As Pentecostals, we were taught that Pentecostalism could be traced all the way back through Christian history to the Apostles. But where did it really come from? Pastor Tom Nelson's sermon is a lesson on Christian history and the rise of the Pentecostal movement. Not only can it not be traced all the way back through history--but it is only slightly over a century old, and developed in the United States, plagued by scandal from its very earliest days.

The Rise of Pentecostalism (Part 1)

Tom Nelson, Denton Bible Church

Second blessing, baptism of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, prayer language, faith healing, slain in the Spirit, health and wealth... Where did these come from? Who started them? How did it spread to be so big? We are talking about Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism--called the Charismatic movement-- what became the next major branch of Christianity. Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy from the 11th century (Constantinople), Protestantism after the Reformation, the phenomena of Liberalism in the 1700s and 1800s ... And now Pentecostalism. The unique thing about this is that all the others were European, but this one is uniquely American. Our contribution to church history, for whatever it is worth, is Pentecostalism.

What is a Pentecostal? It is one who regards the events of Acts 2, and of the Book of Acts in general, as normative and even required of the Christian experience. Where did they come from? I am going to show you here the flow of Pentecostalism. It started with a movement within a denomination, and then split and became its own denomination. And then it did something that no other movement has done -- it jumped the banks of that little denomination, and became an intra-denominational ideology that ended up becoming a total perception of all of life. It is incredible the effects that this has had even over those who would never call themselves Pentecostals -- in worship and music and everything, this movement and denomination and intra-denominational idea has become so influential.

Let me show you how it started. Believe it or not, the Pentecostals are the children of Wesley and Methodism -- did you know that? The Pentecostal movement begans in Methodism. John Wesley held that there is a second blessing, a second work of grace that brought you into what he called 'Christian perfectionism', or entire sanctification. So Wesley had stages of salvation -- salvation, and then cleansing--it was like your old nature was put down and cast out and you were now holy. Many of you that were Methodists never heard this, as I'll show you in a moment. I grew up as a Methodist, and I never heard a message that within Methodism that this was a unique idea -- that of the second blessing. But it was the Methodists. In the 1860s, specifically 1867, there was a movement within Methodism, as in the latter part of the 1800s they saw Methodism falling into liberalism. And so within Methodism, there was the Holiness movement-- it was trying to rekindle and to preserve the fundamentals of Methodism. A group of ministers met together in 1867 and began a movement -- it was not a denomination, but just a movement -- to recapture the campmeeting fervor. It was going to become a Holiness denomination in 1894 as it split from Methodism. And then in 1901, the Holiness movement became the Pentecostal Holiness Church, and we can pinpoint it -- Topeka, Kansas, 1901, January 1st. We know who the leader was, and we know who the first woman was who spoke in tongues. It became Pentecostal Holiness denomination, and it was shunned by the great majority of Christianity. G. Campbell Morgan called the early Pentecostal movement "the last vomit of hell" -- what do you think he thought about that movement? That is a very descriptive term. And so it was not received well within Christendom in general. And so it was just a little group of people down by the river, basically, that were the Pentecostals ... until the late 1960s when it made a jump through predominantly one man out of Oklahoma, and it jumped from that denomination to a neo-Pentecostal ideology that affected all of Christianity. And then it mutated in the 70s to become what is called the Third Wave -- that God wants you rich, and God wants you wealthy, and bad things never happen to Christians, and you and I by our confession can actually determine reality. Holiness, Pentecostal movement, Charismatic movement, Kenneth Hagan, Third Wave-- that was the movement that it made over about 130 years.

Well, let me just show you how this came about. The late 1800s was called the Gilded Age, and it was a lot of shallowness. After the layman's prayer revival, churches became over-institutionalized, and within Methodism there was a complaining that Methodism had become shallow and that Methodism had lost its fervor. And so began, in 1867, the national Holiness movement. Thirteen ministers met in New Jersey to rekindle the camp meeting fervor.So within Methodism, you had this movement, but all of a sudden it had conflicts, because it began to bring a split. It was dividing. This sort of idea divides the church this way. The Church of Jesus Christ was meant to be divided like this -- that certain gifts, all equal but all different, and that we lean on each other, but there are not levels of spirituality. But the Holiness movement does not divide the church like that (equal but different people). Instead, it was like they had people that were junior varsity and people that were varsity -- there were saved people, and then saved and sanctified people. And so it began to bring a split, as you would imagine, within Methodism. The Holiness movement began to take a lot of criticism by Christian scholarship that began to challenge it, and it was connected with Methodism, and a lot of Methodists did not like being lumped together with these people who were taking hits from Evangelical apologists and scholars. There also began to be a very independent spirit in these people. And so in 1894, the Holiness movement became its own denomination, and it fragmented into different places.

One of the earliest Holiness denominations began in Pilot Point, Texas -- the Church of the Nazarene. Another began up north that is called the Church of God. Now remember that tongues are not involved at this point. There is merely an idea that there is a a second work after salvation where you have an encounter with God and you get 'it', and 'it' means that your old nature is cast out and you don't sin volitionally anymore -- you still make moral mistakes, but you don't sin. Can you explain that? Well, that is what they believed. A lot of our great gospel quartets came out of the Holiness movement. In fact, I believe that Bill Gaither is of the Church of God. And Sandi Patty is of the Church of God. There is a great exuberance in their singing. But at this time, there was no tongues -- only a longing for holiness. Incidentally, if you watch the Pentecostal movement, it moved thematically from seeking for holiness to (in the 60s) a seeking for blessing and power and happiness to now a seeking for wealth. Holiness to happiness to wealth. That is a degrading of the movement, but that is what happened. Anyway, by the late 1800s, there were Holiness denominations. If even today you go to the Church of the Nazarene, if they are old-time, you will find that the women don't cut their hair --their hair is long and they tie it up, no slacks, only dresses, no makeup. It was a seeking for holiness, and there are taboos in that denomination.

January 1, 1901, in Topeka, Kansas, a man who is accused of sodomy within the Methodist Church whose name was Charles Parham got a group of people together, and they sought to go beyond holiness and to actually evoke the Acts 2 Pentecostal scenario by the speaking of tongues. It is called within theology 'glossolalia', and glossolalia is the speaking in other languages that you have never heard. A woman who was described as (to be succinct) a basket case -- her name was Agnes Osmond -- was the first one in recorded Pentecostal history to speak in tongues. They were meeting in a livery stable, a barn. And it began to grow. In Galena, Kansas, there were people reported to be healed. Charles Parham went down to Houston and preached there, and he got some other people to believe. And one in particular was a very eloquent former slave. He was illiterate, and he relied on the teaching of others. His name was William Seymour. William Seymour took it from Houston, and he went to a place that he felt would give him a great platform to speak because they were receptive to new ideas. Where do you think you would go to find people who were receptive to new metaphysical ideas? He went to San Francisco.

Now, I want you to listen to something here. All of Pentecostalism feels that they have happened onto a new reformation idea. They are the 'haves', and you and I are the 'have-nots'. It is not a nasty statement--it is a fact, and a good Pentecostal will amen me on that. They believed that they had returned to the purity of the Bible. And so William Seymour began to be evangelistic and to get Christians to come in for the second blessing of the speaking in tongues.

Now, the old Holiness movement had two works of grace -- salvation and an entire cleansing. Pentecostalism has three works -- salvation, entire cleansing where you do not sin, and then the reception of the Holy Spirit marked by speaking in tongues. And so they were adding rungs to the Christian ladder of holiness. William Seymour went to San Francisco and preached at a mission on Azusa Street--312 Azusa Street-- and that was the birthplace of Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal churches all find their way back to Azusa. And I will tell you why, and this is kind of odd. William Seymour would preach in this mission, and he was a tourist attraction. People would come, and he would put a shoebox on his head (covering the glory) and then as he got ready to speak, he would remove the veil, and out of the shoebox he would preach. I would pay to see that. And everybody did -- they wanted to come see this. And Seymour preached that judgment would come to San Francisco if they did not repent. And guess what happened? The biggest earthquake in this country's history nearly destroyed San Francisco. There is nothing like a good earthquake to amen your teaching, you know. Suddenly, he took on a credibility, and he stayed there in that mission, and it began what they would call a 'revival'. There were a whole bunch of people that were coming and were supposedly being filled with the Holy Spirit, entire sanctification, and speaking in tongues.

Well, the progress now of Pentecostalism began to split. The Christian Missionary Alliance split because of the Pentecostal fanaticism. A group of people in Hot Springs, Arkansas, said no, there are not three works of grace -- there are only two: you are saved, and then you have the second blessing where you are filled the Holy Spirit and sanctified and speak in tongues right there, and it is a finished work. They split off from Pentecostalism and were called the Assemblies of God. That is the origin of the Assemblies of God -- it was a 1914 split from Pentecostalism that wanted two works of grace and not three.

So, at this point, you had Churches of the Nazarene and Churches of God that were very holiness, legalistic. You had the Assemblies of God which was a little more user-friendly. And then you had the Pentecostals. And generally, they were in little, small, exclusive, stay-away-from-us churches of 'haves' and 'have-nots', and they stayed in little bitty churches.

Then this person changed things -- she is a study in herself. Her name was Aimee Semple McPherson. How many of you old-timers ever heard of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Foursquare Gospel Church in Los Angeles? She made Pentecostalism famous. She was born in Canada, and she was converted under a Holiness evangelist named Semple. They went to China as Holiness Pentecostal missionaries. He died in China, and she returned from China with his child and remarried a man named McPherson, so she is Amy Semple McPherson. She wanted to preach, and that was unheard of in Pentecostalism -- a woman preacher. She wanted to preach, and in fact, she ended up divorcing Mr. McPherson. She was a divorcee. In Los Angeles, she began a temple. She was a beautiful woman, and she would dress in flowing white robes. She would enter the church often on a white horse. Sometimes she would even have guidewires on her, and she would 'fly' in. That was pretty sensational. It would even be sensational today, but you can imagine in the early 1900s. She would have (supposedly) healing of the blind--she was very demonstrative. She started the Salvation Navy -- not the Salvation Army-- it was a Gospel ship of which Foursquare Gospel was the lighthouse. She died of an overdose of sedatives in her early forties. Supposedly, you can still go to her grave to be healed. Benny Hinn goes there regularly, and supposedly there are angels bowing down to the holiness of this woman. Well ... before she died, when she began to preach in Los Angeles, she became even more famous because it was believed that she had been kidnapped. She disappeared, and no one knew where she was. Supposedly she had been kidnapped, but she showed up walking in from the desert. She had been over in Mexico, and supposedly she had amnesia and didn't know where she was. Well, come to find out, she had NOT been kidnapped, but she was having tryst, an affair with a fellow. She had multiple affairs, one with a fellow name Milton Berle.

When I was in seminary, I remember Dr. John Hanna was teaching on the rise of the Pentecostal movement, and he talked about how you had the Holiness movement and how it became the Pentecostal Holiness movement, and how it became sensationalized through Aimee Semple McPherson. And Dr. John Hanna is a very laid-back fellow, and he was talking through the same things I just talked through about her marriages and divorce and preaching and flying in on horseback and disappearing and showing up and so on. And this was the way Hanna said it, "She disappeared and showed up out in the desert, and it turned out that she had not been kidnapped, she had simply been away in Mexico with a lover. She also had an affair with a Mr. Milton Berle. Point two, ..." And he goes on. And some guy in the class said, "WAIT A MINUTE! Did ... did you just say Milton Berle?" "Yes, Uncle Milty." And the guy said, "Ok, I just wanted to get it straight." That is pretty sensational that she would go off with this performer, who is not a man of supreme unction and holiness as far as we know -- Mr. Milton Berle. And she died of an overdose, so even in her death there was a bit of a scandal around her, so she got famous.

The Pentecostal movement, by this time, was shunned by fundamentalism and scholarship. It conflicted with the ancient Christian idea of holiness and sanctification. Christian orthodoxy has always taught that your growth in Christ comes as the finished work of Christ is applied to you at salvation. There are not three works of grace, there are not two--there is ONE. In Him we are made complete. When we believe the gospel, the Spirit of God baptizes us into the body of Christ, we are part of His life, His righteousness imputed to us, His particular spiritual gift enabling us to serve others, and there is no second blessing. Here is what there is -- there is study, discipline, devotion, accountability, and effort. Those are the things that are honored by God in Christian sanctification. They are virtues; they are not ethereal experiences and encounters. And so, Pentecostalism took a huge amount of hits from evangelical scholarship, as they still do.

And the scholars also challenge their view of tongues. The historic Christian view of tongues is that it is a miracle of the speaking a language you have never heard to validate the original preaching of the Gospel message to the Gentiles. Paul says in first Corinthians 14 that tongues are for sign, not to believers, but to unbelievers. It is to show unbelieving Israel that God has given their Messiah to the nations, and so the tongues they heard were languages. They were not gibberish, they were not emotional -- they were miracles. And the nature of a miracle, or a sign, is to validate a messenger, and the reason that it is a miracle is that it does not occur all the time. Moses and Joshua did miracles to validate the Law, Elijah and Elisha did miracles to validate the beginning of the prophetic office -- those miracles weren't normative, and they did not continue. Jesus and the Twelve did miracles to validate the preaching of the Gospel. So the historic Christian view of tongues is that in the Book of Acts, you don't get doctrine from that. It is merely a miracle that ceases throughout Christian history. And that is why, before the beginning of the Pentecostal movement, you can only show four different occasions documented that you ever see tongues -- and one of them was from a cult called the Montanists of the first century. And so it was not the norm. I just want you to see that.

The Pentecostal church took a hard left turn on the Christian view of holiness and the Christian view of tongues, and it was challenged. But it stayed in their exclusive little denominations -- very legalistic and a lot of taboos -- until one man, and he took it public. He was from Oklahoma -- Mr. Oral Roberts.