Outside of the Camp

Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. (Heb 13:13-14)

Speaking of the outpouring at Azusa street in Los Angeles in 1906, before the scourge of denominationalism got a hold of it Frank Barltleman writes the following………….

The spirit of the song given from God in the beginning was like the Aeolian harp in the spontaneity and the sweetness. In fact it was the very breath of God, playing on human heart-strings, or human vocal chords. The notes were wonderful in sweetness , volume and duration. In fact they were oft-times humanly impossible. It was indeed "singing in the Spirit.”

We had no pope or hierarchy. We were brothers. We had no human program;the Lord Himself was leading. We had no priest class nor priest craft. These things have come in later, with the apostatizing of the movement. We did not even have a platform or pulpit in the beginning. All were level. The ministers were servants, according to the true meaning of the word. We did not honor men for their advantage in means and education, but rather for their God-given gifts. He set the members in the Body.

The services ran almost continuously. Seeking souls could be found under the power any hour of the night or day. The place was never closed nor empty. The people came to meet God. He was always there. Hence a continuous meeting. The meeting did not depend on the human leader. God’s presence became more wonderful. In that old building with its low rafters and bare floors, God took strong men and women to pieces, and put them back together again for His glory. It was a tremendous overhauling process. Pride and self-esteem could not survive there.

No subjects or sermons were announced ahead of time, and no special speakers for such an hour. Know one knew what might be coming, what God would do. All was spontaneous, ordered of the Spirit. We wanted to hear from God, through whom whoever He might speak. We had no respect of persons. The rich and the educated were the same as the poor and the ignorant, and found a much harder death to die. We only recognized God. all were equal. It had to start in the poor surroundings to keep out the selfish, human element.

We were delivered right there from ecclesiastical hierarchism and abuse. We wanted God. When we first reached the meeting we avoided as much possible human contact and greeting. We got our head under some bench in the corner in prayer and met men only in the Spirit, knowing them ” after the flesh,” no more. All obeyed God, in meekness and humility. IN honor we preferred on another. The Lord was liable to burst through anyone. One would finally get up, anointed for the message. It might be from the back seat or from the front. It made no difference ( Frank Bartleman)

Brothers and sisters, I could go on and quote much more from this dear brother but you get the picture of what was going on there. It was only two years before , that the Welsh revival had broken out. God was moving all over the world. In those days no one could have foreseen the horrors of a world war that was just around the corner. No one could have foreseen that not too long after the horrors of that war another war would plunge the world into such a spiritual darkness the likes of which the world had never seen before. But God saw it. God knew. He also knew that church as it existed then would never stem the tide of darkness but in fact would be swept up in it along with the world.

It is reckoned that from those two outpourings, over 600 million people came to know Jesus. These were movements quite outside the camp, outside of the gates of Christendom. Christendom had been swallowed up by the world and had found itself inside the camp, inside the city walls. It had a vested interest in the camp itself. It was an intergral part of the system of the world.

I want to remind the saints. We have no interest in the systems of the world. We have here no continuing city nor dwelling place to call our own, but we seek one that is to come. If we are to be of any use in these coming days of darkness brothers and sisters we have to be found outside of the city, outside of the camp, outside of the gates. It is a place of reproach no doubt. The religious and the faint of heart will not be able to take their place outside of all that is established. They will not be able to stand the ridicule and the loss of position in society.

Heb 13:10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

Brothers and sister it may be said of us that we have no altar, no proper place of worship, no legitimacy. I want to tell you what you already know. Oh we have an altar. Our altar is Jesus Himself. Our altar is not a material one but a personal one. He alone is our altar, our sacrifice, our gift, our meal, He and He alone is all in all. We give up nothing by coming outside of the camp, but we gain everything when we find Jesus there. This place of humility apart from the best of humanity is the rugged ground upon which we stand outside of the camp. The walls and the gates and the camps of men have always been formed for self-protection.

God is raising up an army of men and women and children whose primary purpose in life is not self-protection nor self-interest. For those who are interested in self-protection and self-interest would never find themselves outside the gate. This army of saints is only interested in the glory of God and the truth upon which they stand. This army marches on its knees and while they should be the most vulnerable group of people who ever lived they will strike fear into the heart of the enemy. And his anger against them is already rising. He will demand that those within the camp destroy those that are outside the camp if they want to preserve themselves and their positions.

No matter saints, it must be this way. You already know that in your hearts that wherever the truth leads us, then we must follow. Better to stand upon the solid unshakeable ground of the truth of which we love and be destroyed, than to compromise and find ourselves on the sinking sand of capitulation to a world that ultimately serves itself and its master. Better to die for Christ and live eternally than to sell our souls for a momentary bowl of stew, sell our birthright for the sake of acceptance from a dying and soon to be judged world. Stand fast brothers and sisters, the Lord is surely at the door.............bro Frank

Brilliant and poignant word brother Frank, thank you! I am so done with the systems of this world, both inside and outside of the church and have all but given up on seeing again in my lifetime something that resembles what Frank Bartleman describes. The stink of man is on everything, where is the Lord? How much longer Lord? When will we see the salvation of the Lord? I have all but given up on the American church and her grand ideals, programs and buildings...it has turned into something far flung from the original design. A monstrosity of mans own creation, this once great house has fallen. And yet somewhere, somehow, out of the rubble one never knows what might come forth...

Bro Mark writes.........

"And yet somewhere, somehow, out of the rubble one never knows what might come forth..."

Oh how I long to see this. I have seen it in my spirit brother. I see the remnant coming forth. I see them leave the camp behind them just as the gates shut behind them, taking their place in the wilderness of this world but into the bosom of the Lord. Better to die in the shadow of His wing than to live in the light of this world...............bro Frank

Outside of the camp....

WHEREFORE AND THEREFORE

Wherefore Jesus…suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp.
Hebrews 13:12,13

Jesus kept his "wherefore” and I must keep my "therefore.” He went without the gate to suffer and I must go outside the camp to serve. I am not merely to go from something, I am to go to Him. Where He is I belong. And it is not His popularity but His reproach that I must bear. The world and some churches have devised a popular Christ, but He is not this Christ of the Wherefore. One can stay inside the camp and follow this fictitious Jesus, but not the One who suffered that I might be sanctified with His blood. This present age, like all ages past, despises a bleeding Christ and a gory cross. There is nothing elegant about following a crucified Saviour and seeking a city to come.

I cannot get by with singing about the wondrous cross. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. His "wherefore” demands my "therefore.” And that means the sacrifice of person: "Let us…(v.13), of praise (v.15), of possessions (v.16)

"Jesus paid it all” in the Wherefore. "All to Him I owe” in the Therefore.

~~Vance Havner~~

http://vancehavner.com/devotion-of-the-day-336/

dear brother Frank,

the FIRST non-canonical book I read, was Frank Bartleman's recounting/testifying of what happened at that humble barn/church in April 1906 at 312 Azusa Street, and back then May 2002, to this very day, bro. Frank B.'s recounting and his own personal walk with Jesus, helped "model" my own walk.

and you took from some of the most precious passages in that book, to quote:

"The services ran almost continuously. Seeking souls could be found under the power any hour of the night or day. The place was never closed nor empty. The people came to meet God. He was always there. Hence a continuous meeting. The meeting did not depend on the human leader. God’s presence became more wonderful. In that old building with its low rafters and bare floors, God took strong men and women to pieces, and put them back together again for His glory. It was a tremendous overhauling process. Pride and self-esteem could not survive there."

AMEN!....and I could cut-n-paste everything you quoted...everything!

my dear brother/kin, as an adjunct. led by the Holy Spirit, I desire to go to the little community radio station, which has a full recording studio, to use the Gifts the Lord has given me to PROFESSIONALLY record an audiobook of "Azusa Street"...now the "community" radio station is most definitely NOT canted towards a love and a leading to follow Jesus, ie, Sunday mornings programming is geared towards a sort of "new age" agenda, BUT they are ALWAYS in need of MONEY, which means I am prepared to put my humble purse on the line, and pay for studio time. My "need" would be for a brother who loves Jesus to both record, edit and store, the process of recording slash editing of this Godly testimony, because as I see it, I would need at the very least 10 two to four hour sessions to do it RIGHT....no 'amateur hour'....and when we have, God willing, a finished copy, to somehow, make it available to the saints, and mayhap "fencesitters" FREE of charge...and to do this service under a "pen name"...NOT because i'm "afraid"....no, but because I don't want to, God forbid. make it about ME.

Now, if they refuse my money for studio time, this is a small community, and there "mission statement" is that its a "community" radio station, I will have NO hesitation, via our well read country newspapers OP-ED pages to noise about their "hypocrisy"...my pen is sharp, but my prayer is two fold, that this effort be covered in favor with them, and two, that I can push thru, my tendency towards slothfulness.

one step at a time though, amen?

Encouragement?.......YOUR words, as led by the Holy Spirit, speak truth, and i praise God, that you are obedient to this Leading, which leads me to a heartfelt AMEN! In Jesus love, neil

HI Jeremy , Jesus is our tabernacle and where He is, is life and He was found outside the camp.............bro Frank

I came across this a while ago on the deception in the church website and was wondering how accurate this was. From David Cloud's The strange history of Pentecostalism.

AZUSA STREET MISSION

The man who founded the famous AZUSA STREET MISSION in Los Angeles was Black evangelist WILLIAM SEYMOUR. Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan says, "The Azusa Street revival is commonly regarded as the beginning of the modern Pentecostal movement. ... In addition to the ministers who received their Pentecostal experience directly at Azusa Street, thousands of others were influenced indirectly" (Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, pp. 105,130). During 1901 and 1902 Seymour attended Martin Knapp's "God's Bible School" and joined the "Evening Light Saints" in Cincinnati. He adopted the false holiness doctrine of entire sanctification, believing that two "works of grace" were required to save and cleanse a man. One had to be born again through faith in Christ, but then one must subsequently be sanctified through a second work of grace.

Seymour believed that the true church was being restored in an end-times miracle revival. In 1903 he attended Charles Parham's Bible school in Houston, Texas. There he became committed to another false doctrine, that the Christian must be subsequently "baptized in the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of tongues." In early 1906 Seymour was invited to Los Angeles to pastor a small holiness group which, at the time of the invitation, was pastored by a woman, Julie Hutchins. The group was formed of people who had been disciplined out of the Second Baptist Church for the "second blessing" sinless perfection heresy. On the way to Los Angeles, Seymour visited Alma White's Pillar of Fire movement in Denver, Colorado. This group taught sinless sanctification and believed the evidence of the same was dancing. Alma White was not impressed with Seymour. She later described him as follows: "I had met all kinds of religious fakers and tramps, but I felt he excelled them all."

Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Seymour preached only one sermon before being locked out of the church which had invited him. In his sermon he had declared that tongues was the evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit. He said this in spite of the fact that he himself had never spoken in tongues! Romans 8:9 plainly says "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." This is a very strange matter. One of the key founders of the Pentecostal movement, by his own testimony, was preaching the deepest truth of the Word of God before he even knew Christ, and yet the Bible says the natural man cannot know the things of God (1 Cor. 1:14).

Seymour moved his meetings to a home and then to an abandoned building on Azusa Street, and strange phenomena began to be evidenced. The meetings lasted more than three years, and large numbers of people visited Azusa Street to seek their own Pentecost, subsequently taking the Pentecostal theology and experience back to their homes.

The meetings began in the mornings and continued for at least 12 hours. There was no order of services and usually no one leading. People sang at the same time but "with completely different syllables, rhythms, and melodies" (Ted Olsen, "American Pentecost," Christian History, Issue 58, 1998). The services were characterized by much confusion: dancing, jumping up and down, falling, trances, slaying in the spirit, "tongues," jerking, hysteria, strange noises, and "holy laughter." One visitor described the meetings as "wild, hysterical demonstrations." The seekers would be "seized with a strange spell and commence a jibberish of sounds." A Times reporter noted that the participants "work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal."

There was little or no order to the Azusa Street services. Whoever felt "moved by the spirit" to speak, would do so. Seymour rarely preached. Instead, much of the time he kept his head covered in an empty packing crate behind the pulpit. He taught the people to cry out to God and demand sanctification, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, and divine healing (Synan, p. 99). The firsthand descriptions I have read of the Azusa Street "revival" sound very similar to the current "Laughing Revival."

When Parham visited the meetings in October 1906, even he was shocked by the confusion of the services. He was dismayed by the "awful fits and spasms" of the "holy rollers and hypnotists." He described the Azusa "tongues" as "chattering, jabbering and sputtering, speaking no language at all" (Synan, p. 102). The Azusa Street meetings were so wild that Parham condemned them with the term "sensational Holy Rollers." He testified that the Azusa Street meetings were largely characterized by manifestations of the flesh, spiritualistic controls, and the practice of hypnotism (Sarah Parham, The Life of Charles F. Parham, Joplin, MO: Tri-state Printing, 1930, p. 163). According to Parham, two-thirds of the people professing Pentecostalism in his day "are either hypnotized or spook driven" (Parham, Life of Charles Parham, p. 164). In his writings about Azusa Street, Parham described men and women falling on one another in a morally compromising manner. I have seen this same thing in video recordings of Laughing Revival services.

When Parham arrived in Azusa Street in 1906, he began his first sermon by telling the people that "God is sick at his stomach" because of the things which were occurring at Azusa (Charles Shumway, A Study of the "Gift of Tongues," A.B. thesis, University of California, 1914, pp. 178,179; cited by Goff, Fields White Unto Harvest, p. 131). He never changed his opinion. To the end of his life, Parham, often called "the father of Pentecostalism," denounced Azusa Street as a case of "spiritual power prostituted." Thus the "father of Pentecostalism" roundly rejected the Azusa Street meetings as phony, manipulated, and demonic, even though practically all Pentecostal denominations trace their heritage directly from those meetings!

A man who helped popularize the Azusa Street meeting by his far-reaching reports was FRANK BARTLEMAN (1871-1935). In 1925 he published a book, How "Pentecost" Came to Los Angeles--How It Was in the Beginning, describing the Azusa meetings. It was reprinted in 1955 and again in 1980. Bartleman was a licensed Baptist preacher when, in 1897, he accepted the false doctrines of healing in the atonement and entire sanctification and joined the holiness movement. From then on he wandered about from group to group--Salvation Army, then Moody Bible Institute, then Wesleyan Methodist, then the Pillar of Fire organization led by woman preacher Alma White, then back to the Baptists, then to the Azusa Street Pentecostal meetings led by Seymour. Finally he was baptized into the "Jesus only" movement which denied the traditional biblical doctrine of the Trinity. He claimed the same sort of experiences which are common among Laughing Revival proponents today. Bartleman was "slain in the spirit" for one-half hour in front of a congregation where he had been preaching. On another occasion he said he felt "electric shocks" to the point that he fell unconscious (Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street, introduction by Vincent Synan, p. xiii). In spite of his doctrine that God has promised physical healing, Bartleman was often sick, at times despondent to the point of suicide, and his oldest daughter, Esther, died in childhood in spite of his faith in healing. Bartleman also promoted the same spirit of ecumenism which is popular in the current Laughing Revival. The final chapter of his book on Azusa Street was titled "A Plea for Unity."

"Every fresh division or party in the church gives to the world a contradiction as to the oneness of the body of Christ, and the truthfulness of the Gospel. Multitudes are bowing down and burning incense to a doctrine rather than Christ. ... The Spirit is laboring for the unity of believers today, for the 'one body,' that the prayer of Jesus may be answered, 'that they all may be one, that the world may believe'" (Bartleman, Azusa Street, pp. 172,73).
Note how Bartleman downplayed doctrinal purity and exalted a unity of experience. This is one of the theme songs of the Laughing Revival. One cannot bow down to the true Christ without maintaining true doctrine about Christ. The Bible warns that there are false christs, false gospels, and false spirits. The only way of protection in the midst of widespread spiritual apostasy and error is to cleave to sound doctrine and to mark and avoid false doctrine (Rom. 16:17). The Bible does not prophesy that all professing Christians will be united in a revival in the last hours of this age. It prophesies, rather, almost universal apostasy (Matt. 24:4,5,11,25).hui

Hi Judah,

I found the piece that you posted a very sad and cynical crock-pot of those of the cessasionist persausion. The constant attempt to tie it to the laughing revivals," of Toronto and of the 90s is also very sad. Also trying to tie it to ecumenicalism was just another part of the hodge-podge.

Some of us on the forum have been around many different folks from multiple and various different backgrounds and have found the Body of Christ wherever we have went. This notion of doctrinal purity has landed many a man on the gallows or at the stake.

One can certainly be of the Pentecostal persuasion and reject " false fire." But on the other hand, one cannot be of the cessasionist persuasion and accept that God is still working through the gifts of the Spirit including the sign gifts. Lets say that I believe that one must be Baptized in the Holy Spirit to be able to serve God in any real capacity, and by being Baptized in the Holy Spirit I mean a wholly secondary experience as described in the book of Acts. For believing that, there would be many who would condemn me as heretic and not doctrinally pure according to their own doctrine. This has been the scourge of Christianity for centuries, rounding up and hunting down people who do not fall in line with a particular doctrine.

I just found the whole piece sad, more like a political commentary than anything spiritual. Just my thoughts.........bro Frank

double post

"I found the piece that you posted a very sad and cynical crock-pot of those of the cessasionist persuasion."

Exactly brother Frank! It does not take much effort to dig up criticism of anyone and anything these days. Entire websites are devoted to heresy hunting and the bashing of everyone and everything that they do not agree with. Its so easy to find fault with others it really is. Oh that we all had it so together and had everything so perfectly figured out like those who run these websites. I like to think that God showed up in power and revealed His glory to a bunch of imperfect people at Azusa Street and the rest is history. What did we expect would happen? When God shows up things get real curly, real quick:-)

If we have to second guess everything and throw stones at everyone then it is US that need to check ourselves out.

Lets give thanks for what God did back then and what He is doing today and pray that maybe, just maybe...He will do it again and give us just a tiny taste of His glory and majesty like He did in days of old.

On the other hand, we must also be careful to be led of the Holy Spirit and not by the enthusiasm of man. Just because something is called a move of God, it might not be. I say this because there have been many moves of God since the beginning of the 20th century and some of them are of God and some of them are not. And then there are those things which are a mixture. Something that started in God but ended in the flesh. And then there are those things which are the result of Gods gifts and calling being on a man of God but that man may not even know God anymore. These men move in some sort of power and many things happen that could be conceived as the Holy Spirit, but if I had to guess I would not say that the Lord is in the midst of their ministry.

That said, I am not about to stand in the place of God and pick and choose who I think is of God and who is not. That is a dangerous path to travel. Many who do this have a critical spirit and a root of bitterness has grown down deep inside of them. I am not about to come up with a list or start bashing those things that I don't agree with but if someone asks me or I sense people being drawn into error I will warn them. The bottom line is that we must keep in step with the Spirit and listen to His voice and He will give us discernment and lead us into all Truth.

"Question: Are the "signs and wonders" of this so-called move of God bringing conviction of sin, a sense of fear and awe of the Living God and causing men to leave their former way of life and be reconciled to God and become sincere followers of Jesus Christ?"

Great questions William and a good way to test out a ministry/move of God. The other thing to look for is whether a move of God is drawing people to the man of God or to Jesus? Also look at their attitude towards money. If they appear to be very focused on money and/or getting you to give you money then that is a fairly good indication of where their heart is and a sign that they do not have Gods hand on them.