NEW Istanbul canal to link Black and Marmara Seas

To the west of Istanbul, between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, lie diverse landscapes of forest, farms, marshes and ancient settlements. Following a curving line from north to south would connect you through the Terkos Lake, Sazlıdere stream and reservoir and Küçükçekmece lagoon, important water sources for migratory birds – not to mention the city’s residents.

This line, however, is also the path of Kanal İstanbul, a $12.6bn(£9.7bn) mega-infrastructure plan described by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as his “crazy project” when he first mentioned the idea in 2011.

Kanal İstanbul, approved by the environment ministry last month, would be a 45km (28 mile) shipping canal joining the Black Sea to the Marmara, running parallel to the Bosphorus strait, which already cuts through the centre of Istanbul. The government says the canal is needed to reduce water traffic through the city.

Critics – who include the mayor of Istanbul – warn of a great environmental cost, including the potential ecological destruction of the Marmara Sea. There is a delicate ecological balance between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, currently connected by the Bosphorus strait.

Because the Black Sea is 50cm higher than the Marmara, both the level and salinity density would change if the two were connected by the canal. Not only that, the flow of cellular organisms into the Marmara would eat up extra oxygen.

As Pentecostals historically…

As Pentecostals historically (and as a movement)

We have been looking for power when we should have been seeking after His presence

We have been looking for gifts and signs and wonders, when we should have been looking for fruits of the Spirit and of character

We have been looking for preachers and prophets to follow, when we should have been looking for God’s presence to abide in

We have been looking for prophetic words and utterance, when we should have been taking more time in personal prayer

We have been growing, when we should have been going

And going when we should have been learning in the Spirit

We have been looking for more ways to build, when we should have been looking for more ways to move and go

We have been looking for ways to influence the world, instead of looking to be uninfluenced by God

And in our desire to be leaders and influencers, we have forgotten how to be led by God

And for a long time as a movement, we have existed at the borderline, at the verge and at the danger of gaining our rightful place in human history, but loosing our royal position in the GLORY of GOD

BUT ONE THING WE DID GET RIGHT: The Baptism with the Holy Ghost  (watch the full message)

Read also: Last Days Great REVIVAL

20 recent Pentecostal articles in light of the upcoming Pentecostal Sunday celebration:

1. The Forgotten Azusa Street Mission: The Place where the First Pentecostals Met
2. Diamonds in the Rough-N-Ready Pentecostal Series (Complete)
3. 95th anniversary of the Pentecostal movement in Bulgaria
4. Toward a Pentecostal Solution to the Refugee Crises in the European Union
5. Historical and Doctrinal Formation of Holiness Teachings and Praxis among Bulgarian Pentecostals
6. Pacifism as a Social Stand for Holiness among Early Bulgarian Pentecostals
7. The Practice of Corporate Holiness within the Communion Service of Bulgarian Pentecostals
8. Sanctification and Personal Holiness among Early Bulgarian Pentecostals
9. First Pentecostal Missionaries to Bulgaria (1920)
10. Historical and Doctrinal Formation of Holiness Teachings and Praxis among Bulgarian Pentecostals
11. The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought
12. Online Pentecostal Academic Journals
13. What made us Pentecostal?
14. Pentecostalism and Post-Modern Social Transformation
15. Obama, Marxism and Pentecostal Identity
16. Why I Decided to Publish Pentecostal Primitivism?
17. Historic Pentecostal Revival Tour in Bulgaria Continues
18. The Land of Pentecostals
19. Pentecostal Theological Seminary Address
20. A Truly Pentecostal Water Baptism

Pentecost Sunday Full Gospel

I keep on repeating this through the years, but the need for the constant repetition comes from the simple fact that among new doctrinal teachings and Hillsong style of worship the True Message of Pentecost remains long forgotten

1. Salvation – That a man must be saved while the hour of grace is still upon us has been that teaching of every protestant evangelical since the Reformation. Why people attend church all their lives without getting saved is beyond me. But I do know that the commitment of the CHURCH to REVIVAL brings people to SALVATION.

2. Sanctification – The Wesleyan teaching of sanctification resolves that the sanctification of the believer is definite. This means that though it may progress and evolve through time, as the believer gets closer to God in his/her daily walk, sanctification must become ENTIRE i.e. allowing NO sin to abide in the believer’s body, soul or spirit. Without ENTIRE sanctification resulting in holiness, no one will ever see God (Heb. 12:14).

3. Holy Ghost Baptism – The doctrine of the Baptism with the Holy Ghost means that when baptized we speak in one tongue with God because we are ONE with His Spirit. Not just in us or upon us, but that we are IN the Spirit as John was on the day of Revelation.

4. Healing in the Atonement of Christ belongs to every believer. This means you, your family and your church members. The healing provided in the Atonement is for ALL believers – no exception. It is also for ALL sickness, disease, viruses, infections, tumors and cancers. But that it belongs to does not yet mean that it has been received by the believer. For this reason, God does not stop healing neither in this age nor through eternity, as the leaves of the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem are still and forever for the healing (Rev. 22:2)

5. The Second Coming of Christ for Pentecostals is not simply pre-millennial, but also pre-Tribulation. There have been MANY teachings on the End Times until today. Post-millennials claim we live in the Millennium even now anticipating the return of the Lord; a-millennials that there will be no Millennium at all. Post-tribulationists expect his return at the end of the Tribulation, mid-post-tribulationists in the middle. But in Pentecost, we expect Christ to return before the Tribulation that we may be saved from the hour of trial (Rev. 3:10) and before the Millennium so we may reign with Him 1,000 years. Any other message is no message of hope for the Church of the Living God.

 

Speaking in Tongues in America Prior to the Azusa Street Revival of 1906

April, 1906 – The Azusa street revival swept the globe starting with California

January 1, 1901– The initial phenomenon of speaking in tongues occurred at Parham’s school in Topeka, Kansas

January 6, 1900 – Frank Sanford’s Shiloh school reported that “The gift of tongues has descended”

1896 – Over 100 people baptized in the Shaerer schoolhouse revival conducted by the Christian Union in the North Carolina mountains

1887 – People falling in trances and speaking in tongues were reported at Maria Etter’s revival meetings in Indiana

1874 – Speaking in tongues occurred during healing meetings reported in New York

1873 – William H. Doughty and the Gift People of Rhode Island spoke in tongues

1854 – V. P. Simmons and Robert Boyd reported tongue speaking during Moody’s meetings

FURTHER READING:

Church of God (Cleveland, TN)

• Alive, alive! (A personal testimony)
• Church of God Primitivism
• Bulgarian Church of God
• J.W. Buckalew
• Why revival came? by Dr. Charles Conn

Azusa Street Revival of 1906

• Lucy F. Farrow: The Forgotten Apostle of Azusa
• The FORGOTTEN ROOTS OF THE AZUSA STREET REVIVAL
• Azusa Street’s Apostolic Faith Renewed
• Azusa Street Sermons
• Pentecostal Primitivism Preserved

Prior to Azusa Street Revival of 1906

• First person to speak in tongues in the Assemblies of God was William Jethro Walthall of the Holiness Baptist Churches of Southwestern Arkansas
• The Work of the Spirit in Rhode Island (1874-75)
• Speaking in Tongues in America Prior to the Azusa Street Revival
• WAR ON THE SAINTS: Revival Dawn and the Baptism of the Spirit
• How Jezebel Killed One of the Greatest Revivals Ever

The Unforgotten: Historical and Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in Bulgaria

SEE MORE at Amazon.com by clicking this link

BULGARIA with a NEW Caretaker Cabinet until July

World Wires on Bulgaria: Caretaker Cabinet Will Have to Tackle Pandemic, Ensure Fair Elections

Bulgaria‘s President Rumen Radev called a snap parliamentary election on Tuesday for July 11 and appointed Stefan Yanev, his close security and defense adviser, as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed.

The European Union’s poorest member state is heading to the polls again three months after an inconclusive election in April resulted in a fragmented parliament that failed to produce a government.

Yanev, 61, who was a deputy premier and defense minister in the first caretaker government Radev appointed in 2017, will be tasked to manage the coronavirus pandemic and ensure a fair election, the president said in a statement, confirming an earlier report by Reuters.

President Radev is a harsh critic of long-serving prime minister Boyko Borissov.

Yanev’s government will also have to decide whether or not to submit a national plan to Brussels on how Sofia plans to use more than 6 billion euros from the EU’s coronavirus Recovery Fund.

In charge of the country’s finances will be Assen Vassilev, 43, a graduate of Harvard University, who served as caretaker economy and energy minister in 2013. Vassilev was part of the team that prepared Radev’s proposals for projects to be financed with EU recovery funds.

Borissov’s incumbent center-right GERB party again emerged as the largest party after the April vote, but it had lost seats due to popular anger against entrenched corruption and was shunned by other parties for a coalition government.

After Borissov failed to form an administration, so too did attempts by a new anti-elite party led by TV host Slavi Trifonov, and by the third largest party, the Socialists.

Analysts say the fresh election in July is likely to produce another fragmented parliament that could complicate the formation of a government. A recent opinion poll showed Borissov’s GERB and Trifonov’s ITN (There is Such a People) party running neck-and-neck.

2021 Church Stats

Yes |  No  | Question
78% | 22% | Does a person have free will?
75% | 25% | Can a person choose to be saved or not?
97% | 3% | Must a person accept Jesus Christ as a personal Savior in order to be saved?
75% | 25% | Can a person lose his/her salvation?
60% | 40% | Is the use of alcohol sin?
72% | 28% | Can a person be saved without being baptized in the Holy Spirit?
63% | 37% | Are you baptized with the Holy Spirit?
10% | 90% | Have the spiritual gifts described in the Bible ceased?
64% | 36% | Are there apostles today?
73% | 27% | Do you go to church each week?
88% | 12% | Do you pray daily?
77% | 23% | Do you read the Bible daily?
35% | 65% | Do you fast more than once a week?

According to the preliminary survey results, the profile of the average Evangelical Protestant today is: (1) fundamentally evangelical in doctrine, (2) more Armenian than Calvinistic, (3) more Pentecostal/Charismatic in experience, (4) more traditional than contemporary in conviction, (5) more theoretical than practical in teaching, (5) more conservative than liberal in practice and (7) more agreeing than disagreeing in fellowship.

The Unforgotten

The Unforgotten: Historical and Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in Bulgaria

This book tells the story of four early Pentecostal families who brought the message of Azusa to Bulgaria, Eastern Europe and Russia. The research has taken over a decade to complete. It started with a brief article on the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in Bulgaria, where unfortunately many church archives were destroyed during Communism. Consecutively, the research led my wife and I on a long journey from the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, to the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, Pusey Library at Harvard, the British and Foreign Bible Society in Cambridge, and countless Bulgarian churches.We are grateful to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center for making readily available their denominational archives. Dr. Albert Wardin graciously opened the door for research in Nashville and Berkeley, where most documentation of Voronaev’s early ministry are preserved. Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. of Fuller provided tremendous guidance to the life and ministry of Frank and Anna Bartleman through virtually every step of their journey and every address they occupied. We are also thankful to Dr. Oleg Bornovolokov of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kiev, who helped with various KGB/FSB documents and the NKVD dossiers from Gulag.The papers included in this book were presented at Society for Pentecostal Studies meetings between 2010 and 2021. The first part of the book appeared in vol. 30 (2010) of Assemblies of God “Heritage” magazine and their December, 2010 editorial. The Bulgarian Pentecostal Union published our translation and commentary of Voronaev’s correspondence in their monthly “Evangel.” In 2011, Dr. Vladimir Franchuk, translated our Voronaev’s papers in Russian and included them in his book “Revival: from the center of Odessa to the ends of Russia” just in time for the 90th anniversary of Pentecostalism in Russia. Most of the historiographical data presented in this book is being published openly for the first time.

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SPRING in BULGARIA