SPIRIT-FILLED and EMPOWERED FORERUNNERS 

A NEW BLOG POST SERIES HIGHLIGHTING SOME OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE PIONEERED LAST DAYS HOLY SPIRIT-EMPOWERED MINISTRY ACCOMPANIED BY SIGNS AND WONDERS

On the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the 120 believers gathered together in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. When the people heard them speaking in tongues, which the Bible tells us were known languages recognized by people dwelling there at that time from every nation under heaven, the apostle Peter, together with the eleven other apostles, stood up to address the crowd, saying: "Men of Judea, and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

    'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,

    That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;

    Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

    Your young men shall see visions,

    Your old men shall dream dreams.

    And on My menservants and on My maidservants

    I will pour out My Spirit in those days,

    And they shall prophesy.

    I will show wonders in heaven above

    And signs in the earth beneath:

    Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

      The sun shall be turned into darkness,

    And the moon into blood,

    Before the great and awesome day of the Lord.

    And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD

    Shall be saved.' Acts 2:14-21 NKJV

If this prophecy of Joel concerning the last days outpouring of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled around 2,000 years ago, then surely it must still, and even more so, be relevant today. Many discerning church leaders have stated with a sense of Holy-Spirit led conviction that we are living in the last of the last days before Jesus returns for His church, in what is known as the Rapture, after which there will be a seven-year period called the Great Tribulation on earth - the time of God's wrath being poured out, followed by Jesus coming back to rule and reign from Jerusalem over all the earth as King of kings and Lord of lords, for one thousand years.

The same Holy Spirit who indwelt Jesus while He was on earth, from age 30 now dwells in all believers who are born again of the Spirit of God. The Baptism of (or with) the Holy Spirit is a subsequent impartation of God's supernatural power and revelation available to every believer, as Jesus stated in Acts 1:8 "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Since the time of the Protestant Reformation led by people such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, until the present time, God has been restoring truth to the Church of Jesus Christ that was all but lost after the first couple of centuries of the church age. 

As was stated in the first blog post in this series, at the turn of the last century, the truth concerning the Baptism of the Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues began to be restored to some sections of the church. A man named Charles Fox Parham is credited with playing a major part in this revelation and restoration to the church - to those who woud believe and by faith receive the promised gift of the Holy Spirit to empower for service.

CHARLES FOX PARHAM

(June 4, 1873 - January 29, 1929)

He was an American preacher and evangelist. Together with William J. Seymour, Parham was one of two central figures in the development and the initial spread of early Pentecostalism, known as Holiness Pentecostalism. He associated glossolalia or speaking in tongues with the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. He was the first preacher since the time of the early church in Acts to articulate the distinctive doctrine of evidential tongues and to expand the movement.

He began to conduct his first Christian services at the age of 15. He studied at a Methodist Bible college from 1890-1893.

He left the Methodist Church in 1895 because he disagreed with its hierarchy. He complained that Methodist preachers "were not left to preach by direct inspiration." He established his own itinerant evangelistic ministry.

He preached divine healing and prayer for the sick, after he and his son, Claude had been healed by what he believed to be divine intervention.

In Topeka, Kansas, he established the Bethel Healing Home and also published the Apostolic Faith magazine.

Because of his tremendous success with Bethel, many began to urge Parham to open a Bible school. After shutting himself away to fast and pray, in October of 1900, he obtained a beautiful structure in Topeka, Kansas for the purpose of beginning a Bible school, and called it "Stone's Folly."

When Stone's Folly was dedicated, a man looked out from the Prayer Tower and saw a vision above Stone's Folly of "a vast lake of fresh water about to over-flow, containing enough to satisfy every thirsty need." It would prove to be a sign of things to come.

The Bible school was open to every Christian minister and believer, who was willing to "forsake all." They were to arrive willing to study the Word  deeply and believe God for all their personal needs. The student's faith was their only tuition; everyone was to believe that God would supply their needs.

Parham gave his students a historical assignment. While studying the Book of Acts, they were to diligently study the Bible's evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and report on their findings in three days. On the morning the assignment was due, Parham listened to the reports of forty students and was astonished by what he heard. While different manifestations of the Spirit occurred during the outpouring at Pentecost in Acts, every student had arrived at the same general conclusion: Every recipient baptized by the Holy Spirit spoke in other tongues!

Charles Parham opened a new Bible school in Houston, Texas in 1905. Parham's schools were never meant to be theological seminaries. They were training centres where the truths of God were taught in the most practical manner - with prayer a key ingredient. Many ministers left his school to serve God throughout the world.

It was in Houston that Parham met Wiliam J. Seymour. Up to this time, the Jim Crow laws forbid blacks and whites from attending school together. And Parham's meetings were segregated, but it was because blacks didn't ask to attend the schools, that is until Seymour. Seymour's humility and hunger for the Word so moved Parham that he decided to ignore the racist rules of the day. Seymour was given a place in the school where he experienced revolutionary truths on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. William Seymour would later become leader of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California.

NEXT TIME: William J. Seymour (The Catalyst Of Pentecost)

SPIRIT-FILLED and EMPOWERED FORERUNNERS 

A NEW BLOG POST SERIES HIGHLIGHTING SOME OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE PIONEERED LAST DAYS HOLY-SPIRIT EMPOWERED MINISTRY WITH SIGNS AND WONDERS FOLLOWING THEIR MINISTRY

LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING

It is widely recognized that the Christian Church began on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus had told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem for "the Promise of the Father" when they would be "endued with power from on high." For forty days after His resurrection, the Bible tells us that Jesus presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.                                                                                                 Acts 1:3

For ten days, around 120 of His disciples waited in the Upper Room in Jerusalem praying, and waiting in eager anticipation for "the Promise of the Father" to be given to them. THEN, on the Day of Pentecost, IT HAPPENED:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Acts 2:1-4

This chapter continues to describe how that there were people in Jerusalem at that time "dwelling there from every nation under heaven." The miracle of God was that all these people from a large number of nations heard them speak the wonderful works of God - in their own languages. The disciples were supernaturally "speaking in tongues" unknown to them, but recognized by those listening as their own languages. How amazing is our God!!

The first apostles chosen by Jesus, together with Matthias who replaced Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus leading to His arrest and subsequent crucifixion, led the early Church starting in Jerusalem and then to other parts of the known world at that time. Thomas, for example is known to have ministered the Gospel to southern India, where he was eventually martyred for his faith. The apostle John was exiled on the isle of Patmos and was the only one of the twelve who was not martyred.

The Book of Acts penned by Luke the Physician, who also wrote the Gospel bearing his name, gives us a window to the beginnings of the early Church era, particularly highlighting the ministries of the apostle Peter, the account of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, and the ministry and missionary journeys of the apostle Paul. The church grew exponentially as the Gospel of Jesus Christ was boldly preached, many times with signs following the preaching of the Word, attested by healings and miracles, and deliverances from demonic oppression. Along with powerful demonstrations of the Holy Spirit's working, the apostles and early Christians also suffered persecution.

As the centuries passed, the pure devotion to the Word of God and full  reliance on the Holy Spirit to empower and lead them gave way increasingly to compromise of Biblical truth, adherence to man-made traditions, and re-interpretation of ministry roles, leading to the church being led by a priestcraft, lacking in spiritual power and Godly authority.

In fact, it would probably be fair to say that many church leaders during quite a number of centuries up until the Protestant Reformation were not even "born again" by the Spirit of God, as Jesus stated in John 3:3, speaking to Nicodemus, saying:"........unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

With Martin Luther in Germany came the restoration of the truth that: The just shall live by faith. Faith in the atoning work of Christ on the cross of Calvary was seen as the only means to salvation, not by trying to earn one's way to heaven by good deeds, or by paying indulgences to reduce the penalty for already forgiven sins. The Protestant Reformation exposed the corruption in the Catholic Church with reference to the intimidation and fear applied to parishioners relating to the effect non-payment of indulgences would have on their time spent in Purgatory.

Purgatory is supposed to be an intermediate destination for Catholic Christians as a place of punishment to make them ready for their eventual place in heaven. This is not at all Biblical. The Bible instead speaks about only two destinations for people when they die - either Heaven of Hell. There is only ONE WAY to heaven, and that is by being born again by the Spirit of God - repenting of sin, and acknowledging Jesus Christ and His death on the cross in our place, for our sins, and receiving Him into our lives as Saviour and Lord.

The ministry gift of pastor was restored to the church with the Protestant Reformation. 

In the 1700's the ministry gift of evangelist was restored with notable ministries such as John Wesley and George Whitefield pioneering preaching the Gospel to the masses. Up until the start of the twentieth century, though, most of Biblical ministry was restricted to preaching the simple salvation message encapsulated in John 3:16, when Jesus said to Nicodemus: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

With the turn of the century in the first decade of the 1900's, God was about to show Himself to the world and the church in ways that had not been seen in any measure since the first and second centuries of the Christian Church.

NEXT TIME: CHARLES FOX PARHAM (The Father of Pentecost)