False Prophecy at Azusa Street? Pentecostal Secrets  🔗 **Source:** [False Prophecy at Azusa Street? Pentecostal Secrets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL1--RYnMQs) If you're listening this podcast and you're trying to learn more about the spiritual aspects of Azusa Street Revival, was this a spiritual thing and was it a spirit by God or some other spirit? The newspaper captures it well when it says, "The horror of it." There's an article the subsection is called the horror of it and it's describing [clears throat] this this event where women were openly confessing that they were telling people that they left their husbands and their children in order to enjoy what they called the full measure of faith. Leadership [clears throat] who were in the revival were hearing this thing. They're hearing how women were literally abandoning their families to come participate. And remember this revival went on for what was it? Two, three years. So, if you have the situation where people are abandoning their families, you would expect leadership who are in the correct spirit to say, "No, don't do that. >> [laughter] >> They can be saved, too. Let's bring them or you can go home to them and teach them what you learned." In other words, spread the gospel. But it wasn't about the gospel, it was about the speaking in tongues. And really that is the bottom line. If you're looking at this from a spiritual aspect, the speaking in tongues took the priority. Any mention of the gospel, in fact, you don't find it in any of the newspapers. There's no mention of the gospel and the spreading of the gospel, you're not going to find this. And I I want to say that many of the Pentecostal histories that I've read, not many of them, if any, mention the gospel as part of what happened at the revival. It's more about the tongues. I mentioned in the beginning that there were also false prophecies associated with this revival. And it's not, after all of the weirdness became more weird. During the early part of the revival, July 14th, 1906. So, this is right at the heart of when this thing is beginning >> [clears throat] >> in the article the Holy Kickers carry on mad orgies. >> [snorts] >> There is a description of a prophecy that was given in this gift of tongues and interpretation that went out among the crowds that said in the railroad shall bend and the girder shall fall and the cars shall stand for want of power. In other words, all cars in the United States are going to stop. Chicago will be destroyed and there will be a terrible mangling in Los Angeles and Pasadena. This message from the Lord was conveyed to the Holy Kickers by a negro prophetess Friday night. So, if you understand what is happening, the people who are coming to this thing and they're hearing the tongues, they're believing that this is a word from God and God tells them this thing that did not happen. So, for me this is problem number two. If you're looking for something to identify was this of God or was this not a spirit of God? For me some something that is based off of speaking in tongues and the tongues that have an interpretation that humans can understand evolves into false prophecy, well, this isn't from God. It's It clearly can't be from God because this did not happen. I can understand why they would think it might happen because they just came through the through the event the destruction of San Francisco. But that was a part where mentally the brain had connected to the event that just happened, but the mouth was repeating it as though it came from God. So, for me this is the second problem that is huge when you think about the Pentecostal faith and the Azusa Street Revival. Now, again, these kind of histories you're not going to find in the Pentecostal history books because they are so highly problematic that anybody who is wanting to learn more is this a movement by God or not the moment they come across this the question's going to be asked well if it's from God how can you have a false prophecy there is a lot of questionable things happening in the Azusa Street Revival right there from the very beginning not from years after after people say that it might have gone down the wrong pathway I'm talking right at the very beginning there's some weird things happening that are very questionable I don't have a problem so much even with the questionable things because if you believe God is all powerful and you've got people with people problems coming in and suddenly there's an outpouring and they become better Christians then that makes sense I don't see that but it it would make sense if it did happen for me the [clears throat] bigger problem is somebody who wants to join the Pentecostal faith and they want to learn more about this because this is the epicenter this is the thing that started the modern Pentecostal faith I want to learn more about it tell me more and then the people telling them will tell you the parts that they want you to hear but they don't tell you these parts that I've mentioned today for me this is a problem picture yourself if you go to used car lot and you buy a used car and the car salesman comes out and tells you this is a great engine it was just rebuilt two months ago some little old lady has had it in her garage barely drove it um decided she was going to rebuild the engine and sell it and this thing is really really good it's a good car for your family and doesn't tell you that the little old lady had her >> [laughter] >> shade tree mechanic son do it in his spare time and he had no clue what he was doing when he rebuilt that engine if you knew that you wouldn't buy the car right >> [laughter] >> now does it mean it's a bad car? Not necessarily. Maybe he got it right. But, you would want to know the information before you make an informed decision about buying the car. The problem that I have with Pentecostalism as a recruitment engine, which it is, they don't always recruit telling you the things that might make you skeptical. They'll tell you the things that might make it appealing, and they leave out all of the rest. For me, this [clears throat] is a problem because inwardly, you you must not really believe it solidly because if you believed it, you would have enough confidence in the good parts that you could also talk about the bad. And there's some bad. >> [laughter] >> When you talk about women leaving their husbands and all kinds of weird things happening, that's pretty bad. But, for me, it all goes back to that one article that I read that I mentioned where a sinner legitimately wanted to know more. He stood up, he confessed, "I'm a sinner. I'm in this revival. I want to know more." And he was injured as they kicked him out of the meeting. That's not something that you're going to hear in a Pentecostal history book. That's not something that I would put up with. If I watch this and I'm in the revival, that's the moment that I leave. I don't stay there when I watch a sinner being kicked out. Absolutely not. And that's not the part that they tell you. So, for me, that is the biggest problem of the entire event in my mind is the sinner who wants to learn more, and he's ejected from the revival. So, so much more I could get into. This is just a highlight of all of the weirdness that happened. Again, if you want to learn more, you can get a use newspapers.com subscription and just start reading daily in the Los Angeles Times because this was a circus. You could read daily of what was happening, and people they even called it like a carnival. It was like a vaudeville show, I think was one of the terms that they used. They used different terms. And it's kind of funny when you read it because you're picturing all these black and white movies where the risqué crowd are doing the risqué things. That's how the city of Los Angeles saw the Azusa Street Revival from the outside looking in. Women leaving their husbands, ecstasy, women running out and grabbing men from the streets and taking them in. And all of this weirdness that, you know, if you if you were a Christian back then and you saw this happening, you would think, "Truly, there's something odd about this group of people, and I don't know that this is a movement from God." >> [music], False Prophecy at Azusa Street? Pentecostal Secrets, YouTube, 01ktkp7h28cdchhs0w97txmqe0.