How should the modern Pentecostal movement be seen?
To start with, Pentecostals are another of very many groups trying to please God through their interpretation of His Word. In this regard they are just like any other serious denomination of Christianity, assuming that they are genuine in their purposeful rejection of sin and their particular beliefs in God.
Too often, Pentecostals are misjudged as over-zealous fanatics who are deluded about the function of God’s Spirit in their lives.
In reality, they are no more over-zealous about their belief system than their other-denomination brethren are about theirs – unless one maintains that half-hearted, lukewarm beliefs define all belief systems. Fanatics is a judgment word. You really need evidence to show that someone in one denomination is extreme in what they believe when those who render the verdict maintain that they are not extreme in theirs.
To examine Pentecostals in the overwhelming and absolutely defining system that permeates, regulates, governs, and directs ALL denominations, futurism, they are the advanced group. The Scriptures clearly teach that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit will continue until the perfect (the complete) arrives. Non-Pentecostal groups butcher the word perfect, filling it with alien interpretations in order to jettison the supernatural spiritual gifts. They all reinterpret the word to mean “the canon of New Testament Scripture” (this is a very anemic view when you truly consider both how and how long it took to form the highly debated canon of Scripture), or “the end of the apostles lives evolving into the beginning of church governance under bishops” or “the church age itself, wherein these gifts fade away in view of the Spirit-filled lives of the churches”. All of these are patent misinterpretations of the word perfect. The word means the goal of completeness arrived at and attained in the Kingdom of God at the second coming of Jesus Christ in all of His dominion and glory! This is the long definition of the maturity revealed in the word perfect!
Here Pentecostals are faithful to the Scriptures while their fellow other denominationalists are not.
So, every time that Pentecostals are judged as extreme by other church denomination members, it is those judging church members who are in the extreme!
One thing you can be sure of among futurists, in the main they are a complete closed circular group of extremely short-sighted, divided, and Holy Spirit quenching people who set at naught others not in their approved camp while they propagate great dishonor to God.
What should we think of Pentecostals? Among futurists they honor God more than their fellow other-demoninationalists and, in this particular Bible teaching they show the rest how to properly interpret Scripture!