- 5 hours ago
John examines William Durham’s influence on Pentecostal history and asks whether modern Pentecostal and charismatic churches inherited more from Durham than from William Joseph Seymour. He traces Durham’s arrival at the Azusa Street Mission, his challenge to its three-stage theology, and the rapid spread of his “Finished Work” doctrine through churches, missionary networks, and emerging denominations.
The discussion follows the movement’s development through the healing revival, Latter Rain, John Wimber, C. Peter Wagner, Bethel, and the New Apostolic Reformation. It also explores a recurring pattern in revival movements: charismatic outsiders introducing fresh revelation, building independent networks, and permanently redirecting movements whose members continue honoring their original founders.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
03:29 William Durham Changes the Pentecostal Story
09:42 Durham Before Azusa Street
14:28 The Finished Work Rewrites Pentecostal Theology
18:44 The Jenga Problem: Reforming a Faulty Foundation
24:45 From Early Pentecostalism to the New Apostolic Reformation
31:57 Wimber, Bill Johnson, and the Durham Branch
35:18 The Pattern That Keeps Repeating
40:38 Who Owns the Revival?
44:03 Seymour Won the Memory, Durham Won the Operating System
48:58 Building the Modern Movement on Durham’s Foundation
52:58 Who Is the Father of Pentecostalism?
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
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The discussion follows the movement’s development through the healing revival, Latter Rain, John Wimber, C. Peter Wagner, Bethel, and the New Apostolic Reformation. It also explores a recurring pattern in revival movements: charismatic outsiders introducing fresh revelation, building independent networks, and permanently redirecting movements whose members continue honoring their original founders.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
03:29 William Durham Changes the Pentecostal Story
09:42 Durham Before Azusa Street
14:28 The Finished Work Rewrites Pentecostal Theology
18:44 The Jenga Problem: Reforming a Faulty Foundation
24:45 From Early Pentecostalism to the New Apostolic Reformation
31:57 Wimber, Bill Johnson, and the Durham Branch
35:18 The Pattern That Keeps Repeating
40:38 Who Owns the Revival?
44:03 Seymour Won the Memory, Durham Won the Operating System
48:58 Building the Modern Movement on Durham’s Foundation
52:58 Who Is the Father of Pentecostalism?
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it,
00:46is truly stranger than fiction.
00:48In the past few episodes that I have done by myself, connecting some of the dots of research,
00:54I've been talking about the Azusa Street Revival.
00:57And it's very important because that was the epicenter of where Christianity in America
01:03began to diverge from mainstream Christianity into what would eventually evolve into today's
01:10new apostolic reformation.
01:11If you take Azusa Street out of the mix, you literally do not have a new apostolic reformation
01:17because you do not have a latter reign.
01:20You do not have a charismatic movement that evolved from latter reign.
01:23You don't have the hypercharismania that came next or the new apostolic reformation.
01:28It was the epicenter.
01:30So I'm continuing that focus.
01:32But I asked this question in the episode, I believe it was the episode where I asked who
01:38owns the fire.
01:39I asked the question, who owns the fire?
01:41And I started talking about different figures that potentially claimed ownership of the Pentecostal
01:47fire.
01:48One of which was William Durham.
01:50I do not think that there is enough significance placed on William Durham as it relates to the
01:56overall trajectory of Pentecostalism and what exists today in the new apostolic reformation,
02:02because most historians favorable of the movement will point all the way back to William Joseph
02:09Seymour as the spiritual father of the Azusa Street Revival.
02:13Which is interesting to me, because William Joseph Seymour, in his first publication of
02:18the newsletter from the Azusa Street Mission, said that Charles Fox Parham was the spiritual
02:24father of the movement.
02:25I shared that document in one of the previous podcasts, and you can go back and you can look
02:30through some of that history.
02:32But in today's episode, I'm going to ask, who was the father of the movement?
02:35Because if you point to William Joseph Seymour, and Seymour tells you very openly, very publicly,
02:43he's not the father.
02:44Charles Fox Parham was the father of the movement.
02:47What do you do with this?
02:49Historians who are favorable of the movement would never choose Parham, because Parham was
02:54spiritually ineligible.
02:56He was having sexual relations with young men and young boys, according to many, many parents.
03:03And you can read through that history as well.
03:05I won't get into it.
03:06There were things that were happening with their children they did not like.
03:10I'm going to say it like that and keep it G-rated for the podcast.
03:14It was bad.
03:15It was really, really bad.
03:16And if you say that that was the father of the movement, now you're claiming a tree that
03:21just simply can't bear good fruit.
03:24But William Joseph Seymour said he was the father.
03:27We've pointed this out.
03:29However, if you look at what happened with William Durham, that changes everything.
03:35And what do people do with this?
03:37That's one of the questions that I'm really going to drive at in this podcast, because
03:42you can't really say that today's New Apostolic Reformation inherited William Joseph Seymour's
03:48version of Pentecostalism.
03:51Yes, there are some aspects of it that they did inherit, but let's talk through this a bit.
03:56But William Durham entered into the Azusa Street Revival as just a visiting preacher.
04:01And while Seymour was away, Durham drew this enormous crowd and began teaching a doctrine
04:07that directly challenged the theology of William Joseph Seymour, which would have in turn challenged
04:15the theology of Charles Fox Parham, since Parham was one of the men who helped train William
04:21Joseph Seymour.
04:22So you have this sudden challenger of the core doctrine of the Azusa Street Mission, drawing
04:29this massive crowd and this massive revival from a mission that is telling the people
04:34there will come a big revival.
04:37So here's all these people in the Azusa Street Mission, they're being told through prophets
04:42and prophecies and dreams and visions that there will be this coming great revival.
04:49William Durham shows up and suddenly it's here.
04:52What do you do with this?
04:53Everybody was joining into it, much like they do some of the revivals we've talked about
04:58in charismatic history, New Apostolic Reformation history, where people joined in thinking
05:03this is it, this is the end, I see the revival here.
05:07And think of this, after this happened, William Durham did not just simply disappear.
05:14His theology actually spread faster than William Joseph Seymour's.
05:18His followers carried it into new churches, new denominations, there were missionary networks,
05:24and eventually much of modern charismatic Christianity started to adopt some of the theological
05:32differences that William Durham had introduced.
05:36So when William Joseph Seymour gets kind of pushed to the side, Durham takes over in this
05:42big revival, goes forth with the revival, Seymour comes back in and picks up the pieces.
05:48That's really what happened here if you follow the chain of events.
05:52And that really matters today because most of the New Apostolic Reformation leaders claim
05:59that Seymour was the ancestor of their doctrines, and yet their ministries look much more like
06:05Durham's than they do Seymour's.
06:07Seymour was not this extravagant preacher who had these flashy suits and all of the things
06:13that they have now, fancy cars, etc.
06:16He was just a humble, poor minister, probably with good intentions.
06:20I have yet to find anything that says he did not have good intentions or he was doing all
06:26of this for money, though I do have on record, we've talked about it in a few podcasts, he
06:31did make quite a bit of money off of this.
06:33There were, there's money falling out of his pockets during the revival.
06:36But yet Seymour, the man was not really, he did not appear to be attracted to this.
06:43However, when you look at what happens with William Durham's ministry, he sees this onslaught
06:48of people for this revival, and suddenly he feels big, he feels like he can make something
06:54out of this movement.
06:55And so he does it.
06:57He starts, you know, spreading the ministry, he creates a network, if you think the New Apostolic
07:03Reformation and how their networks of the apostolic networks work, and then picture what William
07:10Durham built with it with his ministry and his movement.
07:13It's really, really similar, and in fact, I would go so far as to say, when C. Peter
07:19Wagner started to take the existing networks of apostolic faith and start to brand them
07:27and give them a name, which he did, he called them the New Apostolic Reformation, I would
07:32say that many of those networks seem to favor William Durham's theology more than it did
07:38William Joseph Seymour.
07:40So I want to get into that a bit today.
07:41I want to talk to you that because it's a history that not many people are really aware
07:46of.
07:46And his North Avenue mission is really significant whenever you consider the trajectory of Pentecostalism
07:53in Chicago, where John Alexander Dowie had already left a footprint, a significant footprint.
08:00Remember that Pentecostalism formed because Charles Fox Parham went to Maine to study Frank
08:06Sanford, Sanford, and he went to Chicago, well, to Zion, Illinois, to study John Alexander Dowie
08:12and try to learn how did they amass this fortune that they did when they amassed their fortune
08:17and created their cult.
08:19Durham was in Chicago, and he would have been very, very familiar with Dowie, the doctrines
08:24of Dowie.
08:25And some of the things that he taught, though you can't say all of them came directly from
08:30Dowie, there would have been a cross-pollination of ideas.
08:34And I think that is really important to understand when you understand that most people who joined
08:40into Pentecostalism looked at Dowie and his ministry somewhat favorably, but looked at the
08:46end of his life as though it was not a good ending.
08:50And that's the point I want to really hone in on, because in the making of a destructive
08:56cult, which Dowie's sect was, there's a period of time whenever people can't discern the doctrines
09:03enough to see that these will lead down the path of destruction.
09:08They see some of the elements as good, and they share many themes, and they see them as biblical,
09:13and they don't recognize that there's a difference, a strong difference between New Testament
09:18Christianity and what they are teaching.
09:21Anybody who has studied theology and looks at the New Testament and looks at what Dowie
09:25taught, they would say they're night and day difference.
09:28You cannot, they're even incompatible.
09:31They would say it like this.
09:32I'm not a theologian, but even just simply me reading the New Testament and reading what
09:37Dowie was teaching, I'm a little bit appalled that this even took a foothold in the United
09:41States, but it took a foothold in Chicago.
09:45So the key points to take away from here are Durham was already preaching these same themes
09:52that came out of Azusa Street, conversion, sanctification, divine healing, fasting and
09:57prayer, restoration of New Testament Christianity, all of the fundamental elements of Pentecostalism
10:04before the Azusa Street revival.
10:06So then what happened after Azusa Street, the missionaries went forth and they said,
10:11we have this new thing.
10:12We're teaching this new thing that has conversion, sanctification, divine healing, prayer, restoration,
10:18all of those key elements that Durham was teaching beforehand.
10:22And Durham was just one of many.
10:24Those were not new ideas to the Azusa Street revival.
10:28But when you listen to the hyper charismatic leaders and the new apostolic leaders of today
10:34who are unfamiliar with history, which many of them are, they will point to Azusa Street
10:40as the birth of this thing.
10:42It simply was not the birth.
10:43History proves otherwise.
10:45So Durham was a significant figure, but he was initially cautious about the Pentecostal claims
10:54at the mission.
10:56These reports were spreading all throughout the United States of speaking in tongues, and
11:00they had reached all the way to Durham's congregation.
11:03And it was spreading through this network of slowly developing Pentecostalism.
11:08But it's really important to understand that he was not, he was initially cautious, and
11:14he was not just diving in headfirst.
11:16He was not an excitable person who just simply accepted it.
11:20And so he went all the way to Los Angeles to see for himself.
11:24And so therefore, this place is Durham in a different category as some of the others.
11:29He entered into Azusa Street as an investigator to see, are these claims true?
11:33But he left as one of the most effective evangelists of early Pentecostalism.
11:39So he is literally preaching the doctrine.
11:42He's one of them.
11:44And his experience at Azusa Street did transform his ministry.
11:49Durham had an advantage that the people in the Azusa Street mission did not have.
11:54And this is one of the same advantages that John Alexander Dowie had.
11:58In Chicago, in the central part of the United States,
12:02he had a strategic location geographically.
12:06Chicago was a major transportation center, immigration, publishing, religious networking.
12:12People could move through the city and could attend Durham's meetings and then carry his
12:17message elsewhere and then connect it with all of the different communities in the United
12:22States.
12:22He's in the center of the United States.
12:24Much like Dowie, when Dowieism began to spread, they could easily come into Chicago and they could
12:31come back with all of the doctrines of divine healing, restoration, all of the themes that
12:36also Durham shared with John Alexander Dowie.
12:39So his mission in Chicago became this crossroads of communities that started to establish a broad
12:49network.
12:49And that network included traveling evangelists and missionaries.
12:54You had European immigrants coming into Chicago.
12:57You had Scandinavian Pentecostals coming into Chicago, which if you know the history of latter
13:03reign, that is really significant because it was spreading through the Scandinavian Pentecostal
13:08communities.
13:09You had Italian Pentecostals, you had future denominational leaders in Chicago who were cross-pollinating
13:17ideas across all of the networks, the religious networks in Chicago.
13:21And so these ministers traveling between all of the parts of the United States and Chicago
13:27started to become a network to platform some of the ideas that Durham was spreading.
13:34And his ministry just spread like wildfire.
13:38Like Dowie in the early years in Chicago, Durham was becoming a big name among the holiness
13:42communities.
13:44And he's, again, right there where many of these ideas are being transformed through the
13:50cross-pollination of other ideas, some of which were Pentecostal, some of which were
13:54not.
13:55Theologically speaking, Durham also had an advantage as a well-established minister over some of the
14:01the other Pentecostals who were going to Azusa Street and then coming back and spreading
14:06Pentecostalism across the United States.
14:08Most of the Pentecostals who did this were just simply going to repeat what Seymour said.
14:14Seymour had the formula, we now need to carry this formula forward.
14:18But Durham had a well-established ministry.
14:21And he was, again, already preaching many of the core foundational doctrines of early Pentecostalism.
14:28So, at first, Durham was one of the most valuable assets that the Azusa Street mission had.
14:35He had visited with Seymour, he had received the experience, returned home, and he began
14:41to help spread Pentecostalism in the flavor that was birthed at Azusa Street.
14:47But, through his theological background, he began to change some of the core elements of
14:53the Pentecostal doctrine.
14:54The original Azusa framework was basically this.
14:58You had to have three major experiences, conversion, entire sanctification, and baptism of the Holy
15:05Spirit.
15:06Durham eventually began to reject the idea that a believer had to receive entire sanctification
15:12as a separate, instantaneous second work of grace.
15:17He was arguing instead that Christ dealt with sin through the finished work of Calvary, much
15:22like he heard through his doctrinal framework before becoming a Pentecostal or going to Azusa
15:28Street.
15:29So, Durham had received the Pentecostal doctrine through Seymour, but he was about to go back
15:35and to dismantle the entire bedrock of William Joseph Seymour's theological system.
15:41And again, he is one who led one of the largest revivals at Azusa Street, right there at the
15:47Mission, whenever Seymour was away, he kind of took over.
15:52People were thinking, okay, this is it.
15:53This is the doctrine.
15:55That's significant because many of those people would have went back and helped to share what
16:00Durham was preaching.
16:02And Durham's doctrines would eventually start to spread throughout the United States as part
16:06of the network.
16:07So, he was a very forceful and very controversial personality in Pentecostalism.
16:16That is something that people begin to take notice.
16:20If you're controversial and you speak with authority, you will get a crowd and people will
16:25listen to you, just like Durham did.
16:28And when you look at all of the New Apostolic Reformation preachers today, the most famous ones,
16:34the biggest ones with the biggest ministries, are the ones with the most controversy.
16:38There is a connection between controversy and fame and spreading of the movement.
16:44Durham, whether intentional or not, he started to do this.
16:49He started to become controversial largely because of his changing of the strategy of the fundamental
16:56elements of Pentecostalism.
16:58But he was also an intense revival preacher.
17:01And he was very confident in his Bible teaching, his doctrines, his biblical conclusions.
17:08So, he was speaking in the charismatic way.
17:11He had a very charismatic personality.
17:13This made him highly effective whenever he was attracting crowds and ministers in those
17:19crowds to help spread his doctrines.
17:21He was not willing to surrender or submit his doctrinal foundation to the pressure of the
17:29entire movement.
17:30So, what happened is his opponents started to view him as divisive.
17:35He's coming in to divide the people.
17:38His followers, oddly enough, viewed him as coming to correct the doctrine.
17:43The Azusa Street Mission was in error.
17:46The fundamental doctrines were in error.
17:48Durham has come to correct this.
17:51So, again, fast forward to the New Apostolic Reformation, Hypercharismania.
17:55Each one of the leaders in today's movements, they believe that they are coming to correct
18:00something that was broken, and they believe that their version is far better than the next
18:06guy's version of the doctrines.
18:08And so, people join in thinking, this is it.
18:10This is the group.
18:11They're going to bring us this rapturing faith.
18:13Or if they don't believe in the rapture, they're going to call down heaven and suddenly we'll
18:18walk out on the ashes of our enemies.
18:20Durham was that type of personality.
18:22So, that tension is very important to understand.
18:27He was a reformer.
18:28He liberated Pentecostalism from his viewpoint from a faulty doctrine.
18:34And those who opposed him thought he was just coming in to take over, and he was a divisive
18:41preacher coming to divide the body of Christ.
18:43Here's where it gets interesting, especially as it relates to the New Apostolic Reformation,
18:48for those of you who have escaped it.
18:50I had this conversation recently with Jed Hartley.
18:54We were talking about, you could view this almost like the Jenga game.
18:58When you have this core foundation, any of you who has played Jenga, you have this core
19:03foundation of ideas.
19:05When you leave it, you try to pull off just a few pieces at the top, and the structure
19:10still stands because you still have that core foundation of these ideas.
19:14It isn't until you pull one of those bottom pieces out and the whole thing comes crashing
19:18down that you realize that the whole thing was built on nothing but tottering wood that
19:23is about to fall down.
19:25Well, Durham went through that experience.
19:27And that's a key point to understand if you want to understand why this has evolved and
19:34changed and why it has lasted so long.
19:37When you have a foundation that is built in error, not only doctrinal error, but also just
19:44simply psychological human error, it had a structure for creating authority that should
19:50have never been.
19:51So there were structures in place that, in my opinion, the movement began in error.
19:57When people join into this movement, they don't want to say that they have been completely
20:02duped.
20:02So what they'll try to do is pull off a few of those Jenga pieces from the top, and they'll
20:07leave the bottom piece.
20:09Durham did this.
20:10He began asking questions that some of it did go to the core, but not all of it.
20:16He began to ask if Christ finished the work on the cross and declared it is finished, why
20:21do we need another crisis experience before we can suddenly receive everything that God has
20:27promised?
20:28So he was challenging the core doctrines of the movement, saying that scripture said otherwise,
20:36but he did not go so far as to question the movement itself.
20:41And so what happened is, as Pentecostalism has done throughout history, somebody will come
20:47and challenge something that they find wrong doctrinally, and they'll create a new branch.
20:52And this new branch will eventually evolve and produce fruit.
20:55Yet the core foundation still remains, the tree trunk still remains, and those who branch
21:01off of it won't ever examine the tree.
21:04They just examine the branch that they came from.
21:07So Durham believed that scripture pointed somewhere different than the Pentecostals at
21:13Azusa Street were pointing.
21:15And he began insisting that they need to tweak this one doctrine.
21:19In other words, we're going to stay on this tree.
21:22We're going to stay on this branch, but we're going to cause this branch to be better than
21:26the other branches of the tree.
21:28And so he began to spend the rest of his life developing this view of holiness that was
21:35somewhat based off of Pentecostalism, but had changed enough that he had opposition thinking
21:41he was creating divisions in the movement.
21:43So he introduced what he called the finished work.
21:47And this doctrine, the finished work of Calvary, the name itself explains what it was, but it
21:53simply said the cross wasn't merely the beginning.
21:56It was sufficient.
21:57The cross that Jesus died on, the work that he did on Calvary was sufficient.
22:03And sanctification began whenever a person began to trust Christ for the work that he had done
22:09on the cross and holiness was instead of an instant thing.
22:14It was a lifelong process.
22:16And that lifelong process was filled with supernatural and spiritual crises that may happen that may
22:24correct and change the trajectory of your life.
22:28Much like I've heard in several modern sermons by charismatic preachers, they will often reference
22:34the Pentecostal tree.
22:35They'll give it some reverence, but they'll say, this is a progressive thing that happens
22:40naturally through the course of your life because they are actually, believe it or not,
22:46mimicking the branch of the tree that Durham came from rather than the root of the tree that
22:51was being founded by Charles Fox Parham.
22:54But from a historical standpoint, think of the power of that, because this is not just about
23:00doctrine, it is about history, and what Durham did changed ministry itself.
23:06Under Seymour's model, people who were taught sanctification first and then baptism of the
23:11Holy Spirit and then expected this empowerment that came instantly for their ministry, what about
23:17the ministers that didn't get that?
23:19Under Durham's model, it completely changed because believers could then seek the spirit
23:25baptism without claiming to have had the entire experience of entire sanctification.
23:30In other words, to put it into layman's terms for people who are not familiar with the theology,
23:36in other words, you can be a human, you still have sin in your life, God will perfect you as
23:42you go, because all humans have sin in their life.
23:45What he was teaching was actually closer to New Testament theology, many people would argue,
23:51then Pentecostalism itself, although there were some deviations, and I won't get into that
23:56discussion.
23:57He dramatically changed the movement.
24:00That's the key to understand, because now all of the evangelists who would have openly
24:06rejected the holiness theology because of the sanctification, the entire sanctification
24:12theology, while they would have rejected that, now they could embrace Pentecostalism under
24:18Durham's model.
24:19They could say that, yes, we too believe this, we have a connection.
24:23And so what happened was, because his model was actually closer to New Testament theology,
24:30New Testament theologians and evangelists, they could start to see how their theologies could
24:36merge with Durham's, and they could join into the Pentecostal experience, albeit a different
24:42Pentecostal experience than was originally in the Azusa Street Revival.
24:46Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
24:51modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
24:57movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
24:59You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
25:05william-branham.org.
25:07On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
25:12Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
25:18audio, and digital versions of each book.
25:21You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
25:27movements.
25:27If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute
25:33button at the top.
25:34And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're
25:39listening to or watching.
25:40On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
25:46So it is at this point in the podcast that the comment feeds are starting to fill up.
25:51There are people who will clearly identify with William Joseph Seymour's version of the
25:57sanctification process and say, no, John is wrong.
26:01This guy's off in left field.
26:02Modern Pentecostalism today did not follow Durham's model.
26:06And they're correct.
26:08Then you'll have this other side of the branch that will say, you know, this is really strange
26:13because I thought we came from the Azusa Street Revival branch of Pentecostalism, and I'm
26:18starting to learn, wait a minute, we more closely match Durham.
26:23Is this history new to us?
26:25Is this something that's brand new?
26:27And at the same time, they're correct.
26:31Both can be correct because both things happen.
26:35You had Pentecostals of today, Pentecostal historians that traced it all the way back to
26:41William Joseph Seymour.
26:43Interestingly, you had some that go all the way back to Charles Fox Parham, who probably
26:47didn't think about the fact that he wasn't really eligible as a father of a movement
26:52because of his thing that he liked to do with children.
26:56You have the other side of the equation.
26:58Some people do recognize Durham, but they'll say that this was a byproduct of what happened
27:05at the Azusa Street Revival.
27:06So you have both sides that will probably argue in the comment feeds, and both are correct.
27:11That's the point I want to make.
27:13But let's talk about what happened in modern New Apostolic Reformation theology.
27:19Most NAR preachers and teachers, they're not simply repeating what Durham taught word
27:25for word.
27:26So if you're a historian, you're probably already in the comment feed saying, no, no, no,
27:30no.
27:31This isn't right.
27:32We don't match Durham.
27:34And they're also correct.
27:35So now you've got three parties that are also correct.
27:38You have, you know, this progression of ideas from Pentecostalism to latter rain, healing
27:44revival, so on and so forth.
27:46My point is picture it like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger.
27:51Well, picture it also rolling up the next hill, getting smaller as it goes, unloading
27:56some of the doctrines.
27:57It has changed and morphed over time.
27:59So you can't say that it's apples to apples, but you also can't say it's apples to oranges.
28:05This is also, this is a tree bearing fruit, and it's all fruit from the same tree.
28:10That's the point I want to make.
28:12Randy Clark may be the clearest modern example of this.
28:17The Global Awakening community, if I remember correct, I read through some of their statement
28:21of faith, and they believe, you know, the Pentecostal type experience, Holy Spirit indwells every
28:27believer, Jesus baptizes believers in the Holy Spirit.
28:30There's a conscious experience that is happening in the believers, and it occurs almost always
28:37after their conversion.
28:38He is talking about a conversion and a subsequent empowerment, whereas the core of Azusa Street
28:45was conversion, and then suddenly, bam, you got it all.
28:48And so Durham is more closely aligned with Clark than Seymour, and yet at the same time,
28:56I don't know that Clark would say he traces his lineage back to Durham.
29:00It's just this cross-pollination of ideas.
29:03But think of the things that Durham is teaching, how close it is aligned, and think of the things
29:08he adds.
29:09Clark took Durham's subsequent empowerment and started to say, with this, we can expand to
29:15healing and deliverance, impartation, the words of knowledge, prophecy, basically all of
29:20the things that came in the charismatic movement.
29:22Clark has taken that route, and that route is a descendant of the Durham theology.
29:29This is something that, yes, they might claim that they go back to the Azusa Street revival,
29:34but which revival is it?
29:35Is it Durham's revival?
29:37Is it Parham's revival?
29:38There were two competing revivals, is what I'm trying to say.
29:41John Wimber, though, he took Durham's structure of theology, and he made it acceptable to
29:49evangelicals.
29:50I know that that's the other point where the comment feeds will explode.
29:54Everybody hates it when I connect John Wimber to this.
29:57But as a part of history, you have to understand that this was an evolving, changing set of
30:03doctrines.
30:04Wimber is not usually classified with the New Apostolic Reformation, because he and Wagner
30:12had some key differences, and we've talked about that a few times in the podcast.
30:17But if you try to disconnect him from the New Apostolic Reformation, it doesn't work, because
30:22without Wimber, you really don't evolve into the NAR.
30:26So Wimber emphasized doing the stuff, healing the sick, casting out the demons, all of this
30:31stuff, and that is essentially Durham's stage, but pushed one or two steps further.
30:37He's saying that you get this experience, and now we can appreciate the experience.
30:42We can feel the experience, and then we can start doing things because of the experience.
30:48So Durham said that you did not have to have entire sanctification before the spirit baptism,
30:54and Wimber's movement effectively said that you really don't need classical Pentecostal
31:00identity at all.
31:02You just need to start opening yourself to the spirit to change you and evolve you into
31:08these things.
31:09That is the Durham branch.
31:11That is not the branch that came from William Joseph Seymour.
31:15So it could be argued that Wimber's ministry – this is far out there, and I'm not going
31:21to say that this is true, but it could be argued that his ministry was more of a descendant
31:26of Durham and the networks that were established because of Durham.
31:30I don't believe that is the case because, again, cross-pollination of ideas.
31:35As Durham's ministry is spreading throughout all of these networks, they begin influencing
31:40people.
31:41You have other doctrines coming in.
31:43And I don't believe that what Wimber brought was anything new.
31:47I believe that he was teaching what other people were already saying within the networks,
31:52and many of those networks had already been influenced by Durham.
31:57Take it to Bill Johnson, the Bethel intensity on power and prayer.
32:02Bill Johnson openly admitted that he was very strongly supportive of what Wimber did.
32:09And there's some key ties there.
32:11I won't get into that.
32:12That's probably another podcast for another day.
32:15But Seymour's theology was not so impactful on Bill Johnson's theology as Durham's was.
32:24Bethel does not normally require believers to have a distinct crisis of experience and then
32:29suddenly an entire sanctification before pursuing the healing, the prophecy, words of knowledge,
32:34knowledge, etc.
32:36Instead, emphasis is placed on the believer's identity in Christ.
32:40You hear the sermons about the indwelling of the Spirit, access to the presence, all of
32:45the things that essentially John Wimber and others were preaching, which was, again, from
32:50the Durham side of the equation.
32:52They believed that this was a process.
32:54And after the sanctification came, this process continues and come to our church and you can
33:00have this big process in our massive megachurch.
33:03So there was a major shift.
33:06That's the point I'm trying to drive at.
33:08Seymour was a person who would ask the question, has this person who has now come before me been purified
33:15and filled with divine love in this moment?
33:19And there are examples in the newspapers.
33:21We talked about it in some of the previous podcasts where people came seeking that experience
33:26and because they didn't instantly have it, Seymour and others were kicking them out of the revival.
33:32No, you don't have it.
33:33I don't see it.
33:34Get out of here.
33:36That's recorded in the newspapers.
33:38You can read it yourself.
33:39The Bethel style would be more permissive of those people.
33:43Come.
33:43You're welcome.
33:44Yes.
33:45Join us.
33:46Experience God.
33:47Experience this thing that we have.
33:50We have this divine love and we got it because we allowed ourselves to progress towards it.
33:55So they're taking the Durham side where the Seymour side actually is destructive to the movement
34:01in that it has the potential to reject people from even getting the experience in the more extreme cases.
34:10And ironically, the initial revival at Azusa Street was the more extreme case.
34:16In many ways, that is probably why when Durham came and held the revival, most people were
34:22more acceptive of that because it had the potential to attract bigger crowds of people
34:27because more and more people can be filled with the spirit that Durham is preaching.
34:32Whereas Seymour's version, this is just this little tiny group and then we're going to be carried away
34:37into the heavens when the earth is destroyed here in the next few days.
34:41That's how it was initially preached.
34:44So there is a significant difference between what is being taught in the New Apostolic Reformation
34:50today and what Seymour began with the birth of the Azusa Street revival.
34:55So at this point, some of you are asking, why does this matter?
34:59What does it matter if there was a division?
35:01What does it matter if Durham taught something that is more closely aligned to the New Apostolic
35:06Reformation today and Seymour taught something that was overall, it was pretty much rejected
35:12by a lot in the movement?
35:15Why does that matter?
35:16For me, it matters because of history.
35:19History shows that patterns repeat themselves.
35:23And this is where it gets important because what Durham created is a pattern that would eventually
35:29begin repeating itself in this endless cycle.
35:32I don't think that Durham intended to create the New Apostolic Reformation.
35:36So if you're looking at that as importance and you're trying to look at this from the
35:40Durham perspective, that's not at all where I'm headed.
35:44In fact, I don't think if you go back and study what he said, he could have never imagined
35:48a massive megachurch like Bethel or any of these places, IHOP, KC, whatever, where people
35:55were coming and getting coffee right before they went in and all of these smokes and lights and
36:00all of the things that attract the people and use this psychological effect on the people
36:06in the pews.
36:07Durham would have thought that is from Satan himself.
36:10That's the temple of the devil.
36:11That's really what he would have thought.
36:14But he unintentionally established a pattern that you can watch repeating for more than a
36:21century.
36:22Over and over it repeats.
36:23The pattern is this.
36:24You have the charismatic outsider.
36:27Durham wasn't the recognized authority of the revival.
36:31He was the visiting minister who came in.
36:34He was the guest speaker.
36:35He's the guy who comes on stage that's invited or either just shows up.
36:40And picture him like the conference preachers of the New Apostolic Reformation.
36:44This is the conference preacher that stole the show.
36:48He comes in.
36:49He brings a new, fresh revelation.
36:51And we have seen that time and time again.
36:54William Branham did it.
36:55Paul Cain did it.
36:56Oral Roberts did it.
36:57Todd Bentley.
36:58Sean Bolts.
36:59All of these guys come in as the outsider who stole the show because they have this very,
37:04very charismatic preacher.
37:07And so when people get kind of, I don't know, tired, the ministry is starting to repeat some
37:13of the things that they're saying.
37:15Suddenly there's a fresh face that comes into the crowd and the itching ears just perk up.
37:20And that's really what is happening here.
37:23Durham wasn't the recognized leader, but he came in and he had that personality.
37:28And suddenly what he developed was platform over institution.
37:33He comes in.
37:34He wasn't looking to hold office, but instead he began preaching.
37:39Now suddenly he realized that, wait a minute, there's a lot of people listening to this.
37:43Let's bring publications.
37:46Let's send out invitations.
37:48Let's go to guest preaching.
37:51I don't know that they had conventions back then, but they would often go to the other
37:55churches in the revival circuit.
37:57They were building up this network of relationships.
38:00And with that, they were establishing not only reputation, but essentially a marketing or a
38:07branding of the ministry.
38:08And that's exactly how the New Apostolic Reformation functions.
38:12That's exactly how hyper charismatic movements functions.
38:15You can take that all the way down the line.
38:17Lateran functioned the same way.
38:20This type of influence from this outsider who comes in and steals the show, that is what
38:26is happening.
38:27And when they steal the show, they take a part of the people with them.
38:31And if you think back to that tree, they're just growing another branch.
38:35And then what happens is another person comes along.
38:38They steal the show.
38:38They grow another branch.
38:40So this tree just keeps growing and growing and turns into this weird tree that I don't
38:45know could possibly stand.
38:47And eventually maybe it won't.
38:49But the key out of everything that I just said is the fresh revelation.
38:53When people become tired of just simply hearing the gospel, they have to hear something else.
38:58And preachers are trying so hard to captivate the people who are just tired of – they're
39:06Christians with itching ears.
39:07I'm going to say it like that.
39:09They're not really satisfied with the gospel.
39:13That's probably a better way to say it than I just said.
39:15They're not satisfied with the gospel.
39:17And so let's look for something new.
39:19Well, suddenly a new guy comes in with a fresh revelation.
39:22Durham did this.
39:23He believed that everybody in the revival had misunderstood sanctification.
39:28So modern apostles frequently claim that God is restoring truths whenever these leaders
39:34come in with these new revelations.
39:36That's why they invite the people to come in and share the platform.
39:40Let's hear what the next guy has as fresh revelation, fresh manna from God, they'll call
39:44it.
39:45And they believe that this is a way of restoring the church.
39:48And what they don't realize, it's not only destructive to their own ministries, it is
39:54actually destructive to the entire tree.
39:56Because if you grow enough branches off of the tree, it's going to get top-heavy, and
40:00eventually it's just going to topple with the next storm.
40:04That's what is happening here.
40:05Fresh revelation is actually bringing in different doctrines.
40:09In Durham's case, and in many of the cases along the line, some of these doctrines are polar
40:15opposite from the core root that is holding up the tree.
40:20So these fresh revelations, they're destructive to the movement.
40:23And if you really think back to how Pentecostalism began, it began in the same way.
40:29It's a fresh revelation.
40:30Let's branch off of mainstream Christianity.
40:33The other thing it does is really, really odd when you think about it.
40:38Most Christians view the central authority of the church to be Jesus.
40:45The work that he did on the cross, it is finished.
40:48But when you look through these revival movements, they all point to cities.
40:52Azusa Street, they had a big revival.
40:54It's so important to us.
40:55They hold these conventions there.
40:58Chicago, you had the healing revivals that went into the United States and Canada.
41:02There were many cities along the way.
41:04Kansas City, it's a big one, Kansas City Prophets, the Toronto Blessing, Pensacola, Florida, Bethel,
41:10all of these different locations.
41:13It is a movement that keeps decentralizing itself because they're trying to put the authority
41:19of the movement into a specific location, into a specific set of God's generals.
41:26In other words, the humans own the movement.
41:29I asked before in the last few podcasts, who owns the revival?
41:32Who owns the fire?
41:34It is the humans that owns the fire and the revival.
41:38And they have a central location.
41:41Or they're just part of the network.
41:43Like the healing revival, you could say it's spreading throughout the world.
41:48But there are key locations that become central.
41:51And we had an experience in that location.
41:53I heard a person talking in Branhamism, and they said, I remember down in Shreveport, I
41:59was there.
42:00I felt it.
42:00That was God's presence.
42:02There will never be another moment like that.
42:04And I had another lady who was on the podcast sometime back, and she said, same thing in
42:09Florida.
42:10We felt it.
42:11That was it.
42:12That was there.
42:12And it wasn't until later, whenever I escaped, I realized that you can't put God into a revival
42:18and say that that's the only time you're going to experience.
42:21But the movement keeps decentralizing because they haven't recognized who owns the movement,
42:27who owns the revival.
42:29So Durham's greatest legacy in all of this wasn't that he created a new doctrine.
42:35It wasn't even that he had adjusted the doctrine that existed.
42:39It was that he proved to be, as one of the gifted, traveling, charismatic ministers, he
42:47proved that he could permanently redirect the entire movement.
42:51And he did.
42:53So again, I'll ask the question, who is the father?
42:56Is it Durham?
42:58Is it Charles Fox Parham?
42:59Is it William Joseph Seymour?
43:01Who is the father who led the movement?
43:05Did Durham win?
43:06That is really one of the key questions, because if you walked into most Pentecostal churches
43:11today, who would you actually recognize when you hear those doctrines?
43:16Would you recognize what Seymour preached or would you recognize what Durham preached?
43:20And I'm not talking about the superficial doctrines.
43:23I'm really talking about the core of this.
43:26Most Pentecostals, by and large, would immediately answer Seymour.
43:30They would say, we are the one that follows Seymour.
43:33You look at their literature.
43:35He's got his picture all over it.
43:37His picture hangs in seminaries for Pentecostal movement.
43:40He appears in all these documentaries.
43:43His revival is always celebrated how the Azusa Street revival set the pattern for all of the
43:50future revivals.
43:52But that's not really the question here.
43:55The question is, which man's theology are the churches in the movement actually practicing?
44:01And in doing so, who are they making the father of their theology, the father of their movement?
44:07Here's where it gets interesting.
44:09Seymour won the memory.
44:12Seymour became the symbol of Pentecostalism.
44:15He had everything that you would want in a Pentecostal minister.
44:19He was a humble pastor.
44:21It was an interracial revival at a time when that was not really widely accepted.
44:26He had the prayer meetings, the miracles.
44:29He had the famous building that everybody goes to that's like a shrine when you go out to L.A.
44:35Anybody who tells the story, they will tell their story connecting it back to Seymour.
44:40He's the beginning.
44:41Usually he is the hero of the Pentecostal story.
44:45But Durham won the operating system of the movement.
44:50Movements aren't just built on symbols and heroes.
44:53They're built on the theology or the ideologies.
44:57And if you examine that ideology that Seymour developed, it's far different from what Durham
45:03changed.
45:05And if you follow the Durham pattern, you start to realize that his ideas became the normal
45:10position within the Pentecostal movement.
45:12So Pentecostal movements today, when they look at Durham, they say, no, we're not like
45:18that.
45:18He came in and he tried to rob the revival from us.
45:21But yet they believe the finished work of Calvary.
45:25There's almost not a single Pentecostal minister that would argue against the finished work at
45:31Calvary.
45:31They believe that sanctification is progressive in most cases, not all.
45:36They believe that the spirit baptism may occur after the conversion.
45:40That was deeply rooted in what Durham was saying was wrong with early Pentecostalism.
45:46Supernatural gifts are available to even the ordinary believers.
45:50And the minister doesn't require this crisis to come into the entire sanctification.
45:56Anyone who preaches that, they're actually preaching Durham's legacy.
46:00But I'll take it a step further because, remember, in earlier podcasts, there were people that
46:06were being turned away from the Azusa Street revival because they came in wanting to get
46:11the experience, claiming that they had already had an experience.
46:16And so they were rejected.
46:18They said, no, you can't have it.
46:19What you had wasn't real.
46:21That was not how Durham taught it.
46:23Durham taught you could come to Jesus.
46:25You could get your heart right with God.
46:27And then he would correct you as time goes because it is finished.
46:31That is the Durham legacy.
46:33That is not the Seymour legacy.
46:34What Durham created is something that would evolve over time.
46:38But what he changed really matters because the framework that he developed for the sanctification
46:45process, it became widely spread throughout the healing revival.
46:50William Branham, Oral Roberts, A.A. Allen, T.L. Osborne, all of these guys are preaching
46:55the Durham side of the equation because it invited people of different types of faith into the
47:03movement rather than openly rejecting them because they could not get along with this.
47:08Whenever you think about that and then think what came later, the Lateran movement developed
47:13after this, and there was this cross-pollination of ideas from people who were Pentecostal and
47:18people who weren't Pentecostal.
47:20Whenever Branham died and it started to transition into the charismatic movement, charismatic renewal,
47:26you had people like John Wimber who were building on ideas that they probably didn't even take
47:32all the way back to, historically, back to Durham.
47:35They thought it went back to Seymour.
47:37But again, it was not the doctrinal framework that Seymour created.
47:42They wanted the open door.
47:44It was an open-door policy.
47:45Come.
47:45God will change you.
47:47The work is done on the cross already.
47:48It is finished.
47:50John Wimber was teaching this, and I'll say this, that aligns more closely with the New
47:54Testament than what they were preaching in early Pentecostalism.
47:57C. Peter Wagner, New Apostolic Reformation, same thing.
48:01The more you open the door to people to come in, get into the faith, and then start to enter
48:09into the sanctification process, the more you're aligned with Durham, and that is the
48:13open-door policy of the New Apostolic Reformation.
48:16Come out of your church.
48:17It's cold and formal.
48:18Come to our church, and we will change you.
48:20So the further you move in history away from Seymour, the further the doctrines also shift
48:27away from Seymour, and a lot of that is due to the fact that Durham invited people into
48:34the Pentecostal movement who could be more aligned with the finished work.
48:38That is really what has happened here.
48:40So people who are standing on this side of the argument, they're actually standing on
48:45the Durham side.
48:46So you could clearly say that in the history that we've examined, Durham was the clear winner
48:52of who is the father of the movement.
48:55So here's the fascinating part.
48:58As I mentioned, it's like a snowball going down a hill.
49:00It gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it slightly, you know, rolls up a hill,
49:05slightly getting smaller, taking some of the things off.
49:07Think of it rolling down the hill.
49:10Durham says we have progressive sanctification, and that becomes one of the core elements of
49:16what spreads throughout the holiness networks that are aligned with the Durham side.
49:21William Branham comes along, and he adds to this, the prophet restores the truth.
49:27Latterain comes along, and it says the church will be mature enough to finish God's work.
49:32John Wimber comes along and says, we're going to finish God's work.
49:35Everybody gets to do the stuff.
49:38Bethel comes along and says, everyone can be activated to do the stuff.
49:43New Apostolic Reformation says the apostles are going to equip the church to do the stuff,
49:48to transform the nations.
49:50These are all different doctrines, but as you can see, they're all built on a foundation
49:55where the supernatural ministry is available before an experience of an entire sanctification
50:02occurs.
50:02In other words, they're all elements of a doctrine that can only exist because of what
50:09Durham taught.
50:10As I mentioned before, this Jenga game, how you have this stack of blocks in this game,
50:16and you pull one piece out of the bottom, the whole thing can come tumbling down.
50:19Well, there is another way to make it tumble.
50:22If you've been, like me, if you have an experimenting mind, and you have two Jenga games instead of
50:27one, what happens whenever you stack two of them tall?
50:32Does the game play the same?
50:33If I pull one out of the top of the first game, will not the whole thing fall over?
50:37What happens if I add a third, and a fourth, and a fifth?
50:41Think back to what I said about how this progressed.
50:44Durham laid the foundation.
50:46Lateran built upon that.
50:48You had the healing revivals.
50:49You had all the way through the charismatic movement to the NAR.
50:53Each one of these stock, basically stacking themselves on top of the same types of doctrine.
50:58They do change.
50:59They do evolve.
51:00I understand this.
51:01But the core foundation of the holiness movement still does exist.
51:05And it existed because of Durham's side of the equation, which most at the top of the
51:10stack would say is incorrect.
51:12So therefore, if it is incorrect, and you've got this Jenga game, you must therefore pull
51:18out the pieces that are incorrect at the bottom of the stack.
51:21And what happens when you do this?
51:24I would argue that there is a different father of the movement.
51:27The Bible talks about God is not the author of confusion.
51:32And whenever you have a movement that says, this revival was the epicenter, and then before
51:39the revival is even over, you have an opposing party who's part of the same revival who says,
51:45no, that formula won't work for salvation.
51:48We need a new formula.
51:49You have this immediate confusion.
51:52Which one is right?
51:53Which one is the father?
51:55The simple fact that I'm asking, who is the father, really answers the question.
52:00I don't even have to answer it for you.
52:02You cannot find a father because it is multiplying confusion.
52:07This is a movement that multiplies itself in confusion.
52:12Does that mean it's all wrong?
52:13Absolutely not.
52:15I will never say that.
52:16But, if you examine the fruits of this ministry, you have to think back and understand, this
52:23was confusing from the very beginning.
52:25From its inception, it was confusing.
52:27And people today, if they were to go back and hear the sermons that were being preached
52:33at the original Azusa Street revival, before William Durham came in and changed it, they
52:38would say, you guys don't know theology.
52:41You don't know salvation.
52:42Have you actually read this Bible you're preaching from?
52:45And then, the irony of that is, there would be people in that building who said, no, I
52:50can't read.
52:51I'm preaching from it, but I can't read it.
52:53That was literally said, that is almost verbatim a quote from the Azusa Street revival.
52:59So, to summarize this question of who's your daddy, I'm going to do it like this.
53:04William Joseph Seymour gave Pentecostalism its birthplace, and he declared that Charles
53:10Fox Parham was the father of the movement.
53:13William Durham changed the Pentecostal theology, and his Finnish work doctrine replaced the original
53:20doctrine of the movement.
53:21Durham's theology made Pentecostalism more accessible, and more and more people came
53:27into the movement.
53:28That same theological shift changed the ministry culture of Pentecostalism.
53:34And the New Apostolic Reformation inherits much of its framework from that doctrine, progressive
53:40sanctification, subsequent empowerment and gifts and doing the stuff, independent apostolic
53:46networks, activation of spiritual gifts.
53:49All of these things come from the framework.
53:52So, think of it like this.
53:54William Joseph Seymour gave Pentecostalism its greatest revival.
53:58Then, William Durham came in shortly after and totally reshaped its theology.
54:04More than a century later, we're talking about things in sermons that came from William Durham,
54:10not from William Joseph Seymour.
54:12So, the church today is still living with the consequences of not knowing who its father
54:19is.
54:20So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
54:23the web.
54:24You can find us at william-branham.org.
54:26For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion
54:30from Christian Identity to the NAR.
54:33Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:53So, we'll see you next time.
54:59We'll see you next time.
54:59Bye-bye.
55:00Bye-bye.
55:00Bye-bye.
55:03Bye-bye.
55:06Bye-bye.
55:10Bye-bye.
55:12Bye-bye.
55:15Bye-bye.
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