RE: They Didn't Tell Us...
Vincent Massi > 05-12-2016, 02:45 PM
7) Despite their "speaking on tongues" erros, charismatics were the Twentieth Century's greatest soul-winners.
The Rise and Success of the Charismatic Movement
I need to explain the difference between a charismatic and a Pentecostal. Charismatics attach a great deal of importance to spiritual gifts, often emphasizing speaking in tongues, but they can belong to any denomination. There are Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian charismatics. Not all charismatics are Pentecostals.
Pentecostals are charismatics who belong to a denomination that is officially charismatic, such as the Assemblies of God. All Pentecostals are charismatics.
Bursting out of a small American revival in the early Twentieth Century, the charismatic movement rivals the Protestant Reformation in its size and importance. A century later, one out of every 25 people on earth are Pentecostal, while one out of 12 are charismatic (about 584 million). The Assemblies of God is second in size only to the Catholic Church (about 1.2 billion members) among professing Christians. About 27% of professing Christians are charismatic.
There are about 800 million Protestants in the world, many of whom (including Anglicans, Baptists, and Pentecostals) do not consider themselves Protestants. About 100 million people are Baptist (about 1 out of 70 people on Earth).
If spiritual gifts were automobiles, the early American charismatics were driving without a license, while the Baptists rode bicycles. Charismatics clashed, split, merged, fought, united, and grew--so heavily that they rapidly expanded outside the US, forming megachurches (averaging 2,000 weekly attendance) in Latin America and elsewhere.
And the early charismatics had their problems. Power-hungry crackpots would declare themselves to be prophets and demand ruling power, unregenerated charismatics would teach salvation by baptism and/or speaking in tongues, and crazy behavior was sometimes regarded as a manifestation of the Spirit. But colleges were established, doctrine corrected many of the flaws, born-again non-charismatics helped out, competent leaders emerged, and charismatics have left many of those problems behind.