Spring 2000

• Answering the Cessationists’ Case against Continuing Spiritual Gifts, by Jon Ruthven

  In the preceding article, we left our friend, George, the novice charismatic whose excited testimony ran into a wall of biblical-sounding arguments from his pastor, a cessationist.1 This article offered a kind of pocket guide of “pro” charismatic arguments which George (or you, gentle reader) ... Read More

• Racial Reconciliation Manifesto

    The Memphis Miracle was a meeting of North American Pentecostals in October of 1994 where the Racial Reconciliation Manifesto was drafted and signed and the Pentecostal Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA) Task Force was formed.   Challenged by the reality of our racial divisions, we ... Read More

• A.D. 2000: State of the Church in America

  As the rest of the world is experiencing unparalleled church and Christian growth, America has become an unchurched nation.       Read More

• The Memphis Manifesto: Five Years Later

    On October 17-19, 1994 the leadership of the essentially all white Pentecostal Fellowship of the North America (PFNA) met in Memphis to confront its racial past and to meet with African American Pentecostals to establish an integrated fellowship. The result was a new organization known ... Read More

• Fredrick Holmgren: The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus

    Fredrick C. Holmgren, The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embracing Change—Maintaining Christian Identity: The Emerging Center in Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 195 pages. I like to start every book by reading its foreword, and that is what ... Read More

• Roger Olson: Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Arminian

    Roger E. Olson, “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Arminian: My Reformed friends sometimes treat me like the enemy, but actually we need each other,” Christianity Today (September 6, 1999), pages 87-94. Many remember the schism between George Whitefield and John Wesley as a microcosm of the ... Read More

• Ken Walker: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

    Ken Walker, “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn,” Charisma (September 1999), pages 38-46, 91. What happens when young people pray that God would do whatever it takes to bring about revival? Is there a connection between prayer and the tragedies that have taken place in Columbine High ... Read More

• Cheleb: The Finest

    Seeing grace and mercy in the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel.   “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). God has changed. Or at least that seems to be what many are teaching in our day. There are denominations that teach that the ... Read More

• Praying in the Spirit: That Glorious Day When Tongues are Not Needed: Until Then … Part 1

  In part 1 of the sixth chapter of the Praying in the Spirit Series, author Robert Graves examines the claim that tongues are not needed today. He argues convincingly that tongues are needed and will continue until the return of Jesus Christ.   “Tongues shall cease.” More ... Read More

• Should Christians Expect Miracles Today? Objections and Answers from the Bible, Part 2, by Wayne A. Grudem

  8. Doesn’t Hebrews 2:3 tell us that miracles were restricted to the apostles, “those who heard him”? In Hebrews 2:3-4, the author says about the message of salvation, It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, ... Read More

• Jon Ruthven: On the Cessation of the Charismata, reviewed by Amos Yong

    Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 3 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993 and 1997), 271 pages. Those who are involved in friendly debates with cessationists should seriously consider this book as a ... Read More