William Seymour

In 1905, William Seymour (1870-1922), a one-eyed Holiness preacher and the son of former slaves, heard Charles Parham teach on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in Houston Texas.

Parham would not allow Seymour in the classroom because of the “Jim Crow Laws.” But he sat in the hall, heard the Pentecostal doctrine, and embraced it.

In February of 1906, Seymour received an invitation to pastor a small Holiness church in Los Angeles. His first sermon in his new church was from Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” When he returned that evening for service, the deacons had padlocked the church to keep him out.

However, a few of the members followed Seymour and began a Bible study in their home. On Monday, April 9, several members of the small prayer group were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Soon the crowds were so great they could no longer meet in the home. So Seymour brought the piano onto the porch and continued the meetings outdoors. When the front porch collapsed, they rented an abandoned AME church at 312 Azusa Street. For the next three years, they held meetings three times a day at Azusa, attracting people from all over the world and birthing numerous Pentecostal Denominations.

“The meetings began at 10 am and continued for at least 12 hours, often lasting until two or three the following morning. Seymour rarely preached. There were no hymnals, no liturgy, and no order of services. Most of the time there were no musical instruments. But around the room, men jumped, shouted, danced, and sang.”

The early meetings were interracial. Their motto was, “The color line is washed away in the blood.”  A 1906 Azusa staff photo shows blacks and whites, men and women—all together in leadership. A staff member described one Communion service and foot washing that lasted until daybreak: “Over twenty different nationalities were present, and they were all in perfect accord and unity of the Spirit.”

“African-Americans, Latinos, whites, and others prayed and sang together, creating a dimension of spiritual unity and equality, almost unprecedented for the time.”

The power of God could be felt at Azusa even outside of the building. Scores of people fell to their knees in the streets before they ever reached the mission. By the summer of 1906, crowds had reached staggering numbers, often into the thousands. The scene had become an international gathering. Every day, trains unloaded visitors who came from all over the continent. News accounts of the meetings spread over the nation in both the secular and religious press.

“The 35-year-old Seymour was an unlikely ambassador of the Pentecostal message: he was not a gifted speaker, he lacked in social skills, and he had almost no formal education.”

But God filled him with power and used him to usher in the century of the Holy Spirit. Church historian Vinson Synan has estimated that over 850,000,000 people were baptized in the Holy Spirit in the twentieth century.

As we celebrate the one hundred year anniversary of Azusa Street, we are greatly indebted to the obedience and humility of one man who endured the indignity of racism to follow God’s call.