The everlasting gospel : the significance of eschatology in the development of pentecostal thought

326 Pages·1996·6.432 MB·English

by  Faupel, David William

Gospel
The Significance of Eschatology
in the Development of
Pentecostal Thought
H»nC;
Journal of Pentecostal Theology
Supplement Series
10
ICI UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
Editors
John Christopher Thomas
Rickie D. Moore
Steven J. Land
Sheffield Academic Press
Sheffield
.
The Everlasting
Gospel
The Significance of Eschatology
in the Development of
Pentecostal Thought
D. William Faupel
Sheffield Academic Press
To
Bonnie, my beloved
and
our children
Jimmy, Michael
and
Kimberley
Copyright © 1996 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
Mansion House
19 Kingfield Road
Sheffield SI 1 9AS
England
Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain
by The Cromwell Press
Melksham. Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1-85075-761-5
Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg and listened to that wonderful organist
who, with such enchantment, draws the tears from the travelers' eyes while he
touches one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by turns the
march of the armies upon the beach, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well,
thus the Eternal God. embracing at a glance the keyboard of sixty centuries, touches
by turns, with the lingers of His Spirit, the keys which He had chosen for the unity
of His celestial hymn. He lays His left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from Adam,
and His right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. From the
one the strain is heard: ‘Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints:'
from the other: ‘Behold He cometh with clouds.’ And between the notes of this
hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen,
the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends into men's souls.
Gaussen’s Theopneusria
Contents
Foreword y
Preface * *
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION 13
Chapter 2
CONCEPTION: THE PENTECOSTAL MESSAGE 19
1. The Focus of the Message 20
2. The Structure of the Message 27
3. Summary 41
Chapter 3
womb: The Context of Pentecostal Thought 44
1. The American Context 45
2. The Perfectionist Parentage 54
3. The 1857-58 Revival 70
4. Summary 75
Chapter 4
GESTATION: THE FORMATION OF PENTECOSTAL THOUGHT 77
1. The Pneumatological Center 79
2. Transformation of World-View 91
Chapter 5
BIRTH PANGS: THE PENTECOSTAL MESSAGE
FORESHADOWED 115
1. Introduction 115
2. John Alexander Dowie 116
3. Frank Weston Sandford 136
4. Charles Fox Parham 158
5. Summary 186
Chapter 6
BIRTH: THE COMING OF THE LATTER RAIN 187
1. Introduction 187
2. The Birth of the Revival 190
3. The Revival Spreads 212
4. Summary 226
Chapter 7
GROWTH: DEFINING THE PARAMETERS OF PENTECOSTAL
THOUGHT 228
1. Introduction 228
2. The Finished Work 229
3. The New Issue 270
Chapter 8
CONCLUSION 307
Bibliography 310
Index of Names 320
FOREWORD TO D. WILLIAM FAL'PEL'S
THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL
In this sweeping, groundbreaking, and provocative work. William Faupel
offers an original contribution to our knowledge of Pentecostalism. This
work is a mine of primary source material reflecting the extensive,
meticulous, and considered work of a historian with a deep insight into
and sensitivity toward the Pentecostal movement.
Faupel sees American Pentecostalism as a millennarian belief system
which emerged as a result of a paradigm shift within the nineteenth-
century holiness movement. In agreement with Robert Mapes Anderson
(Vision of the Disinherited), Faupel focuses on the central importance of
eschatology for understanding American Pentecostalism. Instead of
charts and statistics, however, he offers an analogical model incorpo­
rating critical realism, theological poetics, and myth in order to under­
stand the connections within Pentecostalism and the larger historical
context in which it emerged and diversified rapidly. Faupel has been
positively influenced by Walter Hollenweger, his mentor and dissertation
director at the University of Birmingham; his influence, along with that
of Emmanual Lartey and Karl-Wilhelm Westmeir, is seen in the serious
consideration of oral tradition and worship forms in addition to print
sources for the careful explication of a complex movement.
Faupel proposes answers to several important questions in his detailed
account of this movement. He shows why Pentecostalism. immediately
after it was established as a movement, was rocked by controversies (the
new issue, or the ‘Jesus only’ question; the finished work controversy
over sanctification, and racial divisions). He shows why Pentecostalism
failed to recognize itself in the message of the New Order of the Latter
Rain in the 1940s. He offers insight to today’s Pentecostals concerning
their loss of memory in regard to the original message which formed the
consciousness of early Pentecostals. And, finally, he suggests a way of
recovery through reflecting upon the original experiences; in this way
he seeks to help Pentecostals enter into meaningful dialogue with other
10 The Everlasting Gospel
theological traditions. He recommends neither the embrace of the liberal
emotive-expressivist position, nor the fundamentalists’ evangelical-
rationalist approach. Rather, he encourages Pentecostals to find their
own way and to consider the truth claims made by using ‘models of
reality’ (Ian Barbour), which leave room for discussion and continuing
development.
This work will be the benchmark for all future work on American
Pentecostalism. It is unsurpassed in attention to primary sources and
sensitivity to nuances of meaning. As a result of his comprehensive,
aggressive field work, he has unearthed sources heretofore unknown or
overlooked.
Bill Faupel is an engaging and irenic scholar who has produced a
work which has greatly influenced me as well as many other biblical,
historical, systematic, and practical theologians. This account will be
welcomed and used extensively by scholars in other traditions, because
of its careful research and judicious observations. Although there will be
vigorous disagreements and agreements among scholars with regard to
some of his conclusions (I have some myself), everyone must take this
work into account in the future.
Steven J. Land