WILLIAM H DURHAM (1873-1912).

Dynamic leader of the early Pentecostal movement and proponent of the doctrine of Christ's "finished work." Originally from Kentucky, Dur­ham joined the Baptist Church in 1891 but was not converted to Christ until seven years later while in Minnesota, where he experienced a vision of the crucified Christ. He immediately devoted himself to full-time ministry and became pastor of Chicago's North Avenue Mission in 1901. When the gifts of the Spirit became evident there in 1906, Durham visited the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, where he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues on March 2, 1907, at which time W. J. Seymour prophesied that wherever Durham preached, the Holy Spirit would fall upon the people.

When Durham returned to his church in Chicago, the Pentecostal revival spread quickly through his ministry. His overcrowded meetings lasted far into the night and sometimes until morning. Durham reported in his periodical, The Pentecostal Testimony, that "it was nothing to hear people at all hours of the night speaking in tongues and singing in the Spirit" (Brumback, 1961,69). .A "thick haze . . . like blue smoke" often rested upon the mission. When this was present, those entering the building would fall down in the aisles ( Miller, 1986,123).

Prank Ewart (1975, 99) wrote that "thousands came to hear Durham preach, and all went away with the conviction that he was a pulpit prodigy.” At one point there were as many as twenty-five ministers from out of town at his meetings seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Many people who later became prominent pioneers of the Pentecostal movement attended Durham's meetings, including  A. H. Argue; E. N. Bell; Howard Goss; Daniel Berg, founder of the Assemblies of God in Brazil; and Luigi Prancescon, a pioneer of the Pentecostal movement in Italy.  Aimee Semple, before her marriage to Harold McPherson, was instantaneously healed of  a broken ankle through Durham’s ministry in January 1910.

Durham's church soon became a leading center for the Pentecostal movement worldwide. The Assemblea Cristiana of Chicago, which had re­ceived the Pentecostal message as a result of Durham's friendship with Luigi Francescon, became the mother church of other Italian assem­blies in the U.S.: Italy, and South America. F.A. Sandgren, a Norwegian elder in Durham's mis­sion, published a Scandinavian periodical, Folke Vennen, resulting in several Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Pentecostal missions in Chicago. A group of Persians under the leadership of Andrew Urs han also received encouragement from Dur­ham.

Durham became welt known for his repudiation of the Holiness doctrine of sanctification as a “second work of grace," arguing that the  “finished work" of Christ on Calvary becomes available to the believer at the time of justification. The benefits of Calvary are therefore appropriated for sanctification over the entire period of the Chastain’s life, rather than at a single subsequent moment, as was believed by most Pentecostals in Durham's day.

Durham went to Los Angeles with this mes­sage, and upon his return to Chicago, contracted a head cold. Returning to Los Angeles, he died of pneumonia during the summer of 1912.

Bibliography: R. M. Anderson, Vision of the Disin­herited (1979); F. Bartleman, How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles, 2d ed. (1925); C. Brumback Suddenly From Heaven (1961); J. Colletti, "Sociological' Study of Italian Pentecostals in Chicago, 1900-1930," in Papers of tie Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (1986); F. Ewart The Phenomenon of Pentecost (rev. ed., 1975); 5. Frodsham, With Signs Following

(1946); D. Hayes, The Gift of Tongues (1913); Holleiiwegcr, The Pentecostals (1972); A. S. McPherson, This Is That (1919); T. W. Miller, The Significance of A.      H. Argue for Pentecostal Historiography," Pneuma 8 (Fall 1986)120-58.            R.M.Riss