About Us (original) (raw)

The modern Pentecostal movement has long been acknowledged to find its roots in Methodism since it emerged directly from the Holiness Movement during the late 19th and early 20th centeries.

The Holiness Movement was a revival movement emerging from a deep concern for a restoration of John Wesley’s doctrine of holiness in American Methodism.

This movement spurred the rise of hundreds of holiness camp meetings around the country in the years after the Civil War reaching the masses for Christ while crossing denominational lines as Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other Protestant groups caught the holiness wave. It essentially became at that time what the Charismatic Movement had become for the 20th and 21st centeries.

When a powerful nationwide revival known as the Layman’s Revival broke out in 1857, a renewed sense of the working of the Holy Spirit gripped much of American evangelicalism. As a result, the holiness message began borrowing language from the Book of Acts as holiness preachers began equating it with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They saw the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the definitive event leading to one’s experience of holiness.

In addition to holiness, the Pentecostal baptism was also seen as a source of power for ministry. Hence, the more radical section of the movement began promoting divine healing while its mainstream sector rejected it.

Later, this same radical section would also take hold of the teaching on the imminent return of Christ or specifically what is known as prem. Soon, the term “full gospel” or “four-fold gospel” became the catchword of the radical holiness folks as they taught Jesus Christ as the one who 1) saves, 2) sanctifies, 3) heals, and 4) is the soon coming King.

It was from this radical holiness movement that the modern Pentecostal movement would emerge as they extend this four-fold gospel of the radical Holiness movement to a five-fold gospel by highlighting another important work of Jesus, namely, the baptizer of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.

Therefore, some scholars like Vinson Synan, Donald Dayton, and others would call the Pentecostal movement as part of “one Holiness movement.”

Given this history, it has always been assumed that Pentecostals are Wesleyan. However, that has not always been the case as the following chart shows:
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