Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism

The late McGee (church history and Pentecostal studies, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary) examines the historical, theological, and missiological context of the American Pentecostal movement and how the idea of miracles fits into the early twentieth-century mission landscape. He covers the early background of the Pentecostal movement, how it understood empowerment in the Spirit, how Pentecostals went about missions, and how Pentecostalism has become a global force. He discusses the expectation of miracles in missions from ancient times to the nineteenth century; the concept of the outpouring of the Spirit in relation to missions from the Protestant reformers to the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910; nineteenth-century radical evangelical expectations of signs, wonders, and miraculous happenings in missions, including faith healings, exorcisms, and cosmic spiritual warfare; supernatural languages; early Pentecostal missions and the ways radical evangelical, mainline evangelical, liberal, and Pentecostal missionaries viewed their work; the meaning of glossolalia for empowerment in evangelization, changes in its understanding, and the challenge in the insistence of tongues for Spirit baptism; and present-day missionaries. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)