on april 9 1906 in a small house in los angeles on north bonnie brae street there is a small group of primarily african-americans but other ethnicities in a prayer meeting and they are praying to be filled with the holy spirit the man leading this prayer meeting was named william seymour he was the son of african african-american slaves in louisiana and he was a holiness preacher who had recently come to los angeles and as he prayed that night on april 9th members of that small group of about a dozen or so and praying were filled with the holy spirit and began speaking in tongues this surprised seymour because the first time he had actually experienced his praying for someone and he himself had not received the baptism of the spirit had not been had not been able to speak in tongues yet but three days later he asked members of the prayer meeting to pray for him and here's what he wrote later i quote i could feel the power going through me like electric needles i fell under the power and god began to mold me and teach me what it meant to be really surrendered to him i was laid out under the power five times before pentecost really came each time i would come out from under the power i would feel so clean as though i had been run through a washing machine my arms began to tremble and soon i was shaken violently by a great power soon i began to stutter and then out came a distinct language which i could hardly restrain i talked and laughed with joy far into the night i received the baptism with the holy ghost and fire and i felt the presence of god in my heart my hands my arms and all through my body and at times i'm shaken like a locomotive steamed up and prepared for a long journey the word would spread people would come and see mourinho's followers would as things grew i'd have to move into an abandoned old church on azusa street by the summer thousands of people from all over the united states and eventually the world would come to jesus street every day to see what god was doing there among in their midst the revival would last for three years and spark a movement that we're going to talk about this week and we'll go into some of the details but what's remarkable when we think about this small prayer meeting with a few dozen people in a house in los angeles that would spread into this movement over the next three years is that a hundred years later that movement that began with a few dozen people is now a movement with over 600 million people and is known as not only perhaps the greatest missionary christian movement in world history perhaps the greatest social movement in all of world history as far as numbers and growth curve for a few dozen to 600 million in a century how did this happen sociologists of religion historians theologians have been asking that question uh for the for for a hundred years but especially the last few decades been wondering what was it about the pentecostal not just revival but missionary movement that made it spread not just throughout the united states but all over the world with such speed with such uh repeated with such a wide and deep spread i'm going to give you a quick overview of the origins of this movement and then talk about go back to azusa revival but just note this is going to be a quick sketch because in term one of year two there will be a pneumatology class where we'll go into the theology of um we'll go into pneumatology the theology of the holy spirit we'll also go deeper i'll go deeper into the history we'll go further back in churches we'll look at specific examples so this is a really really quick that'll be covered in the dermatology course we feel like everything is being jumped over we'll be returning to that in the course let's just talk about some of the 19th century roots of this 20th century movement that changed the world to get us this a sense of a foundation of the root system of this moon so i there's a number of things we can identify but there's at least five roots and i'll go over them quickly because we'll go over them in more detail in the pneumatology of course but first evangelical revivalism think first great awakening second great awakening a variety of revivals throughout church history um was something that was deep in protestant christianity but also in catholic christianity and what we when i talk about revival what we're talking about is the gospel being preached in a powerful way a particularly powerful conviction of sin coming upon the people and perhaps most importantly very very strong emotional reactions and encounters with god that are happening that are outside of the normal experience for those individuals but also for the church at large uh think about wailing weeping falling down being slain in the spirit these things have been going on in church history uh um catholic protestant greek orthodox for centuries but they're always they're always unique right there's a sense in which they've been happening for a long time but they're outside of the normal experience it doesn't happen every single sunday it doesn't happen in every single year for a church so evangelical revivalism is part of the root system of what we see in the azusa pentecostal revivals but that's that goes across the theological spectrums but then getting more specifically illogically the wesleyan holiness movement was a significant not the only significant pillar theologically and institutionally uh for the pentecostal revivals again we'll go into it in more detail but the the key thing remember here was is it's rooted obviously in wesleyan this uh wesleyan theology particularly wesley's theology of sanctification where he believed there was this second work of grace the holy spirit would do in the life of a believer and it would result in a greater level of holiness perhaps even christian perfection and it was this thing that was subsequent to salvation yes you get um the holy spirit with salvation but there's a subsequent second work of grace that happens and the teaching of wesley began to kind of roll in different directions but by the 19th century there's there is this connection of going well that's the baptism of the holy spirit we see that in the new testament that second work of grace that work of sanctification that's they people began to equate that with the baptism of the holy spirit and there were also expectations about what that meant to be baptized in the holy spirit so 19th century there's a lot of discussion especially in wesleyan um groups about what that means you end up with these groups that are called holiness groups and they're these denominations in the late 19th century and they have a strong emphasis on personal holiness but also a great desire for the baptisms of the spirit a great desire for the works of the holy spirit to be manifest in their lives connected to this but in a in a slightly more calvinistic or reformed tradition was the keswick higher life movement and this was coming out of the united states in the united kingdom and this is also a late 19th century movement it also emphasized seeking baptism in the holy spirit also emphasized personal holiness but for them rather than seeing the baptism of the holy spirit or sort of being filled with the spirit as primarily that personal holiness or even perfection they saw it like these teachers saw it as something that was primarily rooted toward christian service or mission god fills you with the spirit to empower you on mission again there's a lot more we could talk about that but it was something of a calvinistic or reformed spin on wesleyan holiness movements they were they were all sort of talking about the same kinds of things but took it in different directions but these were movements that were going around the same time so those are the evangelical revivalism you talk about wesleyan holiness or the keswick higher life movement these are all some of the root system that you have in the 19th century and there's this expectation that many of them have that something happens significant when we seek the baptism or the feeling of the holy spirit and to add to this i would say not uniformly but across the board whether you're a wesleyan or a variety of different theological orientations baptist a variety especially in the united states in the uk there was this late 19th century eschatological expectation right of the outpouring of the holy spirit coming very soon in their time and that would usher in the second second coming of jesus right it was the imminent return of jesus it was a pre-millennial eschatological framework where they believed the holy spirit's gonna be poured out soon we don't know when we know how it's gonna be poured out and then the gospel is gonna spread to the ends of the earth as a result of this outpouring and the end's gonna come they believe those things are all coming together there's a pre-millennial expectation about what was going to happen that many especially of the wesleyan holiness groups they're actually also presbyterians and reformed folks in the keswick tradition who believed in this pre-millennial eschatological expectations so that's a quick quick overview to go much deeper any of those we will address them in pneumatology but that's the groundwork so what happens in the 20th century two revivals that happen that one was quite famous the other one was not so famous until later but in 1904 there was the welsh revival it's referred to in your reading and we will also unpack this further in the pneumatology church history section but there was a 26 year old theology student who was a former minor named evan roberts and he began to preach and began to see remarkable things happening in wales lots of the kinds of things you see in evangelical rivals where there's deep sorrow over sin wailing weeping people falling out under the spirit uh people claiming to be baptized in the holy spirit there was interesting accounts people speaking in old welsh who had never spoken in a welsh before so there were some sort of tongues-like manifestations during these revivals but people from around the world begin coming and many begin to go oh this is that revival this is the beginnings of that that thing we were all waiting for we think the holy spirit's going to be poured out and something's going to happen really big so there's this revival in wales and many people from all around and you'll hear as i as i teach on pentecost revivals who often refer back to whales whether they were went there or they heard about it it was an early revival one that was not as known but happened a few years earlier was on december 31st 1900 right the ushering in of the new century charles parham who was an itinerant holiness preacher was having an all-night new year's eve prayer meeting with students of his small bible school called bethel bible school and parham had just he was part of this holiness tradition wesley holy tradition he had begun putting two and two together for him thinking that you know how do we know what the baptismal holy spirit actually is what does it actually look like and he connected it with speaking in tongues he said this is the initial evidence that's actually happened it's not merely you become more holy or closer to jesus it's the tongues part that was one of his things he was connecting so he begins to teach this with his school but nothing had quite happened yet and everyone in a small school a few dozen they were having that expectation so it said you know it's an all-night new year's eve prayer meeting and during the prayer meeting agnes osmond one of the students received the holy spirit began speaking in tongues and here is params and this is the first one he's been teaching on this and believing for this it actually happens on new year's eve 1900 here's parham's account of what happened to agnes i laid my hands upon her and prayed i had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her a halo seemed to surround her head and face she began speaking the chinese language and was unable to speak english for days when she tried to write in english to tell us of her experience she wrote in chinese copies of which we still have a newspaper is printed at the time param then goes on to claim again this is the year 1900 this is before all the ev becomes world famous parm then art claims right that there were 21 known languages spoken during those prayer meetings of a few dozen students and these were confirmed he claims by native speakers including swedish russian bulgarian japanese norwegian french hungarian italian spanish and other languages so the claim is that this is happening in this small bible bible school in topeka kansas and parham believed and he was when the early ones believed this that this gift was for the purpose of missions he saw it as an acts 2 thing spirits poured out in acts 2 so they can be witnesses to the ends of the earth is the exact same thing that's happening he believed this was the tool kind of the final key that the church needed to take the gospel against the earth and bring in the imminent coming of jesus what's interesting is that parliament struggled to really gain a following his you know he traveled around trying to do this he didn't really get any momentum but one of his students william seymour would take this message to los angeles and that brings us all the way back to los angeles when the revival breaks out in 1906 five years after the initial uh the initial movement that parham tried to start didn't ever take root so seymour as i said he was the son of former slaves from louisiana african-american men and he was invited by the santa fe holiness mission keep in mind holiness right these are all wesleyan tradition kind of independent churches that believe strongly in a sanctifying work of the spirit they're often in lower uh class they're in the lower class societies usually the wealthier people are episcopal or methodist or some other tradition but they're these are in the lower class typically typically poor and he's invited by the santa fe holiness mission in l.a his first sunday in l.a seymour preaches about the baptist holy spirit and the evidence is speaking in tongues and he's kicked out he's invited to become the pastor and his very first son he's kicked out because they thought he was preaching something that was too narrow too specific they thought we've already all received this second sanctification this work of the spirit we all been baptized in the holy spirit we love him more we're more holy what are you saying that we aren't baptized in the spirit we don't speak in tongues so he gets kicked out and then a few of the people who are convinced by his teaching follow him and that's when they ended up at a friend's home on bonnie brae street right this small home and it's just a small prayer meeting and seymour's teaching us something he's learned from parham that he's never actually experienced and he's never actually prayed for anyone it's gonna happen so that's what that's the context of the april 9th prayer meetings around easter 1906 they begin praying and believing for this again there's a hunger and expectation for this and things really begin to take off in april on that april 9th the prayer reading takes off in a way there's people speaking in tongues or you're having visions dreams there's healings prayer meeting goes for three straight days 24 hours a day and there's reports from neighbors of all this commotion people beginning to flood to this small house after a week they have to move to an abandoned church on azusa street kind of the famous site where this mission happened and within nine days of the initial prayer meeting starting they had their first headline in the los angeles times i'll flash that headline on the screen but the headline was weird babble of tongues and they would quickly get the notice of the of the media of the secular media and they commented on the fact that people were speaking in weird languages they come in the fact that he was an african-american gathering primarily with some white people they commented on the fact that they were all poor rabble they called them poor people and they talked about the emotional uh ecstatic expressions that they were doing it was very negative very cynical very dismissive but it made the made the front page and even though it was a very negative report it kind of the ground swell the word began to spread around the los angeles area then ultimately around the state and around the nation and ultimately around the world the main group that began with seymour and was attracted that were obviously african-american but also other immigra immigrant groups there were poor people but there were people from wesleyan or holiness traditions some of them were baptist someone presenters but people who were influenced by holiness teaching and this desire for an experience with the holy spirit but they also received a lot of criticism from holiness churches and other church leaders there people from really elite churches and wealthy parts of valley didn't even know it was happening unless they were in the papers they just dismissed it out completely out of hand but when they began those revival meetings it would go all day every day for the next three years as i said they came in this abandoned ame church building former church building they kind of fixed it up they had a very very simple thing they put they put hay on the floor and they had two wooden crates in the center of the room where seymour would pray and lead the meetings but often people who felt the moving of the holy spirit would come forward and they'd prophesy something or give an exhortation to give a testimony it was quite a wild and open free-for-all as the revivals went there was lots of singing there was prayer there was preaching there was healing lots of speaking in tongues there was an upper room a second floor where there was just constant prayer for the meeting while the meeting was going on and it was gained a lot of attention for a variety of you know obvious reasons one of the things that's interesting was they would also as the word spread they created a small newsletter they would send around the united states and around the world and people would read about what's going on then they would write letters back to the azusa street mission and they would read some of those letters people who had been having healings or other miraculous things happening in their cities or their nations around the world they would read letters uh it was you people at any given moment you see it an african-american on the stage or hispanic on this age or a white person on stage or a male or female young and old it was this very open uh liturgical flow and it was quite a sight to see i mean there are regular reporters on site just to see if anything crazy happened then they'd write about the next los angeles times the revival lasted between 1906 and 1909 about three years then it peaked again then then um seymour went on the road in 1909 and began spreading the revival kind of around the united states and really dur in between kind of revivals during the near kind of the low points it was just an african-american church on his industry but then there's another pico revival 1911 1912 the impact though it seemed like a small unimpressive uninfluential group the impact is hard to overstate and we'll just look at a little bit of the impact in the united states and globally you're actually going to read a really interesting article about the ripple effects around the world i'll touch on a few of them but the article that i'm assigning for this on reading is is just a does a fantastic job of going continent by continent and all these people and tracing all the interconnections between azusa street and pentecostalism in sweden for example so well let's just let's think about the the impacts first united states and we'll go globally first uh the church of god in christ kojic is the largest pentecostal nomination united states it was founded by african-american leader c h mason in memphis in 1897 prior to jesus street it was a holiness movement but he after hearing about what's going on azuza goes from memphis to l.a receives the baptist holy spirit speaking in tongues and he returns to memphis and they make the group from a holiness group to a pentecostal group and they that kind of they shift their teaching or sort of see this is the fulfillment of their expectation but kojic which has its roots yes a few years before the revival but but it's turning into a pentecostal group at azusa street when ch basin goes there can trace its lineage right right back to this moment in survival and kojic is significant also because it was the very first one of the very first license were licensed denominations where they could issue ordination licenses so many independent pentecostals both white and black aft in these early early years of the pentecostal revivals were under the umbrella of cogent because they could get their minister credentials through there so it was a mixed denomination for the first decade before they end up splitting uh that's another case study another another time uh the white group that split it off of kojic is now known as the assemblies of god right several of the white the the most the white pastors separated from kojic which was led by black bishops they were one denomination for a while but they split it off in 1914 and assemblies of god so again has its roots kind of in the survival united states would ultimately become the largest pentecostal denomination in the world uh it's smaller in the united states than kojic but around the world assemblies of god is the largest pentecostal denomination and we could go on but there are many those are two are just just two of many pentecostal nominations that have roots in this azusa street moment but what's interesting in in alan anderson is story of pentecostalism writes talking about the spread and the movement right in the global spread says pentecostal is above all a missionary move when you have acts 1 8 and acts 2 as your paradigmatic moment when you say what happened in 1906 is what happened in 30 a.d in jerusalem in acts 2 when you're making that comparison it makes perfect sense that it wouldn't just stop there but it would spread out and go to the ends of the earth because that was the whole point that was what was prophesied in joel and that's what they saw happening in acts 2 and that's what people in 1906 in l.a were saying this is the same thing as happening the fact that they identified with the name pentecostal this is pentecost it's just like what happened in pentecost the first time right had it built in this missionary dna as i said there were some specific theological intricacies right there's a pre-millennial not with all the most of them pre-millennial eschatological expectation that the return of jesus was coming soon and this outpouring was signaling the end it would be an outpouring it'd be a missionary movement then jesus would come back that was the expectation eschatologically that many of them had but even if you just remove that for a minute the idea that they identified acts 2 as their paradigm this is what's happening here and the fact that speaking in tongues specifically was seen as this well if you can speak in chinese agnes maybe god's going to be a missionary to china i will say on a side note there's a fun i'll do it anyway we can edit out later if it's too long on a side note and think about the missionary tongues anywhere which is a fascinating idea three things typically happened with missionary tongues in this early phase right and pentecostal missions were known as missionaries of the one-way ticket they would just go with no planning uh sometimes a missionary would be given the gift of tongues and they go oh this is romanian i guess i should go to romania they'd go to romania and find out oh i don't know romanian or i knew like three phrases in my romanian they'd be on the ocean field either they'd come back to solution or they'd stay and learn romania and become a missionary lifelong right the the tongues impulse got them there but then they had to stick it out others were given the gift of tongues it was a real language they go to the place they learn they they can speak they can communicate but then they lose it and they're on the mission field and they've lost the language and they have to learn the language again then there are still others the the minority but others who were gifted supernaturally with the language they became a missionary and they never had to learn the language but that was the the tiny minority but that's what everyone thought was happening but we that we do have issues of that happening but it's a tiny minority so it's an interesting the whole missionary tongue is a fascinating idea but when we think about the missionary impulse of the pentecostal movement right not just the revivals but the revival spilling into a missionary movement acts two is the paradigm is sort of theological foundation but then you think about they were in this larger moment right the 19th century was this century of protestant missionary sending we talked about beginning uh with william carey or beginning earlier with the moravians but really with william carrying the missionary societies in in the uk but then with the student volunteer move in the united states is just a this is just like right around the same time so there's this overall missionary zeal and optimism and this is when you think about geopolitically this is when there's a greater connectivity in the world uh transportation technology is improving now you have the steam ship so you can get the airplane but you can get places much faster on a steam ship so there's a lot of things that are changing that makes movement around the world much more much less expensive much more plausible so all these features are going on but when we think about the again the article you're going to read will give you much more detail about sort of continental content how things move and individuals and great stories but that's just a really big picture about this missionary movement in the first two years right the movement starts in 1906 at least from azusa in the first two years their missionaries sent out to 25 nations around the world including india china they weren't just going to canada and mexico on you know 10 days trips they went to china india japan egypt liberia angola south africa those are like those are far-flung places from los angeles two years 25 nations and there's no like large apparatus or big mission sending structure seymour is a poor black holiness pastor in a shack of a building in l.a in a african-american neighborhood but getting a variety of people there something happens and they go on a one-way ticket probably outside out of the port of los angeles to go where god's called them to go that they were actually speaking in the right time in the first decade says in the first two years 25 nations that should blow your mind about and that should confirm right this missionary theology that was latent in pentecost revival it wasn't just about clapping hands and falling down and laughing and rolling around in in this tent meeting it was about going in the first decade so in 1916 pentecostals had gone to 50 nations already just think about the the rapid and we've talked about the jesuits rapid expansion or the franciscans or the modern missionary movement or the moravians this may be faster than all then part of it has to do right with some of the craziness of people who are involved but also transportation technology you can get places faster now than you could then if you want to just pick one specific denomination the assemblies of god who have really good statistics um the others are harder to track in the early days just think about the growth of assemblies of god in their missionaries sending worldwide okay just bear these for these numbers in 1939 there were 300 000 members of the assemblies of god worldwide so that's pretty fast right they go from nothing in the early 20th century to 300 000 in about 30 years that's pretty good and at that point it was the largest pentecostal denomination in the world okay by 1960 they were at 3 million okay so in 20 years they've gone from 300 000 to 3 million by 1990 they were 30 million okay multiply by 10 30 years okay by 2010 they were 60 million right so you go from zero at the beginning of the century to 300 000 in about 30 years to 3 million 30 years later to 30 million 30 years later to 60 million 30 years think about that growth curve in just the assemblies of god which is one it's the largest right there's one denomination in this larger pentecostal fold and i might add that 85 of those 60 million and there's more than that now the symbols of god are non-westerners right so americans europeans make up for like 15 of the assemblies of god so it is absolutely a global missionary movement the assemblies of god um they're in over 150 nations right their main focus is in digital indigenous indigenous leadership of churches so what people don't know about these terms of god the way they're organized is it's there's a sense of god we think about is this worldwide organization it's actually a sort of a network of over 150 national organizations every assemblies of god has its own national organization has their own budget their own boards but then they have these it's sort of the aog has sort of a it's a global family or friend you know fellowship of pentecostal groups um that are traced back to aog and they have certain doctrinal distinctives they all hold together but this is not just the aog the church in god cleveland is also in nations uh four square in close 150 nations you think about all the major pentecostal nominations from the early days they're in almost every nation in the world and all of them have been around for less than 100 years around 100 years the reality is is that the fastest growing churches fascinating religious movements around the world are pentecostal and they're happening in asia africa latin america and they are we we've talked about it in other lectures primarily in leadership 215 there's a significant gravitational shift right in the year 1900 before the pentecost revival christianity the majority of the world's christians lived in united states canada and europe western europe most of the world's christians lived there now a hundred years later over 100 years later most of the world's christians live in asia africa and latin america there's been a gravitational demographic shift and in many ways not exclusive but but in many ways you can think the pentecostal missionary movement for that being the case because that's the greatest growth curve in all of in all of uh christianity right now and it's happening in the global south we're going to close and do another interesting lecture on some an origin story you may not have heard but i just wanted to plug one more time the assigned reading entitled to the regions beyond because it'll even go into more detail about early churches in norway and italy and brazil and the ukraine and korea and trace the lines back to azusa street or different place different revivals different providential encounters but i hope as you listen to this lecture reflect on this particular moment read the reading that god will fill your heart with expectation because no one who walked by that feminine 1906 could have even if they had a big faith if they're a big faith person and thought about well god did something great no one could have predicted what would happen in 100 years it transpired and i believe that there are things that god wants to do and there are people he wants to work in and through and we really won't know what ripple effects are a hundred years later and this is just giving us a picture of what can happen in what some historians have called the century of the holy spirit let's pray lord i thank you for your work at pentecost in the first century and i thank you for your work in azusa street in the 20th century let me ask for more i pray that as we look at the pentecostal missionary movement and movements in rather recent history i pray that you would stir us up and you build our expectation for a new outpouring of your holy spirit jesus name amen [Music] you