In what is perhaps the most significant study of Pentecostal Theology to date, Stephen Jack Land offers a constructive interpretation and issues a call for the re-vision of the Pentecostal tradition. Viewing the first 10 years as the heart, not the infancy, of its spirituality, Land identifies the theological heart of the tradition as the five-fold gospel that proclaims, ‘Jesus is Savior, Sanctifier, Holy Ghost Baptizer, Healer, and Soon Coming King. Land’s work recovers The crucial importance of the tradition’s Wesleyan, Holiness, and 19th century revivalist-restorationist roots.
Something of the significance of Land’s constructive proposal is revealed by a survey of the number of references to it in any number of works devoted to Pentecostal Theology. In many ways it has proven to be the starting point for the academic study of constructive Pentecostal Theology and it is now hard to imagine what the shape of this academic discipline would look like without the appearance of Land’s work.