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Note: This article was originally published in the April 1996 issue of Charismamagazine.

When 88-year-old Elsie Mason was born, Teddy Roosevelt was president of the United States and the American West was still being tamed. Arizona and New Mexico weren’t even states yet. The automobile assembly line had just been invented, but paved roads were still uncommon. Women wore floor-length skirts and couldn’t vote. Only rich people had telephones.

The term “Pentecostal” was rarely used to describe any group of Chris­tians. Although Holiness churches taught that believers should seek a spir­itual experience they called “sanctifica­tion,” it was a revival in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and the subsequent and more far-reaching Azusa Street Revival of 1906, that popularized the belief in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Azusa trig­gered a Pentecostal movement that today represents some 430 million people worldwide.

Mason, the widow of Charles H. Mason—founder of the Church of God in Christ—is one of several older Pen­tecostals who remember the early days of camp meetings, tent revivals and backwoods persecution. By talking with her, and with nine other elderly saints, Charisma has collected a treasure chest of oral history..

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source: charismamag.com

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