The PFWBC is historically and theologically a combination of both denominational traditions, having begun as a small group of Free Will Baptist churches in North Carolina that accepted the teachings of Holiness movement, and later, accepting the teaching of a third work of grace spread by the Pentecostal revival.
Many of these "Palmer" churches cooperated to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists in 1935.
Reverend G. B. Cashwell (1862–1916),[1] a former minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, returned to North Carolina after experiencing what he felt to be the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1906 at the Azusa Street Revival.
He began preaching "pentecost" to the Holiness denominations there, one of which was this small group of former Free Will Baptists.
Through a series of meetings he held, beginning in 1906, this group accepted points of Pentecostal faith and practice.