Quote:
Originally Posted by houston
Right. No disputing that.
I read somewhere (link I posted) that Azusa had strange things going on, similar to what took place in Toronto and Pensacola. The writer stated that THAT has always been the fruit of Azusa.
So, when someone claims that there has always been an apostolic church (Oneness, acts 238) I wonder if it can be substantiated through recent history. If it can be shown that there was an apostolic church during the time of the Azusa revival I then would agree that Azusa had some strange fire burning.
If there wasn't an apostolic church then I'd ask why the Trinitarian Pentecostals began to offer strange fire while the apostolic did not, being "birthed" from the same movement.
|
At the original meetings, Bartleman reports that all sorts of cranks and whackos came to see what was going on, including spiritists, mediums, witches, etc and tried to 'get involved'. They were usually chased from the meetings or fell under conviction and repented. Later, as the revival spread to other cities and other meetings, various eccentricities started popping up here and there. It has always been that way with revivals. The early Methodists meetings had similar 'strange fire' going on, as did the Cane Ridge meetings. Some might even argue Cane Ridge was 95 percent 'strange fire' although I wouldn't say that. Jonathan Edwards noted some stuff that nowadays would possibly dwarf Toronto and Pensacola antics, Finney noted weirdness going on, the Holiness movement always had some fringe stuff happening.
In the book of Acts we see some weirdness with the pythoness - girl with a spirit of divination - and the 'sons of Sceva', not to mention first century near eastern society had a lot of general weirdness going on to begin with anyway.
In other words, the 'weirdness' of Azusa street is, historically speaking, wholly unremarkable.
Threaded Mode
