Bishop William Seymour and

His Impact of the Pentecostal Movement in the United States

Bishop William Seymour and

His Impact of the Pentecostal Movement in the United States

Q1-What caused this revival to take place at this particular time Were other earlier revivals occurring of had they occurred?

Ans. Parham was the man who created Pentecostal doctrine, but another man popularised it. William J. Seymour was a black Holiness preacher, brought up in black folk Christianity. At the end of 1905 he heard about Parham's new Bible School in Houston, Texas. He enrolled and became a convert to Parham's Pentecostal message. However, he adopted a different emphasis to that of Parham. His focus was less on missionary activity and more on the harmony that would result once the gospel was heard. He regarded speaking in tongues as the Spirit “breaking through the barriers reconciling all people with one another.

After graduating, Seymour preached the new Pentecostal teaching at his first (Holiness) church in Los Angeles - and was expelled. He continued to teach from a friend's house and on the 9th of April 1906 tongue speaking began. Numbers grew so large that Seymour and his followers had to begin meeting in an abandoned church building at 312 Azusa St. Within a month Sunday attendance had risen to 750 or 800 with a further four or five hundred, for whom there was no room, crowding outside.

Bartlemann, who was present in those early days, recalls that there was speaking and singing in tongues and “falling all over the house, like the slain in battle, or rush[ing] for the altar en masse, to seek God. The scene often resembled a forest of fallen trees. Such a scene cannot be imitated.” People came “hungry for God” and “were humbled”. Bartlemann declares that, “Divine love was wonderfully manifest in the meetings” and, “The whole place was steeped in prayer”. He says that “God's presence became more and more wonderful.

These descriptions show that experience was the 'heartbeat' of the movement. “All was spontaneous, ordered of the Spirit. We wanted to hear from God, through whoever he might speak. It was not difficult for Holiness people to convert to the new Pentecostalism. The offer of proof of Holy Spirit baptism was very attractive to people already convinced of its legitimacy. The southern Holiness churches in particular were open to increasingly radical teaching, and, as such, were “predisposed to accept the even more radical doctrines of the Pentecostal movement”. Furthermore, “the attaching of tongues to the Holy Ghost baptism had a strong basis in the New Testament, a fact that easily convinced many holiness people, practically all of whom interpreted the Bible literally.”

Factor Two: The state of the established churches

The second factor contributing to the rise of Pentecostalism was the state of the established churches at that time. These churches were liberal, greedy, lukewarm, “academic and static in their preaching and liturgy”. They were being undermined by critical readings of the Bible, the theory of evolution, the social gospel, and comparative ...