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World-Changing Revival Born out of Azusa Street

By Paul Strand
CWNews

CWNews.com – The Azusa Street Mission had been an abandoned church building. It had apartments upstairs, and an old stable for horses downstairs.

Today, nothing's left of it. Azusa Street is just a short alley and a plaza where the small mission once stood.

Cecil Robeck is the world’s leading authority on Azusa and author of Azusa Street Mission and Revival.

He said, "And it ran 60 feet in this direction and 40 feet in that direction." Standing in middle of plaza he said, "We would actually be standing inside the mission, at this particular point on the plaza."

The services took place where the horses used to be stabled. Up to 1500 people might try to jam into the main room, with those who couldn't fit filling every window. On a hot day or night it could be tough to breathe beneath the low eight-foot ceiling.

Robeck went on, "Everybody was having to fight the flies all the time…and it was an incredibly awful place to have to worship. “Here were hundreds and hundreds of people attracted day after day, staying many times all night long in order to be where God was doing something."

The presence of God was so heavy on the Azusa Street Mission, people sometimes reported being knocked to the ground by it, blocks from the mission.

Inside, they said the Holy Spirit Himself ran the meetings, which often went non-stop around the clock, including healings, signs and wonders.

One of the most striking features was an ‘impromptu singing in tongues,’ where all the voices in the room would harmonize in what was soon dubbed ‘the heavenly choir.’

Sometimes Pastor Seymour was hardly visible in these meetings, as he would pray for hours with his head tucked inside the higher of two boxes nailed together to serve as a pulpit.

But his leadership was rarely needed as the Spirit appeared to orchestrate dozens of people testifying, singing and preaching in each meeting.

Robeck added, "Anybody regardless of their age -- could be 6 or they could be 60 -- it didn't matter whether they were black or white or brown or any other color -- didn't matter what their level of education was -- didn't matter what their gender was. They were understood to be a real ‘priesthood of all believers’ in which every believer had something to give, something to contribute."

But a main feature of the Azusa Revival was people ‘falling before the Lord,’ getting baptized in the Spirit and beginning to speak in tongues.

Local newspapers like the Los Angeles Times mocked this Revival mercilessly.
An early headline read: "Weird Babel of Tongues; New Sect of Fanatics is Breaking Loose."

Critics have said that these tongues weren't really languages at all. But how about this: Once a Jewish man went into the mission to gather evidence about tongues, to use it in sermons against Christianity. When he went up a staircase in the mission, a young lady pointed a finger at him, and – in perfect Hebrew, his native language -- told his first name, last name, what he was doing in Los Angeles, and gave him a record of all his sins. He asked where she learned Hebrew. She said she didn't know -- she was just ‘speaking in tongues.’ He fell to his knees and repented on the spot."

Wilma Berry is with Joshua Ministries. She said, "People would come into the meeting and they'd hear their language – Russian and Armenian and various languages – and they would hear the Gospel being preached. And they would come running to the altar, asking 'How do you know my language?' and give their hearts to the Lord."

Pastor Seymour and his fellow believers made sure this Revival didn't stay at Azusa. Many rushed off to all corners of the earth to spread its Good News.

Within a century, the Pentecostal faith has captured more than 5/600 million souls and is blossoming even more rapidly in the 21st century.

Hyatt said the number of Pentecostals is "growing at the rate of nine million per year. And what's astounding is that this movement didn't exist just over a hundred years ago. It's an incredible thing. It's a worldwide phenomenon."

"The river of God's presence is bringing life everywhere it goes. And whether we are finding ourselves in Asia, Africa, Europe -- all over the world, the river of the Spirit that God began to pour out in the early 1900s is bringing life and refreshing and changing the face of the planet." – Robert Stearns

Power to Witness: Azusa Sparks Global Church Growth

For three years the Azusa Street Revival lit a Holy Ghost fire in this humble mission building, then all over Los Angeles, and soon after all across the world.

Why did people so want this Baptism in the Holy Spirit?

Eddie Hyatt is the author of 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity. He explained it this way, "Acts chapter one, verse eight: 'You shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses."
Eddie Hyatt was commissioned to write a couple of the key books celebrating the Azusa Centennial.

Hyatt said, "[The] primary purpose of the Baptism is to empower us to be witnesses for Jesus Christ."

Further, Hyatt said, “It's that power -- miracles, healings, signs and wonders -- that so often make God so real to those who witness it.”

And, he added, “That Pentecost power flowed from Azusa into wave after wave of Revival in the decades afterward. One of the most famous involved the first Pentecostal superstar: Aimee Semple McPherson. In the 1920s, she became the first woman to preach on radio, and in Hollywood led three services a day seven days a week at the world's first mega-church.”

But, Hyatt continued, “Still, in those days, most Pentecostals were looked down upon and marginalized, according to Vinson Synan, editor of The Century of the Holy Spirit."

Vinson Synan is dean of the Regent University School of Divinity. He said it this way, "Much prejudice, a lot of criticism. They were called holy rollers."

But Synan says that didn't stop what the Holy Spirit was doing.

After World War II came the healing revival, which Pentecostals, like Oral Roberts, took right into the homes of Americans, via the new medium of television. Never before had so many been able to view this type of ministry first-hand.

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