The History of Pentecostal Christianity
Azusa Street, Speaking in Tongues, Faith Healing, and the Rise of the Charismatic Movement

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.
One minute after midnight on January 1, 1901, a young woman in a drafty Kansas mansion began speaking in a language she had never learned—and the loudest religious noise of the twentieth century was born. From that midnight moment to the thunderous revival at Azusa Street in 1906, where a one-eyed Black preacher named William Seymour ignited a global spiritual firestorm, this sweeping narrative traces how Pentecostal Christianity exploded from obscure Midwestern prayer meetings into the second-largest tradition in Christianity, with over 600 million believers worldwide. Meet the saints and scoundrels who shaped the movement: Charles Parham, Aimee Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, Jim Bakker, and David Yonggi Cho. Witness miraculous healings and spectacular frauds, tent revivals and megachurches, integration and re-segregation, holy fire and human failure. Follow the roots back to John Wesley's Aldersgate epiphany, through the Holiness movement, Phoebe Palmer's parlor prayers, and the Third Great Awakening. Discover how speaking in tongues, faith healing, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost transformed storefront churches into a worldwide phenomenon shaping Brazilian politics, Korean megachurches, Nigerian television, and American presidential prayer breakfasts. This is the epic true story of the Charismatic Movement, revival history, American religious history, and the global spread of Spirit-filled Christianity. Perfect for listeners fascinated by church history, evangelicalism, religious biography, and the extraordinary personalities who carried the holy fire around the world.