Pentecostalism's founding mother spoke Chinese

[ResidentAlien]

Agnes Ozman, the woman who inaugurated the whole Pentecostal movement when she "spoke in tongues" at Charles Fox Parham's Bible school, was trained as a Chinese missionary. You heard that right. Ozman, in her own words, was trained at "T.C. Horton's Bible School at St. Paul, Minnesota" and "A.B. Simpson's Bible School at New York City." See this article: https://www.apostolicarchives.com/articles/article/8801925/173171.htm.

What Ozman leaves out in the preceding article is that she trained to be a Chinese missionary! For those not familiar with this whole saga, Chinese was the language which Ozman supposedly spoke in tongues. Those present reported that she spoke Chinese and that for two days following she was only able to write in Chinese. This all occurred in 1901. In the above article, dated 1951, Ozman omits all references to Chinese and says she spoke "several different languages." For proof that Ozman was trained as a Chinese missionary, see this clip.

 

[ResidentAlien]

I have to make one correction. I said "the above article, dated 1951"; however, Ozman died in 1937, so this was taken from an earlier source. I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact date of the original source.

The Inter Ocean newspaper in Chicago ran a story on the Parhamites on Jnuary 27, 1901. In it, Parham is quoted as saying: "For the first time in 1,800 years is granted to man the gift of tongues. This is false and misleading and Parham knew it. Many groups before Parham claimed to have the gift and supposedly spoke in tongues. Parham himself had been affiliated with at least one of these groups—the Shiloh community of Frank Sanford.

The Inter Ocean article is here.

This is a sample of Ozman's "tongues" translated into writing.