The Azusa Fire: Who Owns the Flame

Music 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.

In the last few episodes that I have done by myself, connecting the dots for people who are interested in the history of Pentecostalism, I have been examining the Azusa Street Revival because it is the single most important event that really blossomed into all of the things that we talk about in all of our podcasts or on the website. It was really the epicenter of everything, but yet it has turned somewhat into a mythology. And so I've spent the last few episodes detangling that mythology to try to bring it back to concrete historical terms that people can look at, historical facts that they can examine, and I've included

some newspaper articles, etc. And they're very important to understand. I've walked through some of the stranger events that were taking place within the Revival and either before or after the Revival, such as all of the false prophecies that emerged during the heart of the Revival, that's something that's not often talked about in modern Pentecostalism.

Or the father of the Pentecostal movement, and all of his shenanigans, I'll just say it like that to keep it g-rated, but William Joseph Seymour is often credited as being the main focal point, but Seymour called Trostvox Parum, the father of the new movement that was being created. So there's a lot of really sketchy history that is involved in the Revival. So much so that if you read through the comment feeds, people who are in the Pentecostal faith, they will often think that I'm attacking it simply because I'm talking about the history that was actually recorded instead of the mythology that came

to after. But I do have, and you've probably seen it if you've read through the comments, there are a few Pentecostal people, both ministers and just lay members of the church, who are appreciative of learning the true history, even though they remain Pentecostal.

In fact, I have some Pentecostal friends and researchers who are working with me on a lot of this information. So it's a strange and unusual thing, but there is a method to the madness because I'm fascinated with history, especially the ancient histories, the ancient religions.

I'm fascinated with learning how mythologies formed, why they formed, who all were impacted by the mythologies, and usually you can study the progression of that mythology and how it progresses towards destruction. That's an interesting thing, even if you are an atheist who's listening to this podcast, and you look at Christianity and some of the fruits that came from Christianity, yes it did create some, it did evolve into some very destructive sects.

That's Jim Jones is a good example of some of the destruction, but it also progressed into some really good movements, so that we're not destructive. So even if you're an atheist listening, you have to understand that some of the ancient mythologies, you can examine them and get direct history of the destruction it caused all the way up to human sacrifice.

So I'm a big fan of not forgetting history, not erasing history because we learn from our mistakes in history, and mythology is one of the more deadly mistakes that mankind has made, because it does eventually evolve into human sacrifice.

Interestingly, and I'll talk about this briefly in the podcast today, interestingly, the mythology that Pentecostalism became also developed into a human sacrifice, and that is recorded in history, not many people are aware of that fact, now does that mean necessarily that the human sacrifice can be blamed on the Azusa street revival, and the leaders of early Pentecostalism, no, but that's the same way that you could say of the mythologies.

Thousands of years after the mythology was born in ancient history, it did develop into human sacrifice, and you can't really blame the founders of that mythology. It's just that there is some destructive natures embedded within mythology, and any historian can tell you some of the worst cases, and I won't go into those in this podcast, but I do want to examine and demystify the Azusa street revival and what happened after it.

We've talked about Seymour and his relationship, we've talked about some of the figures who came into the revival as leaders, who later founded other denominations of faith, such as F. F. Bosworth, who mentored Brannum in the Revivals, John G. Lake, both of those were even in a photograph that we've shown with William Joseph Seymour, and they went on to help found the assemblies of God, for example.

And it's interesting because if I mention those names like John G. Lake, there's this wide swath of character. systematic movement today who look at him as one of quote unquote God's generals, but the history says something different.

This guy was documented to have issues with this ministry. I'll say it like that and keep it clean. You can type in John G. Lake fraud and search it in Google and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It was some pretty bad stuff and not even that it developed into that. He was kind of a scoundrel to begin with, but because he was here and the Pentecostal movement claimed that this was the fire.

We're spreading the fire and if you're connected to the revival that fire can spread through the people who are connected, that's kind of a big deal. And so today I want to examine that fire who owned that fire.

I've talked in the last, I think it was the previous podcast even talking about the revival. Who owns the revival because you've got all of these different figures who are claiming I'm the guy, I'm the lady, I'm the person who is carrying this new revival to the world.

And yet even the term revival, they have twisted what it biblically means. So Pentecostalism, I'm going to ask the same question, who owns the fire? Because for me, when I left the movement that was highly destructive, the Brannemism movement, I started reading the Bible over and over and over again, cover to cover, try to wash all of that nonsense out of my head.

And I kept coming back to this question. It developed from Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism was based loosely on Acts 2. And within Acts 2, you can read the statement that when the day of Pentecost had, and I'm going to explicitly pause here, fully come, when the day of Pentecost had fully come.

So when you go back and you look at the Azusa Street Revival and read through the documentation that does exist about what happened in the revival, not the mythology documented by later historians, there were people leading the revival who could not read their Bible, who were preaching at that revival.

There were people who had not studied theology, who were suddenly appointed as people to spread the revival. And the argument was being made that the day of Pentecost has now come. And even in the very first publication I showed it on the last podcast, even in that publication, it said the day of Pentecost is here.

Yet Acts 2 said when the day of Pentecost had fully come, talking about in the ancient world, not talking about in the modern world. So with that, if you logically reason about what they're claiming with the early Pentecostal movement, it's there.

But we're going to take this fully calm in Acts 2, and we're going to say no, it didn't fully calm. It fully came in part, and it's going to repeat again, which is technically adding words to that passage.

But I'll leave that aside for now. We're going to say that the day of Pentecost is here now. There are ministers who get around this. If you're curious about Pentecostalism, who will say, well, no, it didn't come again.

It came at the day of Pentecost that was mentioned in the Bible, and it just continued, but it died out. And then it came back again. That's usually how it's framed. But that's not really what the Bible says will happen for one thing.

If you read the Bible, if you read it in context, from read that entire passage, and read the passage before or the passage after by recommendation. That's not the way it was framed within early Pentecostalism, because while the ministers today, many of them are actually studied, some of them go to seminary, although seminary is frowned upon by a large swath of Pentecostalism.

There are those who do, and those who do will kind of frame the argument such that, no, we're not going to reject the idea that it fully came back in the ancient day. We're just going to say that we're tied to that direct lineage.

But I want to demystify that, because that's not what the early Pentecostals were saying at Azusa Street. They were claiming that this is it. Pentecost has now come. The speaking in tongues is going to bring everybody into a unified language.

It's going to unite Christians of all faiths, all denominations, I should say. It's going to unite them, and the return of Jesus Christ is imminent. There will be a imminent revival of the church, and then they will be raptured away.

That is what the early Pentecostals were claiming, which I'll get into some of that in a bit. But the question that I'm going to ask in this podcast is, who owns the fire that Pentecost claimed had returned and come again and was fully come the second time?

So let's talk through some of the names of people who owned the fire, and I'm saying that jokingly, don't take that seriously. These are just names of people who their ministries grew to such an extent that they believed that the fire was contained within their ministries.

That's really key to understand because you have to separate the so-called fire, as they were calling it, with the movement. As I mentioned in the last podcast, the early movement from its earliest stages said that Charles Vox Parum was the father of the movement.

But Parum and many of the leaders would say that God actually owned the fire. We're coming, this fire has come down, we're going to spread this fire, God owns it, and whoever receives this fire is going to...

to instantly be empowered by that fire. And I want to really focus on that point, because if you follow that out to its logical conclusion, this is something, this fire, this is something that, once it is inside of you, it changes everything about your being, your personality, your faith, your belief system, your spiritual gifts. This was an all-encompassing power of God. They said was the Holy Spirit, so they connected the fire to the Holy Spirit, and they would say that God owned the fire. But they could not agree after the fire started spreading what it was, how you

got it, all of the different details of this fire, and each one, in effect, claimed ownership of what they felt the fire was. So there were instant divisions, and I've thrown up on the screen some of the names. These are not the all-encompassing list, but you've got William Seymour, who was the pastor of the revival. He was at the pastor of the Azusa Street mission who led the revival, I should say. Paaram, who they said, was the leader, the father of the movement. Florence Crawford, who was a evangelist, who took the Azusa fire and took it to Portland to build her own independent

work. You had Claire Lum, who was the editor of the Apostolic Faith magazine we mentioned later, and she took the Azusa's voice, voice of Azusa when she left. You've got William Durham, who received the baptism at Azusa. Then he went and preached a new doctrine, a new fire, and see more locked him out, actually. But part of the crowds followed Durham. Or you have some would say the people owned the revival. There are hundreds who received the same experience. And among those hundreds there were other similar leaders, but these are the big names that I'll mention in the

podcast. I'll start with Seymour, because obviously he is the one who is credited as the leader of the revival, and he eventually, in at least some sects of Pentecostalism, replaced Paaram as the father eventually. But William Seymour, he did not present himself as the creator of Pentecost.

He was basically portraying the revival as a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, where it was restoring biblical Pentecost. So in other words, when the day of Pentecost had fully come to the ancients, he was saying it had come again, but we're restoring what had come in the first place. So it was like a second time of fully come. And that language really could be applied to anybody, any race, denomination, faith. Anybody could claim ownership of the fire that was being spread, according to the way Seymour presented it. So whenever you hear Pentecostal say it's only in the Pentecostal faith, they don't have this in the denominations.

That wasn't really the way that it was initially framed, it was more to the effect that through what Seymour did, this would spread, and when it spread, it would spread into the dominations, and they would all unite to be instantly raptured into heaven.

They were saying that this was imminent. That's the really the key thing here, and by 1907, the apostolic faith, the publication was being printed, which we showed an issue of it in the last podcast.

It was roughly 40,000 issues were circulated, so this was spreading like fire, I can say it like that, but the question is who owned the fire, because as we mentioned also in the last podcast, the list of subscribers was actually stolen, so Seymour lost control of the fire itself as the Pentecostum movement was spreading this in the form of that publication.

So Seymour led the mission, but he actually rejected a control of the fire. His services were deliberately spontaneous, there was no structure, no controlled liturgy. It was basically everybody could participate. Anybody could testify, sing, prophesy, speak in tongues, so long as they agreed that this was the return of the fire.

If anybody were to ask questions, how can I know more, I'm not sure I believe this, show me more, as we mentioned in one of the previous podcasts, there are examples of Seymour actually kicking people out who were wanting to know more.

So there's a question as to who owns the fire at that point, because Seymour by kicking them out was effectively displaying that he owned the fire at that point in time. And that's the argument that I think I'll make with Seymour.

His experience basically became a portable credential, which is really odd, because if you think how the fire spread, those who attended the revival, they were believed to have received the fire, and therefore without any justification, some of them did not have background checks, they were spreading, there were people who may not have even understood theology at all, because they received this fire, the belief was that the fire would give them the theology.

In other words, when this fire comes in you, it completely consumes you, and you instantly are a carrier of vessel of this fire, so you can take it to other churches, and they did.

So if you were at the Zuzestreet Revival, it was spreading in such a way where they believed God was in control of the fire, God was coming into the vessel, and then that vessel would spread.

it, and those people would become also consumed by the same fire, they would also be instantly converted into perfect credentials, and so the people that they trained in those churches, they also didn't have to have background checks or credentials.

Some of those people, which we'll get into how this worked and some of the more extreme examples because everybody knows I like to go to the extremes, some of those people are really questionable as to whether they received any fire at all, if this was a fire, but more to the point, did the fire actually convert them?

Because we've examined on the podcast all kinds of scoundrels that are connected to the movement. So the question becomes, again, who owns the fire? Was it really God? Did God have such a fire that would instantly convert these people into having a doctrine that would convert souls to a imminent rapture, which we know that didn't happen according to history, and was it perfecting the faith or did it create a lot of division?

That's one of the points I'll get to in this podcast, and history just instantly declares, yes, there were quite a bit of divisions. So Seymour, he was the first pastor, but according to the way that it was presented in the movement, he was merely the first carrier of the fire.

They would believe that it was held by God, he was the first carrier, and once that began spreading, then the vessels were just carrying this perfect faith. So picture the fire as, this is the perfect faith, it's not just the Holy Spirit, it's bringing us to the perfect faith, that's what the fire was being proclaimed as.

I should also mention Crawford and Lomb, at this point, because Florence Crawford went on to establish an independent apostolic faith in Portland, Claire Lomb joined her and took or transferred or stole, we don't have the actual history of this, but the newspapers mailing list, which was one of the most important things in this movement.

So when she took that mailing list, it demonstrated that the fire could actually be separated from Seymour. So at that point, Crawford and Lomb were effectively becoming the chief apostles of the fire. So if you think modern day apostles, and you think the restoration of the church as was being proclaimed, both by the new Pentecostals in the early 1900s and the modern Pentecostals today, they were effectively saying that they are now the apostles who are owning the transference of the power, and therefore they had the mailing list, they were going to spread it, and Seymour basically lost connection to the entire network, although he stayed

obviously in high regard, and people would still come to... visit Seymour. Historians actually disagree on whether this transfer of this mailing list was authorized, because we don't have all the details, but needless to say, Seymour never regained control of that mailing list, so the fire was effectively separated from Seymour by these two Crawford and Lomb. Now, there are those in Pentecostalism, especially the historians in Pentecostalism favorable to the movement, that would say that the transference of that list does not signify that the fire went to them and left William Joseph Seymour, but remember how the movement worked. They were challenging the traditional

ministry in the United States, claiming that the Azusa Street Revival and those who were participants in the Revival were effectively going to rewrite the DNA of Christianity imminently, so that the entire church could be ready to be raptured into heaven. So what they were claiming is essentially this, if you were in a traditional church and you had a theological education, it meant nothing, denominational examinations, credentials, background checks, all of the things that are necessary and are very, very necessary to be a minister of a pastor of a church. They were rejecting that idea. There was no concept of somebody

with an official formal ordination that had all of the prerequisites, and they would actually frown upon any type of supervised ministry, so there were no checks and balances, and essentially, whereas the traditional church had, the ministers had to demonstrate years of exceptional character before they could come into the ministry and lead people.

Pentecostalism said that you would be instantly filled with this fire, and it would supersede all of those things, meaning that this fire, when it came into the person, into the vessel, they would have instance or very quickly would get theological education from God through the fire. There would be no need for examining their background. God would, even if they had a tainted background, even if they were a scoundrel, God would perfect the personality.

No need for formal ordination, though some of them did ordain ministers, but the big key is no supervision. There was no hierarchy, and they were rejecting this hierarchy. They were saying that the church had become formal because of this hierarchy, and the big one for me is they did not have to have years of demonstrated personal character because that fire would change their character. So if you had any ill intent and wanted to be in the ministry, all you had to do is comment.

and it's Pentecostal sect, claim that you got the fire, and there are people who are not Pentecostal who can induce speaking in tongues. I'll say it like that and leave that light. You can go research it if you want.

If you could perform this, you were instantly given authority. And so this turned into a big deal. When you think about that list being taken, that would mean that these two believe that they had it and that they had it more than Seymour, and therefore they were controlling the list, therefore they controlled the fire.

That's the point that I was trying to make. Not that others did not claim the same fire or others may have just outright rejected. Early Pentecostals might have outright rejected that these two should even have this list in the first place.

So what we're seeing and demonstrating is that there began to be a competing force of multiple sources as to what the fire was, who controlled the fire, and what the fire could do for you.

If you were in Charles Vox Params orbit, for example, there were Pentecostals who would reject that he had the fire that could bring you to this level of perfection that had to be created within the soul through the fire to go up into the rapture because he was tainted.

There were things that he was reported as having done with children that would make him ineligible of this according to many of the early Pentecostals. So they were challenging Params version of the fire.

Now the list gets stolen and you've got another person in the orbit who claims the fire. And so it just changed really the landscape of Pentecostalism. It's kind of a big deal, but within that framework that I just mentioned, what it did, it gave ordinary people who might not otherwise go through the process of learning, studying the Bible, learning what theology is, learning how to actually properly interpret the Bible.

Ordinary people were suddenly permitted to speak and even to lead churches, especially those who were in contact with people that were at the Azusa Street Revival. And they believe that here's another point I want to make that's kind of problematic when you think about it.

They believe that those who were at the Revival had a stronger version of the fire than those that the fire was given to. In other words, when you think logically, it means that the fire was losing potency as it transmitted across the nation.

So those who were at the Revival had instant authority, instant, those who they gave the fire to had almost instant authority, but lesser than those who were at the Revival. And then those people who were...

given the fire from the vessels, the vessels themselves seem to have ownership of the fire, because those who owned it from Azusa Street had a far better version of the fire than those who descended down.

In other words, the power of God was decreased as it was transmitted. And that's a really key thing to understand, especially if you think about modern Pentecostalism, the New Apostolic Reformation. By that same logic, the fire would become so weak that the God that is in them has no power at all.

And ironically, if you look at the news and look at the way that the hearts have been changed in some of the modern leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, that might be an accurate argument to say.

But the ordinary people being able to speak is kind of key because these ordinary people did not have the background checks, the credentials, et cetera, and people were being appointed to leadership roles who probably should have never been there in the first place.

In other words, the manifestation authenticated the messenger. That's really one of the big key points to understand here. Experience was also a big factor. If you had an experience, and you had the fire, and you had a better version of the fire than the descendants had, that combination of experience with better version of the fire gave you more credibility.

So you would read through the testimonies, and you'd read through people who were at this, there's a street revival. Those people were more credible, and pretty much anything that they said, everyone in the movement would believe.

But if you were descended and had this lesser flame, so to speak, and you had an experience, but it was just the normal Pentecostal, yes, I spoke in tongues, well, your experience didn't matter.

In other words, the person who is holding the flame, the person who's passing the torch, was really impacting what the fire was. They were in so much control of the fire that their own words, their own doctrines, whatever they said, became established in the movement.

While those who accepted the flame, as you're transitioning through time into modern times, especially, the lay member had no say at all, which is really, really odd, if you think about it, because they're trying to say this fire is what made these people capable of leading churches, but when it came down into the lay member, if a lay member were to stand up and say, well, I want to lead a church too, where did you get your credentials?

Did you talk to one of the people who were at the revival? Did they give you the flame, or did you get it from some other pastor who was layers and layers deep in flame passing?

So that's where it gets odd. Testimonies became resumes, in other words, if you had a testimony and I was at the Azusa Street Revival, wow, that's a powerful testimony. Come preach, come give us your flame, yet the people who had a testimony of, I was given the fire, seven layers down, and I received it in this church in the backwoods of Kentucky.

I would like to come speak at your church. They would say, no, no, no, I'd rather have this person who was at the Azusa Street Revival. So the fire itself, though it was presented as being owned by God, it was more owned by the lineage of person who was descended from the revival.

That's kind of important when you consider what the movement was and what the fire was. So it will raise the question further, who really owns this fire, is it the vessel or is it God?

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, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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I mentioned earlier in the podcast that mythologies are deadly. And if you study the ancient world study how mythologies worked, how it progressed, what it transitioned into, how destructive it became, you learn that mythologies can eventually lead to human sacrifice, which is in its deadliest form of all.

That is no different than the mythology that was created with Pentecostalism. And I'm going to give an example. Again, I like to choose the extreme examples. People may hate me for it, but if you study how bad it can get, sometimes it can correct how far you go down that pathway.

In other words, there's danger in this water. Do not swim. So let's talk about the deadliest form of the God told me virus that spread through Pentecostalism. As I mentioned, there is a succession of leadership that occurred from the Azusa Street Revival and the flame and its power decreased as it was transmitted.

If you study every... thing that was said about the leadership and how it was transmitted. That is clearly the case. Those who were at the Aziz Street Revival had instant, instant authority. And those who are descended of the flame did not have it. But there are rows within this transmission, people who said that God told me. In other words, I had an experience. And because of the way the transmission happened, it created this natural effect that is just so wrong when you think about it. Because of that decrease in power of the flame, if you wanted to step

up and become something, you had to have an experience that actually was more powerful than the flame itself. Those who were at Aziz Street again, they had instant authority. Those who were descendants of the flame, several layers descended, they would have to have an experience so fantastic that people would say, oh, well, your experience is greater than the common people who accepted this flame as we transmitted it to them. And it maybe it wasn't as powerful as those who were at the Aziz Street Revival, but it might be equal. So you'd have the God told me a fact. People would actually say God told me when

in fact, God did not tell them. And they would become a prophet or a leader, some apostles, et cetera. So I want to be careful here. This is not an Aziz Street problem or story. When I talk about the human sacrifice, this is more about the system that was developed because of the transmission of the flame and who owned the flame. People had to step up and try to supersede the flame transcendence. And they did. And this happened. So in 1933, Eastern Kentucky, there was a Pentecostal Revival. And again, Pentecostal Revival is a transmission of the flame. So 1933 would be several layers of flame decreasing in power. They believe

still that if you if you came to one of these revivals, you had intense, intense spiritual meetings of creating experiences. So you might develop new ministers. But again, these ministers did not have the same power or authority because their flame had been decreased through transmission. But some of those people would claim to have divine revelation. They might claim to have had a prophecy, et cetera. And what eventually happened is a family became so convinced of God that they had the means to perfect their little church or their little gathering that they wanted to become the ones who did, in effect, create the system that

the rapture and people would be leaving the earth for heaven because the imminent aspect was starting to decrease. By 1933 people realized okay those in 1907, 1906 they were claiming that it was imminent but we know it's 1933 now they were wrong. So what went wrong and people started to come up with their own ideas and one of the ideas was that well 1907 it was spreading that they would perfect the church through transmission of this flame. They must not have perfected it and so a family actually took it upon themselves to perfect it and they decided through one person's

revelation that outranked the others apparently that if they were to sacrifice another human then that sacrifice would atone for all of the sins that was in the Pentecostal movement or I'm guessing and that atonement would cause them to be raptured. So they actually did sacrifice a human life. The victim Lucinda Mills was an elderly widow and I think she was reported to be in her 70s she was sacrificed by John H. Mills her her own adult son and what happened was there was approximately a week long Pentecostal revival as I mentioned that they had prolonged prayer and

fasting ecstatic worship dancing speaking in tongues etc all of the things that you would see at Pentecostal revival and people were told that God was speaking directly to them because this flame was being passed and what happened was that the person who committed the offense decided that he had a revelation that God required a human sacrifice and here's the scary part apparently those who were present with him did not try to stop him they believed that his transmission of his acceptance of this transmission of the fire gave him the authority to actually do this thing

so the participants apparently prepared and helped him to burn her body as part of the sacrifice when the police arrived they found that she had been strangled to death by her son John H. Mills the point I'm trying to make with that example is not that Pentecostalism caused this because I think everybody can clearly see that was just an extreme case but it's more to the point of not just who owns the fire but what is the fire because effectively this person that got converted to the faith in this revival had something different that was not the fire of God this is not

what the fire of God would do but remember that's not how it was taught from early Pentecostalism this is the fire that would change the heart, the soul, this would further the move of God, and when this person received this so-called fire, it died right there with this person who went to jail.

That's an extreme case, I know, but think about the modern day apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation, and think about the way that they have had to change what the fire meant over the years.

There are a series of books out there now called God's Generals, and the statement being made is, yes, we realize that some of these people are scoundrels, they win a stray, but the fire that was in them continued the movement as it passed the torch from general to general to general, but what about the general that just sacrificed the human?

It's really bad. You can't say that the fire was in any good way performing in this example, but the biggest example that's actually more effective in displaying that the fire had questionable attributes. That's in the case of William Durham.

So William Durham, who was he? He was not an outsider. He was a Pentecostal who received this fire. He was not an enemy of Pentecostal, he was not a skeptic, he was not a critic from some other denomination, he was one of them.

He truly accepted the Pentecostal experience, he admired Azusa Street Revival, he actually benefited from that revival, he had no reason to question it, and that's what makes him probably the most significant in this examination of who owned the fire, because the greatest challenge to Azusa Street did not come from outside the movement, it actually came from within the movement one of their own believers, William Durham.

Think of the irony here, I talked about how the fire decreased as it was transmitted, and those who were at the Azusa Street Revival, they had the most powerful flame. In other words, they had the God that gave them the authority, the power of God that gave them authority.

Well, William Durham was one of the people who had that version of the flame. In February of 1907, he traveled from Chicago to Azusa Street, because he wanted to experience the Pentecostal baptism for himself at the event.

He wanted the initial flame, he wanted the big flame. March 2nd, he's claimed that he had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he spoke in tongues at Azusa Street, so he later wrote this glowing testimony about how he praised William Joseph Seymour as the meekest man that I've ever met and said, in effect, this is the work of God, there's no doubt of that.

So he received the initial flame, he had the initial power of God, and this is where the question lies, who owns that flame, because when he received that initial flame, the power was within him.

to help spread the movement, therefore he, by all nature of design of this transmission of flame, would be one of the most potent carriers of the flame. He returned to Chicago and he became actually one of the most significant Pentecostal leaders and created this most significant Pentecostal center in the Midwest.

So he was in effect spreading this flame. And then a few years later, he returned to Azusa Street to preach and his preaching started attracting these big massive crowds. Many of people who were there began to accept his teaching over William Joseph Seymour's teaching and think of the irony within that.

So William Joseph Seymour, who would have been the primary vessel, started issuing the flame to secondary vessels. Secondary vessel obviously would have a decrease in power because the third, fourth and fifth, this flame decreased and decreased and decreased and they had no, they had very little authority compared to those who were initially there who saw William Joseph Seymour.

Well now you have this whole weird sect of Pentecostals who are at the revival saying, no, we like the flame that's in this guy and not the original flame. So that gets, that's where it gets a little bit weird and it created tension because this was starting to reject the nature of transmission of flame.

That's really what this is saying. So you can say it like this, there was this guy William Durham who came to Azusa seeking the fire, received the fire, praised Seymour as the leader of the fire, helped spread the fire all across America and then he returned, convinced that God gave him a revelation that was going to correct Azusa Street itself and make it better.

So the flame in effect had created a scenario where the flame needed to correct holders up the flame. So you've got this weird vicious circle that is circular reasoning and that's really the main point I wanted to drive at in this podcast.

It is a flame that through transmission decreases but enters into a circular reasoning that cannot be argued with. Those who would say Seymour had the original flame and then look at the results of that flame, they would say that, oh my gosh, the results are bad, let's try this new version of the flame.

But those who were in that circular reasoning would say, well, wait a minute. If this is a flame that is perfecting the church as it's transmitting, well, what happened to the people that it was transmitted to?

And Azusa Street, why did it get worse not better? And they would say because Durham came to perfect that flame and you enter into the circle that cannot be... Okay, you're stuck in an endless loop.

So logically speaking, you can't trust the flame. That's the biggest point of this podcast is you can't trust it. So what do you do with this? And what they have tried to do over time through history is just simply revise what the flame meant.

To the early Pentecostals, it was an imminent return, an instant flame that created an instant perfection of the church, that it did not matter what denomination were you were in. If you were in a denomination and you proclaim Jesus Christ, this flame would eventually reach you and you would be perfected enough to be raptured into heaven.

Nowadays, after many different transmissions of this flame and many different competing theological views on this flame, what in effect happens is the flame is dictated by the vessel that is carrying it. In other words, mythology says that they were wrong at the Azusa Street Revival.

I'm here to correct it. They're trying to perfect the church so they can be the one. Well, then another person rises up and say, no, that guy is wrong or that girl is wrong.

My version of the flame is better than their version of the flame, I'm going to correct it. So if you're thinking in God's Generals mentality, what you essentially have are generals who are fighting each other, not generals who are perfecting the church.

So this flame was a flame to create internal divisions in the church if you follow that out to its logical conclusion. Not saying that the Pentecostal faith is creating divisions on purpose or that it was structured this way by design, it's just simply that that is how it has developed because of the view of who held the flame, who is the owner of the flame.

Fast forward to the latter-rain movement, the post-World War II healing revival. That's why I began researching this in the first place. My family came out of the Brana movement, the Brana movement was the core central element that eventually evolved into the latter-rain movement and was strongly dictating the doctrines and framework that would eventually lead to the New Apostolic Reformation today.

The modern charismatic movement can claim its roots to latter-rain just as the latter-rain movement can claim its roots in the Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival. Why is this? Well, if you think about what I said about the transmission of flame dying as it is transmitted, it gets decreased in power as it's transmitted, eventually there has to be a point if it's decreasing by some percentage, eventually it's going to just fizzle out.

That's what a flame would do. And that's exactly what happened. By 1947, people began to realize, no, the return of God is not imminent. These people who had the Azusa- street revival, they just weren't powerful enough transmitters of the flame, and it all died out.

They didn't say that they were wrong, but they basically said that whatever they were doing to perfect themselves to earn their salvation was wrong. And they never really caught on to the fact that the New Testament doesn't really say that that's a good idea. The New Testament says you look to Jesus for the perfection of faith, he'll send the Holy Spirit, not that you have to perfect yourself and that there will be this flame passing. But what they did was the flame died out and they had a new revival in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. This new revival, the

Laterane Revival, it broke out, it started spreading and much like the early Pentecostals of the Azusa street revival, people were going to this revival thinking that I'm going to get this new flame that has just come out, this new version of Pentecostal flame. And if I'm at that revival, my flame will have significance over the people that it's passed to. And so there were people joining into the revival. Interestingly, William Brannum, who was the leader of the post-war two healing revival, who for a period of time was in the Laterane movement and then later denounced

it kind of like William Durham, he was not at the original event. So he somehow got a version of flame that while it decreased as it was transmitted to him, it suddenly ignited into this big fireball that attracted everyone. And interestingly enough, he owned the flame because people were starting to look to him instead of the Laterane Revival claiming that if I can just touch the him of Brannum's garment, my flame will be better than those that I'm transmitting to. And so everybody was just flocking to the Brannum Revivals. That's why he's proclaimed as the foremost leader

of that revival. There are still people today who believe that William Brannum was God sent down in human flesh. And he had returned in the Laterane Revival just like Jesus became manifested with God's power. That's how they say it in some of the sects. Jesus was manifested with God's power. This manifested Son of God, Jesus is now this manifested Son of God, Brannum. That is what is being taught in some of the more extreme sects. But regardless, each group that bought into this idea had some variation of this. They either believe that Brannum himself was outright God,

or that Brannum himself was this vessel like William Joseph Seymour that was in dude with the power of God, and therefore getting close to that power meant a stronger transmission. And then what happened is much like the Pentecostal movement as it began to transmit from Brannum to the elders of the movement, so on and so forth.

It began to transmit in the same way. If you are in Brannumism, if you were a rank and file member who's sitting in the pews who says, I have this revelation from God because I received the power, the flame, the fire.

They would just laugh at you. They would say, only Brannum can have this revelation because Brannum owned that flame. There were yet ministers and evangelists who were in the movement with Brannum, who received this flame from Brannum, who began to think that Brannum's flame is flawed.

We don't like his flame. We have a better flame, and they became the William Durham's of that event, so it ended up into utter chaos. Each version of the flame, each person who's carrying it, each person who owned the flame, they became the vessel of power, of revelation of the flame, which began to evolve into the word of faith movement.

I had this revelation because God spoke through me. My version of the flame is better than that other guy, because while he's claiming God spoke through him, God only gave him a lesser power version of the flame, and so they're all competing as to whose flame is the most powerful flame.

So let's try to summarize all of this chaos. So you have the flame, which is declared to be God restoring a new day of Pentecost. William Joseph Seymour said that the Spirit is leading, the Spirit is the flame.

Josephus Parum, he came to the Azusa Street revival as the father of the movement, declared as father by William Joseph Seymour and others, and he said that this revival has gone off course. Florence Crawford, she said that the flame passing, the movement, should continue elsewhere.

Claire Alam, she takes the entire mailing list and says, I agree with Florence Crawford, let's move this flame elsewhere. William Durham, who was there and received the initial flame, he says God has revealed to him a better theology than the original flame declared, and his version of the flame was a totally different new theology of the flame.

The mill's family, as I mentioned, believed that God had demanded a sacrifice for their version of the flame. Laterane came and started declaring new apostles of a new flame to replace or augment the initial flame.

So you have different people, different doctrines, different outcomes, but all with the same claim God told me. In other words, my vessel, which is carrying the flame that was passed down from generation to generation, from this event that happened at a revival, claiming that the flame was the most powerful thing, that does not matter what matters my new revelation which supersedes the original revelation of God. In other words, God revealed to these people an initial flame that should be passed throughout the world to create a perfect rapturing faith and it's wrong. We do not need that flame. We need a new flame.

Nobody questioned this. Nobody questioned whether God could speak and denounce the original flame. They only questioned this. Who had the authority to say that he had a new flame or she had a new flame? Every generation since the Azusa Street Revival repeats this pattern and they change an altar what the flame is or how it comes to the people. William Brannum, who led the Laterane Revival, pushed World War II healing revival, he said the angel gave him the flame.

In other words, it wasn't passed from generation to generation. The Azusa Street Revival actually did not matter in the way that it was recreated. Brannum said the angel gave him the flame. Fast forward to the shepherding movement which came on the heels of Brannumism led by one of William Brannum's early campaign managers earned Baxter. God revealed to us that you must submit to us to even receive the flame. Kansas City prophets thus say to the Lord, we have a new flame. International House of Prayer in Kansas City, the Spirit showed us we have a better version of the flame and we have

a new method that will enable the manifested sons of God to take over the earth. New apostolic reformation, modern day apostles and prophets are required to reinvent the flame and create new versions of the flame. Notice what changed. Different leaders, different theology, different generations, but every single person believed that it was their revelation to become the next step of the passing of a new version of the flame. In other words, the original flame did not matter.

What mattered is the person who was holding the flame at the time. The flame becomes a torch and when it's passed, a new person can say, I have a new doctrine because I'm holding the torch.

So the flame was not an organic cleansing as they declared it from early Pentecostalism. All the way into the charismatic movement which had many of the same types of doctrines that this flame that you get through the emotion, that doing the stuff.

If you do the stuff, you've caught the flame. None of that matters. What only matters is who is carrying the torch. So for me, the greatest legacy of the Azusa street revival isn't really the spreading of the fire. As I said, that fire, as it's transmitted, there's a decrease in power with every transmission.

It's more about whenever two leaders of the movement, holders of the torch, whenever they rise up and both have competing doctrines, it forces people to say, which one is right? Which person who said, God told me because God can't tell them both different things.

Which person is actually telling me the truth and which person is telling me the false thing? And it puts the people into a place where they have to be somewhat confused. Is God really talking to this person?

Is God talking to the other person? This person is now in prison because God talked to him and we find out he was a total scoundrel. This other person, they're not in prison, but their doctrines aren't quite right.

It's not what I'm reading in the Bible, yet they said God told them these doctrines and they're holding this torch. So if I go to them and I get the flame, what kind of flame am I getting?

Every single version, every single iteration, every single generation, all of them are faced with that same exact question. And the point I wanted to make with this podcast is what you see today, the chaos you see today, isn't something new.

That chaos went all the way back to the beginning with the initial carriers of the flame. And it's, in my opinion, it's because of the structure of how they created that flame. It was a flame that decreased in power as it went.

And when you really stop and think about that, the decrease in power is only because the human minds wanted to claim some sort of significance. I held the flame and I held a version of the flame that's better than your version of the flame.

And a question is that right? Is that what, is that really what this is all about? So hopefully this has helped somebody who is trying to capture one of the flames that's in one of the thousands of new torches that have arisen.

And if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.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 Automable. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org.