The Dark Side of the Azusa Street Revival

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org where history proves that truth or at least their version of it is truly stranger than fiction. Today I am looking at the Azusa Street Revival which is something that I've actually been asked many times by many different types of people to talk about and it's always interesting to me the types of people that ask me because the most common actually are people who want to find fault with

something that I have in my research. They've been programmed to believe that Azusa Street was the greatest thing that happened since the book of Acts in the New Testament and so they want to see what I have to say about it so they can I guess trap me or something like this but the problem is the history is just the history whenever you present the facts that have been recorded that's all they are they're simply facts and I do get from time to time people who were either in the Pentecostal or charismatic movement or one of the cults that

developed from that type of movement and they want to know because the Azusa Street Revival has been just mystified in their minds. They were also taught that it was the greatest thing since the book of Acts but they began to notice that some of the fruits that come from that type of religion aren't such good fruits I'll just say it like that and so today I'm going to try to tackle it but not in the way that everybody wants me to tackle it. I know that you know you've got both sides you've got people wanting me to speak against it but

people want me to speak for it and what I want to do instead is try to explain both sides in such a way that both sides can understand each other while also understanding the Azusa Street Revival because there is a lot to learn and there's a lot that I think if you're in either side of that equation there's a lot that has really not been explained and quite frankly has been just simply covered up and so I'll never forget I was reading a book by Eusebius who is known as the father of Christian history is the first guy who

really compiled an authoritarian authoritative work on the birth of Christianity and its impact on the world. The thing that really floored me because I was learning how mythology's worked. And I was trying to answer this one question, my family had just left a destructive cult.

It was a dangerous cult if you understand the fruits of that cult. People like Jim Jones, who were part of that cult, created very destructive and deadly stacks of religion that it just developed into something that was very destructive.

And I was trying to answer the question, well, how did it work in the ancient world? How did a person go from the natural human instinct to love one another, and especially to love your family unit, to people who would actually willingly sacrifice children to it?

And I was just, this was a puzzle for me. And I remember reading that book, and it answered the human question for me. Because people in the way that they think, and they try to relate the world around them to their worship and to their deity, they try to understand and make sense of events that in many cases have no good explanation.

For example, there were droughts in the ancient world, and people who were devoted to their gods, maybe even before human sacrifice, believe that God would provide for them. And then suddenly there's a drought and a famine, and no crops are growing and producing the people are starving, there are people dying.

And you have to answer the question, well, if this God is all powerful and he's providing for us, how do you explain my children who are suffering and dying because they're starving? Well, the problem is, because the way the human brain wants to reconcile that question, it can augment a mythology to the extent where humans start to bring their own ideas into the mythology as explanations.

And the best example, I've mentioned this on the podcast before, there was a man who came into a scenario like this, the people are starving, they live near a body of water, and this man taught them how to go out and how to fish.

I guess he cut out a log or something and taught them how to throw a hook and catch a fish and save the town, the village, whatever it was. And I can't remember the deity that he became mythologized as, but what happens over time he was a respected figure while he was human.

Then he died, after he died, the people venerated him, they probably made statues to him, eventually idle us to remember this man. Well, over time, you kind of forget the memory and you start to inject your own ideas.

The man became a god, the god became all powerful, the god became vengeance, vengeful god, whenever the fan... and struck and people tried to appease the God. So what literally started on one hand is just simply a man with a good intention, turned into an all-powerful deity that people would sacrifice their children to. How does that apply to the Azusa Street Revival? Well, you have to understand that there was an event, and it was a very unusual event, and that event, if you are Pentecostal, becomes a mythological story. I tried to say that word, it didn't work. It becomes a mythology,

and people inject their own ideas into that mythology. And what happens is today you have people who are saying things about the event that just simply is not true, but yet there's an actual event that you have to go back and focus upon. So much like in the ancient world, when I came across the link between Azusa Street and what happened later, and I'm trying to like the people on the one category, how do I answer the fruit problem of this thing? How do I say that this produce good fruit? How do I say this movement as of God? And what I came to learn is you really have to first

separate that question. Ignore the question, is this a movement by God or is this a movement that's not by God? First, ask the question, is what I'm being told about the event correct? Because if it's not correct, then it is, in fact, mythology. And if it's mythology, because of the human problem that I just mentioned, mythologies tend to grow and grow and grow over time. So what I did instead was I tried to dissect it much like Eusebius did, as the father of church history. I wanted to do it not as a father of Pentecostal history, but one who is answering the questions of history

that you're not going to find in the textbooks because unfortunately, history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic faith is often written by people who will give you the facts they want you to see and cover up, conceal, hide, shield the facts that they don't want you to see. And their intentions are probably good, if you're in the crowd who is wondering, is this a movement by God? They probably had good intentions by not giving you all of the facts, but the problem is if you don't have all the facts, you can't really answer the questions. And so it is, this will be a problem that I can say

truly exists in the movement. It is a movement that suppresses questions by eliminating critical thinking. You cannot critically think about many events in Pentecostalism and the fruits of Pentecostalism, because if you do, they see it as a demon and they will demonize you. You're not allowed to critically think. I no longer look at it like this, so I'm free to critically think.

And hopefully if you're listening, you are free to critically think a bit to whether you believe in it or whether you don't, because I'm not going to really come out against it or for it.

I just want to explain the facts. And I'm going to explain it in such a way that if you are looking at Azusa Street positively and you want more history about it, these are simply facts.

You should not be scared of the facts as they were recorded in history. So the first thing that I did, much like UCBS and in my example of the village, I wanted to know at the Azusa Street revival, what was the mentality of the people?

What would, if you were going to suddenly have a revival and everybody is going to come together in that revival and they're going to suddenly break out and dancing in religious ecstasy, which did happen, it's recorded documented history.

What background scenarios could augment that if it were, whether it's a movement by God or not, what would augment this situation? So I looked at the first local area in Los Angeles, what was happening.

And it, for a people who were mostly poor, who were joining into their revival, this was a difficult time for these people. Los Angeles was exploding in city growth and cultural dislocation. You had one area of the city that's just literally exploding with population and the wealthier moving in, the wealthier creating jobs.

The jobs are creating more wealthy people, middle class people are rising. Well, lower class people were either diminishing or being culturally dislocated. Because Los Angeles was swelling fast and kind of pushing the poor people out.

You also had the racial tensions. This was, like it or not, this was the peak of the Jim Crow period. And Azusa Street, one of the things that they can proudly boast of correctly is that it was an interracial, non-segregated body of people who was defying the rest of the nation during the peak of the Jim Crow laws.

And so this became very unique to this body of people. And everybody looking on the outside, looking in, can look at this and see, this is unusual. What is this? Why are they acting like this?

And what this did was it raised the curiosity, which is another factor that I'll get into later. But as you see, this unusually event happening that is defying the cultural standards, people are going to get interested.

They want to know why. At the same time, from a religious standpoint, the ecosystem had already been primed. Right here in... the heart of Los Angeles. You had all of the holiness networks, the healing campaigns, many of which have gone through Los Angeles.

You had the spirit baptism and the expectations of what happens when that baptism occurs. It was already circulating in Los Angeles before Azusa Street. John Alexander Dowey, who will play a big factor in the process, will get into later, had came from Los Angeles and had swept through Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, that whole region from San Francisco to Los Angeles in his revival, healing campaigns.

But before they would have been called revivals, they were just simply healing lectures where people would come. And suddenly they would break out into miniature spiritual ecstasies because, oh my gosh, he claimed that he healed this person in this other city, it must be of God.

And I'm going to trust him that he healed this other person in this other city. That was the kind of thing that was happening here. So these people had expectations and many of them had not yet seen the fruits of the expectation.

So whenever Azusa Street Revival starts to break out, now they're starting to get into this frenzy and they view the frenzy as the thing that they're looking for. So from a religious standpoint, this became a phenomenon that kind of self-fulfilling augmentation, I'll just say it like that.

Nationally, you had many things that were occurring that would have also fueled this. So John Alexander Dowey and many others like him had a end of day's focus in their ministry, which is a key component to revival culture, if you understand how revival culture works.

And in 1906, there was a massive earthquake and fire that struck San Francisco. And it was, it was an enormous destruction. I think there were like 3,000 deaths that were happening in San Francisco on April 18, 1906.

So this is right in the midst of what was going to take place at Azusa. Azusa Street. And people saw this as in revival culture, you see this as a judgment sign. So suddenly, there's an apocalypse that's happening right here before us.

This must be the end of days. That is the mindset religiously. The labor unrest and the anxiety about modern life played a factor because the 1900 had frequent strikes, very harsh working conditions. If you've seen any of the photographs, you've seen all of the children who are working in the factories.

And the social order that should have never been was here at the heart of the cities. the large cities in the United States. So people, whenever they felt like the end of the world is coming, now we're seeing the judgment strikes, it's because this nation has put business and technology and population growth over the Bible.

That was the mindset of the people. And so what they were trying to do from a civil and a religious standpoint, they were trying to create moral reform. They wanted to fight the things that were rising up against them, especially the things that brought rapid change because this movement, like it or not, is a movement that does not like change.

And many of the changes were very bad. Again, children working in factories should have never been. So whenever you look at the world around them in this way, you have to understand that from a national standpoint, they needed a revival of some sort.

Worldwide, you had global conflict that was starting to break out. You had the Russian Japanese War, which had a sudden Japanese victory over Russia and it shocked the world. You had the Russian Revolution, I think that was 1905.

You had mass unrest and revolution talk about political violence that the nations are in turmoil. We see all of this conflict growing and eventually because we're in today's focus, this is going to hit the United States.

Be ready people. And then suddenly the earthquake happens and boom, God has struck vengeance against our world. Again, go back to the works of UCBS. If you're creating mythology and you start to see the world events around you, you start to bring in your own ideas of what is that mythology into the picture.

Whenever you hear a Zeus Street today, they won't talk much about the environment around them and what they thought about it. But it played such a key factor into the revival itself that there were prophecies breaking out about each of the things that I just described.

And that's not something that you find in the history books because many of those prophecies did not come to pass. They were false prophecies. So it was a movement that was filled with false prophets.

And as cover-up culture has came to evolve, cover-up culture will suppress the false prophecy. But as Zeus Street did have this, which I'll get into that a bit later. But from a environmental standpoint, you can see that this was just prime time for something to break out, whether it was revival or just simply people rising up saying, we're not going to take it anymore.

But anyway, to understand the Zeus Street revival, you must first understand Charles Fox Parham. And he is a key figure. that you may find in the history books related to Azusa Street Revival, but by and large, many of the historians want to eliminate him for obvious reasons that I'll mention later.

Charles Fox Parham was the person who trained William Joseph Seymour in the revival culture that existed in that day. The end of day's focus, the apostolic faith, and Charles Fox Parham is known by many as the father of modern Pentecostalism.

You won't find him called this by the people who are Pentecostal leaning historians because they want to totally erase that history, but you do have to understand the history to understand the Azusa Street Revival. But more specifically, you have to understand Charles Fox Parham's relationship to the cult that was founded in Zion City, Illinois after cult leader John Alexander Dauy, who I mentioned earlier was in the Los Angeles area from Los Angeles to San Francisco, priming the region for what would eventually break out into the Azusa Street Revival.

So John Alexander Dauy, in the 1890s, he amassed somewhere in today's money, it's almost a half a billion dollars, and he was able to get this in only just 10 years with his revival mentality, faith healing, and his entire array of different unique things that would later be built upon even today in the New Apostolic Reformation. Dauy was convincing people that if they had sick loved ones or if they themselves were sick, they could forfeit all of their possessions to him, and they could come be in his healing homes, and he would heal them of their various diseases,

sicknesses, ailments, etc. And so he was amassing this massive amount of money just from robbing the rich to heal the poor, the heal the poor that he created poor, and people were actually doing this. The problem was he wasn't actually healing them, many of them died, and they would be under the cover of darkness, they would be snuck out by the undertaker and go to the morgue.

So hundreds of people were dying as a result of the cult following of John Alexander Dauy. So let's talk timelines just a bit. You've got in the 1890s, Dauy becomes internationally famous as one of the wealthiest people in the United States. He was labeled the richest man in the west through religion, and you had a large number of copycats wanting to do the same exact thing, because he just amassed in today's money half a billion dollars. In 1905, the world was shaken whenever it was learned that he had suffered a major stroke, and he went later to Mexico to recover

from this stroke, but there was a... period of time in which Daly was not meeting the public and he was even recording his sermons and passing them to the leadership in Zion City while he was off where people could not see that the faith healer could not heal himself.

Over time what happened is people began to realize something's wrong here. He has taught this end of day's theology. People had sold everything that they had. They were taking out leases for land that he owned for a thousand year leases because he had taught them that the end of world is coming.

We're going to live in the new millennium here in Zion City. This is the place and the large numbers of people who had adopted either his theology or variations of it were watching as he suffered a stroke and goes off the scene.

So what happened was, according to the newspapers in Chicago, Chicago is suddenly flooded with prophets who were wanting to take over what would be called today the mantle of John Alexander Daly. Daly claimed that he was the Elijah of the Old Testament.

If you read the last chapter of Malachi, the book of Malachi, it talks about behold, I will send you Elijah and under his framework of theology that wasn't John the Baptist according to his doctrine and instead he was this Elijah that was to come to his people.

So he had all of this influx of prophets in Zion City wanting to take over his empire. One of those people was Charles Fox Parham. So according to the timeline, Daly amasses this massive amount of fortune in 1890 and late, it was October, I believe, 1905, he suffers the stroke.

During this time, Charles Fox Parham is building his apostolic faith, missions, and network basically forming a denomination and he is holding these meetings in the school prepping people to become leaders in what would eventually become his organization.

One of those leaders that he was priming was William Joseph Seymour. So this was key to understand in the south, this was in Houston where Parham is holding these big meetings, massive meetings with William Joseph Seymour as a black preacher for outreach to the black communities and he is helping Parham kind of divide and conquer.

Parham speaking to the white audiences, Seymour to the black audiences and whenever this thing happens with John Alexander Daly, Parham closes the Houston Bible school and he begins credentialing all of the workers who are working with him.

So this would have been where William Joseph Seymour received his credentials. which would have in fact been required to have the prestige that he had in Azusa Street. So through those credentials and through people that he met in that school, Seymour had a connection to Los Angeles that connection would not have existed without Chausvox Parham.

Parham himself goes to Zion City to try to establish himself and key figures who would later be part of the Pentecostal faith, the heroes of the, what are they called, the gods generals of the New Apostolic Reformation.

F. F. Bosworth, who was William Brannum's mentor in the Latter-Rain Revivals, was in Zion City a leader underneath John Alexander Dowey, but joined the Paramite group as it was developing in Zion City. John G. Lake, who later went to the Apostolic faith missions in South Africa, was also a member of the Paramite sect.

So you had these key figures who start in Zion City casting out demons, holding what would eventually evolve into the deliverance ministries and started killing people accidentally. One of the ladies who had an alleged demon they were trying to deliver her from had arthritis and had crooked bones and they tried to eliminate the demon by straightening her bones until they snapped and through the pain the woman actually died.

But all of that took place at the height of the Azusa Street Revival, not the early years. So let's put, let's talk about the timeline and put this together in proper perspective, knowing all of these connections.

Late 1905, Param uses William Joseph Seymour as a black minister for his outreach. So he becomes in, in today's world, New Apostolic Reformation, he becomes an apostle for Param, if you understand how all of this works.

February 1906, William Joseph Seymour receives an invitation to go to Los Angeles and with Charles Fox Param's blessing, he goes to begin what would eventually evolve into the Azusa Street Revival. March 1906, I believe it was Param closes the Houston Bible School and he begins credentialing the workers and he still has his heart set on attaining Zion City.

So as you've got this network of people that are now credentialed, you have essentially built a denomination of faith and you're watching another denomination topple. The central figure is soon to be out of the scene.

He's actually started to be replaced by members of Zion City. Param seizes this as an opportunity that he can bring those people into his network of his apostolic faith. So as William Joseph Seymour is out in Los Angeles, And the Azusa Street Revival is growing to full steam.

Parham is building his network of leadership, which included John G. Lake, FF Bosworth, Tom Hesmo Houch, the figures who are seen in a photograph with William Joseph Seymour at the Azusa Street Revival, which becomes part of a key element of Pentecostal history.

Connecting all of this together, you can see that there is a collaboration of the networks. And the problem is the reason Parham has been kind of scrubbed from the Pentecostal history. After the Parhamite murders happen, which is in 1907 and the sect is under scrutiny for their deadly deliverance.

Parham actually evades this because he's in Texas fighting a battle after several parents, not just one, but several parents claimed that he was having inappropriate relations with their children in the children's school, one of which Parham did admit to.

And he said something to the effect of, I can't help what I did in my sleep, but I did the thing. And so Parham is sort of scrubbed from the Pentecostal histories because the accusations, which I won't mention on this podcast, are very, very bad accusations and not somebody that you want to be the father of modern Pentecostalism.

So he becomes erased, but before that happens, the Azusa Street Revival, there's some history that really needs to be explained. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Now that we've talked through the religious landscape, the historical landscape, the culture, the environment and some of the key figures, let's talk about the revival itself. Now, as a, as another background, which should be obvious, but some people may not be aware, part of the doctrine that Charles Fox Parham was teaching whenever William Joseph Seymour was in attendance, was the idea that Glossa Lailia, or speaking, in tongues was initial evidence of the Holy Spirit. From a world history religion, this is a little bit unique in a Christian ideology because in world religion, this already has

existed for millennia. If you even ask some of the people who are in deliverance ministries who claim that they cast out demons, those people will tell you that we saw a demon and this demon was causing the person to talk in a low, unrecognizable speech pattern. And what they're describing basically is glossololia just in a different way. You can find all through the shaman religions, through the ancient Mediterranean ecstatic speech patterns, Kundalini, Hinduism, many different religions have something that is very similar where the brain and the speech pattern disconnects and something else comes out. If you were in the Pentecostal faith

and if you're in the deliverance ministry type faith, it's interesting because you see the speech patterns that are spoken with the King James dialect from people who read the King James Bible. You see that as a thing of God. While those who might be in another religion who are speaking speech patterns that you claim as an elemental spirit, it's just a different speech pattern that is something that's recognized by that culture. The two are actually the same from a mechanic standpoint. So the question becomes from a spiritual standpoint. Is it real? Is it one of God and one

of the devil? I can't answer that question, but that's the question that really comes out from this because the point is speaking in tongues pre-existed the Azusa street revival. Even in Christianity, speaking in tongues did pre-exist. There were examples in the Welch revival where people were speaking in tongues. The difference is they did not see it as an initial evidence. There were examples. Even I believe I read in Frank Sanford's Colton Shiloh, the one that Charles Fox Parham also visited along with John Alexander Dowie's Zion City. It is allegedly pre-existed in that cult as well. But in Christianity, it became mainstream popularized into the holiness faith

because of the Azusa street revival. So that's the reason many people mistakenly think it was not until Azusa street that we had speaking in tongues because it was popularized and more to the point it was claimed to be a part of the initial evidence that you in fact had the Holy Spirit. Christians who don't believe this way, argue that there is no Bible precedent for saying that there is a specific sign of what is the initial evidence.

And the question and the debate will never end, so I don't really go down the pathway of that debate. But the point is, it did pre-exist. Now in the training that Param would have taught Seymour, Param believed that there was a precursor to this, which was writing in tongues.

And if you're watching the video version of this, I will put this on the screen. But in Param's sect, there was this strange gibberish of writing that they claimed was writing from God. Oddly, in one part of it, it honestly looks like a tic-tac-toe game to me.

But to those people who believe that this is faith-driven writing, they might say that what I just said was grieving the Holy Spirit. So I'm just saying what it looks like to me, you can make of it what you will.

But there was this writing in tongues, then Param tried to accelerate this by sending out missionaries who did not know the languages for the countries that he sent them to. The missionaries went expecting that they could speak in tongues and speak the dialect of whatever is the nation that they went to.

I think one of them was China. And they came back because nobody could understand a word that they said, in the same way that nobody could read a word that was written on this piece of paper of writing in tongues.

So there's some strange history that would have been taught to William Joseph Seymour prior to starting the Azusa Street Revival. But nevertheless, William Joseph Seymour in Houston, while working with Param, was in Param's network as a minister.

He may have had his credentials before the school was closed, I'm not sure. He was teaching in some of the black churches. One of the churches that he taught in was Lucifero's church. Lucifero was a Houston minister who's teaching a black sect in Houston.

And a visitor from Los Angeles, named Neely Terry, came to Houston and heard William Joseph Seymour preach, apparently. Terry went back to Los Angeles and invited, in 1906, invited William Joseph Seymour to come preach.

They were very excited to hear more about this initial evidence of the Holy Spirit. So William Joseph Seymour goes to preach and he eventually invites Lucifero, who he had met as a minister in Houston, and invited her to be his helper.

And on April 18th, 1906, while all of this is happening, Seymour's participating in these meetings, speaking in tongues, began to break out in the Revival. And the Los Angeles Daily Times printed an article on the front page that is entitled weird babble of tongues. Now if you study any Pentecostal history that gives you any access to information, this is the article that they usually will include with their publication. Weird babble of tongues. And the way that they interpret this, the Los Angeles Times are coming as reporters who are skeptical of what is happening here, which is true. But they point to it as evidence that

the outside world can see that this group of people is different than the rest. They're different than the other Christians. And therefore they have something that's special. Very few of those histories, I've read several of them, very few of them mentioned that it's not special within the broad scope of humanity. Because, like I said, other religions have this. Other Christians had this. But what it is, this is the first time that it became recognized with a centralized to a specific group of people who were therefore a revival, who were believing that this is the evidence of the Holy Spirit being sent. That would be newsworthy, right? So if you read through

this newspaper, they're not very good at painting. William Joseph Seymour in a good light. You can tell that they're very, very skeptical. And they're even more skeptical because you had the breakdown of racial barriers. William Joseph Seymour is preaching. There are white people and

it has written colored people in a sprinkling of whites composed the congregation. So you can tell that the article was written by people who are skeptical not only of the religious ecstasy, but also of the intermingling, as they would call it, of blacks and whites. Four days into that revival, as I mentioned before, the San Andreas fault violently settled and the city of Los Angeles was set ablaze. So here are people believing that they have just experienced the evidence of the Holy Spirit. And then suddenly the wrath of God comes down on the San Andreas fault. And you

can imagine what this would do to people not only those who are participating in the Azusa Street Revival. In fact, if you read through some of the articles, you find that there's this weird array of spiritualist mediums to cult people who are attending this revival wondering, did we just witness something of another world? And so people who are skeptical of the Azusa Street Revival, they will often point to this. They'll say, this revival did have Pentecostal holiness people, but look at the others who attended. You had the occult people, the sayances, the transes.

I don't really give that much credence because if you understand what was happening around the revival, this would have put fear into the hearts of many people. who are thinking that there's something otherworldly happening.

Now the fact that they did attend their revival, it gets weird, which I'll get into that in just a bit, because of the way that the revival was handled. From my perspective, if I were a historian and I were to try to write about the occult people who were attending the revival, I would instead say, is not God powerful enough to convert those who attend the revival who don't believe in God into Christianity?

And it's a good thing that those occult people came, because they could be converted, right? That's how a Christian should think about this. The problem that I have found, if you study the Pentecostal historians' views on this, they see it as this offensive thing that unbelievers came to the revival and disrupted things.

You find the skeptics who are looking at it saying, oh my gosh, there are occultists here. This thing was of the occult. And I'm simply thinking, well, if it's a move from God, wouldn't it want to attract sinners and convert them?

That was the first thought that went through my head. So I put that off to the side, and I wanted to see if it is a movement by God, how would the leadership react whenever this happened?

And that's where this gets really interesting. When you hear about the Azusa Street Revival, generally the historians who are favorable of the events, who are Pentecostal historians, they will focus on the speaking in tongues because that was the big event.

But they don't often tell you of the other things that were happening in that revival, many of which sound eerily similar to what you hear when people describe the Toronto blessing, because people were getting themselves worked up into a religious frenzy that went far beyond just speaking in tongues.

People were having holy rolling. They would literally get on the floor and start rolling. And also holy kicking. There were people who would kick, and I think even a few people got injured because of the holy kicking.

There were people who were just acting as though they were completely insane to the extent that some of the people actually did get taken to jail locked up for insanity during the event. Well, as the holy kickers began to carry on what newspapers described it as mad orgies, you had people who were in the surrounding neighborhoods listening to this all night ruckus and just did not want, they wanted their sleep.

They didn't know what this thing going on. And so the police would continually be called to quieten these people down, let the people sleep. Well, the leadership of the revival weren't going to take part in calming this situation.

And in fact, did like some of the ministers might do today, they began to pray for curses from heaven on the heads of all of those people who weren't participating in the revival. And it was not just the skeptics who were warning.

to stop all the commotion that the wrath of the leadership came down upon, even the sinners were subject to the wrath of the leadership. In fact, there's an article in the Los Angeles Harold Sun entitled Unsaved Center Throne Out by Holy Rollers. There is a man named EP Harlan, 62 years old, who had attended the revival. And during the course of the revival, one of the speakers said, we want no sinners in the house. And Harlan examining his own hearts felt, well, this must be me. So he stood up and he said, I guess that applied to me. And he was not going to

get out because he said he wanted instruction. In other words, how can I be saved? And he was physically ejected and assaulted because he admitted that he was a sinner as part of the revival.

So it was this one article. And this is one of several very curious articles about the Azusa Street Revival that painted a picture inside that was different than the mythology that I had been told. I was picturing a revival where everyone who's attended saw the Almighty Power of God and the sinners who came to be to learn more about God could be saved within this revival. And they too could speak in tongues. That's how the mythology evolved in Pentecostal circles. So we were given that we were giving reverence to this event, thinking that this is suddenly this

impartation of God in the building. And everybody who went our holy. In fact, if you understand how Pentecostalism spread, those people who attended the revival became instant credit to accredited ministers and evangelists because they were in attendance. In other words, because they were there, the power of God was so strong that it flowed through the building, flowed through their veins. And now they have this double portion of power that they can go preach to other churches. That's how we were taught.

And in fact, that's how Pentecostalism was structured. However, if you read this one article, you understand that no, it wasn't that powerful because this one sinner got physically ejected because of his sin. Now, that's just one article of several critical articles that you're not going to read in the history of Pentecostalism. The other one for me, which is really interesting and a little bit scary at the same time, is the fact that picture this event, you've got this event happening that to the outside world seems like a circus. You've got people, you could literally go for free and you could see people who were doing things that you've never, ever seen before,

and you can see it all for free. Just walk up and look at these people who are rolling on the floor, dancing, laughing in the spirit, kicking in the spirit, and more. So this became like a circus event to the non-holiness people.

Well, interestingly, there were people who went to see more and decided that they would stay and participate and got caught up in the religious ecstasy to the extent that some women were leaving their husbands to join into this thing.

And the husbands who didn't join because they weren't part of this, the group started to believe that those who did not participate, they were not part of the chosen few. I'll just say it like that.

And there were women and husbands who were leaving their spouses and joining in with other people who were part of this revival. That's certainly something that you did not hear in the Pentecostal histories.

And this unusual romantic aspect of the revival wasn't just centralized to the people within the revival. In fact, there's an article Kicker Embrace's Autowist referring to the Holy Kickers. It describes this man who's driving an automobile and he gets out of his car.

And one of the women in the revival runs out to him and says that she loves him and that he's a sinner and he needs to come inside and get saved. And so she's trying to claim her mate right here in the revival.

This is not the kind of thing that you hear about when you hear the histories of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostalism. But this was happening and you can't make this stuff up. If you want to read more about how this kind of thing occurred, just get a newspapers.com subscription and type in Azusa Street.

You're going to find all kinds of articles that just demystify this thing that has turned into a mythology. Now was it something from God and then all of this weirdness happened afterwards? It could be.

But I go for me personally, I go back to the article about the sinner. For me, all of this that exists in the newspaper, it's not that problematic for me. But kicking out a sinner from a revival that is supposed to be giving people the fire that was lit at the day of Pentecost.

For me, that is problematic. And I can't stress enough how problematic that is. Now the woman who runs and tries to grab her mate from an automobile, it's weird. But it's not as bad as kicking out a sinner who's coming legitimately to learn more about Jesus Christ.

However, if you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to learn more about the spiritual aspects of Azusa Street Revival, was this a spiritual thing and was it a spirit by God or some other spirit?

The newspaper captures it well when it says the horror of it. There's an article, this subsection is called the horror of it and it's describing this event where women were openly confessing. that they were telling people that they left their husbands and their children in order to enjoy what they called the full measure of faith.

Leadership who were in the revival were hearing this thing. They're hearing how women were literally abandoning their families to come participate. And remember, this revival went on for, what was it, two, three years.

So if you have this situation where people are abandoning their families, you would expect leadership who are in the correct spirit to say, no, don't do that. They can be saved too. Let's bring them, or you can go home to them and teach them what you learned.

In other words, spread the gospel. But it wasn't about the gospel. It was about the speaking in tongues. And really that is the bottom line. If you're looking at this from a spiritual aspect, the speaking in tongues took the priority.

Any mention of the gospel, in fact, you don't find it in any of the newspapers. There's no mention of the gospel. And the spreading of the gospel, you're not going to find this. And I want to say that many of the Pentecostal histories that I've read, not many of them, if any, mention the gospel as part of what happened at the revival.

It's more about the tongues. I mentioned in the beginning that there were also false prophecies associated with this revival. And it's not after all of the weirdness became more weird during the early part of the revival.

July 14th, 1906. So this is right at the heart of when this thing is beginning. In the article, the Holy Kickers carry on mad orgies. There is a description of a prophecy that was given in this gift of tongues and interpretation that went out among the crowds that said, and the railroad shall bend and the girders shall fall, and the cars shall stand for want of power.

In other words, all cars in the United States are going to stop. Chicago will be destroyed, and there will be a terrible mangling in Los Angeles and Pasadena. This message from the Lord was conveyed to the Holy Kickers by a Negro prophetess, Friday night.

So if you understand what is happening, the people who are coming to this thing, and they're hearing the tongues, they're believing that this is a word from God, and God tells them this thing that did not happen.

So for me, this is problem number two. If you're looking for something to identify, was this a spirit of God, or was this not a spirit of God? For me, something that is based off of speaking in tongues and the tongues that have an interpretation that humans can understand evolves into false prophecy, well, this isn't from God.

It clearly can't be from God because this did not happen. I can understand why they would think it might happen because they just came through the event, the destruction of San Francisco. But that was a part where mentally the brain had connected to the event that just happened but the mouth was repeating it as though it came from God. So for me, this is the second problem. It is huge when you think about the Pentecostal faith and the Azusa Street revival. Now, again, these kind of histories, you're not going to find in the Pentecostal history books because they are so highly problematic that anybody who is wanting to learn more, is this a movement by God or not?

The moment they come across this, the question is going to be asked, well, if it's from God, how can you have a false prophecy? There is a lot of questionable things happening in the Azusa Street revival right there from the very beginning.

Not from years after people say that it might have gone down the wrong pathway, I'm talking right at the very beginning. There's some weird things happening that are very questionable. I don't have a problem so much even with the questionable things because if you believe God is all powerful and you've got people with people problems coming in and suddenly there's an outpouring and they become better Christians, then that makes sense.

I don't see that but it would make sense if it did happen. For me, the bigger problem is somebody who wants to join the Pentecostal faith and they want to learn more about this because this is the epicenter, this is the thing that started the modern Pentecostal faith.

I want to learn more about it, tell me more and then the people telling them will tell you the parts that they want you to hear but they don't tell you these parts that I've mentioned today.

For me, this is a problem. Picture yourself if you go to use car lot and you buy a used car and the car salesman comes out and tells you this is a great engine, it was just rebuilt two months ago.

Some little lady has had it in her garage, barely drove it, decided she was going to rebuild the engine and sell it and this thing is really, really good. It's a good car for your family and doesn't tell you that the little lady had her shade tree mechanic son do it in his spare time and he had no clue what he was doing when he rebuilt that engine.

If you knew that, you wouldn't buy the car, right? That doesn't mean it's a bad car, not necessarily. Maybe he got it right. But you would want to know the information before you make an informed decision about buying the car.

The problem that I have with Pentecostalism as a recruitment engine, which it is, they don't always recruit telling you the things that might make you skeptical. They'll tell you the things that might make it appealing and they leave out all of the rest.

For me, this is a problem because inwardly, you must not really believe it solidly because if you believed it, you would have an enough confidence in the good parts that you could also talk about the bad.

And there's some bad. When you talk about women leaving their husbands and all kinds of weird things happening, that's pretty bad. But for me, it all goes back to that one article that I read that I mentioned where a sinner legitimately wanted to know more.

He stood up, he confessed I'm a sinner, I'm in this revival, I want to know more. And he was injured as they kicked him out of the meeting. That's not something that you're going to hear in a Pentecostal history book.

That's not something that I would put up with. If I watch this and I'm in the revival, that's the moment that I leave. I don't stay there when I watch a sinner being kicked out.

Absolutely not. And that's not the part that they tell you. So for me, that is the biggest problem of the entire event in my mind is the sinner who wants to learn more and he's ejected from the revival.

So, so much more I could get into. This is just a highlight of all of the weirdness that happened. Again, if you want to learn more, you can get to use newspapers.com subscription and just start reading daily in the Los Angeles Times because this was a circus.

You could read daily of what was happening and people, they even called it like a carnival. It was like a vaudeville show. I think was one of the terms that they use. They use different terms.

And it's kind of funny when you read it because you're picturing all of these black and white movies where the risque crowd are doing the risque things. That's how the city of Los Angeles saw the Asusia street revival from the outside looking in.

Women leaving their husbands ecstasy. Women running out and grabbing men from the streets and taking them in. And all of this weirdness that, you know, if you're a Christian back then and you saw this happening, you would think, truly, there's something odd about this group of people.

And I don't know that this is a movement from God. So I'll let you decide I'm not gonna give my opinion whether it was or not. If you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Pranum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.