Bethel Bible School's Divine Assignment
In October 1900, Charles Fox Parham opened Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas. Unlike traditional schools, there were no tuition fees - students lived by faith and studied Scripture intensively. Parham was convinced there had to be a Biblical evidence for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but he did not know what it was.
Before the Christmas break, Parham gave his students an assignment: search the Scriptures and discover "the real Bible evidence of this baptism." When they reconvened just before New Year's, all forty students had independently reached the same conclusion - the Biblical evidence was speaking in tongues.
Agnes Ozman's First Pentecostal Experience
On New Year's Eve 1900, the students gathered to pray for this promised baptism. Among them was Agnes Ozman, a young woman who had felt called to foreign missions. At about 11 PM on January 1, 1901, Agnes asked Parham to lay hands on her and pray that she might receive the Holy Spirit.
"I had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her," Parham later wrote. Agnes began to speak in what witnesses described as the Chinese language. According to her fellow students, a halo surrounded her face, and for three days she could not speak English - only write in Chinese characters.
Agnes Ozman's Speaking in Tongues Testimony
Agnes herself testified: "It was as if hands were laid upon my head that the Holy Spirit fell upon me and I began to speak in tongues, glorifying God. I talked several languages, and it was clearly manifest when a new dialect was spoken. I had the added joy and glory my heart longed for, and a depth of the presence of the Lord within that I had never known before."
The Birth of Pentecostal Movement
Within days, Parham and thirty-four other students also received this experience. From this small Bible school in Topeka, the Pentecostal movement was born - a movement that would sweep the globe and today numbers over 500 million believers worldwide.
