Charles Parham
A preacher from Kansas at whose Bible school in Topeka students spoke in tongues in January 1901. The Azusa Street mission at first called him its leader and within months said that he was not.
The Los Angeles paper tells Parham’s story as its readers knew it. He opened a Bible school at Topeka, Kansas, to train missionaries, with the Bible as its only textbook. Around New Year 1901 the students studied what the Bible gives as the evidence of the baptism with the Holy Ghost; a student, Agnes Ozman, spoke in tongues when hands were laid on her, and on 3 January twelve more did so (The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles) vol. 1 no. 2 (October 1906), p. 1).
In September 1906 the paper called him “God’s leader in the Apostolic Faith Movement” and reported a letter in which he said that he expected to come to Los Angeles (The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles) vol. 1 no. 1 (September 1906), p. 1). In December it said that he was not the leader of the work at Azusa Street (The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles) vol. 1 no. 4 (December 1906), p. 1). See the Azusa Street Revival.
In the timeline
- 9 April 1906, firm dateThe Azusa Street Revival
In April 1906 a prayer meeting in Los Angeles led by the Black preacher William Seymour begins to speak in tongues. The mission it opens at 312 Azusa Street meets daily, draws people of many races and sends the Pentecostal message abroad.