If there is no God....

[A Theist]

fr0d0 I don't know how it is in the UK but the Pentecostal movement here in the states are the most extreme and fanatical movement around. They are very intolerant towards other Christian groups and claim that they alone have the absolute truth basing themselves not on scripture but on the so called manifestations of the holy spirit in their movement.

They are ignorant of their own history.

Once I was on the church bus on my way to service and a new convert asked where did the Pentecostal church get its name from, and when did it begin? Some elder stated that they got their name from the day of Pentecost when the disciples received for the first time the outpouring of the holy spirit.

I told her that that was incorrect and that the Pentecostals were started by John Fox Parham of the holiness movement in 1901.

She just looked at me with that dumbfounded look on her face.

When I was studying in seminary the instructor completely skipped the chapter on evolution stating "if you want to believe the devils lie that you are derived from an ape go ahead but I am a creation of god". He presented the history of the Christian church from the book of Acts and did not use any external sources. The JWS are considered a sect here in the US and are not considered true Christians by the mainstream churches.

That would be "Charles F. Parham, not "John". The Pentecostal movement began at the Bethel College, a Bible school started by Parham,1901 in Topeka, Kansas. In attendance was a one eyed black minister, William Seymour, who brought the movement to Los Angeles in 1906 where he opened a mission on Azusa Street, hence the Azusa Street revival. A visiting minister who pastored a Methodist Church in Oslo, Norway, attended one of Seymours services, and brought the Pentecostal revival to Norway and founded the "Filadelfia Church" in 1916. The Pentecostal revival then spread to Denmark and Sweden.
In 1907, an Anglican Minister brought the movement to Great Britian where it spread to Germany, throughout Europe, and in the United States.

You're making the mistake of lumping all Pentecostals under the same umbrella. There are many different denominations within Pentecostalism.