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The Church Returns to the Upper Room

many of us will humbly respond to Bush’s last question by saying we
know where we need to go from here. We need to go back to the Upper
Room in Acts and then out to the nations with the Good News of Jesus
Christ. A Holy Spirit directed strategy for the church of the twenty-first
century is essential.

In Chapter Four, we outlined the beginning of the church and
indicated that Africa was in the heart of God from the beginning. The
church began in Pentecostal power, and God wants that power to be
renewed in the last days. There
is evidence that God the Father
has ordained the Lord of the
Harvest to baptize the church We need to go back
anew for the end-time harvest. to the Upper Room in
It is the only manner in which
the church will be victorious. Acts and then out to the

nations with the Good
I have mentioned repeatedly
that I am grateful for the spiritual News of Jesus Christ.
awakenings of the church and
the manner in which missions
became a focus in Africa. The church took important steps in the right
direction to bring the glory of God to all nations. As Sanneh points out,
the “more successful period of the Church in Africa began in the second
half of the eighteenth century, and continued through much of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (1983, 21). For this book, an update
is appropriate: the greatest days for the church in Africa are now and in
the future as we wait for the coming of the King.

The Pentecostal Century
The Purpose of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit

As indicated earlier, J. Roswell Flower was an early elder statesman
of the Assemblies of God, who received his personal Pentecost in 1908.
He was a prolific writer and editor. Flower wrote the following about the
significance and purpose of the Holy Spirit:

The baptism of the Holy Ghost does not consist in simply speaking in
tongues. No. It has a much more grand and deeper meaning than that.

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