What is a Pentecostal?

Some times I am baffled by «pentecostals» who seriously denounce the true characteristics of the Pentecostal Revival.

The original pentecostals practised tongues and manifestations of the Spirit. (Illustration photo)

I saw it in my teenage years when the missionary family I was raised up in as a child returned to Norway: Smack in the midst of Filadelfia Church in Oslo, which I loved (and still love) with all my heart, were members in my generation who neither were baptized in the Spirit nor practised the manifestations of the Spirit. As time has gone by, today there are even leaders who have never experienced the baptism in the Spirit.

How is this even possible?

The largest pentecostal denomination in the Western world, «Assemblies of God», has even established in the bylaws and doctrinal foundation that all Christians need to be baptized in the Spirit with tongues as the obvious «sign». Every leader must evidently have experienced this.

But in some pentecostal circles, this causes the deepest conflicts and negative reactions.

Some of them are in our times the foremost critics of Jan Hanvold, TV Visjon Norge, Svein-Magne Pedersen, Oslochurch.... The thruth seems to be that they are not «pentecostal» in the right meaning of the word.

But there is hope of experiencing the life of the Spirit for everyone who humbles themselves and asks God with a pure heart.