Pentecostal According to Who?
October 5th, 2006 by Carl Thomas.In a voluminous 233-page, 11-country study on Pentecostals, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirmed the global reach of what they call “renewalist Christianity,” ranging from nine percent of the population in Chile to 33 percent in Kenya. However, one of the most surprising conclusions of the study–and one that bears some serious interpretation–is the claim that, in “six of the 10 countries surveyed, at least four-in-ten Pentecostals say they never speak or pray in tongues.“
I can’t tell you how worked up this gets me. I see men walking around the church like they lead John the Baptist to Jesus yet have never once prophesied the Word of the Lord, never once saw a man healed, never once acted in faith and manifested a miracle.
I wish it wasn’t so easy to be called Pentecostal. What if the Apostles and Prophets had to come to your congregation and test your meetings against the Word of God before you could use the label? What if they judged your sermons against the sermons in Acts before you could be called a Pentecostal preacher? My God there would be men crying out for the presence on Saturday nights and sinners crying out for salvation Sunday morning!
Pentecostal preacher, no matter how successful your church growth strategy, no matter how well financed your building campaign, no matter how well respected you are at the city minister’s breakfast, you will not be fulfilled without the manifest presence of God in your meetings. You have been called and set apart to pray down revival. Tongues is a stubling block but so is the cross. Preach the whole Gospel.
Let God be true and every man a liar!
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as long as preachers continue to be afraid of pressing the issue of tongues as the initial physical evidence (or tongues at all) because they are afraid of nutting people out, the real power of “Pentecost” will continue to be a fad instead of the confirmation power to prove the validity of the Word!
Signs and Wonders should follow the Word if the Holy Spirit of the Book of Acts is still real And He is!!!!!!
[...] I have to say that before carl gets too offended. carl seems like a great guy and even though he called me a “bonehead,” I can take it on the chin, realize we are both brothers and return the compliment. But I’ll let him use his own words for that. There are elements what I’ll discuss that permeate the movement but this is my experience and I am relating it as such. If you want a really succinct and more objective history of the Pentecostal movement, I’d recommend Gary Gilley’s article on the topic here. I don’t really have time to explore all of the ins and outs and frankly, I’d just be doing the most boring part of research by regurgitating facts, names and dates. Not really what I like to do on a Wednesday evening. But as for me, I’m still buzzing from the high of seeing my meager hit counter surge a couple of days ago after being Blogspotted by the prince of Reformed blogging, Grace to You’s Phil Johnson. So I’m not planning on bringing myself down with boring names and dates. Thanks Phil. Fine I’m saved, now what? First off, these guys are Christians and I love them as such. (Even as I say “these guys,” I realize that not all Pentecostals will fit into this category.) I just have some disagreements. I think that’s safe ground for discussion. For me, I have to say that I was always bothered by the idea of the so-called “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” as espoused by my Pente-smatic pastor growing up. For those unfamiliar, Pentecostals were known as the “tongues speakers” for the longest time believing that the only evidence that one “had the Holy Spirit” was that they babbled about in “other tongues.” Although the more traditional Pentecostal would disagree, I think that some would say that displaying any of the various spiritual gifts would qualify someone as having received the Holy Spirit even if tongues in particular was not present. The bottom line is that as a distinctive they still believe that one has to “receive the Holy Spirit” as a Secondary Work of Grace, that is, as something that is subsequent to Salvation. [...]