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The Lasting Impact of the Azusa Street Revival

By Paul Strand
Washington Sr. Correspondent

CBN.com – LOS ANGELES, California -This month, the 600 million Pentecostals and Charismatics of the world trace their particular faith back to its humble origins 100 years ago, in a beat-up Los Angeles mission.

CBN News journeyed to Los Angeles to find out what made the Azusa Street Revival so powerful that it still reverberates around the world a century later.

Azusa Street is now just a quiet little alley near downtown Los Angeles. However, 100 years ago, it was the site of a revival unlike any seen since the events chronicled in the Acts 2.

Starting in April 1906, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Christians were baptized in the Holy Ghost at the rundown, ramshackle mission building.

They spoke and sang in tongues, found a new depth of prayer and saw healings and miracles. Eventually they took this re-found blessing all around the world.

Vinson Synan, editor of “The Century of the Holy Spirit,” said, "It started the worldwide Pentecostal movement, which today has over 600 million people in the world, second only to the Roman Catholic Church in size. So it has to be seen as a very major event in world history."

But Los Angeles was not where it all started.

A full five years before the Azusa Street revival began, its roots were planted deeply in Topeka, Kansas, along a road called Stone Avenue, in a place called Stone's Folly.

That was the nickname for the building where the Bethel Bible School met, and where Pastor Charles Parham and several dozen students were anxiously pursuing a deeper walk with God: a baptism in the Holy Spirit that would fill them with His power.

Parham and the students had come to believe that the evidence of this baptism would be speaking in tongues, as seen in the book of Acts.

Right around the first hour of the first day of the new century -- January 1, 1901, Agnes Ozman asked Parham to lay hands on her and pray for this baptism and the gift of tongues. And the prayer was swiftly answered.

Phil Johnson, who covers the religion beat for the Topeka Capital-Journal, explained. "Agnes Ozman became the first person this century to speak in tongues,” Johnson said, “and that started the Pentecostal movement as we know it today."

He added, “Agnes, it was said, spoke in Chinese for three days straight - she couldn't speak in English at all. Then all the other students...or, many of the other students, began to speak in tongues, as a result of that, over the next few days."

Parham took his beliefs about the Holy Spirit with him to Houston, Texas, where five years later he opened another Bible school. One of his most fervent followers there was a young black pastor, William Seymour.

Because of the segregation laws of the time, though, Seymour could not actually sit in Parham's classroom, but had to listen out from the hallway, through the door that Parham left open for him.

Even though he himself had yet to speak in tongues, Seymour, the one-eyed son of a former slave, became an ardent advocate for Parham's doctrines and moved to Los Angeles to take a preaching job.

"Parham was essentially passing on the baton of the Pentecostal movement to Seymour, who then took it on to Los Angeles," Johnson said.

But after just one sermon, in which Seymour preached about tongues and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, his new congregation -- mightily offended -- padlocked Seymour out of the church.

Two black families took the cash-poor pastor into their homes until he could get enough money to return to Houston. But until then, they had him lead prayer meetings, most of them in a big house on Bonnie Brae Street.

Then, a few days into a 10-day fast they'd held specifically for seeking the Holy Ghost, He suddenly filled them -- first was Seymour's good friend Edward Lee, while Lee was getting prayed over for healing.

Wilma Berry of Joshua Ministries met us in front of the Bonnie Brae House. "They came running down here to the Bible study,” Berry recalled, “to share the testimony with everyone: Edward Lee was filled, and he was healed too! And everyone from there was filled."

Louise Johnson is a tour guide at the Bonnie Brae house. She said, "And when he gave his testimony, it was happenin' then, it was goin' on."

The house went wild, as suddenly everyone was swept to their knees before God and many began to speak in tongues, Seymour among them. And Seymour's future wife, Jennie Evans Moore, received another special gift that night.

Johnson said, "The Holy Ghost filled Sister Jennie Moore, and she was not a pianist -- she did not know how to play the piano. But that night, when she was filled with the Holy Ghost, God also showed her how to play the piano! And she was praying, playing, and singing in a language that was not her native language."

"Jennie received the gift of playing the piano,” Berry said, “and she had that gift up until her death."

The people in the house were so excited, they poured out onto the porch where Seymour began to preach as an excited crowd gathered.

Berry explained, "Even the fire department was called -- they thought literal flames were coming from the top of the house."

"The house was filled with people...filled with the Presence of the Lord," said Johnson.

Berry added, "It was such an uproar that people came literally from all over the city."

The house was filled for several days, with masses of people jamming the yard and Bonnie Brae Street.

Then, just a few days before a killer quake hit San Francisco, "There was a young person who came to the porch when the crowds grew out into the street, and they prophesied the great San Francisco earthquake,” Berry said. “That brought the fear, and that also brought curiosity, and a lot of people coming to see what was going on. People rushed the porch, the porch caved in, and they had to find a larger place. And that's when they moved to Azusa Street."

The Azusa Street Mission had been an abandoned church building -- apartments upstairs, dirty old stable for horses downstairs. Nothing's left now, just a short alley and a plaza where the small mission once stood.

Cecil Robeck, who is the world's leading authority on Azusa and author of "Azusa Street: Mission and Revival," gave us a tour of the area.

"It ran 60 feet in this direction and 40 feet in that direction," Robeck 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 eight-foot ceiling.

"Everybody was having to fight the flies all the time,” Robeck said. “The horses had been in there, they had done their business, the flies were hatching out...and it was an incredibly awful place to have to worship. And yet, 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 that 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, filled with 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 Seymour was hardly visible in these meetings, as he'd 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.

"Anybody, regardless of their age -- could be six 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," Robeck said.

But a main feature of Azusa 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 mercilessly. An early headline read: "Weird Babel of Tongues; New Sect of Fanatics is Breaking Loose."

Critics have said that these tongues were not really languages at all, but listen to this story: 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 her 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.

That is just one of many examples.

Berry noted, "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."

Seymour and his fellow believers made sure this revival did not stay at Azusa, with many rushing off to all corners of the Earth to spread its good news.

Within a century, the Pentecostal faith captured more than 500 million souls, and is blossoming even more rapidly in the 21st century -- "growing at the rate of nine million per year,” Hyatt said.

He added, “And what's astounding is that this movement didn't exist just over 100 years ago. It's an incredible thing. It's a worldwide phenomenon."

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