The Methodist Church has come to know many divisions over the years. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was originally a Methodist. Many of the socalled holiness denominations, chief among them being the Church of the Nazarene, were formed because it was thought Methodism had moved too far away from the message preached by its founder, Charles Wesley.
In 1906, at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California, a Methodistsponsored revival of "Pentecostal Power" broke out. People claimed to have been "baptized by the Holy Spirit" in the manner evidenced on the birthday of the Church during the celebration of Pentecost in the time of the Apostles (Acts 2). People speaking in tongues and miracles of healing roused people to a spiritual frenzy. The people who attended those meetings spread their enthusiasm throughout the United States, and the Pentecostal movement began.
In 1914 the director of a Pentecostal publication called for a great meeting of "believers in the baptism of the Holy Spirit." Out of that meeting, the Assemblies of God was born.
Assemblies of God is now a worldwide Protestant denomination following Methodist Church polity but emphasizing the need to be both "born again" and "baptized by the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the gift of speaking in tongues." This experience is called "the second blessing" and usually happens after a person has been "saved" by accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. The second blessing is evidence of a "spiritual in-filling," and biblical evidence for the experience comes mostly from the book of Acts and from Paul's letters.