Tongues: Parham vs. Seymour

Why do so many Pentecostals point to William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival as the beginning of Pentecostalism? It could be for several reasons.

They may have been taught it and have accepted it as fact. They may not be aware that Charles Fox Parham actually preceded Seymour by five or six years. The Assemblies of God acknowledges Parham as the founder of Pentecostalism, and Seymour was a student of Parham. Even so, nine times out of ten if you ask someone where Pentecostalism originated they'll say Azusa Street.

I think there's another important reason. Parham believed and taught that tongues were actual human languages whereas Seymour did not. When Parham sent out missionaries to China, India and Japan, they were not able to speak the native languages by the power of tongues, as they had anticipated. So Parham was severely discredited. But no worries, Seymour taught that tongues are an angelic or heavenly language; strange babbling was standard-fare at Azusa St., which Seymour readily claimed were tongues. Thus, the safest path for those wanting to pass off tongues as legit is to play up Seymour and the language of babble. They say it's tongues and how can anyone argue with them?

But someone may say, most people don't even know any of this so how could this be true for them. That's fair, they probably aren't aware. But something happened back in the early 1900s that caused Pentecostalism to go down the road of babble. I believe it was probably so they could avoid any more embarrassing situations like what happened to Parham and his missionaries.

As it is taught; if you want to learn to speak in tongues, lean back your head, raise your hands wide, spin round and round while repeating "the keys to my honda, the keys to my honda" again and again.........pretty soon you will be speaking an unknown language, or "babble" said to be "tongues."

This is how my beloved mother was told to learn. She declined.

IF those who teach speaking in tongues/unknown language, is Biblical, how exactly can they write Books teaching people how to speak in tongues? Either it is "of the Holy Spirit" or it is babble taught by man..........can't have it both ways.

Do I believe speaking in tongues is Biblical? Yes. It is one of the gifts of the Spirit.

Do I believe 95 percent of what is said to be speaking in tongues is Biblical? No.

The Book of Acts makes it quite clear that "tongues" is "other languages." The fact that some missionaries may not have received this "gift" during their time in China does not cause "other languages" to be the Biblical definition of tongues. The problem may have been with the Missionaries for all I know. Were they "sanctified believers?" That would be my first question.......

That may be a good question; however, the point is Pentecostalism shies away from Parham and embraces Seymour. Why? The reason, I believe, is clear: Babble doesn't have to be verified, and in fact can't be verified.

If you say you're Parhamites, theoretically at least you would believe tongues are true languages and the practice would be put under a microscope. Even to this day, as far as I know, no one has demonstrated the true gift of tongues. A lot of stories but no substance or verification.

As a child, I was forced to go to a Holiness Church, and to this day it angers and troubles me. All I heard was pray for the Holy Ghost, and I was forced to. Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and Thursday nights after prayer meetings. Hours late into the night I had to kneel repeating words and phrases endlessly and rapidly, with heavy arms lifted, and legs numb and asleep from kneeling. As soon as speech would slur or get tongue-tied, I would be shaken by the crowd and yelled at, "Keep going. You're getting it!"

I thought I was defective. I did not understand why God refused to give me the "Holy Ghost". Wearing from all the effort to obtain what fellow church-goers insisted I needed, I FAKED IT! Yes, I started mumbo jumbo this and that, convincing enough they would level me alone.

The very next Sunday in both Sunday school and service, the topic was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It was described in a way that pointed arthritic fingers in my direction. At that point, I was doomed to hell and only 10 years old.


As an adult which no longer subscribes to that denominational practices, not that I ever truly did, I have learned much about it. The pastor starts this so-called movement of the Holy Ghost with select words or phrases like, "Oh, can you feel it?" or "Let me see how much you love Him!" Then Sister Righteous (always a Sister) jumps to her shouting, gyrating, and babbling, provoking Sister Holier than Thou to put on a louder and bigger show to prove she has more "Holy Ghost", therefore more righteousness. Thus starts this movement of constant one-ups to the person next to you.

I now know the gift of tongues is not what they preach it to be, and is not the "Holy Ghost" especially when the loudest noises in the church come from those required to remain silent (Oh, yeah, I went there). The Holy Spirit enters us when we are saved. All that time was wasted praying for what was already given me, and not a gift I, as a small, 10-year-old country kid could use. I was barely above average in English.

All I have for them now is an utter pity, and long prayer list hoping they soon know the Truth.

Have you actually tried this 9 out of 10 survey you are talking about? I would venture to guess that 9 out of 10 Pentecostals would not know who Seymore or Parham were. Pentecostals preach out of the Bible, typically, whether you agree with all the exegesis or not. I saw a bit of SDA Sunday School material that had a lesson from the life of EG White. That was odd to me. I think it is highly unlikely that a Pentecostal Sunday School lesson would have a lesson about Parham or Seymour. I do not think it is likely that Methodists have lessons on the life of John Wesley. But you could hear a lesson about Adam and Eve, the Exodus, or Daniel.

I do not think I have ever heard a reference to either Parham or Seymour from a Pentecostal pulpit, and I was raised in Pentecostalism, much of it in the A/G. Now if you go looking for this stuff on YouTube videos, you could find it. I suspect that somewhere out there that there is probably a Pentecostal preacher who likes Pentecostal history who talks about Azusa Street.

Also, if you talk to someone in the Church of God denomination, they may trace the roots back to the Shearer Schoolhouse revival, which predated Azusa and had speaking in tongues. The Fire Baptized Holiness have some other pre-Azusa Street roots also.

The Azusa Street Revival and a couple of other revivals in India and South America that sprung up about the same time were where the movement took off and became a global movement.

I have never heard of this before. Can you show me one shred of evidence where Seymour expressed the opinion that speaking in tongues is not human languages? The 'Apostolic Faith' was his newsletter, and it had lots of testimonies of people speaking in tongues and it being identified as a human language along with testimonies of hearing speaking in tongues and recognizing the language. These were from the Pentecostal movement in various locations. I have also read other accounts of the Azusa Street Revival of recognizing human languages 'in tongues.' Val Dez's 'Fire on Azusa' gives an example with Russian and an English interpretation of it through the gift of interpretation of tongues. Also 'The Comforter Has Come' relates another account. I think I've read others occurring specifically at Azusa Street, but there were many experiences like this recorded from the Pentecostal movement at that time and since.

Here is a video from the late brother Vinson Synon (I believe this is him; he looks younger than when I met him), Pentecostal historian, interviewing elderly folks who were children a he Azusa Street Revival.
At this point in the video, the woman he is entering is saying what drew people were Chinese, Japanese, and other nationalities hearing the Gospel in their own language through speaking in tongues. From one of Synan's questions in the interview, I pick up on the idea that he may have had some concern about the idea some were promoting that tongues weren't languages, but he does not say it specifically, and I did not ask him during our brief interactions when he was alive. (Btw, he was kind to me, btw, and tried to help me with an obstacle I was facing and prayed with me in his home.)

Look, I think we have had this conversation in the past. It could have been someone else, but I think it was you. Again, do you have any shred of evidence that Parham taught tongues was not or could not be real languages? That actually contradicts what he ___did__ by putting numerous accounts of tongues as real languages. Show me a quote where Seymour taught what you say he did.

It is easy to use history to make your case, when you just make up the history.

Parham had some sloppy but hopeful eisegesis. There is nothing in the scriptures that says that the apostles were 'preaching the Gospel' in Acts 2. Speaking in tongues did get some attention, then Peter stood up and ___preached___ the gospel. There is nothing in Acts 2 that guarantees when someone speaks in tongues, the language he speaks will be the language of the crowd gathered, or that anyone will understand. I Corinthians 14 says when one speaks in tongues 'no man understandeth him.' That was more for a church setting. If the Holy Spirit wants to give someone the tongue of those present or if God sovereignly wants people present who understand the language spoken 'in tongues', then He an do so. But the scriptures do not guarantee this. Parham's idea that tongues would be used for world evangelism was hopeful guesswork, and it didn't pan out like he thought it would.

On the other hand, there were many experiences in the early Pentecostal movement, from Topeka to Azusa and elsewhere, where one spoke in tongues and others understood. According to the historian Vinson Synon, Agnes Ozman's speaking in tongues was identified as Chinese by someone who worked in a Chinese laundry according to 'some of their papers.' I read a few days later, a Bohemian brother understood her speaking in tongues in Bohemian, which we would now call Czech. There were numerous experiences of people hearing speaking in tongues in their own languages or others identifying them in the movement. This has been an occasional ongoing thing with missionaries also.

AG Garr was at the Azusa Street Revival. At some point, he spoke in tongues, but it was different from what he had spoken previously in tongues, and someone indicated to him that it was Bangla. But when he went to India, he found he could not just preach in tongues in the local language.

I don't know that every claim of speaking in tongues is the genuine gift. I wouldn't venture to make such a statement. Doctrinally, I would expect tongues to be the 'tongues of men and of angels' like scripture says. If you ask a Pentecostal preacher who has studied the Bible and has a gift of teaching what speaking in tongues is, he is like to say 'the tongues of men and even of angels.'

There are people who take a reactionary theological position against speaking in tongues who insist that 'tongues of angels' is hyperbole. But the idea of angelic tongues was bouncing around as a real thing, at least in intertestamental literature. In the passage, giving all to the poor is possible, giving one's body to the poor is possible. Moving mountains with faith is possible. If you take Jesus' teaching as a metaphor--that's possible. If He meant it literally, then that's possible. Why must speaking in tongues of angels be impossible?

It's funny you should say that. Newspapers from the period report the exact same thing at Azusa. Seymour would encourage people to speak in tongues and then some woman would start up.

My experience was much like yours. When I was a teenager and recently saved I attended an Assemblies of God church. I was having trouble getting tongues and some people told me I just need vocalize something, anything, and then the Spirit would take over. But this didn't seem right to me and it certainly wasn't the same thing I read about in Acts. I prayed and prayed trying to get the "baptism" but never did. I was very confused and felt like a failure. It was then I was fortunate to meet some people who told me what I was being taught in the AoG wasn't true; it was a sham. Suddenly a huge light bulb went off.

I read to here. You already demonstrate you haven't really read or understood my original post. If and when you do then maybe we can have a conversation.

I've seen some people try to coach and 'extract' tongues from other people. I've also seen some other methods to try to get people to speak in tongues that I found questionable. If you do just start repeating a syllable, some people say, 'You got it.' Realizing that not all speak in tongues takes a lot of pressure off. If the Holy Spirit wants to gift someone with it and they are willing to receive, we don't have to try to extract speaking in tongues and make others have to do it.

I've seen this sort of thing a lot more with Charismatics than Pentecostals, btw. Pentecostals will usually lay hands on you and pray for you. There is a lot of variety among Charismatics, but some try to coach it out of you.

I must admit I am ignorant of this "azuza" but the time period was 1979. I also remember reading in a non-Biblical text, or gnostic text of a fallen angel, or demon with a name similar to azuza. Scary, I must admit.

The Azusa Street Revival started in 1906 in Los Angeles, CA. It's here where most Pentecostals say Pentecostalism was born.

Thank the God I serve, that you didn't choose to carry on with that fraudulent, heretical practice. I know of others to this day, that live wickedly, yet on church days, their only display of righteousness blurts out at non-opportunistic moments, proving just how holy they are, and one can tell them no differently.

Azusa is a street name in California. There are a lots of words that sound like bad things in another language. There is a 'Cardinal Sin'-- a man's religious title and name. Indonesians call older brothers or sisters 'kakak', with an almost inaudible unreleased 'k' at the end. That sounds like something else in Spanish.

i grew up Pentecostal and never once was instructed to practice anything but read the Bible until it become a good habit. it wasn't until many years later, the week that my grandpa passed away, i was praying and seeking God. i was determined to pray until God heard me. it was day 4 of my prayer and fasting when it just happened. i did not even know it was happening at first. but it was more powerful in connection to God than any of my praying to Him ever before. a knock on my door and my dad said, grandpa wants to see you. he was alert when i walked into his room and stood close to his side. he smiled big and said, God told him i spoke in Tongues. shocked, but i knew i did, i said, yes. he had me put my right hand under his right thigh and like Jacob did to his sons he passed me his anointing and said may it be a double anointing/blessing/birthright. he went Home a few hours later.

What language did you speak?

good question. i asked my dad if he heard me and he said no. i was down in the basement in the back room. i just remember when i finished praying i began to wonder what i had just done. so i was silent when my dad came and got me. but i do know before i never felt my prayer was being heard. but that specific prayer i had no doubt about it.

So what do you feel was the importance of this experience? Why do you feel the Holy Spirit gave it to you?

Spiritual Warfare. i have read everything Paul wrote about edifying and such. but i have not really Spoke in Tongues in a church environment, or if i did it was not something that was memorable. but i have Spoken in Tongues when i am alone and praying for people who are sick, need a miracle, need a job, trouble with the law, an upcoming court date that has major implications and possible results that could be damaging. i have Spoken in Tongues during a real life tragedy, or someone else's tragedy i was witnessing first hand.

i remember once we were looking at a home. the realtor was walking us through when all of the cabinet doors opened and the oven door slammed downward. then a cold icy chill just swept over us. i began Speaking in Tongues and it just stopped. we obviously did not buy that home and i don't think the realtor had that experience with the home before. but clearly that home wanted nothing to with myself (my opinion).

Form what I know about tongues and spiritual warfare is it's believed that prayers in tongues are more powerful because it's an angelic language that Satan and his demons can't understand; therefore, our prayers get past him. Is that how you see it?

What I've always wondered is if Satan and his demons are fallen angels why wouldn't they understand an angelic prayer language?