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Author Topic: A Pentecostal Sermon  (Read 2527 times)

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Billy Evmur

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A Pentecostal Sermon
« on: May 18, 2020, 06:02:08 am »
Extracts of a sermon preached in Philedelphia USA 1976.

In the early days after being saved I committed to memory several sermons preached by some leading evangelists of the Pentecostal old school and more than 40 years later can relate them word for word. The sermon I have related here was 1 and 1 half hour long, here is the first half of it.


It's a great privilege for God's servant to be in the city of brotherly love, to walk into this building tonight and to sense the marvellous presence of the Holy Spirit. And tonight we are going to preach on "How to take the limits off of God."


In the 8th chapter of the gospel of Matthew we are reading from the 5th verse.


And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum there came unto Him a centurian beseeching Him and saying "Lord my servant lyeth at home sick with the palsy and greviously tormented" and Jesus saith unto him "I will come and heal him"


Before I read the rest of this scripture it is very important that I stop and tell you this tonight, you cannot change the will of a person after that individual has already died, you might try, you might go to court and try to break a will but it is a very difficult thing to do in the natural world, to break a will of somebody after they have died.


2,000 years ago Jesus Christ gave us His will, He sealed His will and He sealed the testament of that will with His own precious blood, included in that will that Jesus left us was the healing of our physical bodies in the atonement of Jesus Christ.


The bible said that Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil.


There's a marvellous thing about God, He is not finnicky, He does not change. Men change, church doctrines change, denominational structures change but ladies and gentlemen the God who created this world, the Lord Jesus Christ who thought it not robbery to be equal with God but humbled Himself and came into this world for the purpose of defeating and destroying the works of the devil and the works of the devil are first sin, second sickness and thirdly death. Three things God never intended for man to ever possess


God never intended that man should have an evil mind and a bitter tongue that cursed and swore, God never intended that man would become sick, sickness came as a result of man's disobedience through sin and God never intended that man should ever die ... that's right, when you look at this little Jew preacher I want you to know that God never intended for your hair to get bald, your eyes to grow dim or your ears to wax heavy. God intended that man should always live forever and never die.


He was created perfect, in the image of God. Now I can't help it if you have been brought up Baptist, or if you are in a backslidden Pentecostal church where your preacher doesn't know how to pray, I can't help it. But that doesn't alter the will of God. There is no doctrine of the Catholic church, no doctrine of the Pentecostal church, no doctrine of the Baptists, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterian church that can alter the word of God.


And God's will is that we be in health and prosper.


And God didn't say to put an "if" in there, somebody said "well I don't understand it how sometimes good, well intentioned people who have faith in God get sick and die," well there are a lot of things in this world that we don't understand and we have to just be honest about it and say "Lord we don't have all the answers" and there's nothing wrong with being honest.


But it is God's will and do you know why I can look at you and pray the prayer of faith in this building tonight nothing wavering? because I know it is God's will, you say "how do you know it is God will, did God tell you?" yes He did ... He told me right here in this book that I'm holding in my hand.


Jesus said "I will come and heal him" His will hasn't changed, men have changed, the church that used to believe in certain doctrines 100 or 200 or 300 years ago which have become modernised, those churches have changed but God hasn't changed. If you are ever going to pray the prayer of faith you are going to have to take the "if" out because there is no way you can ever pray the prayer of faith as long as you keep that "if" in there, "if it be Thy will God heal me, if it be Thy will provide, if it be Thy will God tells us exactly what His will is and Jesus came into this world to fulfil the exact will of God.


That's what it's all about.


Now let's stop putting an "if" where God doesn't put an "if".


He says "I WILL come and heal him ... He says I WILL ... He says I WILL ... He says I WILL ... not "IF" ... I WILL.


The centurian answered and said "Lord I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed" and when Jesus heard it He marvelled and said to them that followed "verily I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel ..."


And I want you to know that I know what I am talking about, He said, when God created this world I was with Him in the beginning, I made the beginning, when God led the Israelites out of the land of Egypt He said I was the great I am, I was the one in the pillar of cloud, I was the one in the pillar of fire, I was the one who was in the rod that opened up the Red sea, I was the one who fed the Jews in the wilderness, I was the one who rolled back the river Jordan for Joshua, I was the one who quenched the violence of fire for Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, I was the one who stopped the mouths of the lions for Daniel. If you have any doubts, don't ever doubt. I know what I am talking about because I am the great I am that I am that I am and I'll tell you, nobody ever had faith like this man.


And Jesu said to the centurian "go thy way as thou hast believed so shall it be done unto thee." And his servant was healed in that self same hour.


This miracle concerns a centurian an army captain in the army of Rome who had authority over 100 men, he had a servant who the bible describes as having a palsy, now when we think of palsy we think of it as being a shaking sickness, but the actual condition this man had was not a shaking sickness but a paralytic sickness, the man was home on his bed, paralysed, immovable. His situation was helpless, hopeless, impossible so far as man was concerned but not impossible with God because with God all things are possible.


I have no argument with my backslidden theological friends, you say "why do you always pick on the theologians?" because they pick on the people, and we have blind leaders of the blind, and Jesus said "ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"


And the real basis of their unbelief is not in the fact that they do not believe in miracles, the real basis of their unbelief is not the fact they don't believe the power of the blood, the real basis of their unbelief is the fact they don't believe in the divine authority of the scriptures or that Jesus Christ was indeed born of a virgin, the Son of the Living God ...


that's the whole crux.


It's like my Baptist friend who came to me and said "don't you know that 2,000 years ago the gifts of the Holy Spirit were withdrawn from the church, that the day of miracles are over, that they aren't for us today?"


Now if I never could prove, theologically prove, the doctrine of healing in the atonement, if I could never prove it, I would still believe, not in a day of miracles but I would believe in a God of miracle working power, you say "why?" because there are too many scriptures in the bible that tell us call and I'll answer, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you. One little scripture in Ephesians alone would be enough for me to believe God that He could split the heavens and give me anything I asked Him for


Ephesians 3.20

Our God is able, to do what? our God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all we are able to ask or think.

He is able, let them heat the furnace 10 times hotter, little Shadrach Meshack and Abednego said "we just want you to know while you are putting these chains on us that our God is able" huh talk about a day of miracles there's no such thing as a day of miracles, only a God of miracle working power. You see Daniel in the lions den saying to the King "don't you fret" you'd think the king was going into the lion's den not Daniel. he said "don't you fret, my God is able"


Not a day of miracles, not a hang up on some denominational doctrine a Living God, a Living God, a Living God.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2020, 01:02:48 am by Billy Evmur »
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patrick jane

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Re: A Pentecostal Sermon
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2020, 12:14:02 am »
More than a quarter of the global church falls under new and debated label: “Spirit-empowered Christianity.”


Are you Pentecostal?”

Todd Johnson, co-director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, couldn’t quite place the Chinese Christians he met at a conference in South Africa. Theologically, they seemed Pentecostal, so he asked.

They responded: “Absolutely not.”

“Do you speak in tongues?” Johnson said.

“Of course.”

“Do you believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit?”

“Of course.”

“Do you practice gifts of the Spirit, like healing and prophecy?”

“Of course.”

Johnson said that in the United States, those were some of the distinctive marks of Pentecostals. But maybe it was different in China. Why not use the term?

“Oh, there’s an American preacher on the radio who is beamed into China,” the Chinese Christians explained. “He’s a Pentecostal, and we’re not like him.”

Names can be tricky. What do you call a Pentecostal who isn’t called a Pentecostal? The question sounds like a riddle, but it’s a real challenge for scholars. They have struggled for years to settle on the best term for the broad and diverse movement of Christians who emphasize the individual believer’s relationship to the Holy Spirit and talk about being Spirit-filled, Spirit-baptized, or Spirit-empowered.

Globally, the movement includes 644 million people, about 26 percent of all Christians, according to a new report from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. The study was done in collaboration with Oral Roberts University, named for one of the most famous Pentecostal evangelists in the 20th century, to be shared at the Empowered21 conference, featuring 70 speakers such at Bethel’s Bill Johnson and Assemblies of God leader George Wood. The conference, which was originally going to be in Jerusalem, will be held online starting Sunday.








The report represents the first attempt at a comprehensive demographic analysis of this group of Christians in almost 20 years. These findings will be widely cited by scholars and journalists seeking to understand these Christians, especially as they impact places like Qatar, Cambodia, and Burkina Faso, where their numbers are growing fastest, and places like Zimbabwe, Brazil, and Guatemala, where they now account for more than half of all Christians.

In the debate over what to call the movement—which has been dubbed “global Pentecostalism,” “Pentecostal/Charismatic,” and “renewalist”— Todd Johnson and his co-author and co-director Gina Zurlo propose another option: Spirit-empowered Christianity.

“The name has been a perennial problem,” Johnson told Christianity Today. “One of the first things we asked is what is it that is common with all these groups. It turned out to be the baptism of the Holy Spirit. People talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit and an older term is ‘Spirit-filled.’ But a lot of groups have emphasized being empowered.”

Like the Chinese Christians noted, “Pentecostal” is associated with American churches, Johnson said, such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ. The term indicates a connection to the multiracial Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906, where the Los Angeles Times reported a “new sect of fanatics is breaking loose” with a “weird babel of tongues.” The term “Charismatic” is connected to a renewal movement starting in the 1960s and ’70s, where Christians received the baptism of the Holy Spirit but mostly stayed in their own denominations—especially Anglican and Catholic churches.

But there are lots of other groups that are independent of major denominations and disconnected from the American history of Azusa Street. They also emphasize the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the importance of the experience of Spirit baptism, but they’re not really “Charismatic” or “Pentecostal” in the same way.








“Asking groups, ‘Do you believe or practice the baptism of the Holy Spirit?’ that was a really good question to ask,” Johnson said. “What we found in the end is that the baptism question gets at the commonality.”

Not all scholars are convinced by this new term. Some don’t even think a single name can work for a movement so diverse.

“It’s tough to nail Jell-O to the wall,” said Daniel Ramírez, professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University and author of Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century.

Ramírez said that part of the power of Pentecostalism has always been that people can take it and make it their own. It is endlessly adaptable, portable, and regenerative. An indigenous Mexican man, for example, received the gift of the Holy Spirit at the Azusa Street revival and was recorded through a translator thanking the people at that church. But then he left, Ramírez said, and no one at Azusa Street had any control over his theology or authority over how he shared that religious experience with others.

“That’s part of what makes it interesting,” said Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, professor of religious studies at Azusa Pacific University and author of Pentecostals in America. “It’s been diverse from the beginning. You look for a catchall term that’s vague and broad, and I use ‘Pentecostal’ to glue it back to the origins, but then I want people to think twice about the origins of the movement. Pentecostalism didn’t start in one place, whether it’s Azusa Street or a revival in Wales or in India, and so it’s always diverse.”

A single name can also imply that different Christians are more closely associated than they really are, argues Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Women in the Church of God in Christ.

Lumping people together across traditions and cultures, you risk obscuring the historical and theological differences between a Catholic group that speaks in tongues, a Vineyard Church that practices holy laughter, and a Celestial Church of Christ that emphasizes purity and prophecy.











“You say ‘Spirit-empowered’ and an old-time Pentecostal would say ‘Well that Spirit could be a demon,’” Butler said. “And nobody’s going to invite a Catholic priest over to a Charismatic church in Nigeria unless it’s for an exorcism. You can’t just compress the theological differences and flatten out the history.”

The Empowered21 conference, which begins this Sunday on Pentecost, has adopted the “Spirit-empowered” label. Some of the breadth of the movement is reflected in the conference lineup alone: American evangelicals like megachurch pastor Chris Hodges and Hobby Lobby board chair Mart Green are sharing a virtual stage with Cindy Jacobs, part of the New Apostolic Reformation, and Todd White, a Word of Faith preacher, in addition to leaders from Asia and Africa.

Any term is going to bring some people together and drive a wedge between others, according to Cecil M. Robeck, professor of church history at Fuller Theological Seminary. Robeck has been a part of ecumenical dialogues since 1984 and thinks the term “Spirit-empowered Christian” could help some believers see what they have in common. But it also might throw up walls where they don’t need to exist.

“I worry about line-drawing,” Robeck said. “I want to know: Do we have an ecumenical future together? I want people to experience the Holy Spirit, but I don’t want to say they have to jump another hurdle to talk to me.”

Johnson is unfazed by the criticism. He doesn’t think “Spirit-empowered Christian” is a perfect term, but he will argue “it’s as good as any.”

“We used ‘renewalist’ for a while,” Johnson said, “but we decided that’s a neologism, and we thought, ‘Well, we want to use something more natural.’ … If you’re trying to get at what all these groups have in common, ‘empowerment’ isn’t a bad choice, but it’s also not the only one.”

The new study, Introducing Spirit-Empowered Christianity, will be widely available in September. It predicts that by 2050, the numbers of Spirit-empowered Christians will grow to over 1 billion, which will be about 30 percent of all Christians. But when nearly one out of every three Christians practices Spirit baptism, scholars will likely still debate what to call them.

“This argument is always going on,” said Nimi Wariboko, a Pentecostal theologian at Boston University. “What they are trying to capture is the move of the Spirit. Americans often want a term that reminds people of the umbilical cord to the West. But the essence is not geographical origin. The essence is not history and the essence is not doctrine and the essence is not the numbers. It’s the Spirit. And the Spirit moves.”

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Re: A Pentecostal Sermon
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2020, 07:20:41 am »
Billy Rocks

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Re: A Pentecostal Sermon
« Reply #3 on: August 26, 2020, 05:03:20 pm »

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Re: A Pentecostal Sermon
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2021, 03:31:52 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/august/assemblies-of-god-grow-us-council-denomination-decline-poli.html








Assemblies of God Growing with Pentecostal Persistence






ow has the 3.2-million-member denomination avoided decline?


At most denominational conferences these days, leaders have to recognize and reckon with the challenge of continued declines in membership. But for the US Assemblies of God (AG), which drew 18,000 registered attendees to its General Council meeting in Orlando last week, it’s a different story.

The largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God has been quietly growing for decades, bucking the trend of denominational decline seen by most other Protestant traditions.

At three million members, the Assemblies of God is far outsized in the US by groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, which is more than four times as large. But in many ways, the Assemblies of God provide can a case study for what many Southern Baptists—and really, all Christians—want to see: steady and sustainable growth.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the Assemblies of God has continued to increase over the past 15 years. Research shows that membership of the Assemblies of God has become more politically conservative and more religiously active today than just a decade ago, but its own numbers indicate that it has achieved incredible racial diversity—44 percent of members in the United States are ethnic minorities. A confluence of these trends may be factors in its ability to keep its numbers up.


As it has grown over the decades, the Assemblies of God has maintained its Pentecostal theological distinctives, like believing in divine healing, practicing spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, and anticipating a premillennial second coming of Christ.


When analyzing survey data on the church attendance patterns among traditions, it’s clear that the Assemblies of God is not growing by adding lukewarm worshipers to its ranks and church roles. Instead, the data point to a denomination that is incredibly active in congregational life. On average, about a third of US Christians attend church weekly. In 2020, the Cooperative Election Study reported that 57 percent of AG members attend church at least once a week, compared to 49 percent of Southern Baptists.

When the analytical lens turns to political partisanship, a more nuanced story emerges of how the AG has shifted compared to the Southern Baptists.

During the 2008 presidential election, about 22 percent of AG members identified as Democrats compared to 68 percent who affiliated with the Republican Party. Among Southern Baptists, the differences weren’t as stark. About a third of Southern Baptists were Democrats and 60 percent were Republicans.

Over the past 12 years, both traditions have drifted toward the right. In 2020, nearly three-quarters of all AG members said that they were Republicans, up about 5 percentage points. Among Southern Baptists, 67 percent claimed to be a Republican, an increase of 7 percentage points. But the share of AG members who are Democrats remained basically unchanged during that time, while declining nearly 7 percentage points among Southern Baptists.

Pastors, denominational leaders, and those in the pews are always interested in what leads to a denomination’s growth, particularly when the group is growing year after year while others around it experience decline. The Assemblies of God currently has around 13,000 congregations, more than a quarter of which were formed in the past decade.

It’s difficult to pinpoint just one reason for the increase in membership, but the data do paint a portrait of a membership that is very involved in the life of the church. When half of all members report weekly attendance, this goes a long way in warding off defections to other denominations. Research shows that such involvement makes it more likely that young people raised in the tradition will not leave it as they move into adulthood. More than half (53%) of AG adherents are under 35.

The fact that its churches are so politically homogeneous may work in its favor as well. Research has increasingly shown that more and more Americans are choosing their churches based on political considerations. If this is the case, then AG churches portray a clear message to potential converts about their political orientation, making it easy for newcomers to know what the church is about.

Finally, it may be helpful that the Assemblies of God, though growing, is small enough to lay low in the national media, largely avoiding the controversy and attention toward infighting in other denominations.

As the nones continue to rise and more and more nondenominational churches are planted in the United States, it will likely become more difficult for the Assemblies of God to sustain its growth.

As I describe in my forthcoming book on surveys—20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America—almost no traditional denomination has seen any growth in the past 12 years, so the Assemblies of God is a true outlier. It seems to have found a combination of factors that has succeeded even in these difficult times.

Compared to the two largest Protestant denominations in the United States—the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church—the Assemblies of God has always been outnumbered. In 2005, there were about 16.3 million Southern Baptists in the US, by the denomination’s own tally, and nearly 8 million United Methodists. At the time, the Assemblies of God reported 2.8 million members.

However, between 2005 and 2019, both the Southern Baptists and the United Methodists reported a membership decline. In 2019, there were 14.5 million Southern Baptists, down 11 percent. The United Methodists reported a total of 6.5 million members in 2019, down 19 percent. Meanwhile, the Assemblies of God grew over 16 percent to nearly 3.3 million members.

While other denominations have been dropping year-over-year for more than a decade, there have only been three years in the past 40 when the Assemblies of God did not report annual growth in adherents. Just one of those came this century. As a result, the Assemblies of God has managed to add nearly half a million members since 2005.




Ryan P. Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.


 

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