Who was Charles Parham?
excerpt from ‘The Life of Charles F Parham’ by Sarah Parham. Garland Publishing. 1985.
"Parham could not shift this awful pestilence. He was ‘repelled’ by what he witnessed and when he attempted to rectify the situation, Seymour and his followers split from him. They did not like it. This is exactly how Toronto Blessing leaders reacted to rebuke and help from faithful Christians. Parham saw hypnotists (occultists) practicing hypnotism at the altar. Later, he confessed that it was all of Satan, for he saw "hypnotic influences, familiar spirit influences, spiritualistic influences, mesmeric influences and all kinds of spells and spasms, falling in trances etc….” He refuted them as being of God, as his own wife testified. It transpired that Parham was "not wanted” at Azusa Street. Why not? Because one of the elders was himself a hypnotist, who passed on the power to speak in tongues to others! Or as Parham put it: "chattering, jabbering, speaking in no language at all.”
Charles Parham was a full fledged member of the KKK in 1910….9 years after the Azusa Street ‘revival.’ How can the father of a spiritual movement be a member of the KKK?
Charles Parham was a free mason, a member of the Baxter Springs Masonic Lodge 12.
Charles Parham was documented to ‘mental, emotional, psychological and sociological disorders…’
the following: by Anton Chaitkin
According to Pentecostal lore, the movement began when a woman spoke in tongues in the church of Charles Fox Parham in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901. Reverend Parham spread the method until it blossomed in the famous Azusa Street, Los Angeles, revival of 1906; from there, disciples took it around the world.
During the year preceeding the launch-time, Parham had caught fire with British Israelism. He had been indoctrinated into the Empire's mystery cult by emissaries of one Frank Sandford, who ran a cult center called Shiloh, near Durham, Maine. Parham made a pilgrimage and studied under Sandford at Shiloh, after which the two of them went on tour through Canada.
Sandford had made the New England Toryism of his fancy Anglophile family relations into a career, travelling back and forth to England, working to inculcate Americans into the British Empire gospel.
In those days, British Israelism was not shy. Its literature, such as The Anglo-American Alliance in Prophecy, or The Promise to the Fathers, published by Our Race Publishing Co., featured the masonic mummery of a pyramid topped by an all-seeing eyeball. The Egyptian pyramids allegedly contained coded secrets for understanding prophecy. The explicit message of the British Israel propaganda was, Americans should give up their mistaken Revolution, and reunite with their Anglo-Saxon racial brethren in the English fatherland. The movement's masonic Anglomania was proudly displayed. Parham's biography, written by his daughter, includes a photo of a mystery gavel, brought back from Palestine and donated by Parham to his masonic lodge.
With British Israelism as his theory of man's cosmic destiny, Parham began teaching Americans how to die mentally, to speak in tongues, as a religious exercise, allegedly re-creating the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Christ's Apostles during the Jewish feast of Pentecost. He took this show on the road from Topeka, and in Houston, Texas, a black preacher named William J. Seymour, the son of a slave, became part of his audience. The catch was, that Parham, being a crazed racist, would not permit Seymour inside the lecture hall; he had to listen at the window, or in the hallway.
Much is made of Seymour's spreading of the technique to a mostly black congregation on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, and of the fascination and novelty it held for visiting religious adventurers who took "Pentecostalism" out to the world. The movement was widely condemned by Christians as scandalous exploitation, and its historical origins faded into the mist. Frank Sandford spent ten years in jail for manslaughter, after many of his cult members died. Charles Parham's religious vocation was destroyed when he was charged with sodomizing a young male follower in Texas; Parham went on to a new career as a stump speaker for the Ku Klux Klan.
the following by: Paul Fahy
Seymour later admitted that the exuberance of tongue speaking had provided an open door for witches, spiritualists and free love to enter meetings. Parham was so incensed by what he described as ‘animalism’ and ‘all kinds of spells’ that he said, ‘God is sick at His stomach’.
Spiritualists and mediums from all over Los Angeles began to attend the meetings and even contributed their seances and trances to the meetings. Although this disturbed Seymour, he could not control it. The big question is - how can a genuine move of God attract the denizens of Satan. Answer - it cannot, it must have a root in Satan himself, or at the very least, be a mixture and be undisciplined so that evil can operate freely. If it was a powerful move of God, witches would have been unable to get anywhere near the meeting. Frank Bartleman said that there were so many spiritualists and hypnotists and crooks involved in the meetings that people were afraid that the devil would get them, and Bartleman was a Pentecostal supporter, not a critic.
The fact that witches, mediums and other Spiritists could feel at home, secure and contribute in the meetings is a most devastating indictment of the source of the manifestations. Sin flees from the presence of God or is consumed. The Spirit behind Azusa Street could not be from God. If even Parham could see that Satan was behind the activities in the mission, something must have been seriously wrong.
The poor testimony of the behaviour expressed reveals bad fruit which was condemned by secular and religious commentators. At the very least, Seymour disobeyed the scriptural injunction to conduct meetings decently and in order. The fruit of this movement was contention, division, fragmentation, separation and castigation by other church groups. Many members became afflicted by the devil in one form or another and required help from outside. Even Bartleman would admit that by 1925 the ‘tarrying’ rooms were too often full of fleshly enthusiasm, blowing off steam and full o mental intoxication. He called them a ‘lethal chamber, with very little of the pure Spirit of God’.
In the years to come, many serious errors would grow out of this fertile ground like Latter Rain teaching, The Healing Movement (Branhamism) Restorationism, Ecumenism right up to Toronto type aberrations.
the following by: David Cloud
Though William Seymour and Charles Parham have been called "the co-founders of world Pentecostalism" Parham never accepted the Azusa Street experience as genuine. According to Parham, two-thirds of the people that professed Pentecostalism in his day were "either hypnotized or spook driven"
Though there were many reports about healing and financial miracles at Azusa, the bank eventually foreclosed on the church's property and Seymour died young at 52 years old and was in poor health for a long time before that. A few months before his death Seymour was described as "worn, tired, and decrepit" (John Matthews, Speaking in Tongues, 1925, p. 14).