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Holiness Roots

1867 National Holiness Association forms in Vineland, New Jersey

1879 Isaiah Reed forms the largest holiness association in America, the Iowa Holiness Association

1887 A. B. Simpson founds the Christian and Missionary Alliance to promote the Holiness “Fourfold Gospel”

1895 B. H. Irwin teaches a third blessing “baptism of Fire,” splitting the Iowa Holiness Association and forming the Iowa Fire-Baptized Holiness Association

1896 Schearer Schoolhouse Fire-Baptized Holiness revival experiences tongues

1897 Charles H. Mason and C.T. Jones form the Church of God in Christ in Lexington, Mississippi

1898 First congregation of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina

Pentecostal Birth

1901 Agnes Ozman speaks in tongues in Topeka. Charles Parham calls tongues the “Bible evidence” for baptism in the Spirit

1902 First congregation of the Church of God formed at Camp Creek, North Carolina

1905 William Seymour accepts Pentecostal doctrine from Parham in Houston, Texas

1906 First General Assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.)

1906–1909 Azusa Street Revival; Pentecostalism becomes global under Seymour’s leadership

1907 T. B. Barrett opens Pentecostal meetings in Oslo. Begins Pentecostal movements in Scandinavia, England, and Germany

1907 G. B. Cashwell spreads Pentecostalism in the South

1908 John G. Lake begins South African Apostolic Faith Mission

1908 Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) accepts Pentecostalism under A. J. Tomlinson

1909 Luigi Francescon and Giacomo Lombardi begin Italian Pentecostal movements in the U.S., Italy, Argentina, and Brazil

1909 German evangelicals condemn Pentecostals in the “Berlin Declaration”

1909 Florence Crawford founds the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon

Maturing Movement

1910 W. H. Durham begins “Finished Work” movement in Chicago

1912 Maria Woodworth-Etter becomes a popular Pentecostal preacher in Dallas

1914 The Assemblies of God formed in Hot Springs, Arkansas

1916 The Oneness Movement splits the Assemblies of God

1919 Pentecostal Assemblies of the World incorporated

1923 A. J. Tomlinson forms the Church of God of Prophecy

1927 Aimee Semple McPherson forms International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Los Angeles

1928 Mary Rumsey opens first Pentecostal missions to Korea and Japan

1943 American Pentecostal churches accepted as charter members of the National Association of Evangelicals

1945 Several mergers produce the United Pentecostal Church (Missouri)

1948 Healing crusades begin under William Branham and Oral Roberts

World Events

1867 Karl Marx predicts a proletariat takeover in Das Kapital

1877 Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, recording the words “Mary had a little lamb”

1883 Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, writes, “I teach you the Superman. Man is something to be surpassed.”

1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams, one of the seminal works of psychoanalysis

1901 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean

1903 Bicycle mechanics Orville and Wilbur Wright fly the first airplane

1905 Albert Einstein begins publishing his theory of relativity

1912 The Titanic sinks, killing 1,500 passengers and crew

1917 Bolshevik troops, led by Vladmir Lenin, take control in Russia

1925 Adolf Hitler pens Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

1926 Television invented in London by John Logie Baird

1927 Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic Ocean alone in his Spirit of St. Louis

1941 Rudolf Bultmann questions biblical history in his New Testament and Mythology

1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Resources:

Vinson Synan is the author of one of the main scholarly works on Pentecostalism, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. Fortunately, it’s also one of the best reads.

Links:

The International Pentecostal Holiness Church has their own beautifully designed (and inclusive) timeline.

Another Pentecostal timeline is available online.

By Vinson Synan

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