All with One Accord (Donald Gee) - Deal Pentecostal Church

approximately 10,000,000 1 adherents. The testimony still
spreads rapidly, though in varying degree in different
localities. The doctrine is born of experience, but it is an
experience anchored in scriptural precedent.
It has sometimes been objected that the doctrine of the
"initial evidence" is not stated categorically in the Scriptures.
This can be admitted, but the doctrine is firmly based on the
accumulated evidence of the instances recorded in the Book
of Acts where believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit. In
every case there was some outward manifestation that could
be seen and heard, and the preponderating evidence is that it
was speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gave them
utterance. In Acts 10:46 they recognized the Pentecostal gift
upon the Gentiles: "For they heard them speak with tongues,
and magnify God." It was the speaking with tongues that
sealed the gift of the Spirit and stilled all opposition to the
Gentiles being baptized into the Christian Church. The
epistles written to the Christian churches did not shape a
doctrine of the Spirit that could comfortably include all their
members irrespective of personal experience. That fallacy has
been reserved for our later generations. The rather early
believers regarded the possession of the Spirit as a fact of
experience too real to be seriously contested. It was a basis
for appeals to separation and holiness. The reality of the
Spirit in their midst consisted of His manifestations among
them and His power working in them. There was none of the
vagueness that afflicts modern doctrine and testimony as to
the Spirit.
1
1961. By 2000 the estimate was 523 million (Barrett, D.B., “Global
Statistics”, The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic and
Movements, (Ed. Burgess, Stanley), Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2002, p.284)
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