What do we celebrate each Australia Day? The arrival of a bunch of convict rejects from the overcrowded jails of England? The attempt by a thousand ill-equipped Europeans to establish a small segment of civilsation on the under-side of the earth?

There is neither scriptural nor anecdotal evidence that the gifts of the Holy Spirit died out at the end of the apostolic era. Biblically, it is impossible to prove the case for cessationism. God established charismata in the Church (1 Corinthians 12:27-28) and all believers are urged to pray for them (1 Corinthians 12:31; 14:1). It is equally impossible to prove a cessationist viewpoint historically. It simply does not fit the facts.

To define charismatic spirituality is no easy task. The fields are vast and the crops varied. Of course, this applies to some extent to any Christian modality. Anglicanism, for instance, is a variegated plant, as diverse as liturgical Anglo-Catholicism and conservative evangelicalism. And if we were to evaluate Baptist spirituality from the preaching of Rev Jerry Falwell we might gain a rather different impression than from the ministry of Dr Billy Graham.

History is prophetic. To understand the future it is necessary to have some understanding of the past. Young men see visions of how things are and what they could be; old men dream dreams of how things were and what they might have been. Reflective dreams about the past help us to formulate prophetic dreams about the future.

The question of baptism in the Spirit has been a controversial one for a long time. Part of the problem lies in the different ways we use the term. It can easily mean different things to different people. It is this different usage which generally distinguishes Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Charismatics and Third Wavers from one another.

A concise and well-researched Bible study of the relevant and important biblical statements on the question of homosexual practice.

Over recent years, the name Jonathan Edwards has cropped up frequently in articles and reports about revival. People who had never heard of him ten years ago, are now familiar with his name. In the process of popularisation, some stories and impressions about Edwards have emerged which stray from the truth. In this article BARRY CHANT considers a few of them.

From the beginning, preaching was the major dynamic in Pentecostal evangelism. The standard method of winning people to God’s kingdom was to preach the gospel — on the streets, in the home, in hired halls, in tents — indeed wherever they could draw a crowd. Nothing else could compare with the proclamation of Christ in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit was given so that men and women could preach and it was by the hearing of the Word of God that people were saved.

In 1911, a small group of believers in Chicago, Illinois, launched a series of volumes which came to be known as the ‘Yellow Books’. Purporting to contain messages from Jesus himself, these books attracted many sincere and godly readers who longed to hear from their Lord but who were ultimately and inevitably disappointed.
In or about 1923, some of the early Pentecostals in Adelaide, South Australia, began to promote a series of publications known as the Yellow Books.

An exploratory discussion paper presented by Dr Barry Chant at the annual conference of the Association of Pentecostal and Charismatic Bible Colleges of Australasia on Friday 19 May 2000.