William Joseph Seymour will go down in history as one of America’s greatest African American religious leaders. But the man of God had to wrestle racism before he could fulfill the divine call on his life. Pentecostal believers everywhere thank God he did.
A 31-year-old Seymour attended Bethel Bible School in
Houston, Texas in 1906. Founded by Charles Fox Parham,
Bethel was well-known as the place were Agnes Ozman became
the first person to be baptized with the Holy Spirit with
the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues on the
first day of the new century.
But segregation and racism was blatant in the Church in
those days and since he was a black man, Seymour was not
allowed to sit in the main classroom with white students.
Instead, he was relegated to another room where he listened
to the teaching through an open door. While Seymour didn’t
agree with his sentence, he didn’t let that stop him from
pursuing God. Like other great historical leaders, he
refused to let religious hypocrisy stand in the way of his
entry into his high calling. Seymour truly possessed an
unstoppable spirit and hunger for God.
Seymour would only stay at that school for about a month
before God sent him to his first pastoral position, but his
time at Bethel Bible School was valuable because it was
there that he first heard teaching about the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. That teaching would change his life and define
Pentecostalism forever.
It was a letter from a Mrs. Neely Terry in Los Angeles,
California that drew him away from Bible school. That letter
asked him to consider pastoring a Nazarene group led by Mrs.
Julia W. Hutchins. It was a small black group of about 20
believers who gathered together in worship. Seymour accepted
the invitation and headed west to California. There he found
the small group meeting at a facility that Mrs. Hutchins
rented at 9th and Sante Fe Streets. The group welcomed their
new pastor with open arms and enjoyed his preaching on
holiness and divine healing.
Soon, he began to preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. Even
though he had not yet experienced this baptism himself, he
nevertheless preached fervently on the subject, fully
expecting the gift to be released in his newfound church.
But this pioneering teaching was shocking to the
congregation and Seymour found himself, as once did the
Apostle Paul, in the middle of an uproar.
In fact, one Sunday evening Seymour went to the church to
discover that the front door was tightly shut up with a
large silver padlock. A fearful and enraged Mrs. Hutchins
had locked out the new pastor and his Holy Ghost teachings,
leaving Pastor Seymour stranded in the big city with no
place to go.
By the grace of God, however, the Lee family, former
attendants of the Santa Fe meetings, reached out to the
marooned Seymour and offered him a place to stay in their
home. Before long, the Asbery family invited Seymour to
conduct some Gospel meetings there. That house is still
standing and today is known as the “216 Bonnie Brae House.”
Religious scholars, researchers, and historians throughout
the world acknowledge the Bonnie Brae House as a place to
which modern day Pentecostals can trace their spiritual
roots.
Despite his past experience, Seymour continued to speak
about the baptism in the Holy Ghost and on April 9th, 1906,
something historical happened. Seymour’s host, Mr. Edward
Lee, was sick and asked for prayer. Lee asked Seymour to
pray not just for his healing, but also that he might
receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. As Seymour began to
pray, Lee was gloriously filled with the Holy Spirit and
began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave him
utterance.
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That same evening the two of them went to the Asbery home
where the evening meeting was scheduled to take place. With
faith high, seven more believers were gloriously filled with
the Holy Spirit and spoke with other tongues. Something
mighty was being birthed in that little house at 216 Bonnie
Brae. Again, it is interesting to note that at the time
Seymour was preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
he himself had not yet been filled; but on April 12th, 1906,
late that evening, he too was filled to overflowing.
After witnessing many baptisms in the Spirit, the small
fellowship of believers began to tell others what was
happening. This created much interest and the neighborhood
residents began to come to the Asbery’s house until there
was literally no more room at all inside the home. For a
short time they even used the front porch of the house as a
platform area, preaching to those who gathered on the lawn.
That is when Seymour’s ministry relocated to the now famous
312 Azusa Street address.
The 40-by-60-foot Azusa Street building had formerly been
used as the meeting house of the African Methodist Episcopal
(A.M.E.) Church, but was vacated and was acting as a livery
stable and storage building for construction materials.
After a few days of cleanup the building was opened for
worship and wooden planks atop wooden nail kegs seated 750
people. There was no stained glass windows, no carpet on the
floor, no bulletins at the door, and no air conditioning,
but no one could deny that the Spirit of God was there.
Shortly after the first meeting the Holy Spirit filled the
place with the glory of God and revival fires poured out
into all of Los Angeles. Men and women were drawn from all
over the world to this simple manger of a place where God
chose to do a mighty work. Newspaper reporters from the Los
Angeles news media wrote headlines like: “Weird babble of
tongues.” “New sect of fanatics is breaking loose.” “Wild
scene last night on Azusa Street.” “Gurgle of wordless talk
by a sister.” “They make weird babbling sounds.” “They never
dismiss church.”
Newspaper stories described the meetings as, “Disgraceful
intermingling of the races. They cry and make howling noises
all day and into the night. They run, jump, shake all over,
shout to the top of their voice, spin around in circles,
fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and
rolling all over it. Some of them pass out and do not move
for hours as though they were dead. These people appear to
be mad, mentally deranged or under a spell. They claim to be
filled with the Spirit. They have a one-eyed, illiterate,
Negro as their preacher who stays on his knees much of the
time with his head hidden between wooden milk crates. He
doesn’t talk very much but at times he can be heard shouting
‘Repent!’ and he’s supposed to be running the thing. They
repeatedly sing the same song, ‘The Comforter Has Come.’”
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All of these efforts to ridicule the meetings did not hinder
the work of God at Azusa Street. Instead those believers
created a worldwide curiosity about this mighty outpouring
of the Holy Spirit. True word of the revival spread abroad
through The Apostolic Faith, a newspaper that Seymour sent
free of charge to some 50,000 subscribers. The first
addition of The Apostolic Faith newspaper, which was printed
in September 1906, described the first meetings like this:
“The meetings began about 10 o’clock in the morning and can
hardly stop before 10 or 12 at night, and sometimes two or
three in the morning, because so many are seeking, and some
are slain under the power of God. People are seeking three
times at the altar. We cannot tell how many people have been
saved, and baptized with the Holy Ghost, and healed of all
manner of sicknesses. Many are speaking in new tongues and
some are going on their way to the foreign fields with the
gift of the language.”
“A drunkard got under conviction in a street meeting and
raised his hands to be prayed for. They prayed for the devil
of drink to be cast out, and the appetite was gone. He came
to the meeting and was saved, sanctified and baptized with
the Holy Ghost, and in three days from the time he was drunk
he was speaking in a new tongue and praising God for
Pentecost. He hardly knows himself.” They continued, “We are
not fighting men or churches, but seeking to displace dead
forms, creeds and wild fanaticisms with living, practical
Christianity. Love, faith, unity are our watchwords. Victory
through the atoning blood is our battle cry.”
Pentecostalism spread rapidly from Azusa Street around the
world and began its advance toward becoming a major force in
Christendom. Along with Charles Parham, William Joseph
Seymour could be called the co-founder of world
Pentecostals.
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