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A native fellowship. They were anti-denominational, and so they knew that they couldn't. 14 and 1916, you know, there was a lot of debate on whether or not there should even be a statement of faith. And so, you know, they were against creedalism, so they didn't want to write something that was creedal. However, the necessity to hold the fellowship together—they knew they needed some sort of basis, some things that that held doctrinally together. So when they said the statement of fundamental truths, they're just talking about this is this is a statement that they issued that had a number of fundamental truths that they felt like the the the U council of ministers would agree on, and and that provided the basis of fellowship. That's what doctrine does, right? It demarks who we are and us as an identity. So, so you know, they they saw the value of that, but they they were not willing to say that the creed itself or the statement of fundamental truths um was authoritative because the Bible itself is authoritative. So the Bible was the rule. Um, the statement of fundamental truths was just sort of the encapsulation of what what they felt like.
And so they were very, very uh careful to put that in there that the phraseology was not inspired or contended for. Um, that there was no claim that this was some sort of inherent, you know, statement of doctrine. Um, but but what what was really important was that phrase where they say that the present needs. They were really addressing each of the issues that were um facing the Islamist God at the time. So you had a trinitarian controversy. So there was, you know, things there. There was a statement on um speaking in tongues and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So they wanted to clarify there. And then, like I said, there was a variety of views at the time, particularly those coming out of Parl's fellowship, apostolic faith fellowship, who Parl was an annihilationist and he was um he believed that that folks would would go through the tribulation and be spirit-filled in order to witness. And so so they were clarifying those things um and and uh so all those were addressing the present needs, and that that's how the the do the the statement was was intended to function. It's like this is this covers what we're what the present issues, the present controversies are now. It's not it was never intended to be exhaustive. Yeah.
And that's interesting because you know we're approached to the denomination. I always struggle because I I don't you know 34 years ago you might have gotten, you know, a fight out of people about whether or not it was appropriate to call these got a denomination. I think still today we prefer to think of ourselves as a fellowship or a movement, right, over a denomination. So I can I can say that someone authoritatively since you know my late father led the movement and it's a denomination, but anyway um what what's interesting is is that last phrase about meeting the needs of the present moment hint at the fact that there can be development in the statement of fundamental truths. So, for instance, um you know, in 1917 there were 17 fundamental truths, and then that was edited in I think 1921 and 1925 and then a couple times in the 60s until we get the current form which has been what it is with I think they just changed the the references to Bible quotations from the NIV. I think that was the most recent change. Yeah. Um, but some of these changes were Williams in his history say these were just minor modifications. Some of them weren't so minor. So walk us through the history of, you know, not of all of the changes in the statement of fundamental truths but just the kinds of changes that you find um in in the and I like it the EFT the eschatological fundamental truths, right? No, that's a really important point because I think there's some people today that look at the statement of fundamental truths, you know, through that inherent lens like, you know, this is this has always been our view and they always will be our view sort of thing, but there really has been quite a bit of development of these statements, um you know, like you said 1916 there was 17 fundamental truths and those were totally reorganized to 16 um and then in 1921 there was a whole change in uh I'm sorry 1927 there was a whole change in leadership from that first generation early folks um to a new generation of of leaders in the AG, and they they completely rewrote the fundamental truths at that point, and some of them had minor but some of them had major and the eschatological fundamental truths were were ones that that got rewritten. In fact, the millennial reign got almost completely rewritten um and in 1927 the word rapture was taken out of uh the blessed hope and so um you know that terminology has remained out—we don't even use that term in the blessed hope all the way to till today—and so so they were careful about terminology, they were careful about things like that um but they but they would sort of rewrite them as the situation uh changed.
Now, of course, in 1916 it was a pretty loose fellowship, and so you know there wasn't a large organizational structure, but in 1927, you know, people in 1916 didn't even think the age would be around in 1927. Jesus was coming back, you know. By 1925 we're realizing, hey, we're going to be here. We better organize this a little bit better. And that's when the constitution was actually written. The preamble was written in 1916, but the constitution wasn't written till later. And so, um, so there was there was more sense of permanence. And so, they were reflecting on that um as as the uh as the the denomination, as it were, were starting to to mature and try to figure out how do how do we, you know, how do we uh navigate this sense of permanence now that Jesus isn't coming back tomorrow. Um, and then and so the the statement of fundamental truths was sort of rewritten during that time through that. And the eschatological fundamental truths. One of the changes that was really interesting was that sort of the early um lake of fire was really emphasizing what would happen to Satan and the beast and the false prophet. Um, but in 27 it shifted a little bit to uh to begin to think about, you know, more final judgments and hell and things like that. Um, and then in 1961 you had another rewrite because of, you know, you had uh Israel had become a nation by then, and so there's a lot of other contemporary issues that they were dealing with. Uh, there were more educated ministers, some of them were becoming millennialist, and so the the millennial reign was rewritten again uh with with some of that in mind. And so each of these iterations as as the AG was maturing um saw the need to go back and look at that. I think that's what that's what you have today in the last couple uh reframings of the of the statement of fundamental truths was to say, you know, how can we make sure it's contemporary, it's up to date, it's it's addressing the needs that we have right now. And I think that the mission of of millennialism kind of points to why the allowance clause, as you call it, the doctrines of practice disapproved of the bylaws was there—that was originally written, wasn't it—to respond to millennialism and amillennialism is a hard word to say. Yeah, know that that that's the case because if so if if premillennialism, you know, if you have questions about that, a lot of ministers that may sort of begin to reject uh sort of the speculation and the you know pin the tail on the antichrist stuff and they they just think, okay, look, I don't I don't want to engage in this, I'm not really sure about all this. So, I'm just going to kind of take an amillennial position that, you know, I don't know if there is a future millennium or not. It doesn't really matter to me. And um, of course, a lot of the evangelical schools in the in the 60s and 70s were all millennialists. And pushing back on, you know, evangelicals premillennial sort of um I don't know, preoccupation maybe some of that. And so, amillennialism became an important thing, but but uh it was typically in the early days was a position for people who didn't really believe the Bible. You know, the Bible if the Bible says there's a millennium, then there's a millennium. But, you know, people coming out of these liberal schools were saying, "Well, there's no true millennium." And so, that was one of the disapproved doctrines earlier. Um, but it but it also became a reoccurring theme. So um you know as educated ministers we're going to evangelical seminaries and learning these things. The AG had to respond and say, so look if if that's what you believe personally, that's fine, it's not a test of fellowship here, but just don't teach amillennialism because our official doctrine is premillennial. So that's where that allowance clause came from. And I think it served really well because it kept the tent open. You know, if you're extremely committed to speaking in tongues and the gifts of the spirit and healing but you're unsure about premillennialism, you know, there's still a place for you. Just don't lead people, you know, astray and teach these things are off the wall. I I you know, okay, I'm just going to go there. So the the allowance clause um you know starts off with millennialism in one of the revisions, and I can never remember which year it was revised. The allowance clause began to be applied to all of the eschatological errors mentioned in the section on doctrines and practices disapproved of, and in the book you talk about how there was an attempt in the 70s and early 70s, early 80s in order because the older generation of leaders and I think the person behind this effort was Jacob Hogan who was who was just a force of nature. I mean, he was he was the Thomas Fimmerman of the Assemblies of God on the world mission side, and of course Brother Zimmerman himself was a force of nature, so you had these two guys leading side by side for for much of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, but if I remember correctly it was Hogan who was concerned that we were losing our tribulational focus, and so um there was some general council action uh study committees with recommendations to the general council to sort of tighten up the allowance clause. Yeah. And and those were rejected. They said, "No, this is this is good enough." Yeah. Tell me about that because that that strikes me as going to the sort of underlying big 10 thing that you that you just talked about.
Yeah. It really is. It's a great it's a great illustration of how the AG has sort of resisted um being as clearly defined as we all assume that the AG is. So, um you know, so what was taking place obviously, you know, more educated ministers meant more opportunity to view other views, particularly, you know, evangelical seminaries and other places. And so, um yeah, Hogan was concerned because he was interviewing u missions people and they weren't really strong on the eschatological views. And so he he actually brought up the position to the general presbytery, and they formed a committee on eschatological loopholes, and they were saying, you know, was that the actual name of the committee? That was the actual name of the committee. I was pretty surprised when I found that in the uh the general secretary's office uh that this was an actual this was an actual thing, but but it was really that they were trying to find out are the way that ministers are getting around eschatology and still being ordained and still being commissioned as um ministers. So they put together a committee, and the committee went through it, and they they came up with a couple things, and one of the things that they wanted to do was to make um people describe more in detail what their their views are. Um, but they actually the general presbyters actually tabled that and and said, you know, we need more study on this. Let's bring some more people in. And what happened was uh so the next year they took it under advisement. Um, and in 1981 um they actually the conclusion of the committee was no, there's enough in our constitutional bylaws that covers what we think is important. And so we don't need to crack down more on this that between the between the statement of fundamental truths and the disallowed doctrines. We have enough coverage that that that provides, you know, for this space. We don't we don't need to we don't need to seek out to try to expose people who might have some uh you know various doctrines if in fact, you know, they're not making an issue out of it. And so you know that's a really surprising thing for me. It was surprising for me as a historian to kind of see that because you think during that during that era which was very popular eschatology was with how Lindsay and others that they might get a little more um you know a little more strong on some of that, but but it was it was just an example of them saying, well, let's back off of that a little bit.
So you know the relationship of Pentecostalism to evangelicalism is a big debate among Pentecostal scholars. I you know I'm not a scholar. Uh I will say I'm the son of a scholar. He was a college professor at the start of his career after all. But um I I know enough about you know the academic world and enough about the local church to be an editor. So I don't know if that's you know an insult or if that's a good thing or whatever. But what's interesting is you have this massive debate among scholars about the extent of the relationship between Pentecostalism and evangelicalism. And I've honestly just never seen this debate in the local church. They just, "Yeah, we're jungles or whatever." Yeah. Um, and so personally, I find the question kind of weird because it's it's so obvious to me that Pentecostals are evangelicals. I mean, what else would we do? We're not Catholics, we're not orthodox, we're not mainline Protestants. I I've never seen a mainline Protestant get worked up about a debate about the timing of the tribulation, but that is something that evangelicals do. Yeah. Um, but even if we are evangelicals, that doesn't mean that our Pentecostalism is just evangelicalism plus speaking in tongues. The reality is, as your book makes clear, that Pentecostalism has has modified aspects of evangelicalism, retaining what was useful and discarding what wasn't. And cessationism itself, which was very much part of dispensational premillennialism and a lot of more confessional evangelicalism, it's a good example of that. I was really struck by a statement that you made in the book which to me um really gets at the the kind of Pentecostal or evangelical debate, and you talk about the vacillating emphasis between sighs and signs. And so the sighs comes from Romans 8. You know, we sigh, we groan. The signs comes from the olive discourse in Mark 13 and related passages, and the sighs are the way Pentecostals approach eschatology, and the signs maybe are the way that evangelicals do. Talk to me about this because I thought this was one of the most interesting contributions that you made in the book. Yeah, I mean I mean obviously Pentecostalism emerged from the holiness movement which was an evangelical movement, and in the same way that the four-fold gospel um you know savior, healer, spirit baptizer and soon coming king, well prior to Pentecostalism that was that was also there. I mean, you have Christian Missionary Alliance was four-fold gospel, and so you know eschatology as a central pillar of theology was inherited from from evangelicalism, and so you know the great prophecy conferences of the late 1800s um the writings of the Moody and and uh James Brooks and you know all the different people that were writing eschatology were the things that Pentecostals were reading and so but you know as you come into the 20th century you have you have evangelicals using their eschatology, their dispensational eschatology meant that God did things in certain ways at certain times um to to disavow Pentecostalism, they