Updated November 25, 2004 (first published December 27, 2001) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Influential Pentecostal leader Roberts Liardon is taking a three-month leave of absence from his ministry “to seek professional and church counseling related to a recent short-term homosexual relationship” (Charisma News Service, Dec. 21, 2001).

Liardon is pastor of Embassy Christian Center, Irvine, California, described on the Internet as “one of the top 100 fastest growing churches in America.” The Liardon ministries also includes the Spirit Life Bible College, a large missionary enterprise, and a very influential publishing work.

For example, Liardon publishes the “God’s Generals” video series, which glorifies many of the pioneers of the Pentecostal movement, including John Alexander Dowie, Maria Woodworth-Etter, Charles Parham, William Seymore, Smith Wigglesworth, Amy Semple Mcpherson, William Branham, A.A. Allen, Jack Coe, and Kathryn Kuhlman.

In our book The Laughing Revival from Azusa to Pentecost, we have documented the immorality and aberrant doctrine that characterized these people.

JOHN DOWIE, founder of a Holiness community called Zion City north of Chicago, would not allow any medicines or doctors, believing it was contrary to God’s will; and his own daughter died an agonizing death when she was severely burned and he wouldn’t allow her to be treated medically.

MARIA WOODWORTH-ETTER was a female Holiness preacher who often went into trances during her meetings, standing like a statue for an hour or more. She falsely prophesied that the San Francisco Bay area would be destroyed by an earthquake and tidal wave in 1890.

CHARLES PARHAM, one of the founders of Pentecostalism, claimed that some of his students spoke in biblical tongues at his Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, but according to educated outside witnesses, the “tongues” were only gibberish. Parham’s Bible school students jotted down strange writings which they claimed were the product of the gift of tongues. They claimed these writings were foreign languages, such as Chinese, but when they were examined by knowledgeable people, they were found to be mere indecipherable scratchings. Parham taught a wide variety of heresies. He believed in annihilation of the unsaved and denied the Bible doctrine of eternal torment. He believed in the unscriptural doctrine of anglo-Israelism. He taught that there were two separate creations, and that Adam and Eve were of a different race than people who allegedly lived outside of the Garden of Eden. The first race of men did not have souls, he claimed, and this race of unsouled people was destroyed in the flood. Parham believed that those who received the latter days spirit baptism and spoke in tongues would make up the bride of Christ and would have a special place of authority at Christ’s return. He believed in a partial rapture composed of tongues speakers.

WILLIAM SEYMOUR founded the Azusa Street mission in 1906, considered by many to be the birthplace of the Pentecostal movement. The meetings were weird in the extreme, characterized by slaying in the spirit, confused singing in “tongues,” rolling on the floor, dancing, jumping up and down, trances, animal noises, jerking, people trying to speak and being unable to do so, etc. One visitor described the meetings as “wild, hysterical demonstrations.” God’s command that everything be done decently and in order was ignored in the extreme.

AMY SEMPLE MCPHERSON, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, was married three times and divorced twice. In May 1926, McPherson disappeared and was thought to have been drowned while swimming off the California coast. A month later she turned up in Mexico, claiming to have been kidnapped, but the evidence led most people to believe that she had an affair with a former employee, Kenneth Ormiston, who was married at the time. Later she bobbed her hair and started drinking, dancing, and wearing short skirts. McPherson’s mother, Mildred (Minnie) Kennedy, worked as a business associate in her daughter’s successful evangelistic empire. In fact, they owned the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles outright, in a fifty-fifty partnership, but they frequently got into terrific fights. In 1927 Aimee had her mother fired from the positions she had long held. Two years later, Mildred left her daughter Aimee’s ministry permanently “after receiving a broken nose during an explosive argument.”

WILLIAM BRANHAM was considered a Pentecostal healer and prophet, but he denied the Trinity, held that Cain was the product of a sexual union between Eve and the serpent, taught that the mark of the beast was denominationalism, denied that hell is eternal, and proclaimed himself as the angel of Revelation 3:14 and 10:7. He falsely prophesied that the Rapture and the end of the world would take place by 1977. He claimed an angel constantly told him when and what to speak. Our friend, former Pentecostal minister Alfred H. Pohl, has testified of his firsthand experiences working in a Braham healing crusade in Canada. None of those who were proclaimed healed by Braham were actually healed, and many later died.

KATHRYN KUHLMAN, famous Pentecostal preacher and faith healer, believed that Christians today should perform the same miracles that Jesus did. In his book Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle, Dr. William Nolen dedicates an entire chapter to his experiences investigating Kuhlman healing crusades. Though sympathetic to Kuhlman as a person, Nolen was unable to document medically even one case of physical healing, though large numbers of them were claimed. At the time of his investigation, Dr. Nolen was chief of surgery at Meeker County Hospital in Litchfield, Minnesota. Well-known researcher Kurt Koch followed up on 28 cases of “healing” that were provided to him by the Kuhlman organization and concluded that “there is no one clear case of healing from an organic disease.” While pastoring the Denver Revival Tabernacle in the mid-1930s, Kuhlman became romantically involved with married evangelist Burroughs Waltrip, who subsequently left his wife and two children and married her. Kuhlman and Waltrip were romantically involved for two or three years prior to their marriage. Waltrip’s first wife was left alone to raise her two sons and to pay off her husband’s debts. He did not return even for a visit. A few years after her illicit marriage, Kuhlman left Waltrip, saying God had commanded her to leave him and to preach.

Pentecostal evangelist and faith healer A.A. ALLEN was a drunkard and a charlatan. His Miracle Magazine was filled with incredible claims, such as the cure of a woman who allegedly shed 200 pounds instantly during one of his healing services. In 1956 he began claiming that miracle oil flowed from the hands and heads of those attending his meetings. In the 1960s, Allen launched a “raise the dead” campaign, urging his followers to believe God for resurrections, but he had to stop it when some refused to bury their loved ones. Allen claimed to have the authority to lay hands on those who gave to his ministry, granting them “the power to get wealth.” Many of his books promised prosperity. Allen was arrested for drunk driving during a revival in 1955. He divorced his wife in 1967, in spite of the fact that she had stood by him during the many troubles he had brought upon himself, and three years later he died alone at age 59 in a motel in San Francisco.

JACK COE was another Pentecostal healer evangelist whose ministry was characterized by false teaching and outrageous and untrue claims. He claimed that consulting physicians was connected with the mark of the beast. Though he taught that healing was guaranteed in the atonement and warned his followers against using medicine and consulting physicians, Coe went right to the hospital when he fell ill with polio. He succumbed to this disease a few weeks later. After Coe’s death, his own widow published a series of articles exposing the fraud of key Pentecostal healing evangelists.

Famous Pentecostal evangelist-prophet-faith healer SMITH WIGGLESWORTH also believed that physical healing is guaranteed in the atonement of Christ and taught against the use of all medicine. He claimed that the Christian has the power to speak things into existence. He taught that the Christian can operate in the same omnipotent power that Christ exercised. He believed in a form of sinless perfectionism. In spite of his teaching that God promises perfect physical wholeness and that the Christian can operate in the same sign gifts that Christ exhibited, very few of those who sought Wigglesworth’s healing ministrations were ever healed. His own wife died a mere six years after he became a Pentecostal, and his son died two years after that. His daughter, who assisted in his meetings, was never healed of her deafness. For three years Wigglesworth suffered with gallstones.

While there have been many moral and upright Pentecostal preachers, the fact remains that a very large percentage of the most famous ones have been charlatans and heretics.

At a young age Roberts Liardon set out to study the lives of these and other Pentecostal founders, and now he himself has become the latest casualty in the long line of discredited and shipwrecked individuals who have stood at the helm of the Pentecostal movement.

See our book The Laughing Revival from Azusa to Pensacola for more information and for careful documentation of these sad facts.