The Topeka Outpouring

 

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The dark room hovered about them as they knelt in their own private corners or paced the floor, the moon outside casting eerie shadows upon the wall. The low mumble of prayer had become a persistent droning as shadows lifted and fell with the movement of the room’s occupants.

Pacing the floor, rubbing their arms to keep off the chill, or huddling for warmth in corners of the room to shut out the coolness of winter, they let their tears fall and their petitions be heard. It just couldn’t be put off any longer…not to a warmer season, not to a more convenient evening, not one more hour.

What a phenomenal test of faith it must have been! Praying for hours on end in prayer shifts, earnestly believing in a gift of God that no one in their families, their circle of friends, or even in their nation had seen! Yet it was there….

They knew it was real…it had to be…and it was for them! Knelt in her cozy corner, Agnes Ozman likely recalled time and time again how Charles Parham had instructed the students to study the book of Acts. She relived each moment that she found another person filled with the Holy Ghost in those pages, all of them speaking in a heavenly language, given by God.
Amidst her praise of God, she would envision, over and over, the scene that her Bible’s worn pages had unfolded before her. Oh, how the scene tonight resembled that of Acts 2! In Acts 2, she recalled that the believers of Jesus had gathered in an upper room to pray; seated in her corner of this upstairs classroom in Rev. Parham’s Bethel Healing Home, she almost felt a kindred spirit with those believers so long ago. Was it as cold in their room? Likely not, being in the Middle East, she thought. But she was certain that the same warm presence of deity infiltrated that room the same as now.

The believers in Acts 2 had faced the same unknown—just what was the promise of the Father like? How exciting to be one of the one hundred and twenty to be chosen for such an experience! So few a number with all the Jews outside….She began counting. Her group couldn’t contain much more than 30 students and the Parhams. So few and yet…. here she sat, basking in the presence of God as her brothers and sisters prayed alongside her.

Bethel….the meeting place for this prayer service; what a choice! Located on the upper west side of Topeka, it certainly wasn’t grand enough for such an encounter. Why not the glittering cities of New York or Chicago? Sure, it had beautiful spires and had once been envisioned as an American Palace, but could it house such deity?

But Agnes knew from her reading that the vessel God longed to fill was not a physical building—it was a temple made of flesh, an open and hungry heart. She began to pray more earnestly. The words of Acts 2:39 rang in her ears, “For this promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call.”

This promise belonged to her! Quickly, Hebrews 11:1 reminded her that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Her faith was enough to receive this promised gift! Faith, faith, faith….just have faith and pray!

Bethel – What a name! The exact same place where Jacob dreamed of a ladder between Heaven and Earth with angels ascending and descending between the two realms! Agnes recalled it as the place in which Jacob proclaimed, “Surely, the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.”
God can fill the most unlikely place—even a house whose construction remained unfinished that served the poor, sick, and dying, she thought as she wept. Likewise, God can fill the lowliest sinner, the most unworthy person, the person no one else would want….

As her lips murmured praises to God, she recited a passage that was no longer a memory. It was inscribed into her mind and now was the cry of her heart:

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”


Suddenly, there was a sound…faint at first but then it grew louder. Agnes realized it was her! What was she saying? It sounded foreign but the language flowed!

As the realization took hold, she began to feel an intense joy and excitement bursting from the inside of her! She wanted to leap to her feet—wait a minute! Somehow she was already on her feet! She began to cry, to worship, and to dance as the beautiful language burst forth from her lips!

She couldn’t be sure how long she continued until other voices lifted in heavenly outpourings around her. Despite the dim lanterns that she knew were originally in the room, the place felt like it was filled with light!

They had broken through! Like Alice stepping through the looking glass to a completely different world, they had forged through to another realm—never to return again!