History and Development of Pentecostalism — Unit 3: Topeka, Azusa Street, and Simultaneous Outpourings (1901-1910): Mukti (India), Wales, Chile

Key Verse

"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." (Acts 2:4, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe Charles Parham's Bethel Bible School and the events at Topeka, Kansas, in 1901.

2. Tell the story of William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906.

3. Explain how the revivals in Wales (1904-1905), at Mukti in India (1905) and in Chile (1909) show that the Spirit was moving in many places.

4. Describe how the message spread from Azusa Street and what The Apostolic Faith reported.

5. State the main objections to these revivals and explain how Pentecostals answer them.

A Hunger Around the World

Unit 2 showed that for generations believers had been praying for a deeper work of the Spirit. In the first years of the 1900s that hunger became a flood. Within about ten years, revivals with prayer, repentance, healing and tongues had broken out in North America, Britain, India and South America. Our tradition believes that this was the Holy Spirit's own work, renewing in the church what the New Testament describes. This unit tells the story, with its heroes and its flaws.

Topeka, Kansas (1901)

Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) was a Holiness preacher who taught divine healing and looked for a great outpouring before the Lord's return. In October 1900 he opened a small Bible school, called Bethel, in Topeka. He asked his students to study the book of Acts and to find what Scripture teaches about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. After searching the passages, the students came to a shared conclusion. In every account where the Spirit's coming is described, speaking in tongues followed.

The usual account says that on the first day of 1901 one of the students, Agnes Ozman, asked Parham to lay hands on her and pray that she might receive the Spirit. She began to speak in other tongues. In the days that followed Parham and many others at the school had a similar experience. Parham understood these to be real human languages, given by the Spirit so that missionaries could preach without years of language study.

Two things came from Topeka that matter greatly for our story. First, Parham taught that speaking in tongues is the initial sign of baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of "initial evidence," which classical Pentecostals still teach. Second, the school's method was to read the Bible for itself, trusting that what Acts describes can happen today.

We should speak honestly about Parham. His idea that tongues would give missionaries foreign languages did not work in practice. Missionaries who went abroad expecting this did not receive the languages they needed, and many Pentecostals later changed their understanding. His later years were also marked by controversy. He opposed the Azusa Street meetings after visiting them, because of the mixing of races and the manner of the services, and his racial attitudes are rightly rejected by Pentecostals today. We honor Topeka for the question the students asked of Scripture, but we do not excuse Parham's failings.

After Topeka, Parham held meetings in Kansas and Texas, and in 1905 he opened a training school in Houston. There he taught a man who would change history.

William J. Seymour and Los Angeles (1906)

William Joseph Seymour was born in Louisiana in 1870 to parents who had been enslaved. He became a Holiness minister, moved to the American Midwest and then to Texas. In Houston he heard of Parham's school. Because of the segregation laws of the time, he was not allowed to sit in the classroom with the white students, and he is reported to have listened from the hallway. He accepted Parham's teaching about tongues, though he had not yet spoken in tongues himself.

In February 1906 Seymour went to Los Angeles, at the invitation of a small Holiness church. When he preached that tongues follow Spirit baptism, the leaders of that church rejected his message and locked the doors. Seymour did not give up. He joined a prayer group that met in a private home on Bonnie Brae Street. On April 9, 1906, several people there spoke in tongues, and a few days later Seymour himself received the same experience. Crowds gathered so quickly that the house could not hold them.

The group moved to a plain, run-down building at 312 Azusa Street, which had once been a church and had been used as a stable and warehouse. There the Azusa Street Mission began in April 1906. Meetings continued day after day for about three years. People of many backgrounds came: African American, white, Latino and others. Observers wrote that people prayed, sang, testified, were healed and were baptized in the Spirit with tongues. The services were not tightly planned. Seymour led with humility, and he insisted that the work belonged to God. A Los Angeles newspaper mocked the meetings, which only drew more attention.

Seymour's own teaching at first followed the Holiness pattern. He taught that a believer should be converted, then sanctified, and then seek Spirit baptism with tongues. In Unit 4 we will see that other Pentecostals disagreed.

The Apostolic Faith and the Spread of the Message

In September 1906 the mission began to publish a paper called The Apostolic Faith. We described this source in Unit 1. It printed testimonies, reports of meetings, and letters from many places, and it was mailed to readers in many parts of the world. It also taught what the mission believed: salvation, sanctification, the baptism of the Spirit, divine healing, and the Lord's soon return. Historians such as Cecil M. Robeck Jr. have used it, together with other records, to study the mission carefully.

The message spread quickly. Visitors came to Azusa Street, received what they sought, and carried it home. G. B. Cashwell, a Holiness preacher from North Carolina, went to Los Angeles in late 1906 and returned to hold meetings in Dunn, North Carolina, from which the message spread through the Holiness churches of the American South. Thomas Ball Barratt, a Methodist minister in Norway, received the experience in New York in 1906 and took it to Norway and then to other parts of Europe. Charles H. Mason, who will appear again in Unit 4, was among those who traveled to Azusa Street. Missionaries went out to many nations. Not all were wise in their preparation, but many were faithful.

By about 1909 the large crowds at Azusa Street had thinned. Other missions and leaders had arisen, and Seymour faced conflicts. This is a lesson in humility. Revival is not a building or a city. The Lord moves where His people pray.

Wales, Mukti and Chile: Many Streams

The Azusa Street story is only one part of the picture, and our tradition should say so plainly.

Wales (1904-1905). In the autumn of 1904 a revival began in Wales, associated with the young preacher Evan Roberts, who came from a mining family. It was marked by prayer, congregational singing, confession of sin and many conversions. The Welsh revival was not Pentecostal in the sense of teaching tongues as the sign of Spirit baptism. But reports of it traveled by letter and newspaper to many countries. In Los Angeles, Frank Bartleman, a Holiness preacher, read these reports and urged believers to pray for the same outpouring in their city. Wales stirred the hunger that Azusa Street later met.

Mukti, India (1905). Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) was an Indian Christian scholar and reformer who cared for widows, orphans and famine victims at the Mukti mission near Pune. In 1905 the mission experienced a revival marked by prayer, confession of sin and spiritual gifts. The American missionary Minnie Abrams, who worked at Mukti, wrote about it in The Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire (1906). The revival was led by an Indian woman and took place before Azusa Street. It shows that the Spirit did not wait for one American city.

Chile (1909). Willis Hoover was an American Methodist missionary and the pastor of a Methodist church in Valparaiso. In 1909 a revival began in his congregation, with prayer, healing and tongues. Reports from other places, including Mukti, had reached the church. Methodist authorities did not accept the revival, and in 1910 Hoover and many of his congregation left to form a new church, the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal. It was led by Chileans and grew into a large national church. We will return to it in Unit 6.

Seen together, these revivals show a pattern. They arose in different places, with different leaders and different cultures, but with the same hunger for God, the same prayer and the same gifts. Many Pentecostals find this to be strong evidence that the Spirit was doing what He promised on the day of Pentecost.

What Historians Debate

Historians ask two main questions about this period.

The first is: Who is the founder of Pentecostalism, Parham or Seymour? Some older histories name Parham, since the doctrine of tongues as initial evidence was taught at Topeka. Others name Seymour, since the revival that spread the message to the world began under him at Azusa Street. Many historians now say both were important and that neither was the only source.

The second is: Did Pentecostalism begin in one place or in many? Robeck and others show that Azusa Street was a center of unusual influence. Allan Anderson and others stress that revivals at Mukti, in Chile and in other places had their own leaders and developed on their own. As we said in Unit 1, many historians combine these views.

Our tradition answers that the question is worth asking, but that the final origin is the Spirit Himself, not any one person. We are grateful to Parham for his question, to Seymour for his humble leadership, to Ramabai, Abrams and Hoover for their faithfulness, and to the many unnamed believers who prayed.

The Main Objections and Our Answers

Objection 1: The revivals were only emotion and crowd excitement.

Critics, including some newspapers of the time and some modern psychologists, say that the noise, tears and tongues came from group feeling and expectation, not from God.

Our answer. Emotion is part of being human, and it is not evil. The disciples were "filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 13:52). But we do not rest on emotion. We test every experience by Scripture and by its fruit: repentance, holiness, love, and obedience to Christ. First Thessalonians 5:21 says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good." The early revivals produced changed lives, healed families, new churches and missionaries who crossed oceans. Where excess appeared, leaders were right to correct it. Excess is a reason to use the gifts in order (1 Corinthians 14:40), not a reason to abandon them.

Objection 2: Parham's failings and his mistaken view of missionary tongues weaken the whole case.

Critics point to Parham's attitudes and to the failure of the "missionary tongues" idea, and they say that a movement with such a beginning cannot be of God.

Our answer. We agree that the failings were real and that the idea was wrong. But the doctrine of tongues as the sign of Spirit baptism does not stand on Parham's reputation. It stands on the book of Acts: at Jerusalem (Acts 2:4), at Cornelius's house (Acts 10:46) and at Ephesus (Acts 19:6). God has always used imperfect people. If Scripture is our authority and not any leader, then a leader's faults cannot overthrow what Scripture teaches. Seymour's own humility reminds us that the work belonged to the Lord.

Objection 3: Real tongues at Pentecost were known languages. The modern ones are not.

Some critics argue that Acts 2 describes earthly languages and that modern tongues, which are often unknown, are different.

Our answer. Acts 2:6 says that the crowd heard the disciples "speak in his own language," so there were real languages at Pentecost. Early Pentecostals reported the same thing at times. But Paul also speaks of tongues in worship that no one understands unless there is interpretation (1 Corinthians 14:2, 13). We hold both: the Spirit gives utterance in known languages at times, and in prayer and praise at other times. In either case He gives it, and in either case the gift is to be tested and used in love.

Pastoral Application

Pastor Daniel serves a small church in a town where the congregation has grown cold. A group of young people has read about Azusa Street and says, "We must have a revival like that. We must shout, cry and fall down as they did." An older deacon replies, "That was emotion, and it is not for us."

Daniel first listens to both. He sees the young people's hunger and the deacon's concern.

Second, he gathers them for the Word and prayer, and shows them what the early revivals actually had in common. They did not copy a style. They prayed for weeks, confessed sin and sought unity. He opens Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14.

Third, he teaches that the Spirit is sovereign. A revival cannot be arranged, and the sound of a meeting is not the test. The test is changed lives.

Fourth, he leads the church to pray and wait. Where the Lord moves, he welcomes it in order and with love, and where excess appears, he corrects it with gentleness.

Summary

Pentecostalism is a story of many streams. At Topeka in 1901, Parham's students concluded from Acts that tongues follow Spirit baptism, and Agnes Ozman was the first to speak in tongues. Parham's idea of missionary tongues failed, and his later years were troubled, but the teaching on initial evidence rests on Acts. William J. Seymour, a Holiness preacher taught by Parham, led the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles from April 1906. Its paper, The Apostolic Faith, spread the message, and visitors such as Cashwell and Barratt carried it to the American South and Europe. At the same time, the Spirit was moving in Wales in 1904-1905, at Mukti in India in 1905 under Pandita Ramabai, and in Chile in 1909 under Willis Hoover. Historians debate whether to name Parham or Seymour as founder and whether to speak of one origin or many. We answer objections from Scripture, and we hold that the Spirit Himself is the true author of the revival.

Further Reading

• Cecil M. Robeck Jr., The Azusa Street Mission and Revival (2006).

• Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (2nd ed., 2014).

• Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (1997).

• Grant Wacker, Heaven Below (2001).

• The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles, 1906-1908), a primary source.

• Charles F. Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1902), a primary source.

• Minnie F. Abrams, The Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire (1906), a primary source.

• Frank Bartleman, How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles (1925), a primary source.

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