Historian Vinson Synan has gathered sixty representative testimonies of the Spirit's power from the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement and beyond. Readers will discover the inspiring personal witnesses of such well-known and diverse figures as Amy Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Jack Hayford, Agnes Ozman, Kenneth Hagin, Pope John Paul II, and many others. Synan has also included a few pre-twentieth-century testimonies, including John Wesley and Francis of Assisi. Readers and serious students will value these accounts of people receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit; yielding to gifts such as tongues and prophecy; and receiving healings and other gifts of the Spirit.

Pentecostalism is a movement that, in a little over a century, has encircled the globe and, either directly or indirectly, has impacted and influenced every quarter of Christendom. At its heart the movement bears witness to a contemporary experience of divine-human encounter in line with the prophetic claims of the Old Testament and the Pentecost testimony of the New—indeed an encounter with the power/the presence/the Spirit of God that is radically transformative enough, at both personal and corporate levels, to evoke a new way of seeing the world and, with it, a new way of reading the Word. In the post-modern situation that has forced all of us to a greater awareness of the contextual particularities of how we see and read things, with all of the limitation and the illumination that this can entail, it is time for offering a survey of Scripture, and the Old Testament in particular, that speaks both from and to the manifold global context of Pentecostal faith and practice. Here the authors are deft guides, affirming the integration of academic scholarship and charismatic spirituality. They present thoughtful readers with an overview of the Old Testament that is explicitly engaged with the faith and practice of the Pentecostal movement and the recent scholarship that has been generated by this contemporary, global, Christian movement, especially as it bears upon biblical interpretation. They invite readers to approach scripture reading with the expectation of being encountered and addressed by a Living Voice, flipping the primary goal of biblical study from ‘us interpreting Scripture’ to ‘Scripture reading and interpreting us.’ In addition to treating each Old Testament book individually, this textbook offers a brief chapter-length introduction to each of the four major book collections, as standardized in the Protestant Bible’s arrangement of Old Testament Scriptures: 1) Pentateuch; 2) Historical Books; 3) Poetical Books; and 4) Prophets.

Robert Menzies, writing in the lucid, moderate style for which he is well known, skillfully explains Pentecostal theology. His answer for the uncertain and the confused is a skillful melding of sound hermeneutics, solid exegesis, and heartfelt testimony. Pentecost demonstrates that the Pentecostal experience is by far the best twenty-first-century expression of Luke's distinctive vision of the Spirit-baptized church in mission. This book is a heartfelt invitation for all Christians to be open to a new filling of the Holy Spirit of Jesus so He can continue to do immeasurably more for and through mere human beings than any of us can ask or even imagine!

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James

Lukan narrative takes its readers into God's story: how his salvation plan in Jesus began on the slopes of Judea and at the Sea of Galilee, ending on the hill of Calvary and the Mount of Olives, yet moving on and telling how the Spirit descended onto the Temple Mount empowering God's people, who then began to fulfill the given mandate in the presence of the Spirit. Yet, readers of Luke-Acts, throughout the centuries, have had a meandering journey as they have tried to understand the narrative's persuasion and Spirit-references. This book seeks to bring awareness to these challenges by some of the most respected Pentecostal biblical scholars and systematicians. Here their vigorous labor with the questions of hermeneutics and theology in relation to Lukan writings have come to fruition. These contributions have been collected as a Festschrift in honor and celebration of the career of Roger Stronstad, a Pentecostal biblical scholar whose contribution to Lukan studies have moved Pentecostal scholarship from shadows into daylight. The editor of this volume invites the readers of Lukan narrative to journey together on the road to Emmaus, as we continue to ponder the events in the past, the present, and the future.

In The Spirit of Praise, Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong bring together a multidisciplinary, scholarly exploration of music and worship in global pentecostal-charismatic Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Spirit of Praise contends that gaining a full understanding of this influential religious movement requires close listening to its songs and careful attention to its patterns of worship. The essays in this volume place ethnomusicological, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives into dialogue. By engaging with these disciplines and exploring themes of interconnection, interface, and identity within musical and ritual practices, the essays illuminate larger social processes such as globalization, sacralization, and secularization, as well as the role of religion in social and cultural change. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Peter Althouse, Will Boone, Mark Evans, Ryan R. Gladwin, Birgitta J. Johnson, Jean Ngoya Kidula, Miranda Klaver, Andrew Mall, Kimberly Jenkins Marshall, Andrew M. McCoy, Martijn Oosterbaan, Dave Perkins, Wen Reagan, Tanya Riches, Michael Webb, and Michael Wilkinson.