| Chapter : | Introduction |
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Introduction
There was a general spirit of humility manifested in the meeting. They were taken up with God. Evidently the Lord had found the little company at last through whom He could have right of way. Others were in the hands of men, and the Holy Spirit could not work.
Others, far more pretentious had failed. That which man esteems had been passed by once more, the Holy Spirit choosing a humble “stable” outside ecclesiastical establishments.1
—Frank Bartleman, participant in the Azusa Street Revival
The early twentieth century interracial religious revival among the lower and middle classes of the American South, West, and Midwest, known as the Pentecostal movement, spread around the world as a result of the racially integrated revival services held in an abandoned warehouse at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California during April 1906.2 Over the next 3 years, hundreds of people came from across the United States to receive its signature experience, the baptism in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other, or unknown, tongues.3