When Pentecostal History Gets Sanitized

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]In this paragraph, it says Seymour, referring to William Joseph Seymour, had been a student of Charles Fox Parham who provided the doctrinal framework for the young Pentecostal movement.

[00:00:12]So, you have different sects and branches of Pentecostalism.

[00:00:17]Most of them are going to go to Seymour and they're going to just kind of ignore Charles Fox Parham. In fact, I was contacted by one historian who said, "You mentioned Charles Fox Parham was the founder of Pentecostalism or the father of Pentecostalism, and that's absolutely incorrect. Seymour was."

[00:00:35]Because [snorts] he didn't Apparently, he didn't know the history.

[00:00:38]But, it gets even more interesting than that and when you think of the New Apostolic Reformation side of things.

[00:00:44]>> [clears throat] >> I have mentioned several times in several podcasts and in the books, there's a reason why Charles Fox Parham was not fully accepted and widely accepted by all of the Pentecostals. In fact, it probably should have been him that took over the revivals in Azusa Street and the the history would read quite differently.

[00:01:07]Charles Fox Parham was facing a lot of criminal issues because of the things that he was doing to students who were young people who were gathering into his young people ministry.

[00:01:20]And to keep it G-rated, I'm not going to talk much about it other than there was an accusation of Charles Fox Parham and a male student. And Parham apparently confessed to it. You can read through some of the transcript in the newspaper.

[00:01:36]So, there is some issues with Charles Fox Parham.

[00:01:39]But, whenever they trace this lineage, they they mention specifically while the Apostolic Faith movement was largely confined confined to the South Central United States, the revival at Azusa Street catapulted Pentecostalism before a worldwide audience.

[00:01:58]So, what they're [clears throat] trying to do, even though they say doctrinal framework came from Parham, they're trying to limit the scope of what Parham did to Pentecostalism.

[00:02:10]And if you go back through the history that we have provided in the podcast and in the books, during the years when John Alexander Dowie, who was the prototype for all of the faith healing movement shenanigans, whenever [clears throat] he had lost his mental faculties, and Zion City was flooded with all of these prophets trying to get at his $10 million, Charles Fox Parham is Charles Fox Parham is one who came to Zion City claiming to be the next Elijah.

[00:02:38]And we've covered that quite well.

[00:02:41]What happened there, we have also talked about, but he created a sect within Zion City that would impact the New Apostolic Reformation immensely.

[00:02:53]In this sect that he created, they called them the Parhamites, they started teaching deliverance ministries. The early phases of stages of what would become deliverance was being taught there in Zion City by Charles Fox Parham.

[00:03:08]He trained FF Bosworth, who then later trained William Branham. Bosworth was a leading figure in John Alexander Dowie's Zion sect.

[00:03:19]He also trained John G. Lake, who was a Parhamite in the Zion City Parhamite sect. And there were others, there were multiple. Until they began murdering people in their deliverance ministry shenanigans. We've covered that also in the podcast, but there were people who actually died under their training to try to deliver demons out of broken bones. These people would actually say that a demon has caused this crippled lady to be her bones to be crooked, so we're going to physically straighten them by God, and they did until they snapped the bones, and out of the sheer pain, this woman actually died. And I think there were a few murders that happened because of this.

[00:04:04]So, in Zion City, you had this mess. You had Parham who escaped that because he's being uh criminally tried for his his things that he did with underage children.

[00:04:17]You had all of [clears throat] the Parhamite murders, which caused another scandal. So, you have to separate that branch. You can't you can't say that and there was a Parham presence in the north because you don't want the people to know this, right? This is not the kind of thing that you talk about. And you certainly don't say Seymour had been a student of Charles Fox Parham in the history page on Assemblies of God and say, "Parham who would have led the revival had he not done inappropriate things with children." That's just not how you invite people to come to your organization, obviously.

[00:04:52]But that [clears throat] part is really interesting to me because fast-forward to 1914, whenever this is created, FF Bosworth, who was a Parhamite, he is one of the original founders of the Assemblies of God. John G. Lake is at this meeting. John G. Lake, who was in Africa, came to the United States, and he came to this meeting.

[00:05:15]These are the people who helped organize a separation between black and white, and basically brought all of the white leadership out of the Church of God in Christ and put them into a new organization. So, let's go back to Howard Goss because he is kind of key to understanding how all of this unfolds.

[00:05:35]Howard Goss was a white Pentecostal leader, and he is the one who helped organize the assembly.

[00:05:42]Every advertisement has his name in it, and these invitations were sent out to ministers, but according to historians, these were primarily sent to white ministers despite having the Church of God in Christ name. So, picture this.

[00:05:58]Picture you are in an organization, you you're led by a black leader, and somebody underneath you in this organization sends out all of the invitations, but doesn't send them to black people. And you're a black person leading it. How is this going to make you feel?

[00:06:15]>> [laughter] >> This This is not a good thing that Howard Goss is doing. There are significant questions as to whether he was racist.

[00:06:23]And considering the fact that Charles Fox Parham, there [clears throat] are sources reputable sources who link Parham to the Ku Klux Klan as late as I think it was 1929.

[00:06:36]So, during this time, as Charles Fox Parham is laying down the doctrinal framework, Parham who's in the Klan, F.F. Bosworth who later works with Branham, who's working with the second in command of the 1915 KKK, Bosworth who is preaching and holding conventions in the Klan headquarters in Indiana, these are the men that are being invited to this thing.

[00:07:01]And among many others, there are probably others who were not even closely affiliated with the Klan, but there were some, and Goss is sending these invitations apparently to white people, and not sending them to black people.

[00:07:16]So, during the meetings, what happened is there was a motion This This was This was like a a forum where people were voting and and making motions for the upcoming years plans, etc. There's a motion by the white leaders to reorganize and withdraw completely from the Church of God in Christ authority.

[00:07:40]So, again, you've got invitations coming out to white leaders. You have this flood of white leaders coming in to vote, and they basically hijacked the organization, if you understand that history.

[00:07:54]Had it been the reverse, had the black leadership had sent out letters only to black ministers, and invited this large body of black ministers to come to this organization and say, "We want to kick out all of the white ministers."

[00:08:10]This would have read entirely The history would have read entirely differently. But, that's not what happened. Goss, basically, if you understand what happened here, he made a hostile takeover of the Church of God in Christ, and hijacked it, separating the organizations into two separate organizations, one for the black people, one for the white people.

[00:08:40]>> [music]