Pentecost in Tulsa tells the story of how the city became an important epicenter of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in the United States. In its earliest days, revivals led by such luminaires as Charles Parham, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Raymond T. Richey helped establish important Pentecostal churches. Later, well-known evangelists in the movement, such as Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin, launched worldwide ministries from Tulsa that impacted millions around the globe. This book also reveals the untold story of a resilient Black Pentecostal community that endured the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and revived the famous Greenwood District. Through these triumphs and tragedies, Tulsa has emerged as a significant location with continuing impact on the story of Pentecostalism.

We often regard the author of the Gospel of Mark as an obscure figure about whom we know little. Many would be surprised to learn how much fuller a picture of Mark exists within widespread African tradition, tradition that holds that Mark himself was from North Africa, that he founded the church in Alexandria, that he was an eyewitness to the Last Supper and Pentecost, that he was related not only to Barnabas but to Peter as well and accompanied him on many of his travels. In this provocative reassessment of early church tradition, Thomas C. Oden begins with the palette of New Testament evidence and adds to it the range of colors from traditional African sources, including synaxaries (compilations of short biographies of saints to be read on feast days), archaeological sites, non-Western historical documents and ancient churches. The result is a fresh and illuminating portrait of Mark, one that is deeply rooted in African memory and seldom viewed appreciatively in the West.

Lent recalls times of wilderness and wandering, from newly freed Hebrew slaves in exile to Jesus' temptation in the desert. God has always called people out of their safe, walled cities into uncomfortable places, revealing paths they would never have chosen. Despite our culture of self-indulgence, we too are called to walk an alternative pathâ€"one of humility, justice, and peace. Walter Brueggemann's thought-provoking reflections for the season of Lent invite us to consider the challenging, beautiful life that comes with walking the way of grace.

Are you ready to go deeper in your relationship with the Holy Spirit? From Passover to Pentecost is a fifty-day journey specifically designed to prepare you for a fresh and deep experience with the Holy Spirit. In From Passover to Pentecost, Cynthia shares that the Bible tells us to count the fifty days beginning with Passover and ending with Pentecost, called in Hebrew Shavuot (Leviticus 23:15-16). It was on this fiftieth day called Pentecost that the first believers received the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). They had been waiting in Jerusalem for the "Promise of the Father" when God's Spirit fell on them. I believe that as we wait upon the LORD from Passover to Pentecost, preparing our hearts by giving Him our love and devotion, we too can receive a fresh endowment of power and revelation through the ever-present living Spirit of God! This book will encourage you to enter into a new place of intimacy with the Holy Spirit, and receive a fresh impartation of power and revelation.

One of the first books ever written by Oral Roberts, If You Need Healing, Do These Things was originally published in 1947 shortly after Roberts began his healing ministry. As a young man dying from tuberculosis, who experienced the healing power of God for himself, Roberts wrote a book that still speaks profoundly to all people who are sick or hurting in some area of their life. Can God heal? Will He heal me? If You Need Healing, Do These Things answers those questions...and more. Written by someone who knows what it is like to lose all hope and to walk the very steps you may be walking right now, If You Need Healing, Do These Things is a down-to-earth, practical "handbook" on how to get into position to receive whatever miracle you need from God.

Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview--rich with bibliographic resources--to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.

In this fascinating autobiography, Billye Brim tells the story of her family's Pentecostal roots and how a God-given directive led her to build Prayer Mountain in the Ozarks.She also shares about:-The roots of Pentacost in America at the beginning of the prophetic 20th century.-What made Tulsa such a spiritual city.-The importance place of prayer in these last days.

A probing but clearly written book, Calendar will find an appreciative audience beyond academia and clergy to the laity of the church: choirs and their directors, worship planners, adult study groups, and others who want to understand better the church's times of preparation and celebration. Calendar centers largely on theological meaning and parish practice in relation to liturgical time. Deliberately, almost no attention is given to detailed historical development, much of which is exceedingly complex in its origins and technical in its detail. An appendix entitled "Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (Or, This Book in a Nutshell)" aptly describes the radical reordering that Stookey believes occurs when our understanding of time and the story of Jesus takes its bearings from the Incarnation. So, just as the Christian week begins with Sunday, the day of Resurrection, Stookey follows the Christian year beginning with the season of Easter, and only then Lent; Christmas, then Advent. Illuminating discussions of Ordinary and Extraordinary Time, and the Sanctoral Cycle follow.

The prosperity movement has influenced millions of people in North America, Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa through Pentecostal, Charismatic and nondenominational preachers in some of the largest churches in the world. CNN, ABC, and Time magazine have examined the preachers and churches in this popular and controversial movement. Scholars and church leaders have studied it for more than two decades, producing dozens of books and articles on it. Considering the widespread popularity of the prosperity movement and the attention it is given by its critics, Brogdon asks, "Is prosperity preaching the new Pentecostal message?" In order to answer this question, one has to examine the prosperity movement as a Pentecostal movement instead of a Word of Faith movement that is a revised form of New Thought metaphysics and Science of Mind. Brogdon provides an introduction to the prosperity movement as a Pentecostal movement. He asks important questions in the study of the prosperity movement, such as who popularized prosperity teaching, Oral Roberts or Ken Hagin? Do all Pentecostals agree with the prosperity doctrine? Is prosperity teaching good news to the poor? Has prosperity replaced the emphasis on the Holy Spirit? The answers may surprise you.

Fourth-generation fundamentalist Carlton Pearson, a Christian megastar and host, takes a courageous and controversial stand on religion that proposes a hell-less Christianity and a gospel of inclusion that calls for an end to local and worldwide conflicts and divisions along religious lines. In The Gospel of Inclusion, Bishop Carlton Pearson explores the exclusionary doctrines in mainstream religion and concludes that, according to the evidence of the Bible and irrefutable logic, they cannot be true. Bishop Pearson argues that the controlling dogmas of religion are the source of much of the world's ills and that we should turn our backs on proselytizing and holy wars and focus on the real good news: that we are all bound for glory, everybody is saved, and if we believe God loves all mankind, then we have no choice but to have the same attitude ourselves. Bishop Pearson tells the story of how he had gone from a powerful religious figure, once preaching to an audience of over 6,000 people, to watching everything he had built crumble around him due to a scandal. Why? He didn't steal money nor did he have inappropriate sexual relationships. Following a revelation from God, he began to preach that a loving God would not condemn most of the human race to hell because they are not Christian. He preaches that God belongs to no religion. The Gospel of Inclusion is the inspiring journey of one man's quest to preach a new truth.