I. ORIGIN
Most of the Pentecostal churches which bear the name "" can be
traced to a holiness revival in the mountains of northwest Georgia and eastern
Tennessee. In 1884, R.G. Spurling, a Baptist minister in Monroe County,
Tennessee, began to search the Scriptures for answers to the problems of
modernism, formality, and spiritual dryness. An initial meeting of concerned
people was held on August 19, 1886, at the Barney Creek Meeting House to
organize a new movement that would preach primitive church holiness and provide
for reform and revival of the churches. Christian Union was the name accepted
by the first eight members enrolled that day. Spurling died within a few months
and was succeeded in leadership by his son, R.G. Spurling, Jr. After ten years
of little growth, three laymen influenced by the Spurlings' work claimed a deep
religious experience similar to that written about by John Wesley, the founder
of Methodism, and as a result began to preach sanctification. The three laymen
began to hold services at Camp Creek, in Cherokee County, North Carolina, among
a group of unaffiliated Baptists, Spurling and the Christian Union moved their
services to Camp Creek and united with the group in North Carolina. During this
revival that followed this merger, spontaneous speaking ...