Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paul Alexander is the founder of Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice, a multiethnic, international, and ecumenical network of pastors, laypeople, academics, missionaries, and students. He teaches at Azusa Pacific University.

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Praise for Signs & Wonders

"I urge the reading of Paul Alexander's Signs and Wonders as a second-best introduction to Pentecostalism, the first being 'being there.' He offers a clear narrative line, issues helpful explanations, and gives something of the experience one recognizes at Pentecostal events or in Pentecostal ventures." From the Foreword by Martin E. Marty Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and an ordained Lutheran minister

"When I teach about religion in the current world situation the most frequent question I get is 'But why is Pentecostalism growing so quickly and in so many places?' I try to explain, but after reading this book my answer can now be much more complete and well grounded. This is the book that answers that question. It is fair, accurate, balanced, and written in an accessible style. No one seriously interested in the fastest growing Christian movement in the world can afford to miss it." Harvey Cox Harvard Divinity School and author, Fire From Heaven

Aus dem Klappentext

Recent surveys reveal that ever-increasing numbers of the faithful are attracted to the Pentecostal movement. While in the United States the popularity of this religious movement is strong, the global appeal of Pentecostalism has been nothing short of extraordinary. What accounts for the fact that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious movement in the world?

Drawing on Paul Alexander's scholarly work, religious upbringing, and rich personal experience in Guatemala, Venezuela, Mexico, Malta, Palestine/Israel, Belgium, India, and the United States, Signs and Wonders offers a compelling view of the amazing growth and power of the worldwide Pentecostal movement.

As Alexander explains, Pentecostalism is attractive to seekers on many levels the lively services, the mystery of tongue talking, the promise of prosperity, and the draw of hope and joy. Pentecostalism is open to prophecy, dreams, and visions. Pentecostals believe that dreams and visions are ways that God can speak directly to human beings. These beliefs hold great appeal for the millions of people who take comfort in hearing God's voice when life gets difficult. Pentecostals live in a world where God is close enough to talk to and can be appealed to for miracles of all kinds from curing warts to keeping an eighteen wheeler from crushing a mini-van. The Pentecostal view of prosperity through faith has great allure for those living the American dream and for those who dwell in abject poverty. As one pastor put it "God wants you to prosper. You don't have to wait. You don't have to be tied down by your circumstances."

Signs and Wonders offers a unique view of the Pentecostal movement from Paul Alexander who has been both an insider and an outsider to the faith.

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Signs and Wonders

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Expect a new miracle every day. -Oral Roberts

When I was a kid, growing up on a farm in Kansas, my younger brother, Mark, and I loved to swim in our pond out in the pasture. We would jump and dive off the dock into the deep, cold water, swim back, and climb up the old aluminum ladder that we had stuck in the mud and leaned against the rickety pier. We had truck and tractor inner tubes we floated on and a canoe we would paddle around in.

When I turned twelve, I think it was, I got a new waterproof digital watch for my birthday. One hot summer afternoon not long after that, Mark pushed an inner tube out away from the dock for me to dive through. As I dived through the tube, the valve stem caught my watch and ripped it off my wrist. My heart sank; I swam back to the dock and told Mark what had happened. I then started diving to the bottom of the pond, which was more than eight feet deep at the end of the dock, running my hands through the mud, trying to find that watch.

After diving several times with no luck, I was exhausted, frustrated, and ready to give up and go back to the house. Mark, being a good little Pentecostal boy, suggested that we pray. I didn't feel like it, but being a good Pentecostal big brother, I agreed. Mark prayed a very simple prayer: "Dear God, please help us find Paul's watch. In the name of Jesus, amen." He raised up his little head and looked me right in the face, grinning, with his eyes sparkling as if it were Christmas morning. He suggested that he swim back out with the inner tube and put it in the exact same spot for me to dive through again. Doubting that this would work or that we'd ever find the watch, I nevertheless directed him from the dock-a bit farther out, a bit to the right-until he had placed the inner tube perfectly. I backed up, ran down the dock, dived through the inner tube, and then swam to the bottom of the pond with my eyes squeezed shut and my hands spread wide open until they hit the cold squishy mud. My right palm landed directly on my watch; I didn't even have to move my hand around to find it. I grasped it tightly and swam back to the surface, hardly believing what had just happened. Mark and I ran back to the house and talked all over each other telling our mom.

That story has become a little legend in our family. But legend though it may be, it's not an odd or unbelievable event in the lives of Pentecostals. Like Mark, most Pentecostals expect things like this to happen and love to tell stories about the miracles and healings. Just this past Christmas, I told the tale of my lost-and-found watch to my in-laws in Texas while we were all sitting around the dinner table eating stew and cornbread. Ronda, my sister-in-law, immediately said, "Remember the bone spur on my knee that disappeared?" and Betty, my mother-in-law, interjected, "And don't forget the burns on Deborah's leg that were healed." Grandma then told about the time that Grandpa laid his hands on their van and prayed for it one morning-which was the morning they were almost killed by an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler "with smoke boiling everywhere" that "screeched within two feet of the back of our van." When asked why he had prayed that morning, Grandpa replied, "I just felt impressed to do it. Never done it before and never done it since." Betty then told us about when her uncle had a spider bite so bad that he swelled up and was going to die. There was no doctor, so his father prayed for the boy, who was healed immediately.

Everybody chimed in with one story after another until Grandpa interrupted, "I'm going to tell one even more impressive than that," and went on to recount an amazing tale about when Sister Foster had called him to come quickly because Gladys, with the death rattle in her throat, had been sent home to die by the doctors. Her husband, whom Grandpa called "a big ol' Methodist," was standing by the door "to see what we were going to do to his wife." Grandma and Grandpa prayed for her, and a couple of days later, she was perfectly fine and lived for many years after that.

Grandpa then told about how, when he was stricken with appendicitis as a twelve-year-old boy, he looked at a clock on the wall and thought, "The man who made that clock could fix it if it broke. And God could fix me, too." The pain left him that very instant, and he just swung his feet off the bed and got up and strolled out onto the porch. His father walked up from fetching the doctor, leaned against a post, and, said Grandpa, "his eyes got yay big, and he said, 'Son, what's happened to you?' I told him about the clock and how the pain left me. He expected me to get sicker and sicker; he just knew I was going to die. But I was playing with the other boys from then on, and I've never had another pain on that side."

Over the next hour, almost everyone at the table told at least one story. We heard tales of healings and miracles that included asthma cured, a cancer that fell off a man's hand, infected tonsils being spit out on the ground by a boy after he was prayed for, and the woman whose infected bladder healed ("She still writes to us fifty-five years later," Grandma said with a nod of her head). There was the woman in Anniston, Alabama, who had emphysema; Brother Cobb in Bonham, Texas, who also had emphysema (and who slept in a bed for the first time in fifteen years after being prayed for and healed); the woman with unceasing pain that had lasted for years (who heard a radio preacher say, "Go to the nearest Assembly of God church and get the pastor to pray for you"); the two-year-old girl who didn't pray quite right ("Thank you Jesus for mommy's headache") but her mother's headache was healed anyway; and even a healing from "we don't know what it was."

During a pause in our merry recounting of miracle upon miracle, I mentioned that in my book I would also need to address the fact that sometimes people aren't healed, that sometimes miracles don't happen when we pray. At my words, silence fell; I could hear the clock ticking in the living room. I took a bite of my stew, put some butter on another piece of cornbread, and drank some sweet tea. Then Grandpa broke the silence by telling about the man who had "walking pneumonia" and couldn't eat onions, but after Grandpa prayed for him, he ate steak sauted with onions and was fine from then on. Betty told about how Rodney, her husband, who was a technician at an Exxon gas plant, was healed of plantar warts and his feet ended up as smooth as a baby's bottom. There followed more stories-about how prayer healed the boy who sucked down a peanut whole, shell and all, and doctors thought he'd die; the boy who was sweating with a terrible fever in bed (probably from polio) and was perfectly well the next day; and the junior high girls who made it safely home from basketball practice in the middle of a tornado-filled hailstorm: "Suddenly there was a clearing around them. They drove home safely with the storm all around, but their car area was clear. They got inside safely. It built the girls' faith incredibly." Those girls personally experienced a miracle like all the ones we'd been recounting, and in the future, when the need arose, they'd be able to have even more confidence when they prayed.

When I told...