Feast of Pentecost - Charles Parham, John G. Lake, Azuza street.

Excerpts taken from chapter 18 of a book entitled Deuteronomy: the second law - speech 1 author: Dr. Stephen Jones - Deuteronomy 

It is of particular interest to me that Seymour would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit on a street named Bony Bray, for it is a sign of Pentecost. As I wrote in my book on The Wheat and Asses of Pentecost, Samson was an Old Testament Pentecostal type when he killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Hence “Bony Bray” street is a fitting location for the most well-known beginning points of modern Pentecost...

...In the midst of these events, John Alexander Dowie was founding a Pentecostal work at Zion, Illinois. He decided upon that location by the end of December in 1899, just before New Year’s Day when the Holy Spirit was poured out in Topeka, Kansas under Parham’s ministry. On page 52  Mrs. Parham wrote about how this began,

Sister Agnes N. Ozman, (now LaBerge) asked that hands might be laid upon her to receive the Holy Spirit, as she hoped to go to foreign lands. At first I refused, not having the experience myself. Then being further pressed to do it humbly in the name of Jesus, I laid my hands upon her head and prayed. I had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her, a halo seemed to surround her head and face, and she began speaking in the Chinese language, and was unable to speak English for three days. When she tried to write in English to tell us of her experience, she wrote the Chinese, copies of which we still have in newspapers printed at that time.

This was occurring in Topeka, Kansas just about the time that Dowie’s ministry at Zion, Illinois was taking shape. Parham subsequently held many meetings at Zion. The tremendous healing ministry at Zion gave birth to John G. Lake, who himself received healing there and went on to become one of the greatest healing evangelists in the world.

Parham himself had the revelation of non-denominational Christendom. For this he was often persecuted, as Christians spread lies that he had left his wife and children, that he had “backslidden,” and even that he was a “desperately vile criminal.” Mrs. Parham wrote on page 201,

I believe, however, that the main secret of the fight against him was that he did not believe in organizations. Not giving any of his time to build up any denomination, he preached a free gospel everywhere to all who would receive it. 

...Charles Parham saw a great outpouring of the Spirit on New Year's Eve of 1900. Azusa Street came six years later through a black man, W. J. Seymour, who had been one of Parham’s students. In 1906 Seymour went to Los Angeles prior to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We read on page 162 in The Life of Charles F. Parham, written by his wife in 1930, that...

. . . a door was opened among the Holiness people, where both black and white held cottage prayer meetings in a house of one of the members on number 214 Bony Bray; and Mr. Seymour received the baptism of the Holy Spirit here. Men and women sought more of God and their labor was blest. They sought wider fields, and rented an old building down town on Azusa St.

One newspaper report from The Daily Commercial of Three Rivers, Michigan, accurately described Parham this way:

“Mr. Parham follows none of the present day methods of evangelism; does not depend upon excitement, nor seek to create it. He will not tolerate fanaticism or wild-fire in any form in the meetings. He takes no collections, neither do any of his workers for their support, but are wholly dependent on God to supply their every need according to His promise. He is not forming a new sect or denomination, but is absolutely free of denominationalism. He preaches the Word of God in its fullness, and seeks only to bring people into a living union with a living Savior. He is one of the most loved, and at the same time one of the most hated, men in the United States." [Parham, p. 259]

This general outpouring of the Spirit, I believe, was timed by God to give the church and nation a final opportunity to repent in order to prevent the final phase of the Babylonian captivity from happening.

More later...