A Charismatic Looks at the Birth of Pentecostalism

Old readers and those who know me will be surprised, if not shocked, to find this content at my blog.  And one look at my profile in the sidebar will tell new readers that this is a radical departure from the usual duke's mixture of political/ social/ curiosity content. In any case, my interest in Charismatic/ Pentecostal Christianity has deep roots, in both my family history and much of my adult life. Long story. Some other time.

I'm posting this for two reasons. First, the author, Bill DeArteaga, is a close personal friend. He and his late wife have been friends with me and my wife well over twenty years. He is a published writer of several books, some of which are academic resources for future ministers and counselors.  Second, this piece is published elsewhere, but the site (linked with the end notes) has quite a slow server causing this article to be divided among several screens that take quite a long time to load. Curating it here is my way of furnishing Bill and others ready access without waiting for it to load several screens. 

A Charismatic Looks at the Birth of Pentecostalism

October 17, 2014 

The grace that Pentecostalism brought to Christendom was to make the use of tongues and the other gifts described by Paul in I Cor. 12 and 14 normal in the life of ordinary Christians.[1] This was something not seen since Apostolic times. Before we examine how tongues came to be normal (or at least well known) we need to look at an almost forgotten revival to learn a negative lesson. That is, what happens when the Spirit gives His gifts but there is no theology to receive the experience?

The Cherokee County Revival

The revival in question took place in Cherokee County, North Carolina.[2] This county is part of the Unicoi mountain region bordering North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. It occurred during the summer of 1896.

Ten years earlier a tiny eight member church formed called the “Christian Union” by the Rev. R.R. Spurling. The founder’s rather grandiose intentions were to restore the church to the holiness of “primitive Christianity,” avoid divisive creeds, and ultimately unite all the churches – thus its name. Spurling died shortly after the church’s launch, but not before he ordained his son, R.G. Spurling, Jr., to carry on his vision of the new church.

The Christian Union grew slowly, and in 1892 a second congregation formed. Two other preachers joined the denomination, one was a Methodist preacher, William Martin, and the other F. W. Bryant, a Baptist. By then, all three had experienced a Wesleyan-like “second blessing” of sanctification in their lives and were influenced by Holiness doctrines.

Under the leadership of these ministers, a series of local revivals took place in the homes, barns and meeting houses of the Unicoi mountain region. This intensified in the summer of 1896 when the three ministers began a revival in the Shearer schoolhouse in Cherokee County, a humble, one-room frame building. They preached the Methodist-Holiness message of sanctification and soon return of Jesus. A. J. Tomilinson, writing about the revival fifteen years later, recounts:

…the Holy Ghost began to fall on the honest, humble, sincere seekers of God. While the meetings were in progress one after the other fell under the power of God, and soon quite a number were speaking in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. The influence and excitement then spread like wildfire, and people came for many miles to investigate, hear and see the manifestations of the presence of God.[3]

The tongues surprised the ministers, who “sought the scriptures.” They correctly identified the phenomenon with Acts 2:4, 10:46 and 19:6 and felt very blessed by the experience. The revival, including tongues, lasted all summer, but faded by the fall. The ministers and congregation thanked God for the season of revival and the tongues, and prayed that all of the Churches would be similarly blessed.

The Rev. Spurling, Jr. and the others who led the revival had no theology, accurate or inaccurate, to understand that what had happened was a universally important and a repeatable gift. They did not make a “big deal” of the tongues. A decade later, when the Azusa Street revival received national publicity, the churches of the Christian Union accepted the theology developed by Charles Parham and joined the budding Pentecostal movement. Ultimately, the Christian Union changed its name and grew to become the Church of God (Tennessee), now one of the biggest Pentecostal denominations of the world.

One other pre-Pentecostal revival needs to be mentioned, a revival that took place among several Holiness congregations in Corsicana County, Texas, in the 1870s. This revival began with a burst of worship and enthusiasm which included tongues and, significantly, an understanding that the gifts of the Spirit described in 1 Cor. 12 were for the present. Unfortunately, like many revivals before, the leaders drifted into false prophecy, which included the idea that a person baptized with the Spirit would be regenerated physically to the point of being able to live a thousand years. The revival disintegrated further as local prophets urged their followers to sell all and await Jesus’ return in 1875. Jesus didn’t make it, and the only thing achieved by the revival was the discrediting of future Pentecostal efforts in the area.[4]

Charles Parham and the theology of tongues

These two revivals give us a backdrop to understand the achievements of the Pentecostal revival that did succeed and was able to discern a way forward through its own temptations to false prophecy and exaggerated theology. For this we need to turn to pioneer of all of this, Charles F. Parham (1873-1929).[5] Parham was born to a rural family in Iowa, and as an infant had an attack of encephalitis which left him weak and stunted his growth. At age nine he contracted rheumatic fever which further weakened him. Thankfully his devout mother prayed for him continuously.

In 1890 Parham entered Southwest Kansas College, but the next year suffered a severe relapse of rheumatic fever. In a weakened state he overheard his physician say that he would die, and this brought him to intense prayer. Shortly, he began to recover. But it was an incomplete healing that left him partially crippled and with his ankles turned outward. Seated under an apple tree at Southwest he made a re-commitment to God to pursue the ministry and be obedient to God’s direction. Immediately he was healed and walked normally.[6]

Parham left Southwest in 1893 to become a Methodist pastor, and successfully pastored several Methodists congregations. But by 1895 he felt a call to pursue an independent ministry, dependent solely on God’s inspiration and direction. He came to accept the “radical” Faith-Cure position, that recourse to medication or doctors was lack of faith. He added faith healing to his preaching of salvation and holiness and in fact ministered many healings in his evangelistic efforts.[7] During this period he married Sarah Thistlethwaite, who would be his life-long assistant and co-worker, and with her help founded the Beth-el Healing Home in Topeka, on the model of healing home from the Faith-Cure movement of the 1880s.[8] The focus at Beth-el was to build up the patient’s faith so that his or her own prayers would result in healing. He also published a Holiness journal called Apostolic Faith.

In 1899 he read in another Holiness journal of a Christian missionary who received a special gift. She was able to open her mouth and speak in unknown tongues, and her audience in Africa could perfectly understand what she said in their native languages. This is similar to what happened to Peter in Acts 2:5-12.[9] This unusual spiritual gift is called “xenolalia,” by scholars, and it has been reported sporadically in both Catholic saint’s tales and Protestant missionary literature.[10] Later, Parham went on a twelve week tour of Canada and the U.S. to visit several Holiness centers. At his stop at a large Holiness church complex in Shiloh, Maine, he again heard an account of Holiness missionaries speaking in unknown tongues which the natives heard and understood in their own language.

These reports impressed Parham who had strong belief in pre-millennialism and the soon return of Christ. Parham combined these elements into a theological system. The Holy Spirit was about to pour out a new baptism on the Church which would enable missionaries to communicate the gospel with whoever they encountered, and demonstrate the power of the Gospel with healing. This combination would trigger an immediate and glorious world-wide revival, and in turn usher in the rapture and second coming. In Parham’s mind, tongues/xenolalia was the key and identifying mark of Spirit-baptism and of the end-times great missionary expansion.

Parham returned to Topeka at the end of 1899 and urged his students at Beth-el to seek the marks of Spirit-baptism. He guided them to study the book of Acts, and especially Acts 2. They reported to him that the single evidence for the reception of the Holy Spirit was the speaking in tongues. A night-watch service was called by Parham to usher in the New Year for Parham’s students and his local congregation. Parham recalled later what happened:

About 75 people beside the school which consisted of 40 students, had gathered for the watch night service. A mighty spiritual power filled the entire school. At 10:30 p.m. Sister Agnes N. Ozman, (now La Berge) asked that hands might be laid upon her to receive the Holy Spirit as she hoped to go to foreign fields. At first I refused, not having the experience myself. Then being further pressed to do it humbly in the name of Jesus, I laid my hands upon her head and prayed. I had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when the glory fell upon her a halo seemed to surround her head and face and she began speaking in the Chinese language, and was unable to speak English for three days.[11]

We should note that Parham guessed that the tongues spoken was Chinese, since there are many languages spoken in China. Parham believed his theology was authenticated and that his discovery would usher in the great end-time revival immediately. Instead, it immediately caused opposition and negative publicity. There followed two years in the “desert” where he cultivated a small following and tried to spread the message of tongues as mark of Spirit-baptism. In Galena, Texas in 1903 he did trigger a local revival and it was there that tongues and divine healing were united into what we would recognize as a Pentecostal service. The Galena revival received some favorable local publicity, and Parham was able to lead further revivals in Texas and especially in the Houston area. There he settled and establish the “Houston Bible School” where he combined Holiness sanctification, divine healing, tongues and the pre-millennial end-times into a “Pentecostal package.” He also spread this theology via his journal Apostolic Faith.

Parham missed being a major player in the Azusa Street revival which began in 1906 because he was busy bringing the message of tongues to the people of Alexander Dowie’s “Zion City” complex north of Chicago. For a while it seemed that Parham was going to win over a majority of Zion’s residents to his leadership. However, that did not happen, and Parham went back to Kansas and then Texas.[12] He did make it to Azusa Street in October of 1906 to attempt to assume leadership of the revival there. He was appalled by the exuberance, noise, and general “messiness” of the revival (see below).[13] He tried to “correct” these faults, but was rebuffed by the church board and asked to leave. He founded a separate Pentecostal church in Los Angeles which did not flourish. He left that church to another pastor and went back to Texas.

The worst was yet to come. He was accused of and arrested for a homosexual affair with a young man – a felony in Texas and an almost “unforgivable sin” among Holiness advocates. Although the charges were never proven and the case dismissed, the charges made headlines in the religious press across the nation. Parham’s ability to be a major leader in the new Pentecostal movement was ruined. He died in 1929, largely forgotten by the Pentecostal movement he founded. He went to his death-bed still believing that the gift of tongues was always xenolalia.[14] This in spite of the fact that the Pentecostal missionaries who went on foreign missions demonstrated, to their surprise and embarrassment, that he was wrong.

Pentecostals would grapple with tongues-as-xenolalia for several decades and come to an understanding that tongues were related principally to Paul’s description in 1 Cor. 12 and 14.[15] That is, that tongues were a special form of heavenly language used in communication with God, useful for edification, and, when matched with the gift of interpretation, functions as prophecy. Paul says clearly in 1 Cor .14:2, “For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.” Xenolalia was a related but different and rare event. The idea that tongues was the necessary first step or “initial evidence” of Spirit-baptism remained as basic to Pentecostal theology, although there was always some opposition to this interpretation. For instance, the well-known Pentecostal healing evangelist, F F Bosworth, believed there were “multiple’ evidences to being baptized in the Spirit. Because of his opinion, he had to leave the Assemblies of God and joined the Christian and Missionary Alliance.[16]

In spite of his inglorious later years, Parham’s achievements must be counted as enormous. He brought the phenomenon of tongue speaking to the forefront of Christian thought and practice as never before. This opened up also clearer thinking about the other gifts of the Spirit enumerated in 1 Cor. 12, and Romans 12.

The contrast between the Cherokee County revival and the Azusa St. revival reminds us of what the famous philosopher science, Karl Popper, said on the progress of truth. That it, truth is discovered through some hypothesis that focuses on a phenomenon, and by testing it is affirmed, modified, or eliminated.[17] From the perspective of one hundred years we can see that Parham’s two hypotheses, that tongues was xenolalia, and that tongues were the necessary “initial evidence” of Spirit-baptism were respectively a mistake and an exaggeration. However these hypotheses were close enough to the truth to make tongues desirable to many Christians and do what the Cherokee Revival did not – spark a world-wide movement and recovery of the word gifts of 1 Cor. 12.[18]

An African-American preacher ignites Pentecostalism

Parham’s other major contribution to Pentecostalism was in mentoring the person who would subsequently lead the Azusa Street revival, a African-American Holiness preacher named William Seymour (1870-1922).[19] Seymour was borne in Centerville, Louisiana, to parents who had been slaves. Raised as a Baptist, as a boy and young man he received multiple spiritual dreams and visions. He moved north and eventually settled in Cincinnati where he joined a local Holiness congregation called the “Evening Star Saints.” They preached entire sanctification and anticipated a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit just before the rapture of the Church.

Seymour caught smallpox which blinded him in his left eye, but while recuperating from his illness accepted a call to preach. He was licensed and ordained by the Evening Star Saints. Providentially, Seymour moved to Houston and there attended a local Holiness Church pastored by a woman preacher, Lucy Farrow. Farrow asked Seymour to be pastor of her congregation while she accepted a position as governess in the home of Charles Parham in Galena, Texas. When Farrow returned to Houston with the Parham family (1905) she had the gifts of tongues. Parham had returned to Houston to establish a new Bible school.

Seymour became a student at Parham’s school, but due to the Jim-crow laws, had to sit in the hall and listen to Parham’s instruction via the open door of the classroom. Seymour accepted Parham’s Pentecostal theology and especially his understanding of tongues – although he did not immediately speak in tongues.

An African-American Holiness congregation in Los Angeles invited Seymour to come and preach (and audition to become its pastor). When Seymour arrived in California, February, 1906, many of the local Holiness and other evangelical churches there were in anticipation of revival. This had been sparked by the news of the great revival in Wales (1903-1904).[20] In Los Angeles one of Seymour’s first sermons to his potentially new congregation was on the necessity of tongues for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. In response, they locked him out of the church – and with that went his job as pastor.

However, he continued preaching and holding Bible studies in several private homes. These meeting had an unusual anointing from the beginning. Both Blacks and Whites mingled together – very unusual for the era. At this point Seymour and several others received the gift of tongues, and this sparked curiosity and growth that could not be contained in any private home.

A search found a vacant two story frame building that had recently served as a warehouse and stable – 312 Azusa Street. It was quickly cleared and prepared with crude pews (planks set on empty barrels) and a “mourner’s bench” to receive converts. Seymour named the church “Azusa Street Mission.” In its first meetings, April 1906, the church did not even possess a preacher’s stand. But from the first services there was a tremendous anointing with tongues and other revival manifestations present, such as “falling under the power.” News of the new “tongues” manifestation spread quickly in Los Angeles and the small church attracted both the pious and the curious. Within a week, The Los Angeles Times sent a reporter to investigate. The result was a negative, but lengthy report on the meetings. The headline read: “Weird Babble of Tongues.”

In September 1906 another reporter described the events taking place and wrote that the Azusa Street mission:

[It is a] disgraceful intermingling of the races…they cry and make howling noises all day and into the night. They run, jump, shake all over, shout to the top of their voice, spin around in circles, fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and rolling all over it. Some of them pass out and do not move for hours as though they were dead. These people appear to be mad, mentally deranged or under a spell. They claim to be filled with the spirit. They have a one eyed, illiterate, Negro as their preacher who stays on his knees much of the time with his head hidden between the wooden milk crates. He doesn’t talk very much but at times he can be heard shouting, ‘Repent,’ and he’s supposed to be running the thing… They repeatedly sing the same song, ‘The Comforter Has Come.’[21]

These newspaper accounts attracted even more people. More importantly, people began coming in from across the country to see what was happening. The Holiness preacher named Frank Bartleman, who ultimately became Azusa Street’s first historian, came and left us a more discerning account of the early meetings.

Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there. The services ran almost continuously. …The people came to meet God. He was always there…

No subjects or sermons were announced ahead of time, and no special speakers for such an hour. No one knew what might be coming, what God would do. All was spontaneous, ordered of the Spirit….

Someone might be speaking. Suddenly the Spirit would fall upon the congregation. God himself would give the altar call. Men would fall all over the house, like slain in battle, or rush for the altar enmasse, to seek God. The scene often resembled a forest of fallen trees…The shekinah glory rested there. In fact some claim to have seen the glory by night over the building. I do not doubt it.[22]

Seymour maintained order with a firm but gentle hand. He often ceded the preaching to visiting preachers. The upstairs served for overflow crowds and for a “tarrying” place for those seeking the Baptism of the Spirit. That is, a period of prayer and pleading in which the seeker waited for God’s power as in the Acts 2 “upper room” Pentecost.

After the LA Times articles the crowds increased to about 200-300 per evening. The initial revival at Azusa Street lasted between 1906-1909, with another burst occurring after 1911. Besides bringing thousands of skeptics and non-believers to the Lord, many thousands were Baptized in the Spirit, and many healed. But, the major work of the revival was to broadcast the “Pentecostal package” of Holiness sanctification, Baptism of the Spirit with tongues, divine healing, Faith-Idealism, and premillennialism. Eventually Seymour deemphasized tongues as “initial evidence” and stressed tongues and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for empowerment in service, but not before Parham’s original doctrine of initial evidence became the majority view among the newly forming Pentecostal churches.

Faith-Idealism was an integral part of this package, though most often lived rather than preached. We catch a glimpse of it from Bartleman’s own comments on an attack of mumps as he spread the word of Pentecost through the south: “The mumps were working on me, though I refused to acknowledge it.”[23]

Besides the many visitors to the Azusa Street mission, Pentecostalism spread through the wide circulation of Seymour’s newspaper, The Apostolic Faith. He directed the paper and wrote many of its articles. Seymour had the help of two female employees on the Azusa Street Mission staff, Miss Clara Lum, and Mrs. Florence Reed Crawford.[24] Miss Lum had experience as an editor of a missionary journal, and Mrs. Reed Crawford, was also experienced in Christian publishing. Mrs. Reed Crawford also served as Pentecostal apostle and evangelist for California. The Apostolic Faith’s first printing in 1906 numbered 5,000 copies, a substantial figure for the times. It grew to 40,000 by 1907 – fed by a mailing list of visitors from the United States and overseas which was managed by Miss Lum. It was of critical importance in spreading the “Pentecostal Package” in the initial years of the revival.

What ultimately happened to Seymour and his paper is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions. Seymour and his staff, like many Holiness revivalist of his times, were absolutely certain of the very soon return of Jesus Christ – as in next week, or at most a few years. However Seymour had a romantic interest in Miss Lum, a white woman, and considered marrying her. He consulted with his church board which advised him that such an interracial marriage would destroy the budding revival (this was 1907, not 2007). Seymour stopped that romance.

At bit later he fell in love and married Jenny Moore (1908) – a very attractive Black woman. Before his marriage to Moore, Seymour began preaching that marriage was OK in spite of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. This was disappointing to both Miss Lum and Mrs. Crawford who considered Seymour’s marriage a scandal and violation of Paul’s admonition not to marry because the “time is short” (1 Cor. 7). With indignation (and jealously?) two of the women ran off with The Apostolic Faith mailing list to Portland, Oregon.[25] They continued printing the The Apostolic Faith from Portland without even letting the readers know that Seymour was no longer in charge. Mrs. Crawford went on to found a separate Pentecostal denomination called the Apostolic Faith Mission, and she made sure that none of her ministers married.[26]

The theft of the mailing list cut off Seymour from his national following and short-circuited his continued leadership in the Pentecostal Movement. His church, The Azusa Street Mission, lingered on as an African American Pentecostal church with small numbers until his death in 1922. It would go on under the pastorship of his widow, Jenny, until 1931 when she retired.

But the Azusa Street revival had fulfilled its providential task. Tongues and the gifts of the Spirit became part of normal, repeatable events in the life of dedicated Christians. Unlike the Irving revival in England of the previous century, the Azusa Street revival did not generate an exaggerated prophetic legacy that it could not correct. Through its visitors, and The Apostolic Faith, varieties of the “Pentecostal package” became established throughout the world. These formed “beachhead” churches that planted Pentecostalism amid a public and clergy that generally rejected the new insights, and often bitterly persecuted the messengers. In the American South, Pentecostalism had its greatest initial gains. Many Methodist and Holiness congregations quickly added the Pentecostal package to their Holiness theology.

One prophetic element of the Azusa St. Revival that did not last a decade was its interracial quality to include Hispanics from the LA region. This racial diversity did not last long either in The Azusa Street Mission itself or in the new Pentecostal denominations and churches. By 1920 Pentecostal churches were generally as segregated as other churches in the United States.[27]

The Holiness Veterans

Part of the reason that Pentecostalism succeeded was that many of its leaders were the battle tested and often wounded veterans of the Holiness and Faith-Cure movements. They had been bruised in the scandals of Dowie’s Zion City, opposed and ridiculed as cultists for their participation in the Faith-Cure movement, and told they were fanatics for upholding their Holiness code of morals. Some like Carrie Judd Montgomery had survived the scandals and had established successful, if marginalized ministries of their own.[28] These Holiness Faith-Cure veterans persisted and kept fellowship with each other. As Paul wrote of his own life: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Cor 4:8-9) Grayed and spiritually scarred, they flooded into Pentecostal denominations and churches with their wisdom and spiritual maturity. For the first time in modern church history, the leadership of one revival (the Faith-Cure) lived long enough so that they could mentor the leadership of another revival. It was a continuity of wisdom, suffering and experience. Bartleman, who we quoted earlier, was quite aware of this:

One reason for the depth of the work at “Azusa” was the fact that the workers were not novices. They were largely called and prepared for years, from the Holiness ranks, and from the mission field, etc. They had been burned out, tried and proven. They were largely seasoned veterans.[29]

Naturally, the Pentecostals faced persecution and ridicule in their home churches. Some of the fiercest opposition arose from Holiness churches and pastors who did not accept Pentecostalism as a fulfillment of Holiness quest of the Holy Spirit. In fact, one of the cruelest early critiques of tongues originated from a Holiness pastor’s wife, Alma White, who in her book Demons and Tongues, claimed that tongues were demonic in origins.[30] This was a position that many were prone to accept without much further investigation, and it remained influential for decades.

Opposition to Pentecostalism was not just in writing. Especially in the American South, where the Klan believed itself to be the arbiter Protestant Christianity, opposition meant beatings and burnings. As late as 1947 a sniper fired a rifle bullet at Oral Roberts during one of his early tent crusades.[31] In many foreign countries, especially in Latin America, Pentecostals suffered martyrdom.

Within a few years of the original outbreak it became clear that the established churches would reject the “Pentecostal Package.” New fellowships had to be forged. Forming a new religious group out of older ones is difficult because the general enthusiasm of the “innovators”, which unites them, often clashes with their conflicting expectations and histories when the time comes to organize and live together as a new group. Not surprisingly, the Pentecostals formed multiple Pentecostal denominations and independent fellowships. Among the most important development was the formation of fellowships that were not from Wesleyan or Holiness traditions. The largest of these, the “Assemblies of God” denomination formed in 1914 to be a home to Pentecostals from the Baptist tradition – and also, most unfortunately, to assure the segregation of the races. 

Pentecostalism’s “irregular idea”

Forming a new theology of the gifts of the Holy Spirit where there was so little in the received traditions and theology of Christendom was no easy matter. Unexpectedly, it was the theology of baptism, not tongues or the other gifts, which caused the worst division among the early Pentecostals. It took the form of the “Oneness” or “Jesus Only” movement.

This new division began in 1913, at a Pentecostal camp meeting. There the minister in charge of Baptism noted that in the Book of Acts, the converts were baptized in Jesus’ name, and not in the Trinitarian formula found in Matthew 28:19. He baptized that day in the name of Jesus only. This stirred up a controversy and another Pentecostal minister, Frank J. Ewart, “searched the scriptures” and came to the conclusion that this innovation was correct. Further, he developed the idea that God was only Jesus, and the Trinity a superfluous doctrine. For him, Jesus was the Father and the Holy Spirit all in one.

This idea had occurred in the first centuries and was called modalism but was dispatched as a heresy back in the early church councils. It is true that the Holy Trinity is a difficult concept – more properly a “mystery” that humans can never fully grasp. However, this new modalism was not a good way to understand the relationship of Father, Jesus and Spirit as revealed in the New Testament.[32] Ewart began touring Pentecostal congregations, especially Assemblies of God churches, and re-baptizing believers in the Jesus formula. Many accepted re-baptism without Ewart’s modalism, but some did slip away from Trinitarianism.

By 1915 leaders of the Assemblies of God were concerned about the issue and called a general council to discuss the matter. Ironically, many of the early Pentecostals believed that church creeds were unimportant (and somewhat “Catholic” – and thus bad). They believed one could rely on the guidance of the Spirit for all issues of doctrine. They were reluctant to fashion a new “creed” for this crisis, and so nothing was settled that year. What did happen was that the Oneness pastors were removed from leadership positions. This was not enough, and by 1916 the Assemblies of God issued a “statement of faith” (a creed with a different name) reaffirming Trinitarianism and forcing the Oneness faction out. The Oneness ministers then reorganized into several denominations, but it was almost three decades before they could come together in what is now the “United Pentecostal Church International” (1945).

We should note that the issue of the correct baptismal formula continues to shadow even Trinitarian Pentecostals to this day. In fact, it is a valid issue. A majority of biblical scholars are convinced that the Trinitarian formula was an “add on” to the Gospels from the early Church. [33] This does not mean that the Trinitarian formula, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” is invalid. It may mean the opposite, that the Early Church understood the necessity of the Trinity and its implication for the Christian at the beginning of his spiritual life.[34]

Marginalization of Pentecostalism

Oneness controversy gave further excuse for the mainline churchmen and theologians to marginalize and write-off all forms of Pentecostalism as sect and heresy. The educated clergy of the Second Great Awakening had understood and tolerated the “exercises” of that revival largely because Edward’s revival writings were both widely read and respected. But that situation had changed by the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The “modern” seminaries had little interest in Edwards’ revival writings.[35] Thus the Pentecostals were ridiculed and marginalized as “holy rollers” because of their exuberant “exercises.” Edwards had explained it perfectly a century and a half earlier, but he would not be listened to in the 1900s.

The legalists and liberals had a field day. By the 1930s, mainline Christians had all sorts of “explanations” that reduced Pentecostalism, its “exercises’ and its tongues to a sociological phenomenon and/or psychological aberration. Just one example, a Yale professor, George Bernard Cutten, wrote Speaking with Tongues, Historically and Psychologically Considered, in which he concluded that tongue speaking was a form of hypnotism related to mental illness.[36] It took well into the 1960s for non-prejudiced and well executed scientific surveys using control groups to conclude that tongues were not a psychological abnormality.[37] Their pacifist stand in World War I added to the unpopularity of the Pentecostals.

The Slow Expansion of Pentecostalism

After the first two decades of growth, Pentecostalism settled in to a pattern of routine pastoral ministry and slow growth. The most exciting aspect of Pentecostalism in the between wars period (1918-1941) was its itinerant healing evangelists. For instance, Maria Woodsworth-Etter came into full Pentecostalism in 1912 when she teamed up with F.F. Bosworth for a revival in Dallas. Her prestige as a Holiness healing evangelist nudged many of her followers to embrace full Pentecostalism. She continued a schedule of healing/evangelistic (and now Pentecostal) crusades until her death in 1924. But the most exciting of all (and controversial) in this period was Aimee Semple McPherson, “Sister Aimee” whose unusual and controversial ministry pioneered many of the things that were to become commonplace decades later in the charismatic renewal, such as a relaxed dress code.[38]

During World War II Pentecostals began to acquire a grudging acceptance from mainline Christians. In 1942 Pentecostals became charter members of the National Association of Evangelicals – a major breakthrough in acceptance by other Protestants. After the war TV became a major factor in American life, and in 1953 Oral Roberts began broadcasting his healing crusades on TV. Suddenly Americans could catch a glimpse of “faith-healing” that was exciting, and seemed to work – and came without snakes.

Immediately after World War II there came another outburst of Pentecostalism called the “Latter Rain Movement.” The revival started in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, at a Pentecostal school and church campus (Feb., 1948). It was marked by a renewed anointing for healing and the usual revival phenomenon of “falling under the power.” But this revival also had the repeated occurrence of a phenomenon called the “heavenly choir” – where music supernaturally flows from the heavens without any apparent source.[39] One person who experienced it wrote:

From a little distance it sounds like a master choir accompanied by a matchless symphony orchestra. It seems difficult to credit that such a sound could be reproduced by human vocal organs. There is such perfect order and timing…[40]

 Another unusual element was that instead of “tarrying” for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the revivalist would lay hands on the supplicant’s head for the impartation of the Spirit. In July 1948 there was a weeklong camp meeting in the Canadian town of North Battleford widely attended by Pentecostal laypersons and ministers from all over Canada and the United States. By 1949 the revival had spread to dozens of churches north and south of the border, especially among churches that were independent of the major denominations.

In fact, many pastors in the established Pentecostals denominations looked askance at this new movement and found fault with its emphasis on prophecy. They could point to trivial and false prophecies being uttered, as if this was anything new. Some Pentecostal leaders called the movement heretical, because of its prophesying, and because of the new use of laying on of hands for impartation of the Holy Spirit.[41] This was an overkill for a movement that was bringing thousands of converts to Christ, having major healings, and imparting the Baptism of the Spirit to other thousands. In spite of opposition, the Latter Rain revival continued to spread and influence many churches, and many of those touched by it became the leaders of the coming Charismatic Renewal. For example, the editors of Logos Magazine, which became the first and most important journal of the early Charismatic Renewal, came from of Herald of Faith/Harvest Time which was the journal of the Latter Rain Movement.

On reflection, in spite of its mistakes, “irregular ideas” and failures of its leaders, the Pentecostal revival ushered what is perhaps the greatest move of the Spirit since Apostolic times. Ironically, it began with a mistake and an exaggeration, that tongues was xenolalia, and that tongues must always be the initial evidence for anyone who had the Baptism of the Spirit. The noted Pentecostal historian William Faupel carefully studied the documents of Pentecostalism’s first decades and concluded that the confusion of tongues as xenolalia was indeed a major cause of its ridicule and rejection by the majority of Evangelicals of the period.[42] But God was in the movement, amidst its human frailties and theological imperfections. And Pentecostalism, combined with its later sibling, the charismatic movement, ultimately became the most important and widespread church reformation since Apostolic times.

About the Author: William L. De Arteaga, Ph.D., is known internationally as a Christian historian and expert on revivals and the rebirth and renewal of the Christian healing movement. His major works include Quenching the Spirit: Discover the Real Spirit Behind the Charismatic Controversy (Creation House, 1992, 1996), Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival (Zondervan, 2002), Agnes Sanford and Her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal (Wipf & Stock, 2015), and The Public Prayer Station: Taking Healing Prayer to the Streets and Evangelizing the Nones (Emeth Press, 2018). Bill pastored two Hispanic Anglican congregations in the Marietta, Georgia area, and is semi-retired. He continues in his healing, teaching and writing ministry and is the state chaplain of the Order of St. Luke, encouraging the ministry of healing in all Christian denominations.

The original & end notes can be found at The Pneuma Review, a Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministries & Leaders 

Yemen -- Houthi snapshot

This is a browser translation of a link about Yemen. There are numerous images at the link that I have not transcribed. Even after having followed events in Yemen for several years, I remain more ignorant than informed about how all the moving parts intersect. For me this link is but another part of a complicated puzzle.

Electronic espionage, an "unknown soldier", turns the balance in Sanaa

"The Independent Arabia" investigates how "Ansar Allah" transformed communications into "polytheism" to hunt opponents and recruit neutrals?
Hisham Al-Shubaily is a Yemeni journalist and photographer
Thursday 26 November 2020 18:18

If the Houthi militia, themselves, were to one day place a symbol of the "unknown soldier" in their control of power in Sanaa, then that soldier would most likely be the "mobile chips", which played a very influential role in the brutal war between them and the recognized legitimate government Internationally, by describing mobile phones, the most lethal means in most of the military group's arsenal, to entrap opponents and recruit neutral Yemeni citizens, divided voluntarily or involuntarily between the two parties to the conflict, in the land of Yemen, whose title was "Al-Saeed".

Although Yemeni parties are accustomed to exchanging accusations, in which one party without the other monopolizes state institutions, which are usually based in the capitals, the Yemeni telecommunications file has remained and remains the most thorny file, and one of the tools that provide the militias financially, intelligence and media and work to keep them together. What is the story? That was the mission of "The Independent Arabia", which investigated the case through its various corridors, between the testimonies of the victims, the documents of the parties from the men of the Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and the recruiting of the militia leader, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi.

Ground of control

The imposition of control over Sanaa on September 21, 2014, was the beginning of the countdown to the steps of controlling the state’s joints. However, the share of communications started with a signal from the first man in the group, Abdul Malik, who the sources say was the establishment of a committee to "organize spying on The Yemenis "in 2016, made up of the Yemeni National Security Agency, which he established and in the presence of personal representatives of the Houthi in person due to the sensitivity of the issue, namely Dhaif Allah Zabara and Abadi Al-Awairi, all of them agreed to appoint 7 leaders at the head of the Ministry of Communication, including 3 officers, two colonels and a major. "The newspaper keeps their names."

Once the committee was formed, it set up units of experts who were trained in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, and their tasks were distributed to all telecommunications sectors. After that, the main committee worked according to two security sources who spoke to The Independent Arabia, in the context of a "joint operations room between the Ministry of Defense and the Interior in Sana'a, whose mission is to search and investigate all leaders and officers of the (legitimate) Hadi government, and find out their numbers that were not registered with their names, as well as Monitoring the numbers of people opposed to the group, including dignitaries, educators, tribal sheikhs, and influential people, using the secret telecommunications company records of Yemeni companies, such as "Yemen Mobile", "Spafone" and "MTN", and starting to monitor the activities of those targeted. "

One of the teams that emerged from the espionage committee took over the task of hacking accounts on social media platforms, most notably Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, some of which are active through the officers and leaders of the Yemeni republican regime who were with the legitimate government or who adhered to neutrality in their homes. .

The testimonies of the two security sources, whose names are kept by The Independent Arabia, confirmed that the group’s affiliated elements did what they could to control accounts and spy on mobile SIM cards as much as possible, and developed a technology thanks to which they were able to monitor all the movements of those required to be monitored by tracking the “chip” without stopping what remained. Connected to the battery.

According to the information we got from the two security sources, the year 2018 witnessed a remarkable development when the elements that were trained in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq began to link the devices in their possession with more advanced modern listening devices directly related to the war operations room, missiles and drones in order to target the leadership The army and the legitimate resistance elements through it.

They explained that among the new devices that have been linked to the communications and the military operations room, devices that monitor the movement of coalition aircraft, these devices have their own radars, which have been distributed in the various areas under the group’s control, and this - according to the two sources - may be one of the reasons why some air strikes were not hit. The Arab Coalition Forces have their targets. Reports of the attack are received by the Houthis about ten minutes before the targeting operations.

The Constitution of the Republic of Yemen criminalizes all forms of espionage and eavesdropping, as Article 53 of the Yemeni law states that “the freedom and confidentiality of postal and telephone correspondence and all means of communication are guaranteed and it is not permissible to monitor, search, divulge their secrecy or delay them.” Articles (16, 14, and 12) thereof, and the infringement of this right is considered a criminal offense that does not lapse by prescription.

The nerve of the battle

In the context of our research and sought to complete the picture about the importance of communications and the centrality of this important sector in the ongoing battle between the Yemeni government and the "Ansar Allah" group in Sana'a, we directed a question to the Yemeni telecom engineer Raed Al-Thabti, who confirmed that "there are dark aspects in the process of using communications. This file represents technically." The battlefield and strategically is half the battle, and the issue of eavesdropping and illegally accessing subscribers' data at all legal, religious and ethical levels, whether this data is text messages, voice communications, pictures or video. But he expressed his regret that this is done in several ways. “Everything that goes on through the communications chip is recorded in the subscribers' databases, and it is also possible to technically intercept and eavesdrop on that data, and sometimes it is in automatic archiving, that is, all data in the life of this segment are kept inside the base. And they are recovered when they are needed, ".

In his speech, Al-Thabti pointed out that the tracking process is carried out in several ways, sometimes by traditional means, "by tracking the number through the database of subscribers, and there is a database of equipment belonging to this company numbered by the so-called automated coding process."

The advanced aspect of the tracking or eavesdropping process, according to the constant, is with key words such as "a weapon or mine, and sometimes it is the fingerprint of the detected voice. Once it is heard, the interested person intercepts it, according to a technique called biometric" biological data ", by which intelligence services can track opponents through Algorithms and technology, usually owned by tracking and tracing companies. "

This is how the secrets began to unfold

The Houthi Ministry of Communications in Sanaa refused to respond to the testimonies of "The Independent Arabia" sources, but the departure of the "SabaFon" communications company of the Yemeni capital towards "Aden" last September allowed many facts to be revealed, and confirmed what we knew of the violation of Yemeni laws and privacy. A person in the afflicted country, by spying on the details of his life.

In its statement, the company said that it had "launched secure mobile communications services in the liberated areas through a communications network independent of the control and control of Ansar Allah group in Sana'a."

Its spokesman, Abdullah Al-Awadi, told "The Independent Arabia", that the reports of the Houthis spying on Yemeni communications through all the country's telecommunications companies are proven. He said, "I would like to clarify at the outset that the Houthi group seized all public and private state institutions, and the" Sabafon "company was one of the largest companies that was affected by them, so that they changed the legitimate management of the company and set up a department affiliated with them. The group is fully responsible for all these crimes, "he said.

As for the espionage mechanism, the Houthis “set up eavesdropping and spying devices on all telecommunications companies after the seizure of the company. Thus, they succeeded in transforming the company into a means of espionage after its seizure, by installing and integrating hardware and software within the communication systems in order to be able to eavesdrop and locate; They also use the customer data they have available for this purpose as well. "

The Houthis' knowledge of their government whose government is not recognized internationally in Sana'a, for their illegal use of communications, prompted them to demand that local companies still under their control discontinue their communication and information link with the "SabaFon" wing, which split from the president in Sanaa. According to a document obtained by the newspaper, which was directed by the Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dr. Hashem Muhammad Al-Shami to each of "Sabaafon, Yemen Mobile, MTN Yemen, and the Y Company", in which he called on them to cut their association with the dissident wing of "Sabafon" towards the liberated areas in South of the country.

Commenting on our repeated reports and our meetings with you, he said, "Interconnection with the alleged company" SabaFon "is strictly prohibited, which finally cut off the communication network between the governorates of the Republic on 9/20/2020, which is considered a sabotage act intended to increase suffering and discord among the people. One… and also not to accept or activate any new digital categories that were created for the alleged company without the approval of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology - Sana'a, the only licensee. According to him.

The stage of entrapment and recruitment

After spying through chip chips has become a systematic policy for the Houthis, our task has become to find the next step, and how to deal with the unfortunate people who fall under the group’s circle of interest and are still in their areas of control. Either because they are related to one of their teams, or for another reason, such as believing that the owner of the phone can obtain information that can be built upon in the service of the objectives of the military and security establishment in Sana'a.

The information we obtained indicates that the Houthi group is keen through security informants, which it has deployed in the various areas under its control, and even in the areas outside its control. The task of these informants is to collect as much information, data, and numbers as possible, then send them to the group’s operations rooms, which are concerned with monitoring the movements of Yemenis, especially those who are not loyal to the group.

In addition, the Houthis have assigned female members, within the so-called "Zainabiyat", to collect information about the families of the anti-group figures, and whoever suspects the group to monitor, and the task of these elements is to get close to those families and collect as much information as possible through them.

After collecting the necessary information, it is submitted to the competent authorities, in the Security and Intelligence Service, which is the device that the Houthis established on the ruins of the national and political security services. After that, it is determined whether the targeted person represents a danger and needs follow-up and monitoring, or targeting, so that the agency assigns executive bodies, either to arrest the victim, liquidate him, or continue to monitor him.

According to the exclusive documents we obtained and the sources that spoke to us, the next step is to place the target person's number under technical care. In the event that they are not able to obtain the target person’s number, the person closest to him will be placed instead. "Through technical attention to the number of the victim, his wife, or his children, all his information, private numbers and details of his movement are reached. This is followed by analyzing the data and extracting what concerns them from it." That way, the source says they can collect massive amounts of information by numbers.

Detention and extortion

Despite the lack of observance of the laws in the espionage operations followed in the areas under the control of the Sana'a government, finding the target is still a difficult task in a rugged country with a wide terrain, so arrest and kidnapping was a mere suspicion or a thread, a common occurrence in northern Yemen. Or at least this is confirmed by the documents of the cases in our hands, such as this incident, dated 3/3/2016 and bearing a sign that “the user of the number 32 ***** 73 sent to a friend who resides in areas outside the group’s control requesting an amount of money In order to be able to leave Sana'a because of the children of al-Mushki (Houthi supervisors) they harassed him and that they humiliated him and he cannot stay. " Three days after this message, the number stopped and no activity was recorded after this date.

In this context, we obtained information according to which the Houthis tried to use the people most frequent in the Marib Governorate, east of Yemen, to trade to pressure them and use them as spies to transmit news. Their numbers were put under surveillance and dozens of them were detained on malicious charges, including “cooperation with the forces of aggression”. "The legitimate Yemeni government forces and the Arab coalition" that supports them.

When talking with victims who went through the experience, we found that horror still prevailed over them, one of them tells his story, saying, “They stopped me at one of their points in Sana'a, and took me to a secret detention place, and they investigated every letter and contact I had, even the family messages for the numbers he used. It is Yemen Mobile and MTN. "

He pointed out that he was interrogated for a period of five hours, all about messages related to the process of sending and receiving goods, adding that “upon completion I was transferred to another place. In the new place I was surprised that one of my friends had about 12 days, and he, like me, did not know what the purpose of the investigation was. During the interrogation with me, someone told me literally, in the Yemeni dialect, what it means, “Do you want to leave or stay here?” I told him: Certainly I would like to get out, so he said, “We will release you now if you agree to work with us and provide us with all the news from“ Marib ” (Central city of Yemen) and we will provide you with facilities. ”After the victim refused the request for“ cooperation, ”they forced him to record a video in which he acknowledged his support for the Houthi project, to blackmail him with it in any circumstances that required it.“ As for dozens of victims, we have not been able to reach them so far because of their presence In the areas controlled by the group, because those who refused to cooperate are still in prison, and some of them died. "

In this context, we obtained a list of 200 people whose phone numbers were monitored, and those who were unable to reach his number added the phone of his wife or one of his first-degree relatives. It is likely to be censored.

Through the group’s attention to the details of the people whose phone numbers were collected, The Independent Arabia was able to know some details of the victims, and documented the testimonies of a number of them. Through field research, the newspaper's reporter met a number of them, heard their testimony in various Yemeni cities, and investigated their whereabouts in different cities for several months, so that he could finally meet 40 people, who were subjected to kidnapping, torture and raiding of their homes, as their families were subjected to intimidation. Among those who died during the military confrontations, after they aligned themselves with the government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi (the legitimate), and others who managed to flee to other areas that have been liberated.

What is the meaning of "orange"?

When talking about any war or human suffering, there is nothing better than the victims talking about themselves, and this is what Samir Al-Dhabyani does, after he was caught by monitoring his phone and kidnapping him by the new rulers of Sanaa, the head of the "Yemeni Organization for Abductees and Detainees", after If he was the owner of an educational facility before his arrest and an educator who had no interest in politics, according to what he said in his documented testimony with "video", he and others preferred to break the silence and make the sound of what is there to the greatest extent possible.

The story of the Yemeni educator Al-Dabiani, according to his account, goes back to the morning of Monday, February 22, 2016, the day he came to his family's home to take a car with his sick wife, heading with her to a hospital in Sana'a to undergo an operation. However, as soon as he moved his vehicle, he found himself surrounded by cars on all sides. In the beginning, he thought the matter was wrong or random surveillance, but besieging him, directing a machine gun at him and asking him to descend immediately, his suspicions were lost.

It was only minutes until the dialogue took another course, at which it reached an intensity with which the Houthi soldiers did not agree, granting him a deadline in which to take his wife to the hospital or home, and they also refused to undertake the task of addressing the wife's humanitarian situation. The only speech was, "You are wanted, ride with us, and convulsion is the master of the situation. At that, a passer-by, whose curiosity aroused the horror of what he saw, stood up and stood in the face of the soldiers advocating for my position in terms of finding a solution for my wife. But even he was confronted with severity and a threat, so I told him when I saw goodness in it. Take the wife to the children's school to continue her journey towards home, so that I can see my fate with them. "

During the first ten days of the continuous investigation, the conversation focused on the victim's phone messages, since the first day he received it, as he said that when they were subjected to interrogation, they printed all of those messages, on a mission that took about 3 hours from the printer due to the large amount of content. They did not leave in those letters stray or incoming unless they asked him about it, including the "home supply" that his wife asks him to bring to the family. For example, he added, "When my wife sends a request for oranges in a message, they insist that she means something other than oranges that people know, so the investigation takes hours on something that is understandable and cannot be interpreted, except in their minds."

After hiding him for two months without a trace or news, they transferred him to a well-known Yemeni prison called “Habra”, and “I was the last one to enter ward No. 9, thank God that I got out two years ago, but up to this moment there are still a number of detainees in Houthi prisons. It was me and them. In one place, unlike all those in prison, for example Dr. Lotf al-Farrasi from the province of Hodeidah - may God have captured him - an old man (almost over 75 years old, and he has all the diseases, and yet he is still in Houthi prisons. He was financially responsible in the Tihama region. When the Houthi group attacked his house ... they took all the family's phones, such as the wife, girls, and boys, and his personal phones, and they wanted to know every little and every big thing in their phones.

After she lost her eye, this was their request

Al-Tarboui Al-Sanaaani was not the only one who suffered harm because of his mobile phone messages. There is also journalist Ahmed Hathan, a former detainee in the Political Security Organization controlled by the group, stressing that all the investigations during his kidnapping, “were about messages from WhatsApp, whether they were personal or In general, in addition to the SMS text messages, they also focused on money transfers a year or two ago, they came to me with messages that passed for a long time and I no longer remember their content, and after three days of torture and beatings in the criminal investigation, they took me out at three in the morning, after investigations It lasted more than 12 hours, and I was signed on more than 100 papers, I don’t know what, and most of the prisoners I met in prison The common denominator between the reasons for their arrest was smartphone messages of all kinds, especially those whose bad luck led them to receive messages from parties related to the government Legitimacy, or live in liberated areas. "

As for the political activist and poet, Bardis Al-Sayaghi, she had the worst luck describing her previous activity, which seemed to raise the concerns of the pillars of Houthi rule, and therefore she paid the price for exceeding the normal torture to the loss of one of her body parts, which is her eye. However, the mobile phone messages were present in the Houthi questions, suspicions and concerns. According to her account documented with the "video", in which she stated that the attack was a trick that she did not play with, but she did not find any response to it, when the speaker added to her, saying, "Either you come to us or we come to you." And in prisons where she and dozens of Yemeni women, according to her version, were at the mercy of the notorious "Zainabiyat", she says that she was subjected to forms of torture, like many detainees who were even raped, in a conservative society, in which all those who disagreed were famous for neutralizing honor as a "red line."

She says, "I arrived and found everything equipped, including numbers that were registered in my name for different telecommunications companies, which I had forgotten. They told me: Confess everything if you do not want to be tortured, and after receiving a response, they charged me with" state terrorism and betrayal of the homeland ", and they gave me names Personalities of Saudi officers want me to pretend I know them, and I, by God, do not know them, but in the end I signed what they want after two months of kidnapping and torture after losing my right eye as a result of torture due to beating on the table when they were interrogating me.

The Houthis were in Sanaa, as Al-Sayaghi says, they kidnapped her on August 2, 2019 at 4 am, “When five crews accompanied by a bus of Zainabiyat came without a court order, and if I had anything, they would come in broad daylight. I almost opened the door except for the men. And the women entered in a brutal way, a scene that I could not forget, neither me nor my children until this moment, one was standing by me and the other searching me, while I was sleeping among my children and a group of armed men with their rifles aimed at me and my children, even my daughter tried to give me a cloak that covered myself and they rebuked her strongly and prevented her and did not show her mercy ".

Ultimately, however, the Yemeni activist was able to delude her jailers that she had become convinced of their political program, and would promote their ideological rhetoric to the masses, but instead found her way to escape.

Daylight abduction

As for Samira Al-Houri, a former kidnapped person, she says that she was not officially investigated by the Houthi militia, and she was not arrested, but was kidnapped because there was no legal justification or a prosecution order to bring her, and therefore she was not allowed to appoint a lawyer, communicate with her family, or even know the location of her abduction. . And she continues: "I did not stay during the period of my kidnapping in an official place, and the interrogation with me was unofficial. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the presence of all my text messages and my contacts with them, and this is evidence that all telecommunications companies are under the control of the group and that they are spying and monitoring text messages and communications, regardless of your phone number." ".

Later, he asked me to lure politicians and activists in certain methods that were mentioned in previous interviews, then they released me and kept me under tight surveillance in order to give me time to think. I tried to gain time to escape from Sanaa and communicate with my family, but I was surprised on 7/27/2019 with four Military cars, containing Houthi gunmen, in addition to a bus carrying a group of Zainabiyat led by Sultan Zaben, Ahmed Matar, Abu Salah and Abu Saqr, stormed the residential complex in Faj Attan Abraj Al-Ansi, and entered my apartment on the 12th floor, Apartment No. 48, and destroyed all the furniture on it, and stole the possessions They took me to a secret, unknown location with a number of girls who had been kidnapped earlier. I learned that they were in the criminal investigation at a place known later as "Dar Al-Hilal" in Taiz Street 1 in front of Al-Zahrawi Market.

Al-Houry continues: “I was not officially investigated by the Houthi militia, nor was I arrested legally.

Al-Houthi's legal rationale

After hearing the testimonies of a number of the kidnapped, we asked the lawyer of the journalists kidnapped in Houthi prisons, Abdul Majeed Sabra, about the allegations of the facts narrated by the speakers, and he confirmed that the Houthi government in Sana'a is based on “the texts of the legal articles (126, 127 and 128) of the Crimes and Penalties Law and these articles. Related to the aid of aggression or the pursuit and intelligence with a foreign country, which is mostly here in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, or publishing false news and statements aimed at weakening the defense force, as is the case with the accusation against journalists, which is stipulated in Article 126, Paragraph Two, and sometimes the kidnappers are charged with participating in armed gangs to target members of the army And the popular committees stipulated in Article 133 of the Penal Code.

Regarding the Houthi evidence and their accusations, Sabra asserted that the court that is trying the journalists depends on the reports of the National Security and Political Security and the statements he provides to him as “communications belonging to kidnappers, even though they deny them and deny their connection to these numbers and ask to address the telecommunications company to verify these Messages and confirmation of those who follow these numbers, as it is the body legally authorized to do so and not the National Security or Political Security Agency, but the court does not respond to those requests and issues its rulings, most of which were death sentences. It pleaded in such cases and submitted those requests to the court, but it did not respond. "

As for the legality of this behavior, Yemeni law affirmed that it is "a crime of assault on the private life of a person, and this is punishable when the arrest warrant officers carry out it on their own initiative without referring to the judiciary."

For his part, President of the American Center for Justice "ICG" Abdul Rahman Berman considers that the judicial law is the only one authorized to deal with privacy such as mobile messages, as "Article 35 of the Yemeni constitution stipulates the freedom and confidentiality of postal, telephone and telegraphic transportation, and all means of communication are guaranteed," It is not permissible to monitor, search, divulge its secrecy, confiscate it, or delay it except in cases specified by the law by a judicial order. Spying on citizens and monitoring them, as well as arresting them, entrapping them, kidnapping them, subjecting them to torture, then transferring them to trials and issuing death sentences.

He explained that from the legal point of view, "it is not permissible to use the evidence extracted through eavesdropping and espionage, regardless of their gravity and degree of clarity, given that they were taken in an illegal manner, in addition to the fact that the Houthis are an armed group and not an institution or a state, and there is also a liability for the telecommunications company that has knowledge or It allowed wiretapping of citizens, and victims can resort to the courts, whether it is the local judiciary after the restoration of the state or the international judiciary for trademark companies that have a branch in Yemen, and thus these companies will face legal and civil responsibility that must compensate the victims for the damages suffered by them.

Awaiting responses

Although the Yemeni government, from its temporary capital, Aden, in southern Yemen, is engaged in a multi-front struggle with the Houthis in the north, the Minister of Communications there, Eng. Lotfi Bashrif, refused to clarify any efforts made by his country's government in order to withdraw the communication rug from under the hands of the Houthis. From "Sabafon" to the south in the areas controlled by the internationally recognized government, it could be an indication that Bashrif and his team are working on their side on this file. Upon the arrival of the official response from the government or even from "Ansar Allah", it will be published by the "Independent Arabia", as is the case for the two companies, "Sanaa and Teleman", which also refused to answer our questions to confirm or deny the information that was investigated regarding the use of its data in violation. Peculiarities of consumers.

The "Ansar Allah" group led by Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi had colluded with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and overthrew the government in Sanaa in September 2014 before it took control of most of the Yemeni north and a dispute erupted between the two ruling partners, after the Arab coalition pressed militarily to restore Authority is vested in the internationally recognized government of Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The latter chose Aden as a temporary capital after its liberation from Al-Houthi, who is in talks with his organization under international sponsorship, and finally concluded the exchange of prisoners as a goodwill gesture, to start final negotiations to end the humanitarian crisis in the war-exhausted country.