Apostolic Faith Mission

The noted church historian from Yale University Sidney Ahlstrom, said in 1972 in a lecture to his class and later wrote in a book that, "William J. Seymour was "the most influential black leader in American religious history."

Present Chief Apostle and Presiding Bishop of Christ Churches of God in Christ, USA states,

"William Seymour stands perhaps, the important spiritual leader of the Apostolic Pentecostal Faith in the world and certainly in modern Times."

The Azusa Street Revival has fascinated church's historians for decades and has yet to be fully understood and explained. For over three years, the Azusa Street "Apostolic Faith Mission" conducted three services a day, seven days a week, where thousands of persons from all over the world received the baptism of the Holy Spirit speaking in other tongues as taught in the book of Acts of the Apostle. The revival went abroad through The Apostolic Faith New paper. This Paper was a tool of Apostle Seymour and was sent free of charge to some 50,000 subscribers. The Azusa Street Revival covered the entire earth.. spreading around the world and changed the face of the move of God throughout Christendom.

In 1906, the 1st Century Church re-surface with a revival in Pentecostalism worldwide. The attention of the movement was through the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles led by the African-American preacher William Joseph Seymour. He had learned about the tongues and the Holy Ghost baptism in a Bible School that Rev. Parham conducted in Houston, Texas in 1905. Apostle Seymour was invited to pastor a Black holiness church in Los Angeles in 1906, Seymour opened the historic meeting in April, 1906 in a former African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles which was known as a barn for animals.

The Azusa Street Revival brought about a merger of many in the white establishment of the Holiness Church to worship together and to merger into the African-American heritage of the Pentecostal's tradition which also came out of slavery in the South. There was an expressive worship and praise in the Azusa Street Revival. There were shouting and dancing. The speaking in tongues were commonplace. The Black music and worship styles of blacks were accepted as a God's given gift to the movement. Suddenly, blacks were an instruments in the hands of God bring about a movement that would shape the face of history in the modern church throughout the world. A powerful Pentecostal Movement of the first Century Church. A powerful move of God among former slaves who had been deprived people in America and other nations of the world now surface as people used of God to bring about a revival for the ages..

This movement in Los Angeles was changing the out look of racism and segregation of its times in the whole of America. Apostle Seymour, himself changed the appearance of his times; for he brought about Blacks and Whites worshipping together under a Black pastor. This seemed very incredible to many in that time and period. Frank Bartleman, left record who was a white worshiper at the Azusa's Mission stated, "The color line at Azusa Street was washed away in the blood." People from all the ethnic minorities of Los Angeles, as Frank Bartleman stated made Los Angeles "the American Jerusalem."

The Indian tribe in whom this name belong were the 'Shoshonee' tribe.

"Azusa" became the name of the street in Los Angeles, California where the New Testament outpouring of the Holy Spirit fell. The Mission was name "Azusa Street Mission" (because the Mission was located on Azusa Street) and the movement in its beginning became and was called the "Apostolic Faith Movement." . For more important on this subject, please refer to Bishop Payne's book, "Thy Kingdom Come" Volume I & II", chapter ten.