What made us Pentecostal?
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Pentecostalism is a message for standing fast till the end. As Pentecostals, we preached this message before we had a sermon outline.
We went without knowing. We prayed without ceasing. We prophesied without seeing in the physical or even purposefully refusing to reckon with it.
We preached without a season, for preaching was the vibe of our ministry and the heartbeat of our churches. We preached because we had a testimony. We did not know how to say it, but we had something to say.
We did not know how to write a sermon, or a theological exposition, or an exegetical definition, or a leadership proposition, but we preached because we had an experience that NO sermon could recreate and no message could deliver.
We had met God upon the mountain and that personal meeting, that date with destiny, that divine appointment had become our source of life everlasting. And this is what made us Pentecostal.
Daniel and Revlation
The Great Tribulation
Rapture of the Church
Spiritual Problems and Solutions from the 7 Churches of Revelation
Network of the Seven Churches of Revelation
Although the Book of Revelation has been vastly studied and interpreted throughout church history, usually the focus is on one major issue within the text, namely, the role and future of the church. The main reason for this has been the in-depth prophetic and pastoral messages to the Seven Churches. The value of the messages to the Seven Churches of Revelation is constituted by the fact that they are the last recorded Biblical messages to the Christian Church. For this reason, the letters to the Seven Churches obviously do not contain all of the usual elements used in the New Testament epistolary form.
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20 SIGNS of the LAST DAYS
1. Spirit to be poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28)
2. Israel to be restored (Deuteronomy 28:64, 30:3 Jeremiah 29:14, 30:3 Isaiah)
3. Universal apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)
4. Good will be called evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20)
5. The watering down of the gospel (2 Tim 3:5, Matt 15:9)
6. False prophets and false Christs (Mat 24:24)
7. Worldly knowledge to increase (Dan 12:4)
8. Earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues and diseases (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)
9. Peace taken from the earth (Matthew 24 and Luke 21)
10. Increase in the wickedness, murder and crime among men (Mat 24/Luke 21)
11. People will not believe the signs (2 Peter 3:3-4, Matthew 16:1-4)
12. Increase in persecution of Christians (Matthew 24:9, Mark 13:9)
13. The Spread of nuclear weapons as predicted in the Bible
14. Middle East tension
15. NEW tower of BABEL
16. GOG AND MAGOG
17. Revived Roman Empire
18. The Antichrist
19. The Mark of the Beast
20. FINAL SIGN: Gospel to be preached to all of the world (Mat 24:14/Rev 14:6-7)
2014: Year of the Glory of God
2014 comes with a word from 1 Kings 8 where the glory of God has filled the newly built temple for the very first time. The same glory, which the prophet Isaiah will later see in the year when the king has died, and the prophet Ezekiel will see leaving the Holy of Holies.
When the glory fills the Temple, it is time for the leaders to pray for the nation. But while Moses had prayed in the same situation with a prayer of recollection of the past miracles of God, Solomon prays with a prophetic prayer for the future of the people of God.
And right there in v. 38 it states that the prayer made by “any man of all Thy people Israel can return the nation back to God.” Verse 39 continues with a supplication that contains a prophetic promise, which turns the personal perspective of one man into a destiny for the whole nation:
“Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men;).”
The prayer of one man whose heart is known to God can return a nation back into the glory. Are you that man in 2014?
See also:
- When you change a GENERATION you change a NATION
- See why this is important for US today
- On the Glory of God
When you change a GENERATION you change a NATION
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In the CHANGE of one GENERATION is a change for the whole NATION
The success of Israel was in the GLORY of GOD and its power to overturn evil kings and political systems
- In the case of Moses this was the Pharoah
- In the case of David this was Saul
- In the case of Ezekiel this was Babylon
And EVERY TIME the people who followed the glory were blessed and received the covenant promises
See why this is important for US today
Keynote presentations from our speaking itinerary
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Keynote presentations from our speaking itinerary
2013 Video Bible Project at Logos BibleTech Conference
2012 Historical and Doctrinal Formation of Holiness Teachings and Praxis among Bulgarian Pentecostals at Society for Pentecostal Studies at Seattle Pacific University
2011 The (un)Forgotten: Story of Rev. Ivan Voronaev’s Children at Society for Pentecostal Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary
2011 Broadcast Your Church at Leadership Development Institute
2010 Using Computer Technologies in the Making of the New Bulgarian Translation of the Bible at Logos BibleTech Conference
2010 The Untold Story of the Life and Ministry of Rev. Ivan Voronaev at Society for Pentecostal Studies at North-Central University
2009 Underground Web Ministry within the Postcommunist Matrix at Logos BibleTech Conference
2009 Ministry on the Internet at Leadership Development Institute
2007 Bulgarian American Congregations: Cultural, Economic and Leadership Dimensions at Society for Pentecostal Studies
2006 The Story of the Bulgarian Bible at Evangelical Theological Society (video)
2006 Introductory Chaplaincy Training Course at the Bulgarian Chaplaincy Association Quarterly Meeting
2005 Internal Motivation at the Bulgarian Chaplaincy Association Quarterly Meeting
2005 Bulgarian Churches in North America at the Bulgarian Evangelical Alliance Annual Meeting
2004 Postcommunist Believers in a Postmodern World at the 4th Annual Lilly Fellows National Research Conference
Key Publications:
Spring 2013 Bulgarian New Testament (Special Study Edition for Bulgarian Churches and Diasporas Abroad), Spasen Publishers
2012 The Life and Ministry of Rev. Ivan Voronaev (with the (un)Forgotten:Story of the Voronaev Children)
2012 Bulgarian Churches in North America: Analytical Overview and Church Planting Proposal for Bulgarian American Congregations Considering Cultural, Economical and Leadership Dimensions, Spasen Publishers
2011 The Case of Underground Chaplaincy in Bulgaria (A Case Study for NATO’s Manfred Wormer Foundation)
July, 2007-present, Letters from Bulgaria: A Series on Bulgarian Pentecostal Heritage in Pentecostal Evangel
Spring 2006, When East Met West in East-West Church & Ministry Report
July 2006, Roberts College in Pro & Anti Newspaper
Fall 2005, Postcommunist Believers in a Postmodern World in East-West Church & Ministry Report
April 2005-2009, Bulgarian Protestant History Series in Evangelical Newspaper
April 2005-2010, About the Bible Series in Evangelical Newspaper (Published in one volume by Spasen Publishers)
March 2002, Bible Studies on the Church of God Declaration of Faith, Spasen Publishers
May 2001, Pentecostal Primitivism Preserved, Spasen Publishers
September 2000, To Harvard and Back a Hundred Years Later (A Biographical Sketch of Stoyan K. Vatralsky)
January 1994, “Going Up”, Christian News, Newspaper of the BulgarianChurch of God
1998-2003, Commentary on the Four Gospels for the Bulgarian On-Line Bible [http://www.bibliata.com]
The Missional Church
The nature of the church is missional, through the fact that its existence is powered by the Great Commission. The book summarizes the culture of today’s American spirituality and its relation to the apostolic church. The main question is, “What would a theology of the church look like that took seriously the fact that North America is now itself a mission field?”
Five Key Insights
1. The missional nature of the church – The place which the church takes in the surrounding world/society defines its nature as missional. How it interacts with the surrounding worlds identifies the church’s response to the needs of individuals and groups of people and results in its success/failure to fulfill its original mission. A valid point was the statement that the witness of the missional church is characterized by its integrity.
2. Recovering missional identity – Recovering the church’s original New Testament identity has been a subject of discussion for many various ages in church history. The volume of works written about it has indeed increased in the latter part of the 20th century. The discussion in the book claims that as truth, self, and society are rediscovered in postmodernism, the churches of North America will recover its missional identity. Thus, the individual search of identity will reflect on the corporate search of the church as a community and as the Body of Christ. Chapter four further claims that the churches missional identity is shaped by the gospel of the reign of God which Jesus preached.
3. The Holy Spirit and the community of the missional churches – The Chapter on the Holy Spirit, although very informative, did not integrate the connection between the Spirit and Missional outreach to a practical paradigm, but it was mostly a theoretic and philosophical proposition.
4. On spiritual leadership – the discussion on spiritual leadership is based on the axiom that leadership is focused on the reign of God. Only then the church assumes its mission. Solving problems and creating unity within the church is reached through the same focus on the reign of God.
5. The secular surroundings – the vision of the church may not align with the secular surrounds. Actually, it may often completely contradict them fulfilling its role as a prophetic utterance. At the same time, social, political and economical factors may oppose the message and the mission of the church, thus creating an atmosphere in which the church grows against the grain.
