Azusa Street: Charles Fox Parham and William J. Seymoure

Abiyah,
I have not heard these accusasations.
There is a book I read years ago entitled "Azusa Street" it is by Frank Bartleman.
There was some racism that was common in that day but I have never heard the kkk accusation.
As far as the freemasonry goes your prominent Pentecostal denominations and Fellowships frown on freemasonry.

 

Another source that you may want to look at is a book called "The century of the Holy Spirit" by Vincent Synan. He goes into more detail about Parham.
The book points out some failures in racial areas as well as the fact that Pentecostals historically were a part of the solution to racial problems rather than being a part of the problem.
On page 277 of this book it is stated that Pentecostal leadership was strongly opposed to the KKK and they were often targets of Klan terrorism because of the interracial attitude that the Pentecostals had .

 

At first Seymour and the blacks were asked to sit in the back but you have to remember this was way before civil rights when the tenor of this nation was very different then. Yet after a few services this changed and the whites mixed with the blacks which caused quite a furor and much persecution from outsiders. When Seymour went to Houston and his church became interracial it was highly and severly persecuted.

As far as claims against Charles Parham, every person who ever had any attention that had to do with Christianity has been slandered somehow over the years. False and misleading stories are always told.

There were stories about Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday. They were adulterers. Drunks. Dopers.
Child molesters and even homosexual. These stories are told by individuals whose sole goal in life is to try and destroy the church by innuendo and gossip.

Did you know that John Calvin was accused of incest with his own daughters and that he had a sexual fixation on children and that at time he showed latent Homosexual tendencies. These accusations were brought against Zwingli, Martin Luther, John Knox and on and on and on.

 

Hrhema,
I guess things have not changed since the Days when Jesus was on the earth.
The religious crowd acused Jesus of Being a winebibber and a glutton and said that John the Baptist had a devil. They even accused Jesus of casting out devils in the name of Belzebub.
There is a religious blasphemous attitude that exist to this day that falsely accuses ministers of the Gospel but Jesus warned about this.

 

It is no wonder that many ministers fail. They are under so much pressure from people to be perfect when we all know that is an impossibility. They live in a gold fish bowl with everyone watching them closely.

There are standards for ministers but when they do fail or act human the church needs to be the first to forgive instead of condemning.

No there are times when they commit adultery or other sexual sins that they need discipline but there are mistakes preachers make that do not need to be broadcast. The church needs to handle discreetly but with firm discipline.

 

There are lots of idle words that are used to accuse ministers of heresy and other things and we will all have to give an account of idle words.
The accusations of KKK activity of Charles Parham is a case in point. This accusation cannot be proven and I personally dismiss it based upon what I have read.
What matters is that the "Church Universal" should not have racial overtones. When this happens in any group it should be repented of.

 

Free masons have always been bad news. The higher you get up the hierarchy the more you understand that this group is really involved with the illuminati and very humanistic and satanic in their beliefs. First step mason are not aware of these things. They go through life thinking they are involved with an honest group. It is higher up that things are dark.

 

I do not know about other groups but from some careful study of groups that trace history through Azusa Street you find freemasonry being frowned upon since at least 1914 when the Assemblies of God were formed. I have never personally met a Pentecostal that was a Mason. I have met lots of Baptist that are.

 

Here is some good information from a couple of good sources:

Actually, Pentecostalism began in the nineteenth century. Two groups must be given credit here for the early occurrences, namely the Mormons of Joseph Smith and the Shakers. It will be remembered by the students of Mormonism that Joseph Smith believed in the gift of tongues along with visions, revelations, etc. To him tongues would accompany the reception of the Holy Spirit and would open the door for visionary understandings and revelations. After all, this is the way the Book of Mormon had come to him. Other historians of this movement, such as J. H. Kennedy and J. W. Gunnison, relate the unbelievable and weird episodes when this gift was claimed to have been enjoyed with the interpretations that followed. At the very best, one can only look upon this as the unbiblical braying of wide-eyed and hot-minded men. Something similar took place among the Shakers, especially with its founder, “Mother” Ann Lee who claimed that she could discourse in seventy-two languages. The gift of tongues was also accompanied by times of unspeakable joy and dancing during which many of the hymns of this movement were composed, although made up of unintelligible and unheard of words.

Pentecostalism itself cannot be dated much earlier than 1900. Some did live before that time who claimed “Pentecostal Holiness,” and “Pentecostal Fullness,” while others engaged in “Tarrying and Speaking” meetings. However, very few of these things occurred before 1900. A Rev. David Awrey of Delaware, Ohio, claimed he had the Spirit of fullness in 1890. In 1897 a Holiness convention was held in New England composed of “gift people.” In the year 1900 Charles F. Parham opened the Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, and this school held that the signs of tongues and healing should be normal for the church. Then W. J. Seymour became greatly enamored with the message of Pentecost and started the Azusa Street Assembly in Los Angeles in 1906. This may be as good a date as any for the birthday of the modern Pentecostal movement. One of the members of this group, G. B. Cashwell, left Los Angeles and went to North Carolina, and in 1908 preached at the annual meeting of the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, where the leader, H. A. Tomlinson, got the baptism and the Church of God became Pentecostal. Even the Christian and Missionary Alliance could not escape the influence of it and in 1907 some tongues appeared on the campus at Nyack, but A. B. Simpson refused to commit himself to say that tongues were necessary. However, his hymns have been used by Pentecostals since. The Assemblies of God have always noted their indebtedness to A. B. Simpson. The first General Council of the Assemblies of God was held in 1914 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and from this has come the largest group of Pentecostals in this country, the Assemblies of God, which currently claim over one half a million members out of a total of approximately a million Pentecostalists in the entire nation.
http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/full.asp?ID=283

Historically, the Charismatic movement is the child of the Pentecostal movement. That began about 1900 and it went along for about 60 years and the Pentecostal Churches were primarily the Assemblies of God, the Four Square Church, and then there were some other smaller groups, the United Pentecostal group and so forth. But they were basically off to themselves. People used to call them the "Holy Rollers." They were a kind of a unique group that did not mainstream at all in Evangelical Christianity because of their strange beliefs.

In 1960 a remarkable thing happened. In 1960, not far from here, in Saint Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, Rector Dennis Bennett supposedly got the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. And what happened was Pentecostalism jumped out of its own box and landed in Episcopalianism, and for the first time it transcended its denominational definitions. Since that time it has moved through the major denominations like a flood. It went beyond historical Pentecostal denominations and has continued to do that. That second movement is called the Charismatic Movement. They borrowed that concept of Charismatic because it is associated with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the believer.

But the Charismatic Movement can't be defined doctrinally. Why? Because it involves Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, anybody and everybody. So it resists, and has resisted any kind of doctrinal definition that is too rigid. What they all hold in common is an experience which they will call the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. And they wrongly define the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as a post salvation experience that adds something to your Christian life that you previously didn't have, and is usually is accompanied by signs and wonders, most particularly speaking in tongues. And we are going to talk much more about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and Tongues at a later time. But once you have had that experience, you have sort of jumped into this new level of spiritual awareness, and you have reached the level of the Charismatic.

http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/CHAOS1.HTM

DHK

 

Dkh,
I can assure you since I have talked to Mormons on this subject that I have never met a Mormon that speaks in tongues. Ask Mormons for yourself you will find that this just does not happen. I realize that Mormons claim that Speaking in Tongues can be given by the laying on of hands of mormon leadership( (this is because Mormons believe that anything that you get from God would have to go through the Mormon church) but if you find a Mormon that speaks in tongues give me their name I have never met one.

I wiould encourage you to read a book by Eddie Hyatt entitled "2000 years of Charismatic Christianity." You will find that Pentecostals/Charismatics practices are as old as the Church itself and have always been a part of church history. Ever heard of Tertullian?

 

I wouldn't put much faith in these sources!

In the first sentence you will find untruth!

Pentecostalism didn't start in the nineteenth century. It started on the Day of Pentecost. In Acts 2:4, you will find that this is where "The Church" was born. It has been around ever since and will continue, with all that the Lord left for her, until His return.

MEE

 

I don' have to ask Mormons. If they choose to be ignorant, "let them be ignorant still." If they choose to lie about their own history; they will be judged for it.

“Why do not the people speak with tongues? We do, and we speak with tongues that you can understand. Paul says he would rather speak five or ten words in a language that can be understood than many in a language that cannot be. This is what may be conveyed.” -Brigham Young, Discourses, pp.341-342

I encourage you to read a number of his quotes here:
http://fray.ca/treatises/tongues.html

Have you ever heard of the Adamic language? It is the language supposedly spoken in heaven that Brigham Young taught his followers to speak here. He taught them to speak in tongues. It is well documented. For more information check here:

http://nowscape.com/mormon/Adamic.htm

DHK

 

Whew!... DHK, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? Or maybe you just have a 'bur' under your saddle?

Cheer up! Life is too short to be so hateful.

MEE

 

I am not hateful MEE, but concerned. What you have is not the gift of tongues but a cheap imitation that started around the end of the 19th century. History bears this out. Sure, there have been some heretical groups sporadically spread out throughout history that the church has never recognized that have spoken in some kind of ecstatic tongues. But it certaintly wasn't the Biblical gift of tongues. It was more related to the occult.

The Day of Pentecost was a one time event in history never again to be repeated in history. We still have the ten commandments. But we don't have Mount Sinai with lightning and thunder, and a cloud around it for all to see. We still have the Bible, the recorded history of what happend on the Day of Pentecost, but the people, place and the event itself are history. You can't replace Mount Sinai, and you can't replace the Day of Pentecost.
We have the written ten commandments, and we have the written word of God, and the indwelling Spirit of God. That is all.
DHK