azusa Street in October 1906. He condemned much of what he saw as fleshly excess, and he was offended by the close mixing of Black and white worshipers. The Azusa leaders declined his authority, and he set up a rival meeting nearby. In later years Parham spoke about Azusa Street in openly racist terms. It is significant, then, that this article gives the title “Projector,” which seems to echo language once used of Parham’s own role, to Jesus Christ, and honors Him as “the great Shepherd of the sheep.” The break was not only about personalities. It was about whether a Black-led, interracial congregation would govern itself under Christ or submit to a white leader who rejected its worship.

5.No Pope, and a Humble Pastor

The article next describes how the mission understood leadership. “There is no pope, Dowieism, or Sanfordism,” it says, “but we are all little children knowing only Jesus and Him crucified.” The two “isms” refer to famous leaders of the day. John Alexander Dowie built the city of Zion, Illinois, as a healing community and eventually claimed to be Elijah the Restorer. Frank Sandford led a strict community at Shiloh, Maine, where his followers were expected to obey him closely. Parham had contact with both movements. By naming them, the paper rejects the pattern of a single powerful leader controlling a movement. Instead, “Bro. Seymour is simply a humble pastor of the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made him overseer,” quoting Acts 20:28. The same principle applies to workers sent out from Azusa: they too may become pastors over the people the Lord gives them, “feeding them with the pure Word of God,” and “each mission will be united in harmony, having its own pastor.” This is an early picture of Pentecostal church order: local congregations led by Spirit-called pastors, joined by fellowship rather than by a central hierarchy. It had real strengths. It also left the movement without clear ways to settle disputes, a weakness that would soon matter.

6.What the Mission Believed

The article then gives a short statement of faith. The mission, it says, believes in “old time repentance, old time conversion, old time sanctification,” as well as in bodily healing and the baptism with the Holy Ghost. The word “old time” shows how the early Pentecostals saw themselves: not as inventors of something new but as restorers of the faith of the apostles and of earlier revivals. Two denials follow that are easy to miss. “We do not believe in any eighth day creation, as some have taught, and we do not believe in the annihilation of the wicked.” Both were teachings of Parham. He held that the wicked would finally be destroyed rather than suffer eternal punishment, and he speculated that Adam was created on an “eighth day,” separately from earlier humans, an idea he tied to his views about race. By affirming instead that God “made Adam in His own image,” citing Genesis 5:1, Psalm 8 and Matthew 19:4, the mission quietly affirmed one human family. The article then states its spirit of fellowship: “We recognize every man that honors the blood of Jesus Christ to be our brother, regardless of denomination, creed, or doctrine.” Yet it also insists that errors must be rejected if they do not “tally with the Word of God.” Generous fellowship and firm doctrine are held together.

7.The Latter Rain, and What a Pastor Takes Today

The article ends in celebration. “This is the year of jubilee when God is sending the latter rain.” Early Pentecostals loved this image from Joel 2:23 and James 5:7. In the land of Israel, the “former rain” fell at planting time and the “latter rain” just before harvest. They believed the first Pentecost was the former rain and their own revival the latter rain, God’s final outpouring before Christ’s return. God “has raised up a nation in seven months’ time,” the writer exults, closing with a hymn line: “The long, long night is passed, the morning breaks at last.” What does a pastor take from this today? First, that revival is born in persevering, honest prayer. Second, that a leader may humbly confess he is still seeking, as Seymour did. Third, that Christ alone is head of the church, and no human leader should be treated as a pope. Fourth, that Pentecostal unity must refuse any teaching that ranks one race above another. And fifth, a sober lesson from what followed: Azusa’s loose structure later left Seymour exposed when, in 1908, the paper and its mailing list were moved to Portland, and when other leaders challenged him. Humility under Christ and wise, accountable order belong together.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The revival began with a small band honest enough to admit people “were not getting saved.” What would that kind of honesty look like in your church? Seymour preached what he was still seeking; how do you speak about experiences of God you have not yet received? And how does your church guard against both a “pope” who controls everything and a looseness that leaves no one able to settle a dispute?

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Reading 4 · Unity and Healing

Beginning of World Wide Revival

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 5, January 1907, p. 1

Azusa’s New Year look back at 1906: a watch night on its knees, a mustard-seed faith grown into a great tree, all classes and nationalities on “a common level,” healing claims read with care and the “never take medicine” line firmly rejected as advice, and Monday prayer and counsel among the city’s missions.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Beginning of World Wide Revival: Azusa Looks Back on 1906

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the mission’s New Year retrospective: worldwide hopes, a “common level” for all classes and nations, healing claims read with care, and cooperation among the Los Angeles missions

A CTS digest of a primary source: “Beginning of World Wide Revival,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 5, January 1907, page 1. The original issue (1907) is in the public domain in the United States; CTS quotes it here only briefly, for study and commentary.

Retrospective
Unity
Divine healing
Primary source

A word before you read. This front-page article was written as 1906 turned into 1907. It looks back on the revival’s first year and forward to a worldwide harvest. It also contains the article’s most difficult line for modern readers, the claim that the mission people “never take medicine.” CTS reads that sentence as history, explains it, and firmly rejects it as advice for anyone today. Read with gratitude for the faith of these believers, and with the care that their own Bibles asked of them.

1.A New Year on Their Knees

“We are expecting wonderful things from the Lord for 1907.” So the article begins. The close of the old year and the start of the new “found us on our knees at Azusa Mission.” This was a watch-night service, an old Methodist custom of praying the old year out and the new year in, which Black churches in the United States had long cherished. As midnight came, the writer says, “such a wave of glory, and divine love and unity came over us” that the meeting went on until morning and all the next day. The writer calls 1907 “a jubilee year,” borrowing from Leviticus 25 the image of the fiftieth year, when debts were cancelled and slaves set free. For a congregation largely made up of African Americans whose parents and grandparents had known slavery, the language of jubilee carried a deep and personal weight. The prayer that closes this paragraph is simple and fitting for any new year: “May we all spend it at His feet, learning of Him.” Before the article speaks of growth, numbers or nations, it places the whole mission in the posture of disciples: kneeling, waiting, learning. That order matters. In Pentecostal spirituality the posture of prayer comes before the work of mission.

2.Looking Back on 1906

“The Lord did great things in 1906,” the writer continues. “Pentecost first fell in Los Angeles on April 9th,” the date of the outpouring at Bonnie Brae described in Reading 3. Since then, the paper says, the good news “has spread in two hemispheres.” It summarizes the experience of believers in three words that every holiness reader would recognize: “pardon, purity, and power,” that is, forgiveness of sins, sanctification of the heart, and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. “Hundreds,” the writer reports, have been baptized with the Spirit, and many are now in the field, “some in foreign lands,” with “signs and wonders” following. He uses a fresh image: people across the land have heard that “the oil of the Spirit” is being poured out in Los Angeles, and they are “coming for oil,” some traveling thousands of miles. As with all the numbers in this paper, students should read “hundreds” and “thousands of miles” as the joyful estimates of participants. Yet the broad claim is supported by later history. By the start of 1907, Azusa workers had reached Liberia and India, and leaders from the American South, the Midwest, Canada and Europe had either visited the mission or were corresponding with it. A local revival was becoming an international movement.

3.The Mustard Seed and the Common Level

The writer turns to the parable in Matthew 13. From “the little mustard seed faith” given to a small company “waiting on God in a cottage prayer meeting,” a great tree has grown, and people “from all parts of the country” are coming “like birds to lodge in the branches.” Then he describes the atmosphere at Azusa: “It is a continual upper room tarrying.” To “tarry” was a favorite early Pentecostal word, drawn from Jesus’ command in Luke 24:49 to wait in Jerusalem until endued with power. “Tarrying meetings” were long, patient times of prayer for the baptism with the Spirit. The mission, he adds, is “like a continual camp meeting or convention.” Then comes one of the most important sentences in the issue: “All classes and nationalities meet on a common level.” In January 1907 American law and custom were building walls between races and classes. At Azusa, at least as its own people described it, those walls came down at the altar. A first-time visitor is quoted: “The thing that impressed me most was the humility of the people.” He went to his room, knelt, and asked God for humility himself. It is telling that what struck him most was not the tongues or the healings but the humble spirit of the people.

4.Altars, “Slain” Saints and Holy Joy

The next paragraph describes the meetings. The altars, the writer says, “are filled with seekers,” and sometimes the meetings ran all night. People “are slain under the power of God” and then rise sanctified or “speaking in new tongues.” The phrase “slain under the power” needs a word of explanation. It describes believers falling to the floor, often quietly, while being prayed for or during worship. Revival accounts from John Wesley’s day onward describe similar scenes, and many Pentecostals and charismatics today speak of being “slain in the Spirit” or “resting in the Spirit.” The paper does not treat falling as the goal; it reports that people rose “sanctified” or “speaking in new tongues,” and that what mattered was meeting God. Pastors today are wise to follow that emphasis, never pushing anyone over and always pointing to the fruit of a changed life rather than to the outward sign itself. The writer also notices faces: he sees “the holy joy of the Lord” on their faces, and people “are melted in the presence of the Lord,” full of praise. For all its emphasis on power, early Azusa described its worship above all in terms of joy, tenderness and praise. That picture balances the stereotype of Pentecostal worship as mere noise.

5.Healing Claims, and the Line on Medicine

“The Lord is graciously healing many sick bodies,” the article says. Requests for prayer arrive from everywhere; they are presented in the meeting, and “the Spirit witnesses in many cases that prayer is answered.” Following Acts 19:12, “handkerchiefs are sent in to be blest” and returned to the sick, and the writer reports nine one day and sixteen another, and a man healed of a broken arm. Pentecostals have always believed that God heals in answer to prayer, as James 5:14–15 teaches, and CTS shares that confidence in a God who hears. But these specific reports are participants’ testimonies, not examined medical cases. Then comes the sentence that needs the most care: “The mission people never take medicine. They do not want it.” Many radical holiness believers of that era held that using medicine showed a lack of faith. That belief caused real suffering; some early believers, including some on the mission field, died of illnesses that ordinary treatment of the time could have helped. CTS rejects this line completely as guidance for anyone today. It is a historical statement, not medical advice. Most Pentecostal churches long ago came to teach that God heals both through prayer and through doctors and medicine. If you or someone you love is ill, pray in faith, and also see a doctor and follow qualified medical care.

6.Unity Among the Missions

The article next describes “a very sweet spirit of unity” among the Pentecostal missions of Los Angeles and nearby towns. “Every Monday morning,” ministers and workers met “for prayer and counsel.” Three city missions are named with their pastors: 327½ South Spring Street under Brother Fisher, Eighth and Maple under Brother Pendleton, and East 51st Street under Brother and Sister Kent, while workers came in from Long Beach, Pasadena, Anaheim and other places. “All are in one accord,” the writer adds. Historians note that some of these missions were formed by people who had left Azusa, including a number of white members; yet here they meet together in prayer. The original issue also records that messages in tongues were given and interpreted at these gatherings; CTS does not reproduce them in this digest. What stands out is the shape of the cooperation. There was no denomination yet, no headquarters and no written constitution. The Pentecostal missions of the city were held together by a weekly prayer meeting, shared counsel and personal friendship. That simple practice was an early form of church organization: leaders of separate congregations meeting regularly to pray, to compare what they were seeing, and to settle problems before they became divisions. Paul’s instruction that prophetic words be weighed by others (1 Corinthians 14:29) assumes exactly this kind of fellowship, where no single leader stands alone. Pastors today who meet faithfully with other pastors across congregational lines are carrying on one of the healthiest habits of the Azusa years.

7.“No Flesh, No Color, and No Names”

The article closes with a confession of faith in God’s unity. “He recognizes no flesh, no color, and no names.” “We must not glory in Azusa Mission,” but only in Christ. “Azusa Mission stands for the unity of God’s people everywhere.” These lines express the deepest hope of the early movement, and they deserve to be honored. They also invite an honest look at what followed. Within a few years many white Pentecostals had formed their own fellowships; the Assemblies of God, organized in 1914, was largely white, while the Church of God in Christ, led by Charles H. Mason, who had received the Spirit at Azusa, became a great Black denomination. In 1911 William Durham tried to take over Azusa while Seymour was away, and after years of such losses Seymour’s 1915 rules for the mission reserved its top offices for people of color, a painful reversal born of experience. In 1948 the new Pentecostal Fellowship of North America included no Black churches, and only in 1994, at the so-called “Memphis Miracle,” did white and Black Pentecostal leaders repent together and form a new interracial fellowship. A pastor today learns from both sides of this story: the ideal is true, and keeping it requires repentance, humility and steady work.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The first visitor was struck most by “the humility of the people.” What would a visitor notice first in your church? How do you hold together a strong faith that God heals and a wise use of doctors and medicine? And where does your church still glory in its own name, as the writer warned Azusa not to glory in itself, or let color and class divide those whom the Spirit has baptized into one body?

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Reading 5 · A Global Network

Pentecost Both Sides the Ocean

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 6, February–March 1907, p. 1

Less than a year after Bonnie Brae, the revival had crossed the ocean both ways: a Honolulu believer reached by the paper, news from Calcutta and Norway, claims of missionary tongues in Liberia weighed honestly, seekers from Tennessee, Chicago and Canada, workers sent out by name, and a new network of free Apostolic newspapers.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Pentecost Both Sides the Ocean: A Movement Goes Global

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — letters, travelers, newspapers and named workers: how the Azusa revival became a transnational network within its first year

A CTS digest of a primary source: “Pentecost Both Sides the Ocean,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 6, February–March 1907, page 1. The original issue (1907) is in the public domain in the United States; CTS quotes it here only briefly, for study and commentary.

Global spread
Missions
Print networks
Primary source

A word before you read. Less than a year after Bonnie Brae, the Azusa paper could print a front page full of place names: Honolulu, Calcutta, Liberia, Chicago, Oakland, Winnipeg, Boston. This reading follows those names. It shows how the movement spread through letters, train tickets, free newspapers and ordinary workers who simply went. It also asks how to read the paper’s reports of “missionary tongues,” and what later experience taught the movement about them.

1.Crossing the Water

The article opens with a short line, “God is still manifesting His power in Los Angeles,” and then a bold headline claim: “The Pentecost has crossed the water on both sides,” westward to “the Hawaiian Islands” and eastward to England, Norway, Sweden and India. The first example is telling. “A brother in Honolulu received the Pentecost, by hearing of God’s work through the paper.” He never visited Azusa Street. He read about it, sought God “in earnest,” and testified that he was baptized with the Holy Spirit and “spoke in two languages.” This is a reminder of how important the printed page was for early Pentecostalism. The Apostolic Faith was mailed free to anyone who asked, and copies were passed hand to hand, read aloud in prayer meetings and carried by missionaries. A believer thousands of miles away could encounter the revival’s message, its testimonies and its hymns without ever meeting its leaders. Historians often speak of Pentecostalism as a movement of the Spirit, and so it was; it was also a movement of the post office. The God who poured out His Spirit in a Los Angeles barn also used envelopes, stamps and a hand-cranked printing press to spread the news to the ends of the earth.

2.Letters from Many Lands

“We rejoice to hear that Pentecost has fallen in Calcutta, India, over ten thousand miles away.” This refers to the work of Alfred and Lillian Garr, a white couple who received the Spirit at Azusa in 1906 and sailed for India, arriving in Calcutta late that year; their meetings among missionaries there drew wide attention. The article then lists letters from “China, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Australia, and other countries,” some written “in foreign languages.” Missionaries, it says, “are hungry for this outpouring of the Spirit which they believe to be the real Pentecost.” The mention of Norway points to Thomas Ball Barratt, a Methodist minister from Kristiania (today Oslo), who corresponded with Azusa while in New York, received the experience there in late 1906, and returned home to begin a revival that spread across Scandinavia and on to Britain and continental Europe. India also had its own story: a revival with similar marks had already broken out at Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission in 1905. So the paper’s claim that “the world seems ripe for the Pentecost in all lands” was not simply boasting. Spiritual hunger was rising in many places at once, and Azusa became one meeting point for streams that were already flowing.

3.Missionary Tongues in Liberia

The next paragraph reports that one of the missionaries from Los Angeles in Liberia “had been able to speak to the people in the Cru tongue,” and that another sister wrote “in an unknown language” which “was understood and read by one of the native kings there.” A few words need explaining. The Kru (spelled “Cru” in the paper) are a people of the Liberian coast, known for their skill as seafarers. “Native” and “kings” are colonial-era terms; today we would speak of local or Indigenous Liberians and of their traditional chiefs or rulers. Lucy Farrow, whom we met in Reading 3, was among the Azusa workers in Liberia at this time. Behind these reports lies an early Pentecostal belief that the gift of tongues was given chiefly so missionaries could preach in foreign languages without study. Students should read these reports as the sincere claims of participants. Experience soon tested that belief. Many missionaries, including the Garrs in India, found they could not preach in the local languages and had to learn them in the ordinary way. Most Pentecostals came to understand tongues primarily as a gift for prayer and praise, while still testifying to occasional cases of known languages. The cost of early zeal was real: several of the first Azusa missionaries to West Africa died of disease within months.

4.Seekers from Near and Far

The article then returns to Los Angeles. Requests for prayer arrive from “hungry souls” everywhere, seeking salvation, sanctification, the baptism with the Holy Ghost and healing; handkerchiefs are blessed, as Reading 4 described, and letters come back reporting answered prayer, which students should again read as testimony. “March 19th was a wonderful day,” the writer says, when “three ministers from Tennessee” received “the enduement of power” and “the glory of God filled the upper room.” Then a parade of names. Brother Stewart from Phoenix, Arizona, came seeking and was “filled and overflowing” when he went home; “Mother Griffith,” also from Phoenix, received too. Brother Andrews and his wife, gospel workers from Tennessee, were so sure the Lord wanted them at Azusa that, “not having the means,” they started out on foot “till the Lord gave them the fare.” These are not famous people. Their names are recorded because the paper believed every seeker mattered. The repeated mention of Tennessee is also worth noting. The American South became one of the strongest early regions of Pentecostalism, as preachers like Gaston B. Cashwell carried the message to holiness churches there, among them the Church of God based in Cleveland, Tennessee, whose leader A. J. Tomlinson received the experience in 1908.

5.Durham, Blake and Irwin

Three visiting preachers receive special mention. “Bro. W.H. Durham of 943 North Ave., Chicago, Ill., and Bro. H.L. Blake of Ruthton, Minn.” came “to see and investigate what God was doing,” were baptized with the Spirit, and went home “filled and saturated with the power of God.” Durham is one of the most important figures in early Pentecostal history. His North Avenue Mission became a major center from which the message spread through the Midwest and Canada, and to Italian immigrants and others. A few years later Durham began teaching that sanctification is received in Christ’s “finished work” at conversion rather than as a separate second experience. That teaching divided the movement, shaped the Assemblies of God, and in 1911 brought him into painful conflict with Seymour, who closed Azusa’s doors to him. The article also reports that Sister Rees of Oakland asked for a leader for the work there, and “Bro. Irwin” answered the call. This is B. H. Irwin, earlier the founder of the Fire-Baptized Holiness movement, who had left its leadership in 1900 after a moral failure and later found his way to Azusa. His appearance here shows how quickly the revival drew in experienced and controversial figures alike, and why the early movement needed, and often lacked, careful ways to test leaders.

6.Workers Sent Out and Papers Springing Up

The writer admits the movement has outgrown his ability to report it. People have come from Winnipeg, Canada, from the Atlantic coast and from Colorado, and “from other centers workers are going out to the ends of the earth, till we cannot keep track of them.” A list of placements follows: the McLains to San Jose, joined by Agnes Jacobson and Harmon Clifford; the Turneys from San Jose on to Honolulu; the Vintons home to Medford, Massachusetts, with their street address printed so others could find them. Seymour himself had visited San Francisco and San Jose and reported saints there “shining for God.” Notice that women and married couples appear throughout as active workers. Then the article describes a new phenomenon: “There are a number of papers on the Apostolic line that are springing up.” It names three that it calls “clean cut” for a Bible Pentecost, the Apostolic Light of Portland, Oregon, The New Acts of Alliance, Ohio, and The Apostolic Evangel of Royston, Georgia, and stresses that all are free and “supported entirely by free will offerings.” Within months, the revival had produced its own press network. Each paper reprinted testimonies from the others, so that a believer in Georgia could read about Oslo, and a worker in India could read about Ohio.

7.What a Pastor Takes from It Today

This article reads almost like a map of how Pentecostalism became the global movement it is today, with most of its members now in the Global South. A pastor can draw several lessons from it. First, the gospel travels through relationships and ordinary people. The names on this page are mostly unknown couples, sisters, brothers and pastors of small missions who simply went where they were needed. Second, faithful use of media matters. Seymour’s generation used free newspapers; churches today use radio, printed booklets and the internet, and CTS itself is offered freely in that same spirit. Third, early enthusiasm needs mature reflection. The hope that tongues would replace language study did not prove true, and honest missionaries said so. A healthy Pentecostal church can testify joyfully to what God does while learning from experience and preparing missionaries well, including in language, culture and health. Fourth, the article shows both the strength and the risk of rapid growth. Leaders like Durham and Irwin were welcomed quickly, and later conflicts showed the cost of having no clear way to test and support leaders. Finally, the article ends where every Pentecostal report ends: with praise. Behind the names and addresses, the writer’s real subject is “the wonderful works of God.”

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The brother in Honolulu met the revival through a newspaper. What means is God using today to carry the gospel to people your church will never meet face to face? How should a Pentecostal church speak about gifts like tongues honestly, without either doubting God or overstating what has happened? And whose names would appear on a list of the faithful workers your church has sent out?

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Further Study: Seven Public-Domain Works

These seven works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All seven are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).

Further Issues · No. 7

1. The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), No. 7, April 1907