Description
The modern Pentecostal movement began seventy years ago in an Anglican parish in Sunderland. The vicar and his wife, and then many members of the congregation, had a dramatic and revolutionary 'experience' of the Holy Spirit which led to speaking in 'tongues', prophetic utterances, and also, it was claimed, miraculous healings. Simultaneously, identical outbreaks of Pentecostalism occurred in other parts of the British Isles, in Scandinavia, and in the United States.
This 'Pentecostalism' represented a facet of Christianity that had hardly been seen, or at any rate recognized, since the early decades of the Church's existence. St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, especially chapters 12 to 14, dealt with phenomena that were regarded by most commentators until recent times as of merely antiquarian interest. Clearly the members of the church at Corinth engaged in kinds of prayer and worship with which most Christians of later eras were totally unfamiliar: prophecy, speaking in 'tongues', and the interpretation of 'tongues'. Not only that, but the pattern of worship at Corinth, with apparently spontaneous contributions from various members of the congregation, prophetic utterances and inspired interpretations, was far removed from the style of Christian worship of even the 'freeest' of the 'free' Churches of subsequent Church history.
ISBN:0006244564
