March 12, 1906: William Seymour starts meetings at the home of Richard Asberry at 214 Bonnie Brae Street

Dony K. Donev

William Seymour was expelled from the Santa Fe Mission on March 4, 1906, after preaching that speaking in tongues constitutes the biblical evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Outraged by the treatment of Seymour, one of the church members, Edward Lee, invited him to his home, where prayer meetings soon began. Because of the growing number of visitors, the gatherings were moved on March 12, 1906—exactly one month before Seymour himself received the Holy Spirit—to the home of Richard Asberry at 214 Bonnie Brae Street. Ironically, this was the same location where members of the Santa Fe Mission had met in 1905 after being expelled from the Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles for preaching the doctrine of holiness. At that same location, in Richard Asberry’s home, on April 9, 1906, Edward Lee became the first to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Many others were also baptized and spoke in tongues after Seymour and Lucy Farrow laid hands on them in prayer.

The prayer meetings at 214 Bonnie Brae Street gained widespread attention as the number of attendees soon exceeded the capacity of Richard Asberry’s home. Holding services in the street itself attracted crowds of curious onlookers. Among them were representatives of the numerous immigrant communities living in Los Angeles at the time. One such group consisted of Russian “Molokans,” who had immigrated because of religious persecution directed against their extremely conservative beliefs (the so-called Old Faith) and their worship practices, which included dancing, trance states, falling in the Spirit, and in some instances even speaking in unknown tongues. One of the earliest American missionaries to the Balkans, F. W. Flocken, encountered a similar Molokan community in Tulcea and documented in detail his observations concerning their religious beliefs and practices (see notes 25–27 and the 43rd Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1861, p. 48ff).

Most Russian immigrants in Los Angeles in 1906 lived in Boyle Heights and Oaks Lot (the so-called “flats area slums,” a term used to describe the apartment blocks in the ghetto), approximately half a kilometer from Azusa Street. There, at Pecan Playground, tent meetings were held during the height of the Azusa Street Pentecostal revival (1906–1909). The first issue of the newspaper published during the revival, Apostolic Faith, reports that members of the revival were invited to preach in the local Molokan church (see Apostolic Faith, Issue 1). What the Molokans observed in the prayer meetings at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, and later in the Azusa Street revival itself, was nearly identical to the “Old Faith” practices they maintained in their own gatherings. When Ivan Voronaev moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles around 1913, he worked among Russian immigrants who had been eyewitnesses to the Azusa Street revival. /to be continued/

March 7, 1906: Seymour Preaches before the Southern California Holiness Association

Expelled from the Santa Fe Mission for preaching that speaking in tongues is the biblical evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit, Seymour was invited to defend his position before the Southern California Holiness Association. The Santa Fe Mission was part of this association, and it was with its elders that Julia Hutchins consulted before locking the mission’s doors on Seymour’s evening service on March 4, 1906. One of the elders’ arguments was that Seymour himself had not received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and thus had not personally experienced what he was preaching.

The association’s meeting on March 7, 1906, was organized by J. M. Roberts at 114 South Union Street in Los Angeles. Pastors and leaders were present and voted following Seymour’s sermon. Their position was that the doctrine he proclaimed was not in agreement with the teachings of the Holiness churches, even though neither Seymour nor his teacher, Parham, were the first to associate speaking in tongues with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The council instructed Seymour to cease preaching about Spirit baptism if he wished to continue pastoring Hutchins’s church at Santa Fe and Ninth Street in Los Angeles.

Thus, the democratic governance of the church voted against what would become the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the twentieth century—before it had even begun. The Santa Fe Mission has therefore remained in history as the church that expelled the preacher through whom God would initiate the revival.

March 4, 1906: William Seymour is expelled from the Santa Fe Mission

On March 4, 1906, Seymour preached during the morning service at the Santa Fe Mission that speaking in tongues is the biblical evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit. When he returned for the evening service, he found the church doors locked by Julia Hutchins. After consulting the leadership of the Southern California Holiness Association, to which the Santa Fe Mission belonged, Hutchins informed Seymour that she did not accept speaking in tongues (glossolalia) as part of the doctrine of holiness. One of the elders’ arguments was that Seymour himself had not been baptized in the Holy Spirit and had not experienced what he preached.

However, Seymour was not the first to make the connection between speaking in tongues and baptism in the Holy Spirit. Even his teacher, Charles Parham, who systematized the theological link between biblical sanctification and Spirit baptism, was an heir to a rich tradition of preachers and churches that accepted speaking in tongues as the sign of the baptism in the Holy Spirit within the holiness doctrine.

1905 – Lucy Farrow, who introduced Seymour to Parham and later helped him receive the invitation to pastor the Santa Fe Mission in Los Angeles, was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. She was the niece of Frederick Douglass and pastor of a Holiness church in Houston. Lucy Farrow received the baptism in the Holy Spirit while working in the home of Charles Parham. At a prayer meeting in Houston in early 1906, she prayed for 25 people, all of whom were baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues simultaneously. Shortly afterward, she traveled to Los Angeles, and when Seymour was expelled, it was Lucy Farrow who prayed for the first believers to receive Spirit baptism during the home prayer meetings that began on Bonnie Brae Street in April 1906.

1896 – During the revival meetings known as the “Shearer Schoolhouse Revival,” more than 100 men, women, and children were baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were part of a mountain community in North Carolina called the “Christian Union,” from which the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) would later emerge.

1887 – In the revival meetings of Maria Etter, under the power of the Holy Spirit, believers (mainly Quakers and Methodists) fell into trances and spoke in unknown tongues, leading the secular press to call her a “voodoo priestess.”

1880 – The “Pentecostal Holiness Church Movement” documented Holy Spirit baptisms among its members.

1889 – Jethro Walthall of Arkansas was baptized in the Holy Spirit along with many others during a prayer meeting.

1875 – E. B. Swan testified that the so-called “Gift People” in Rhode Island practiced speaking in tongues.

1874 – Similar testimonies came from healing meetings in New York State, where many were baptized in the Spirit and spoke in tongues.

1855 – William Dowie spoke in unknown tongues during meetings of Frank W. Sandford in Shiloh, Maine. Later, Dowie founded the “Gift People” movement, and Sandford started a Bible school called “The Holy Spirit and Us” as part of his church. Ambrose J. Tomlinson, who in 1907 would organize the Church of God, also visited Shiloh in October 1901. Even Charles Parham stayed at the school for six weeks during the summer of 1900 to listen to Sandford’s lectures. It was there that Parham first heard speaking in tongues among the students in the school’s old prayer towers.

In 1906, the participants in the Azusa Street Revival sought the same experience of speaking in tongues that had occurred in the early hours of January 1, 1901, at Charles Parham’s school in Topeka, Kansas. Interestingly, a publication from January 6, 1900, reported that at Sandford’s school in Shiloh, many had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in unknown tongues following a prayer meeting that began on New Year’s Eve and lasted about ten days.

1854 – W. P. Simons and Robert Boyd separately testified about speaking in unknown tongues during evangelistic meetings led by D. L. Moody, attended by followers of the Scottish preacher Edward Irving.

Speaking in Tongues in America Prior to the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 (Diamonds in the Rough-N-Ready Series)

The Azusa street revival swept the globe starting with California

January 1, 1901– The initial phenomenon of speaking in tongues occurred at Parham’s school in Topeka, Kansas

January 6, 1900 – Frank Sanford’s Shiloh school reported that “The gift of tongues has descended”

1896 – Over 100 people baptized in the Shaerer schoolhouse revival conducted by the Christian Union in the North Carolina mountains

1887 – People falling in trances and speaking in tongues were reported at Maria Etter’s revival meetings in Indiana

1874 – Speaking in tongues occurred during healing meetings reported in New York

1873 – William H. Doughty and the Gift People of Rhode Island spoke in tongues

1854 – V. P. Simmons and Robert Boyd reported tongue speaking during Moody’s meetings