Inspirational Quotes on Pentecostalism

“Those who know that glossolalia is not God’s path for them and those for whom it is a proven enrichment should neither try to impose their own way on others, nor judge others inferior for being different, nor stagger if someone in their camp transfers to the other, believing that God has led him or her to do so. Those who pray with tongues and those who pray without tongues do it to the Lord; they stand or fall to their own master, not their fellow-servants; and in the same sense that there is in Christ neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, so in Christ there is neither glossolalist nor non-glossolalist.”

“At Seabury House, headquarters of the Episcopal church, David was asked the touchiest question of all--the one that in the past had led to more ill-will toward the Pentecostals than any other. He'd been talking to a group of clergymen for thirty minutes or so about the Pentecostal experience when one of the priests stood up suddenly and said with some asperity, "Mr. du Plessis, are you telling us that you Pentecostals have the truth, and we other churches do not?" David admits he prayed fast. "No," he said. "That is not what I mean." He cast about for a way to express the difference Pentecostals feel exists between their church and others--a feeling so often misunderstood--and suddenly he found himself thinking about an appliance he and his wife had bought when they moved to their Dallas home. "We both have the truth," he said. "You know, when my wife and I moved to America, we bought a marvelous device called a Deepfreeze, and there we keep some rather fine Texas beef. "Now, my wife can take one of those steaks out and lay it, frozen solid, on the table. It's steak all right, no question of that. You and I can sit around and analyze it: we can discuss its lineage, its age, what part of the steer it comes from. We can weigh it and list its nutritive values. "But if my wife puts that steak on the fire, something different begins to happen. My little boy smells it from way out in the yard and comes shouting: 'Gee, Mom, that smells good! I want some!' "Gentlemen," said David, "that is the difference between our ways of handling the same truth. You have yours on ice; we have ours on fire.”

“While we were finishing our coffee, one of these men stood up and called out the name of a song. Everyone joined in, loud, lusty and wonderful, as I'd heard it before among Pentecostals. By the middle of the second song a woman at the next table was weeping. There was nothing especially emotional about the song itself; it was one of the standard old Gospel hymns, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." But crying seems to be as infectious as laughter. Soon some of the men on the platform were unabashedly bringing out their handkerchiefs. What was it that swept a room this way? I felt it too; so did Tib sitting next to me. Both of us were studiously avoiding looking the other one in the eye. As the music continued, several people at the tables began to sing "in the Spirit." Soon the whole room was singing a complicated harmony-without-score, created spontaneously. It was eerie but extraordinarily beautiful. The song leader was no longer trying to direct the music but let the melodies create themselves: Without prompting, one quarter of the room would suddenly start to sing very loudly while other subsided. Harmonies and counter-harmonies wove in and out of each other.”