Sermon Tone Analysis

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:

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.