The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Pentecostalism...is it Biblical?

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"]What is its history, or lack thereof?</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Here's some information from a paper I wrote:<br><br>"The American Pentecostal [movement], though it has several overarching characteristics, is complex and diverse, owing in great part to its history. Some of the earliest influences on the development of Pentecostalism came from the restoration, premillennial [dispensationalism], healing, and Holiness movements of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Restorationism focused primarily on God’s desire to restore the primitive New Testament church, and [dispensational] premillennialism denotes a belief in the secret rapture of the church before the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Christ as illustrated in the Book of Revelation. The healing movement posited that miraculous physical healing by means of faithful prayer and the laying on of hands is available to the believer as a promise of the Holy Spirit. The Holiness movement, largely an outgrowth of Wesleyanism, emphasized the power for perfection in Christian living imbued through 'baptism in the Holy Spirit.'<br><br>"Out of this general milieu arose an itinerant preacher by the name of Charles Fox Parham. Parham had been influenced strongly by Holiness teachings, and set up his own Bible college in Topeka, Kansas. There he asked his students to study the Scriptures for the evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, with particular focus on the second chapter of Acts. The students concluded that the evidence was speaking in other tongues, and on January 1, 1901, Agnes Ozman did just that. But this new experience was not accepted by many others, and Parham’s gospel spread slowly. In 1905, he set up a mission and Bible college for his Apostolic Faith Movement in Houston, Texas, where black Baptist preacher William Joseph Seymour came to believe in the doctrine of Holy Spirit baptism with the evidence of tongues. Before he had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, Seymour travelled in 1906 to Los Angeles with Parham’s blessing, where he eventually established the Azusa Street mission.<br><br>"The Azusa Street mission was founded amidst a city brimming with Holiness missions. It attracted thousands of seekers, and worship practices were spontaneous, ecstatic, and interracial in character. The revival there spawned several others and received extensive coverage in the press, and eventually Pentecostal revival missions were popping up all over the country and world. As Robert Anderson writes, 'The Pentecostal movement came upon the religious world in 1906 like a meteor.' The Pentecostal movement would later be divided by several internal controversies—some of which had the potential to destroy the movement altogether—but Pentecostalism survived and emerged in the second half of the century as a widely accepted and influential movement within conservative Protestant evangelicalism."<br><br>Works cited in original paper:<br><br>1. Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).<br><br>2. Edith L. Blumhoffer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993).