What you're saying makes sense. However, to know if the founders of Pentecostalism had the right interpretation of scripture one has to look at the fruit of their lives and examine their other teachings and practices. If someone is a known con artist and manipulator, why should we think their interpretation of scripture is correct?
Do you know of any of the Reformers who bilked people out of their money? Any who lied to gain a following? Any who forbade the use of doctors for all their followers except for them? Any who engaged in power struggles to be top dog? Any who made one false prophecy after another? These things aren't occasional moral failures; it's a consistent pattern to all the founders of Pentecostalism.
This is what's so frustrating to me. Most Pentecostals don't even know the origins of their own beliefs and when you try to inform them they immediately go into attack mode. One doesn't need a hermeutical presentation of scripture; all that's needed is some knowledge and a little common sense.
You should not be frustrated. They don't feel the need to know these sad stories you want them to know about.
I will agree that most Pentecostals/Charismatics today do not know the history of the modern Pentecostal Movement. But I don't think it matters.
It is not "their history" and they don't relate. Most Pentecostals today have a history of their own testimonies about how they were saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit and they don't really care about these stories from 1900 as it does not matter to them if Parham ended up a sad story.
They didn't know about this history when they read the bible and believed what it said and were baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. Knowledge of the modern Pentecostal history was not necessary. That is why they don't care about your sad stories.
They did not base their understanding of scriptures on any man from the 1900s they just read the bible and believed it. Many modern Pentecostals have never engaged in these theological debates having never been exposed to the questions. They just read the bible and believed and after wards they encounter people who tell them about the debates or the history of the modern Pentecostal movement. It does not matter to them because they didn't know about it before they read the bible and don't feel it is possible that they could have been tainted by any of these false teachings you want to highlight. You are probably frustrated because your theory is failing you. You can't find anyone who was tainted by these teachings. You think they are ignoring it but you are simply unwilling to concede that they based their interpretation on the plain reading of the word without human intervention. That is what is making you mad. You can't accept that.
I think you are painting with a broad brush. People like Parham were confronted as soon as they departed from scripture and moral standards and the fact that they were
not tolerated demonstrates that the movement was not corrupted by these bad characters as you charge. No one ignored them. They confronted them.
You are doing the same thing that people do when they look at Christian TV networks and say that is what christians believe and teach. They have a distorted tunnel vision that is based on isolated bad examples on TV and form an world view that is inaccurate concerning true Christian teachings and doctrine and lifestyles in the real world.
The Pentecostal Movement was so much larger than the celebrity pastors and personality bad examples you can pluck from their early history. For each example of an early leader there were hundreds of thousands that were doing MORE teaching, church planting and missions work and accomplishing more for spreading the movement than that bad example celebrity pastor you use as an example. It simply is not true that Most of their leaders were bad characters. Not even close.
It seems that your own understanding of the history of the Pentecostal movement is wrong.
I challenge you to read a few more highly rated, books on the subject. These two books are considered excellent, accurate histories and are even respected as true histories by non pentecostal seminary teachers who don't believe in the teachings of Pentecostals but would vouch for these as accurate historical accounts.
This Gospel Shall be Preached (in two volumes) by Gary McGee
The Century of the Holy Spirit by Vinson Synan
There are a few others that I can recommend as well but these are often found in bibliographies of non pentecostal authors of bible college and seminary text books.
Keep reading about the history of the Pentecostal movement from detailed accounts like these and you will soon learn that Parham, did not play as large a role as you thought. You will soon learn who the real leaders were (and there were many) and the contributions they made, as well as the reasons for the growth in missions which continues to this day.
Much more was going on at the root of the movement than what Lake, or Parham did or said. MUCH, MUCH more. It was HUGE. They were little fish in comparison to the rest of the story of the ROOTS of the Pentecostal movement.
As far as which denominations have the most accounts of pastors living ungodly lives we all know it is by far the non pentecostal churches. So if you are going to use that argument you should examine the root of that problem. There are many more accounts of baptism pastors falling into sin or living an ungodly example in any given year than pentecostal pastors.
Maybe there are more Pentecostal Celebrity pastors who get exposed and become scandals but that is because There are more Pentecostal celebrity pastors and mega church pastors. However, this does not mean there are more Pentecostal pastors who fall into scandalous sin.
Pentecostal pastors have far fewer accounts of moral failures than Baptists, or Methodists etc. Far fewer. Everyone knows that.
That statistic cannot be ignored while pointing out celebrity pastors and trying to make a false conclusion based on them.
Reality is found in the number of moral failures among all their pastors and Pentecostals have fewer and always have. That is fact that you are ignoring while trying to paint a false reality based on celebrity pastors.