Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected
| PentecostalTheology.com
BARTLEMAN NEVER PREACHED at AZUSA…
An occasional visitor to the New Testament church was Frank Bartleman. He was an
unusual person. He was a preacher but would not accept a pastorate. He also would
not affiliate with any denomination. But he did go around among all the churches
where he was allowed to participate to any degree. For instance, he would go to
the New Testament church before time for the church service to begin and urge all
those who had come early that they should not depend on the pastor to start the
prayer meeting. He would try to get them to begin a prayer meeting on the church
steps before the pastor arrived.
NEW BOOK about the wife of Azusa historian Frank Bartleman, Anna Ladd Bartleman
A name is painted on the Azusa Street church. It was “Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission.” This greatly offended Frank Bartleman. He said they had failed God, and he left. Although he considered himself rather important there, (often saying “at Azusa we did this” or “we did that”) he left without claiming to have received the baptism. He did claim to have the gift of music, but not of words. When the ‘Heavenly Choir’ would sing in tongues, he would join in making guttural sounds that he said were beautiful. They were all singing the same verse of the same song at the same time so he could only ‘sing’ along without words.
August 12 Someone gave Frank Bartleman some money so he rented a vacant church on Eighth Street and Maple Avenue on August 8, and opened it for services on Sunday, August 12. Two principal things which are emphasized, and wherein they claim to differ from other, is, that Christians are sanctified before they receive the baptism with the Holy Ghost, this baptism being a gift of power upon the sanctified life, and that the essential and necessary evidence of the baptism is the gift of speaking with new tongues. …the speaking with tongues has been a no-thing-a jargon, a senseless mumble, without meaning to those who do the mumbling, or to those who hear.”
The article by Bresee was much longer than shown above, but this is sufficient to show that points of view were widely different. Apart from the put-down, Bresee had an accurate idea of the doctrines. But he should have been there when foreigners testified that they had understood what was said in their own language. This included Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, etc. Frank Bartleman was so taken up with himself that he wholly misunderstood what was going on. He had a feeling that since he had written four letters to Evan Roberts and had urged people at the New Testament Church to begin prayer meetings on the front steps of the church while waiting for the pastor to arrive, that he had been a major cause in what happened on Azusa Street. In reality, what was happening in the Azusa Street Mission was a continuation of what had happened earlier in the home of Richard and Ruth Asbery on Bonnie Brae Street. And what happened there was related to something that had happened more than five years earlier. Something Frank Bartleman had nothing to do with. His book, How Pentecost came to Los Angeles, has an accurate timeline; he was there for almost four months, but his basic premise is in error. We do not think Pentecost came to Los Angeles as told in his book. The book has now been revised and reprinted under the name AZUSA STREET.
Frank Bartleman helped find a temporary place for Durham to preach and sat on the platform with him. The easier way was a smashing hit. Great crowds came to hear and join him. Not long afterward, (1912) Durham died, but his easier way is still popular today. His teachings were incorporated into quite a number of existing churches, but was denounced by Sis. Crawford, Seymour, Parham, Mason, and Fisher. One of the first new churches to be started using Durham’s teaching was Aimee McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church. https://www.azusabooks.org/what.shtml
