Building on the Foundation of Spiritual Adventurers

The newer, faster computers with more memory and more user-friendly operating systems did not spring up over night. No, they are the products of innovators who labored to improve and enhance the efforts of those who had pioneered in the field of electronic processing and storage of data. The new products are built on the foundational work of earlier scientists.
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I think there is a need to pull back the curtain and explain that the Pentecostal Movement did not spontaneously appear either. Rather, it was built on the foundational work of previous spiritual adventurers. Without stifling exploration, innovation, and creativity, those who work with emerging Pentecostal leaders have the responsibility of showing them where they fit into the advance of God’s Kingdom. Will emerging Pentecostals learn from their predecessors? Can they enhance and improve on the efforts of the pioneers?
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Sola Scriptura: A commitment to the primacy of Scripture characterized the Pentecostal Movement from its beginnings. Pentecostals owe much to the Reformers who restored to the Church the principle of Sola Scriptura—the teaching that the Bible alone is the final authority for what we must believe and how we must behave. Believing the Scriptures to be the all-sufficient rule for faith and practice, Pentecostals have attempted to search the written Word of God to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing in and saying to His Church.
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Radical Conversion: Linking the activity of the Spirit with the Word in this way moved Pentecostals beyond contemplation of biblical teachings to volitional action based on Scriptural truth. It was not sufficient to possess an intellectual assent to the facts of the Gospel, an individual needed to have a “heart-warming experience” with God.
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Being born into a Christian family was not adequate. Being moral in the eyes of the world was not enough. A clear-cut decision for Christ was required. People were expected to mourn over their sins and seek Christ to receive cleansing and regeneration. For this emphasis, Pentecostals should be grateful to the nineteenth century revivalists as well as to John Wesley and the Moravians and Reformers who influenced him.
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Pursuit of Personal Holiness: Donald Dayton and others have pointed to Wesley’s theological emphasis on sanctification (“Christian perfectionism”) as the backdrop for the emphasis on a “second work of grace” within the Holiness Movement of the 1800s.
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While Wesley preferred to use descriptions such as “attaining the mind of Christ” or “total devotion to God” rather than “sinless perfection,” Phoebe Palmer and other Methodist teachers held to the possibility of attaining instantaneous and entire sanctification by “placing all on the altar.”
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Others in the Holiness Movement who were less Wesleyan pursued experiences with God subsequent to justification as part of the “deeper life” (“Higher Life” for the Keswick Teachers) that was part of progressive sanctification.
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Social Justice: It is noteworthy that the teachings of Christian perfectionism affected not just the personal arena, but tackled social and institutional concerns as well. The movement gave vitality to the antislavery enterprise.
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Baptism in the Holy Spirit: As the Holiness Movement advanced toward 1900, it increasingly used the terminology and imagery of Pentecost to describe the subsequent blessing. Charles G. Finney and Asa Mahan helped popularize the phrase “baptism with the Holy Ghost” as a description for the empowering and cleansing experience. When the Pentecostal revival began, it co-opted the Holiness terminology to describe the baptism in the Holy Spirit with its attendant speaking in other tongues.
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Divine Healing: One of the most obvious components of the Pentecostal foundation is the sincere belief in contemporary signs and wonders. Following in the footsteps of those who believed in the restoration of vital New Testament Christianity before Christ’s return, Pentecostals refused to accept the teaching that miracles ceased with the death of the last Apostle. Like A.B. Simpson, they believed that since divine healing was part of the atonement it was the will of God to heal.
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Do we still believe? Do we believe in sola Scriptura, in radical conversion, in the pursuit of personal holiness, in Christian compassion and social justice, in the infilling of the Holy Spirit, in divine healing?