Who are Pentecostals?
Christians of the evangelical faith—that’s what Pentecostals were called in Russia. If we give a precise definition, we can say that this is a Christian sect that arose in the USA in the 20th century. In their doctrine, Pentecostals proceed from a myth taken from the Gospel. It talks about “the descent of the spirit from above upon the apostles” 50 days after Easter.
Pentecostals talk about him in their sermons. The faith of people of this religious movement is based on the postulates of man’s sinfulness and his salvation through the descent to earth of the Holy Spirit. What is important for ministry? Personal faith, devotion to teaching and complete renunciation of all earthly goods. Often, at collective prayers organized by adherents of the movement, people bring themselves to ecstasy. They claim that at this moment the holy spirit descends on them, and at the same time they receive the opportunity to “speak in other tongues.” This “unearthly” speech gives them the opportunity to communicate with God.
Pentecostals in Russia
As noted above, in our country the movement arose at the beginning of the last century. The first Pentecostal in Russia is considered to be the German Wilhelm Ebel. During his visit to Asia in 1902, he stopped along the way in Riga, where he founded his representative office of the missionary society. The first Pentecostal organizations in Russia arose in 1907. The preacher of the new teaching was the Norwegian pastor T. Barat. The new religious movement quickly found new adherents. It included Baptists, Adventists, and Christians... Pentecostals assured their new members that they had received the grace of the Holy Spirit, who came to earth in the name of saving people from sins. The first Russian followers of the community were N.P. Smorodin and A.I. Ivanov. It is worth noting that in Russia, as in other countries where Pentecostalism is widespread, adherents of the new religion are not distinguished by the unity of the basic tenets of the teaching. So, for example, Adventists talk about Holy Saturday, Molokans see the meaning of life in moving to Mount Zion - and so on. There is a conditional division into separate groups of Pentecostals: Smorodinites, Leontyevites, Schmidtovites, Voronaevites and others.
Scientific atheism, Khrushchev's version
The Soviet state took a thorough approach to eradicating religion in the early 1960s. To control religious organizations, two councils were created - the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and for the Affairs of Religious Cults. In 1965 they were merged.
But the creation of control bodies was not limited to this. Active ideological work was underway, the tax on church lands was increased, religious books were confiscated from libraries, even the ringing of bells was prohibited. Naturally, monasteries and churches were closed. In some cases, believers managed to defend them, but only where people were ready to engage in direct conflict with the police. For example, when a decision was made to close the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, Archimandrite Alypiy destroyed the document and said that he was ready to accept martyrdom, but would not allow the monastery to be closed. The flock also came out to defend the monastery, but this was done in isolated cases.
The conflict with Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsky and Kolomna, who headed the Department of External Church Relations, was indicative. He sharply opposed Khrushchev’s course, and, fearing a person with such views, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church ensured that Nikolai resigned from all his posts. The circumstances of his death in 1961 remain mysterious: the former metropolitan was hospitalized with an attack of angina pectoris and died after being injected with an unknown drug. It is possible that this was a medical error...
Metropolitan Nikolai. (pravoslavie.ru)
The propaganda campaign was widespread: according to historian Sergei Firsov, in 1961–1962 alone, Soviet publishing houses published 667 atheist books and brochures with a total circulation of 11 million. The number of seminaries was reduced from 8 to 3 - it became increasingly difficult to train new personnel. There were often cases when monks from a closed monastery moved to another monastery, from where they were expelled due to lack of registration.
Pentecostalism Abroad
In the USA, Pentecostalism is associated with the name of Charles Finney. He believed in him at the age of 21. Then, for 50 years, he preached the new teaching in the USA, Scotland and England. Finney claimed that the image of Jesus Christ once appeared before him. The Holy Spirit that descended on Charles pierced his entire body and soul. After this, Finney believed and began to preach, telling people about this miracle. In this religious movement, another person played an important role. This is Dwight Moody. He lived and preached in the second half of the 19th century. He carried out his first evangelistic campaign at the age of 38. After this man’s sermons, people formed Pentecostal communities, spoke other “angelic” languages, prophesied, healed the seriously ill and performed other “miracles.” Speaking about the history of this movement, we should also mention Charles Fox Parham. He decided to create a kind of Bible school and send out invitations to everyone. 40 students from Kansas responded to his letter. On January 1, 1901, all the followers and their teacher prayed earnestly to God in their school. Student Angessa Ozman, wanting to receive spiritual power, approached Charles and asked the teacher to lay hands on her. At that moment, according to the preacher, a miracle descended on the girl: she forgot her native English language and began to speak Chinese. Many religious adherents consider January 1, 1901 to be the founding date of their community.
Pentecostalism today
In our time, this movement in Russia ranks second among all sectarian associations in terms of the number of believers. We currently have three main similar organizations:
- United Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith.
- Russian Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals).
- Russian United Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith.
In 1995, a community under the leadership of S. V. Ryakhovsky separated from the United Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith. This man later created the Russian United Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith. There are other organizations of this kind. It is worth noting that many Pentecostal communities are very active in the social sphere. Some of them provide assistance to orphanages, promote medical funds, and organize youth camps.
Anti-religious campaign: punishments are getting tougher
In 1960, a new Criminal Code of the USSR was adopted, and in 1961, the Criminal Codes of the Union Republics were updated. Some significant changes have been made to them. For example, in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the punishment under Article 142 for violating the laws on the separation of church and state was increased to 3 years in prison. Article 227 - the creation of a group causing harm to health and encroaching on the personality and rights of citizens - now carried up to 5 years of imprisonment. It was under these articles that believers were most often judged.
Atheistic literature. (Wikimedia Commons)
In addition to the Criminal Code, the USSR Government adopted Instructions for the Application of Legislation on Cults. She qualified a number of religious movements as anti-state and savage.
In the period until 1964, about 4,000 churches were closed and destroyed, and representatives of all religions were persecuted. But representatives of non-traditional sects and branches, which included Pentecostals, were especially wary.
Basic Tenets
What do Pentecostals believe? What are they? A lot of questions arise in connection with this religious movement. Let's try to figure it out. Adherents of the religion believe in the life-giving power of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is externally manifested in a person by the ability to speak other languages. Pentecostals believe that when they achieve a special state of mind during evangelization through prayer, members of the sect discover a special gift of speaking in different languages. In addition, such a person may develop a talent for clairvoyance, wisdom, and miracles. An important aspect of the sect’s theology are the so-called “teachings of piety,” which call on followers to give up anything that could interfere with leading a righteous life: smoking, alcohol, gambling, drugs. Some groups of this movement do not recognize weapons, adhering to the doctrine of “non-resistance to evil.”
Ordinary people about the Pentecostal movement
Recently, this movement has been increasingly criticized. People believe that the Pentecostal church and its doctrines are nothing more than a deception of believers. Many call this formation a sect. Apparently this is true. There are many eyewitnesses to how meetings of members of this movement take place.
People write that from the outside it looks like the rampage of a hypnotized crowd, not noticing anything around them and busy only with fervent prayer. The believers are on their knees and screaming furiously, sweating profusely. Speaking in different languages, or so-called glossalia, achieved through diligent prayer, is nothing more than disordered mumbling. Rituals are often performed at night in crowded and stuffy rooms. It is not surprising that under such conditions, when people are highly nervous, they may experience hallucinations that they mistake for a “revelation of God.” Among the sect members there are many mentally ill people. The main task of the preachers of this religion is to lead each new member of the community to such an unbalanced state when a person will not be able to adequately assess the situation and respond to it.
We have answered the main questions related to the term "Pentecostal". Who they are, what they believe, what rituals they perform - everything was discussed in this article.
“Corinthian glossolalia” or a miraculous gift?
When discussing the phenomenon of the gift of tongues, it should be recognized that even Orthodox authors often distinguish the miraculous gift mentioned in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles from the so-called. “Corinthian glossolalia”, which, according to Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov), “did not allow identification with any historical language” and can be correlated with “ecstatic speech, which is observed in a state of strong religious excitement...”. On the one hand, this could be a consequence of the mishandling of the gift of tongues in the Corinthian Church, where many Christians had the gift of tongues for the sake of the many foreigners who visited this large trading city. However, the Corinthians were very proud of the gift of tongues, and therefore used it not only for preaching among the pagans, but also directly at divine services, when there was no need for it. Ap. Paul, warning against such abuse and “foolish pursuit,” explains that the gift of tongues “is not for those who believe, but for those who do not believe”—to attract them to faith. Therefore, the main point of the fourteenth chapter of the Epistle is not to affirm the importance and usefulness of glossolalia in itself, but to prohibit the Corinthians from speaking in other tongues at prayer meetings. There is also an opinion that in the Corinthian Church, divided by schism, glossolalia could degenerate as a phenomenon, turning into the gift of speaking languages that were incomprehensible not only to others, but also to the owner of the gift, which caused temptation (1 Cor. 14:23) and required interpretation ( 1 Cor. 12:10; 14:26). Thus, there is no direct evidence that “Corinthian glossolalia” had its own independent and positive meaning as a “new prayer language” without any connection with the need to preach in this language among the pagans. Even if A.P. Lopukhin, M. Skaballanovich and some Orthodox researchers admit that in Corinth the gift of tongues manifested itself as “the eruption of a deep inner feeling, not clearly recognized by the speaker himself... [who] could not express his feelings in a coherent and consistent speech” , however, this assumption is very vague and does not have a clear positive response in the works of the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church, who, on the contrary, strongly warn against any enthusiasm in prayer and recommend doing “smart prayer.” Even if such a fact took place in the practice of the Corinthian community in apostolic times, it should be perceived as an anomaly, and not as a description of one of the forms of a prayerful state. Already the ap. Paul urged the Corinthians to approach what was happening in their meetings with reason (1 Cor. 14:29), “so that nothing demonic might creep in under the guise of prophecy. This purpose was served by the special gift of “discernment of spirits” (1 Cop. 12:10): whether this is said by the action of the Spirit of God. Ap himself. Paul warned the Corinthians about the danger of accepting pseudo-gifts of grace (2 Cor. 11:4), as did the apostle. John called for “testing the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Similar advice was preserved in the Didachi, which calls for distinguishing a prophet from a false prophet. Here the state of the prophet in the “spirit” can be understood as his being outside himself, when, by inspiration from above, a ministering spirit, good or evil, sent or allowed by God for a specific task, speaks through the prophet. Thus, already in the Ancient Church there was a very wary attitude towards religious delights and “gifts of grace.” In the 2nd century, the prophecies and “frenzied speeches” of the Montanists were directly classified as demonic possession.
