After his visits with Dowie and Sandford, Parham established the BETHEL BIBLE SCHOOL IN TOPEKA, KANSAS. It was patterned after Sandford’s ministry and was opened in October 1900 in a 30-room building called “Stone’s Folly.” It was so named because the owner, whose name was Stone, was unable to complete the building before going bankrupt. Parham was convinced that Christ’s return would be preceded by a latter rain outpouring of signs and wonders and he believed that tongues was the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He further believed that the tongues would be real earthly languages that would enable missionaries to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth without having to learn foreign languages. According to Parham’s teaching, those who received the latter rain baptism and tongues would form the bride of Christ and would rule with Him at His coming.
Parham urged his students to seek this experience, and in this context he laid hands on one of his Bible school students, AGNES OZMAN, on January 1, 1901, and she allegedly began to speak in Chinese and later in Bohemian. She spoke while in a trance (Topeka State Journal, Jan. 9, 1901). Subsequently, Parham and others at the small Bible school allegedly also began to speak in tongues. They even claimed that cloven tongues of fire appeared over the heads of the tongues speakers.
Parham said that language professors and other linguistically educated people confirmed that the tongues the students were speaking were languages, but this has never been confirmed. Newspaper reporters of the day described the phenomenon merely as “gibberish.”
