Answers · The Church & Its History
Where did the Apostolic movement come from?
The Apostolic movement's own answer is that it did not begin in the modern century at all. It begins where the church begins — at Pentecost, when the promise Joel had spoken was poured out upon all flesh. The History page of this site opens its timeline there: the Holy Ghost given in Jerusalem, about three thousand souls added in a day, and those converts baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:"
— Joel 2:28 (KJV)
Peter framed that day as a promise with a long reach — and the History page traces the witness down the centuries that followed: the Shepherd of Hermas still tying baptism to bearing the name of the Son of God, the Didache still admitting to the Lord's table only those "baptized into the name of the Lord." The experience and the name were never wholly lost to the record, even when they lay far from the church's common life.
"For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."
— Acts 2:39 (KJV)
The modern movement opens at Topeka, Kansas. At a small Bible school there, students of Charles F. Parham concluded from their study of Acts that speaking in tongues accompanied the baptism of the Holy Ghost; the experience reported there on January 1, 1901 is generally taken as the opening event of the modern Pentecostal movement.
From Parham's Houston school, William J. Seymour carried the message to Los Angeles, and in April 1906 the meetings at 312 Azusa Street became the fountainhead the story is usually told from — services day and night for roughly three years, reported in Seymour's paper, The Apostolic Faith, and carried by departing visitors and missionaries across the United States and around the world. The movement's claim throughout is the same: not a new church, but the apostolic one, recovered.