At the Azusa Street Mission, exactly the opposite was true. This is why I have chosen to highlight the Azusa Street Mission as the birthplace of global Pentecostalism. Essentially, when someone spoke in a tongue, the mission followed a simple four-step program. First, they attempted to identify the language. Second, if they felt they had identified it, they sought to establish whether the speaker believed he or she had a received a missionary “call.” Third, if the tongues-speaker claimed to have such a call, the mission staff tried to discern whether the call was genuine and whether the person
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