Restoring the Apostolic Faith

Jude 3 NKJV

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Contending for the Faith

Through the centuries, the power of this exhortation has echoed in the ears of those who have sought to discover again the experience, doctrine, and ministry of the early apostolic church.

The Falling Away

Jude wrote his epistle around 65 AD. Like weeds false doctrines sprang up quickly.

Paul:

2 Thessalonians 2:3 NKJV

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,

By the end of the 4th century (300’s) that falling away was a visible corporate entity.

By the end of the 6th century they were the only recognized legal authority in Christianity.

Oneness -> Trinity

Justification by faith -> Justification by works

Repentence -> Penance

Name of Jesus -> Deleted from the baptismal formula

Baptism of the HG -> Claimed to have ceased.

These non-biblical doctrines that corrupted, obscured, and contradicted the Bible, became cardinal doctrines of the “falling away” church, which used the civil power of the state to force others to accept these doctrines to suffer, sometimes even to death.

Any attempts to return to the “common salvation” taught and experienced by the apostolic church in the Book of Acts was met with hostile and often violent persecution.

The Restoration Impulse

A driving force to restore the apostolic church with the same salvation experience, doctrines, lifestyles, cultures, and church government.

Restoration: “a putting or bringing back into a former, normal, or unimpaired state or condition; a representation or reconstruction of the original form or structure.”

France: Waldenses and Albigenses

England: the Lollards (followers of John Wycliffe)

Moravia and Bohemia: Hussites (followers of John Hus)

Europe: Protestant Reformation

North America: Wesleyan-Methodist-Holiness movement

Many sought to reform the existing church and not to restore the true apostolic church.

Accepted doctrines formed by ecumenical councils of the early centuries and other teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

2nd Great Awakening in America

(1790s-1840s)

People experienced a life-changing encounter with God in camp meetings that drew 20 - 30 thousand people.

Some in this revival discovered

Jesus name baptism for remission of sins and that the Holy Ghost was part of the plan of salvation, and didn’t mention the trinity. Yet they failed to restore these apostolic doctrines during the Awakening.

The restoration impulse sparked by the Second Great Awaking became the guiding force in the Holiness movement.

By the time of the Holiness revival of 1857-58, some leaders had begun to identify the experience of sanctification as the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Later, others began teaching that the baptism of the HG was an additional experience beyond sanctification.

By the 1890s almost every branch of the holiness and higher life, and revival movements were teaching in some form or another on the Baptism of the HG....

This shift toward Biblical terminology and experience let holiness leaders such as R.A. Torrey, president of Moody Bible Institute, to study the biblical sign of receiving the Holy Ghost.

In his book, The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, published in 1885, he wrote, “In my early study of the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, I noticed that in many instances those who were so baptized ‘spoke with tongues,’ and the question came often into my mind: if one is baptized with the Holy Spirit will he not speak with tongues? But I saw no one so speaking, and I often wondered, is there anyone today who actually is baptized with the Holy Spirit?”

Torrey’s study of the baptism of the HG led him to the Bible sign of speaking in tongues at least 15 years before Charles Fox Parham discovered it and made it the cornerstone of the Pentecostal revival.

By 1901 the Holiness movement had led people to the doorstep and into the Pentecostal revival.

Early Pentecostal Revival

Charles Parham

Congregational - Methodisg - to evangelizing in Holiness churches.

In 1898 he established a mission in Topeka Kansas, secured a large building and opened a faith healing home.

Turned it over to two holiness preachers and opened Bethel Bible College in a large building known as Stone’s Folly.

Opened with about 40 students.

When classes at the college recessed for the Christmas and New Years holidays, Parham assembled the students and asked them to study the Bible to find the indisputable sign of the baptism of the of the HG.

When he returned he asked for their answer. Every student had the same answer.

On January 1, 1901, the first student, Agness Ozman, reeived the HG with the sign of speaking in tongues.

On the evening of January 3, twelve other students received the HG while praying in a room on the second floor of the college.

Parham returned late from a speaking engagement, heard the noise, entered the room, knelt, began praising God for this event, and asked God to give him this same blessing. In a few moments he received it.

The Revival in Galena, Kansas

News papers as far away as St. Louis and Cincinatti.

100s HG/1000’s healed

The Revival in Texas

Orchard TX

1st service Easter 1905

Houston became the center

Lucy Farrow, a black pastor of a Holiness church in Houston was among a group that returned to Kansas with Parham for a visit and received the HG.

Parham brought an additional 15 workers, including Howard Goss, who had not received the HG yet back to Houston.

The movement grew rapidly.

Opened a short term Bible School....

Seymour attended but from outside the room.

When Farrow left to go with Parham to Kansas, she left her church in the care of William Seymour. She persuaded Parham to attend the Bible School.

Parham called his movement the

Apostolic Faith Movement

The Apostolic Faith Publication

William Seymour

Neely Terry, a young woman from a black holiness mission in LA, visited Houston and met Seymour. She told him that her church was looking for a pastor and asked if he would consider pastoring the mission.

Julia Hutchins was temporarily filling in as pastor. The congregation, on the recommendation wrote and asked Seymour to assume the pastorate.

When Seymour told Parham, he initailly didn’t favor it, but eventually helped raise the money got get Seymour to LA.

Seymour arrived and preached on Sunday morning from Acts 2:1-4, about speaking in tongues being the sign of the gift of the HG.

This didn’t meet with the approval of Julia Hutchins and when he returned for the evening service, he found the mission locked in order to keep him out.

The Edward Lee family, didn’t necessarily agree with his teaching but showed hospitality to let him stay in their home until he could get a ticket back to Houston. In their home he began a prayer services.

Gradually he won their trust and belief in the HG. When the Asbury family invited him to move the prayer meeting to their home on Bonnie Brae street, he continued to live in the Lee’s home.

Frank Bartleman visited attended prayer meetings in both homes.

The Outpouring of the Spirit

Toward the end of March, Lucy Farrow arrived in LA to help Seymour. She had traveled from Houston with J. A. Warren another member of the Apostolic Faith Movement.

April 9 1906 before Seymour left the Lee home to go to the Asberry home, Edward Lee asked Seymour to lay hands on him and pray that he would receive the HG. Farrow also laid hands on him and within moments Lee began speaking in tongues.

When Seymour told the small group praying at the Asberry home about Lee receiving the HG, the Spirit fell on several of the women, including Jennie Evans Moore.

Three days later, Seymour himself received the HG.

On the following Sunday, Jennie Moore attended the Easter service at her church, the New Testament Church, a congregation that has split off the First Baptist Church in their search for a revival of Pentecostal power. At the end of the morning service, Moore began speaking in tongues, creating a stir among the people

When it became known to the congregation that the HG had fallen upon the prayer group on Bonnie Brae Street, scores of them decided to attend the prayer meeting that evening.

The people filled the yard and street.

Bonnie Brae Street Outpouring

In 1905 First Baptist Church pastor Dr. Joseph Smale, had traveled to Wales to investigate the Welsh revival under Evan Roberts. After he returned he and Elmer K. Fisher, pastor of the FBC in Glendale, CA began holding congregational prayer meetings to seek for an outpouring of the HG.

When Smale was forced to leave the pastorate, he organized the New Testament Church with people who followed him. He preached and prayed for the outpouring although he knew nothing of about the sign of speaking in tongues. In one of their meetings Fischer received the HG speaking in tongues.

Asuza Street Mission

By Tuesday April 7th, they had secured an old abandoned two-story building on Asuza Street. It was built as an African Methodist Episcopal church in an impoverished part of town.

The group from Bonnie Brae Street eventually discovered an available building at 312 Azusa Street (

in downtown Los Angeles, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then an impoverished part of town.[18] The rent was $8.00 per month.[21] A newspaper referred to the downtown Los Angeles building as a "tumble down shack". Since the church had moved out, the building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable with rooms for rent upstairs. It was a small, rectangular, flat-roofed building, approximately 60 feet long and 40 feet wide, totaling 2,400 square feet (220 m2), sided with weathered whitewashed clapboards. The only sign that it had once been a house of God was a single Gothic-style window over the main entrance.[18]

Discarded lumber and plaster littered the large, barn-like room on the ground floor. Nonetheless, it was secured and cleaned in preparation for services. They held their first meeting on April 14, 1906.

Church services were held on the first floor where the benches were placed in a rectangular pattern.

Some of the benches were simply planks put on top of empty nail kegs.

There was no elevated platform, as the ceiling was only eight feet high.

Initially there was no pulpit.

Frank Bartleman, recalled that "Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there.... In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors..."

The second floor at the now-named Apostolic Faith Mission housed an office and rooms for several residents including Seymour and his new wife, Jennie.

It also had a large prayer room to handle the overflow from the altar services below.

By mid-May 1906, anywhere from 300 to 1,500 people would attempt to fit into the building.

Since horses had very recently been the residents of the building, flies constantly bothered the attendees.

People from a diversity of backgrounds came together to worship: men, women, children, Black, White, Asian, Native American, immigrants, rich, poor, illiterate, and educated.

People of all ages flocked to Los Angeles with both skepticism and a desire to participate.

The intermingling of races and the group's encouragement of women in leadership was remarkable, as 1906 was the height of the "Jim Crow" era of racial segregation, and fourteen years prior to women receiving suffrage in the United States.

Services and worship[edit]

Worship at 312 Azusa Street was frequent and spontaneous with services going almost around the clock. Among those attracted to the revival were not only members of the Holiness Movement, but also Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Presbyterians.[21] An observer at one of the services wrote these words:

No instruments of music are used. None are needed. No choir- the angels have been heard by some in the spirit. No collections are taken. No bills have been posted to advertise the meetings. No church organization is back of it. All who are in touch with God realize as soon as they enter the meetings that the Holy Ghost is the leader.[14]

The Los Angeles Times was not so kind in its description:

Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, 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 the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve racking attitude of prayer and supplication. They claim to have the "gift of tongues" and be able to understand the babel.[9]

The first edition of the Apostolic Faith publication claimed a common reaction to the revival from visitors:

Proud, well-dressed preachers came to "investigate". Soon their high looks were replaced with wonder, then conviction comes, and very often you will find them in a short time wallowing on the dirty floor, asking God to forgive them and make them as little children.[15]

Among first-hand accounts were reports of the blind having their sight restored, diseases cured instantly, and immigrants speaking in German, Yiddish, and Spanish all being spoken to in their native language by uneducated black members, who translated the languages into English by "supernatural ability".[14]

Singing was sporadic and in a cappella or occasionally there would be singing in tongues. There were periods of extended silence. Attenders were occasionally slain in the Spirit. Visitors gave their testimony, and members read aloud testimonies that were sent to the mission by mail. There was prayer for the gift of tongues. There was prayer in tongues for the sick, for missionaries, and whatever requests were given by attenders or mailed in. There was spontaneous preaching and altar calls for salvation, sanctification and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Lawrence Catley, whose family attended the revival, said that in most services preaching consisted of Seymour opening a Bible and worshippers coming forward to preach or testify as they were led by the Holy Spirit.[25] Many people would continually shout throughout the meetings. The members of the mission never took an offering, but there was a receptacle near the door for anyone who wanted to support the revival. The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.[9]

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Charles Parham[edit]

Main article: Charles Parham

By October 1906, Charles Parham was invited to speak for a series of meetings at Azusa Street but was quickly un-invited.

Arriving at Azusa Street, [Parham] recoiled in disgust at the racial intermingling. He was aghast that black people were not in their "place," and simply could not abide "white people imitating unintelligent, crude negroisms of the Southland, and laying it on the Holy Ghost." Parham made his way through the crowd, stood at the pulpit, and delivered a stinging rebuke: "God is sick at his stomach!" He proceeded to explain that God would not stand for such "animalism."

When it was clear that the majority of the Azusa Street Mission would not accept Parham's leadership, Parham left with an estimated two to three hundred followers and opened a rival campaign at a nearby Women's Christian Temperance Union building.

Criticism

In a skeptical front-page story titled "Weird Babel of Tongues",[24] a Los Angeles Times reporter attempted to describe what would soon be known as the Azusa Street Revival.

"Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand", the story began, "the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles". Another local paper reporter in September 1906 described the happenings with the following words:

disgraceful intermingling of the races...they cry and make howling noises all day and into the night. They run, jump, shake all over, shout to the top of their voice, spin around in circles, fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and rolling all over it. Some of them pass out and do not move for hours as though they were dead. These people appear to be mad, mentally deranged or under a spell. They claim to be filled with the spirit. They have a one eyed, illiterate, Negro as their preacher who stays on his knees much of the time with his head hidden between the wooden milk crates. He doesn't talk very much but at times he can be heard shouting, "Repent," and he's supposed to be running the thing... They repeatedly sing the same song, "The Comforter Has Come."[8]

The attendees were often described as "Holy Rollers", "Holy Jumpers", "Tangled Tonguers" and "Holy Ghosters". Reports were published throughout the U.S. and the world of the strange happenings in Los Angeles.[19]

Christians from many traditions were critical, saying the movement was hyper-emotional, misused Scripture and lost focus on Christ by overemphasizing the Holy Spirit.[17] Within a short time ministers were warning their congregations to stay away from the Azusa Street Mission. Some called the police and tried to get the building shut down.[

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1 Corinthians 14:14 NKJV

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.

1 Corinthians 14:1–2 NKJV

Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.

Jude 20 NKJV

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,