Martin Mittelstadt is professor of New Testomony at Evangel College in Missouri and president of the Society for Pentecostal Research. He describes the Pentecostal motion as a “restoration” or “restoration” motion inside Christianity. Such actions sometimes come up when Christians really feel that one thing essential about Christ's unique teachings and church has been misplaced and must be restored.
Within the case of Pentecostals, the spectacular religious powers and prophetic callings given to Christ's 11 remaining apostles within the New Testomony ebook of Acts have been misplaced, Mittelstadt says. After Jesus was crucified and resurrected, he appeared to his disciples and informed them to attend in Jerusalem “till you’re endued with energy from on excessive” (Luke 24:49). This energy got here throughout the Jewish vacation of Shavuot, identified in Greek as Pentecost (“fiftieth”) as a result of it takes place 50 days after Passover.
Because the apostles and greater than 100 different early Christians gathered for the Pentecost feast, “there got here from heaven a sound like a dashing mighty wind, and it crammed the entire home the place they had been sitting,” Acts 2 studies. “And there appeared to them cloven tongues as of fireplace, and upon every of them, they usually had been all crammed with the Holy Spirit and started to talk with different tongues, because the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Pentecostal pioneer William Seymour and others understood this unique biblical Pentecostal expertise for instance of the “baptism within the Holy Spirit” or “spirit baptism.” Such Spirit baptism happens after one has already transformed to Christianity in his coronary heart by accepting Jesus Christ as his private Savior (often known as “saved”), and is separate from water baptism. To be baptized with the Holy Spirit is to be baptized with the “Holy Spirit and hearth” as promised by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11.
Pentecostals imagine that the identical transformative religious baptism skilled by the unique 11 apostles is obtainable to all and essential to align your life and private mission with that of Jesus Christ.
“The purpose is to revive 1st century Christianity,” says Mittelstadt. “They wish to relive the ebook of Acts. And the occasions of the day of Pentecost are central to the character of the Pentecostal worldview.”
On the core of this worldview is the idea that the return of Jesus Christ is imminent. In Acts 2, the apostle Peter explains the unusual habits of the disciples at Pentecost as an indication that the second coming is close to. He quotes the Outdated Testomony prophet Joel who prophesied that “within the final days… [God] will pour out of [His] Spirit on the entire physique.”
The early Pentecostals noticed what was occurring on Azusa Avenue and elsewhere because the long-awaited coming of the “latter rain,” fulfilling the prophecy that the Holy Spirit would descend upon this final technology earlier than the triumphal return of Christ.
