I attended many Pentecostal churches growing up. Every one taught from the Bible, verse by verse. Maybe, in this world gone mad, people need God and they did not find Him in their previous churches.
“Pentecostalism promotes healthy lifestyles and serves as the largest detox center for Latin American men. Men who join these churches often stop hard drinking … or gambling or womanizing.”
This is the reason for its popularity. These people truly had a conversion to Jesus. Their lives changed dramatically and others saw their change and wanted Jesus in their lives as well.
You shall know them by their fruits.
The churches that I have gone to that believe in the gifts of the spirit have also taught the Bible in accuracy.
Some of the people blogging on this site don’t understand the gifts of the spirit so they criticize them. I know a guy who criticized pentecostals, though he claimed to be a Christian and was living with his girlfriend. I do believe he had a love for Christ but lacked the strength to say no to this sin in his life. He would have done well to embrace the holiness of God that I have seen from people praying in the Spirit.
I believe the gifts of the Spirit are for today and I believe every word of the Bible and I believe in living the words of the Bible and in personal Bible Study as well. And the people who I have met who also believe this are strong, Word abiding Christians who love the Lord and who follow the Bible.
Amen! I know from being raised in a Pentecostal Assemblies of God family and church, that the deeper one studies the Word and the closer one gets in their walk with Jesus, there comes a longing to experience a true infilling of the Holy Ghost and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit that go along with that. After all isn’t that what Jesus Christ commanded us to do, Matthew 28:19-20
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Acts 1:8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Acts 2
2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
1 Corinthians 12
12 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. 2 Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. 3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9 to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 10 to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: 11 but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.