The purpose of the essay is to discuss the growth of the 312 Azusa Street movement and its impacts upon the contemporary churches and the later years. The study also focuses influences made by life and works of William J. Seymour. While Charles F. Parham had initiated the idea of "the third blessing," a baptism with Holy Spirit, it was Seymour that founded modern Pentecostal movement through his mission in 312 Azusa Street. Though he had no education or social skills, Seymour led the Mission which became "American Jerusalem" for the Pentecostalism. By 1910, countless people visited the mission and received the Pentecostal messages. Because he was a black man in an era filled with racial discrimination, Seymour is not remembered as a great preacher. Only a few of his sermons were not extant. They were published in various issues of The Apostolic Faith. Justification, sanctification, divine healing, and the baptism with the Spirit consisted of core messages in the sermons of "the Azusa Apostle." The strong point of his preaching was the simplicity of "pure gospel." Furthermore, the movement stressed the corporate element in worship and encouraged lay-people's active participation with spiritual gifts. One of striking characters of the early Pentecostal movement was that the revival mission was interracial. As one Pentecostal historian asserted, Azusa meetings included blacks and whites, men and women: "Color line was washed away truly in the blood." Along with the success, hurts and divisions also came to Azusa Movement. Finally, after some three years of revival meetings, Azusa declined, but the Pentecostalism spread everywhere. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” describes well the relationship between the 20th-century Pentecostalism and its distinguished founder, William Seymour.

The purpose of the essay is to discuss the growth of the 312 Azusa Street movement and its impacts upon the contemporary churches and the later years. The study also focuses influences made by life and works of William J. Seymour. While Charles F. Parham had initiated the idea of "the third blessing," a baptism with Holy Spirit, it was Seymour that founded modern Pentecostal movement through his mission in 312 Azusa Street. Though he had no education or social skills, Seymour led the Mission which became "American Jerusalem" for the Pentecostalism. By 1910, countless people visited the mission and received the Pentecostal messages. Because he was a black man in an era filled with racial discrimination, Seymour is not remembered as a great preacher. Only a few of his sermons were not extant. They were published in various issues of The Apostolic Faith. Justification, sanctification, divine healing, and the baptism with the Spirit consisted of core messages in the sermons of "the Azusa Apostle." The strong point of his preaching was the simplicity of "pure gospel." Furthermore, the movement stressed the corporate element in worship and encouraged lay-people's active participation with spiritual gifts. One of striking characters of the early Pentecostal movement was that the revival mission was interracial. As one Pentecostal historian asserted, Azusa meetings included blacks and whites, men and women: "Color line was washed away truly in the blood." Along with the success, hurts and divisions also came to Azusa Movement. Finally, after some three years of revival meetings, Azusa declined, but the Pentecostalism spread everywhere. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s assertion that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” describes well the relationship between the 20th-century Pentecostalism and its distinguished founder, William Seymour.