Sunday, January 8, 2017

"Last Vomit of Satan"

 .....false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.
Mark 13:22
"The events at Azusa (tongues, visions, healings) lasted from 1906 to 1909. Synan writes:
 
"The Azusa Street revival is commonly regarded as the beginning of the modern pentecostal movement. Although many persons had spoken in tongues in the U.S. in the years preceding 1906, this meeting brought this belief to the attention of the world and served as the catalyst for the formation of scores of pentecostal denominations. Directly or indirectly, practically all of the pentecostal groups in existence can trace their lineage to the Azusa Mission."
 
Azusa had its share of critics who were convinced the participants were lunatics. Additional bad press occurred when spiritualists and mediums from the occult societies in Los Angeles began to attend and to participate in their own special way. G. Campbell
Morgan, a highly respected evangelical preacher, called the Pentecostal movement "the last vomit of Satan," Harry Ironside in 1912 denounced the movement as "disgusting . . . delusions and insanities" and accused their meetings as causing "a heavy toll of lunacy and infidelity."
 
Parham himself arrived in Los Angeles toward the end of the revival. He had been in Zion City, Illinois (near Chicago) trying to salvage what was left of the work of Alexander Dowie. Parham believed the people at Azusa had gone too far and had fallen into "extremes and fanaticism." He left town disgusted because many "came through chattering, jabbering, and sputtering, speaking in no language at all." He split with Seymour and continued to denounce Azusa as a case of "spiritual power prostituted" to the "awful fits and spasms" of the "holy rollers and hypnotists" (quoted in Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century, 1997)." SamStorms