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Pentecostals began in the early 1900's.  They sprung out of the Baptist and Methodist denominations. There are many splinter groups that refer to themselves as Pentecostals, but lack the criteria to be truly Pentecostal.  Even as with other denominations there are some basic key points that must be held to in order to be considered Pentecostal.  These basic tenets are referred to as the Pentecostal Pillars. First, all true Pentecostals hold to the Fundamentals of the Christian Faith.  This means that they affirm the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, The Deity of Christ, the Authority of the Scriptures, the Trinity,...

The Three Supernovas By Philip Cottraux Atheists used to believe the universe was eternally pre-existing and static. By rejecting the biblical creation account, they couldn’t accept the idea of a universe that had a beginning. Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, and at one time even Einstein labored under this philosophy. The idea of the whole universe condensed to a small state whose expansion was triggered by a colossal explosion was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges LeMaitres. The idea seemed so preposterous that astronomer Fred Hoyle first coined the phrase “big bang” as a term of ridicule. But two years...

After a series of messages over several weeks encouraging the listeners to respond to the ‘fire of God’, Pastor Bates waded into the controversy over homosexuality, highlighting it’s sin as compared to Scripture: “I was literally shocked, personally, when I began to see people get up, move out, walk out the door kinda shaking their heads. “ Bates says that the people who were most likely to walk out on a message on the Biblical stance of homosexuality are those people with relationship connections with those in the LGBT community. Be it a son, daughter or parent, many going to...

(Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images) Tens of millions of Latin Americans have left the Roman Catholic Church in recent decades and embraced Pentecostal Christianity, according to a new Pew Research Center survey on religion in 18 Latin American countries and Puerto Rico. Indeed, nearly one-in-five Latin Americans now describe themselves as Protestant, and across the countries surveyed majorities of them self-identify as Pentecostal or belong to a Pentecostal denomination. Pentecostals share many beliefs with other evangelical Protestants, but they put more emphasis on the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as speaking in tongues, faith healing and prophesying.With...

Liberation Theology and Neo-Pentecostalism: A Leading Challenge to the Evangelical Churches in Brazil By Julio Severo Traditionally, major theological trends — good or wicked — came from Europe and America. The single major theological trend originating outside Europe and America is Liberation Theology, which is prevalent in Latin America, especially Brazil. In this original and exclusive e-booklet, I trace this movement in Brazil and how its leaders recognized openly that the only force capable of challenging Liberation Theology was neo-Pentecostal churches. In fact, the Brazilian Left admits today that neo-Pentecostal churches are the only hindrance to the advance of its...

IntroductionIn writing this analysis, it is important to note that the Pentecostal movement is diverse and heterogeneous. Some charismatic Christian groups are extremely adhoc and fluid in technique, such as the Wesley and quasi Pentecostal-Baptists churches, whilst other groups are more organized and rigid. For example, the United Pentecostal Church, other so-called independent "Oneness" Pentecostals and at times the Assemblies of God. And as a result, the diversity of Pentecostal movements must be taken into account when reading this analysis. This paper attempts to examine the main differences between mainstream fundamentalist and/or evangelical Christianity and the Pentecostal movement. As a...

I'm a bit loathe to wade into such again. However, The Lord HAS brought to my awareness a couple of things this past week that kind of goad me into posting. I'm MORE loathe to allow Holy Spirit to go unrepresented on such scores on FR after the recent thrashing His works received on that other locked thread. I'm NOT interested in going around and around with the more irrationally and unBiblically harsh posters on that other thread. They will likely arrive and rant as they did on that thread. I may or may not respond with pics and...

In an ongoing debate about what it means to be a Christian, Chris Redford, a former Assembly of God youth-turned-atheist, is trying to make the case that the view of salvation held by Pentecostals today is more akin to his own view than the one held by the entire Protestant church since the Reformation. He in particular cites my Calvinism and suggested “‘saved’ means “something different (to me) than what it means to Pentecostals”. I will summarize his position, which is found in a comment on the other post. Calvinist (Protestant Reformation View): Metaphysical Salvation, Salvation and the Gospel Message...

Pentecostals have always been the red-headed stepchildren of American Christianity -- holy rollers who were known for speaking in tongues or laughing wildly and even barking like dogs while seized by religious ecstasy, or producing miracle healings on command and handling venomous snakes without fear. All of that was made possible, of course, by calling on the Holy Spirit -- yet was too embarrassing for sober-sided mainline Protestants and even hellfire Southern Baptists, and incomprehensible to the point of batty for Roman Catholics and other high-church folks. Or at least it was until Oral Roberts came along. Roberts, who...

PASTOR DANIEL AJAYI-ADENIRAN is coming for your soul. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white, rich or poor, speak English or Spanish or Cantonese. He is on a mission to save you from eternal damnation. He realizes you may be skeptical, put off by his exotic name — he’s from Nigeria — or confused by his accent, the way he stretches his vowels and trills his R’s, giving his sermons a certain chain-saw rhythm. He suspects you may have some unfortunate preconceptions about Nigerians. But he is not deterred. He believes the Holy Spirit is working through him...

Before criticizing Pentecostal churches that draw Catholics as members, Catholic leaders should ask why their own parishes aren't meeting the needs of those who leave, the Vatican's top ecumenical representative said yesterday at Duquesne University. "Our response cannot be in the form of a polemical approach, leaving ourselves to condemn the activities of other groups," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Such an approach "is not constructive and could even be counter-productive," he said. While Cardinal Kasper is known for outreach to traditional Protestant and Orthodox churches, he said it is crucial to...

Folks, the table I shared with you a couple of days back, documenting the different anti-Trinitarian heresies, the time of their birth, and the people and events leading their rebuttal and condemnation as false teaching, had become a piece of conversation in here. One user observed that nowhere in the authorities in favor of the Trinity do we find "the Bible" and that's because the Trinity, so he said, is a heretical, devil-inspired concept foreign to Scripture and the Truth, or words to that effect. I suppose that he was talking about the second two tables because the first one...

end-times_news@associate.com "Jan Ross" rross@columbus.rr.com To: "News" end-times_news@associate.com Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:46:05 -0400 A Tidal Wave of Christianity September 11th focused a lot of attention on the growth of Islam. What most pundits and scholars have missed is the incredible growth of Christianity, and where it's growing. Today more Presbyterians worship in the African nation of Ghana than in Scotland. And more Anglicans worship in Nigeria than in Britain. We like to think of ourselves as the Christian West. But there is growing evidence that the center of Christendom has moved. Africans are running to accept Jesus Christ. It...