I’m starting to think my American Pentecostal-charismatic brethren have completely lost it. Our movement was birthed among the poor in Los Angeles in 1906 when the Holy Spirit visited a tiny gathering of what a local newspaper derided as “Negro washerwomen.” Led by a one-eyed Black preacher named William J. Seymour, the little church that came to be known as the Azusa Street Mission erupted into a worldwide movement that now counts more than 600 million adherents. Seymour was a follower of Jesus Christ such as we seldom see today. He had no interest in praise from men, and to
