Assemblies of God Bible Study

There Is an Official Document, and That Changes Things

Most writing about Pentecostal Bible study describes a posture: expectation, openness, prayer before reading. That is fair as far as it goes, and it is covered on the Pentecostal Bible study page on this site. The Assemblies of God is a narrower case. It is a denomination with a governing doctrinal statement, so its positions are not a matter of general impression.

The Assemblies of God was founded in 1914. In its own account, two years after its founding the AG established 16 doctrines as a standard to reach, preach and teach its people, and those doctrines became the Statement of Fundamental Truths. If you want to know what the AG teaches on a point, that document is where to look rather than any description of the wider movement.

This matters for study in a practical way. When an AG sermon or Sunday school lesson makes a doctrinal claim, there is a text behind it that a reader can check. That is a different situation from traditions with no central statement, where the honest answer to what do they believe is often that it depends on the congregation.

What the AG Officially Says About Scripture

Article 1 of the Statement is the one that governs everything else in it, and it is short. In full: The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.

The article cites three passages in support: 2 Timothy 3:15-17, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, and 2 Peter 1:21.

Two words there carry weight. Verbally inspired is a stronger claim than inspired in a general sense. And rule of faith and conduct means the text is treated as governing both what is believed and how life is lived, not one or the other. An AG reader approaching a passage is meant to be asking what it requires, not only what it teaches.

The Four Core Doctrines

Of the sixteen articles, the AG designates four as core. In the denomination's own wording, these are Salvation, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Divine Healing and the Second Coming of Christ. The reason given is the key role they play in reaching the lost and building the believer and the church both now and for the future.

For someone studying the Bible in an AG setting, this is a useful map. These four themes are where the denomination concentrates its teaching, so they are the passages that come up most: the salvation texts, Acts and the Spirit passages, the healing narratives and James 5, and the return-of-Christ material in the Gospels, Thessalonians and Revelation.

Spirit Baptism and Initial Physical Evidence

Article 7 addresses the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It states that all believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that this was the normal experience of all in the early Christian Church.

The article then makes a claim that shapes AG reading of Acts: This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth. It cites Acts 8:12-17, Acts 10:44-46, Acts 11:14-16 and Acts 15:7-9. Those are the passages where believing and receiving the Spirit appear as separable events, and they are read that way deliberately.

Article 8 is the one that most distinguishes the AG from other Pentecostal and charismatic bodies. It states: The baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance, citing Acts 2:4. It adds that the speaking in tongues in this instance is the same in essence as the gift of tongues, but is different in purpose and use, citing 1 Corinthians 12:4-10 and 12:28.

That distinction between evidence and gift is worth understanding before reading 1 Corinthians 12 in an AG context, because the chapter is dealing with the gift, while Article 8 is dealing with the sign.

What This Page Does Not Claim

Everything above is quoted or summarized from the denomination's own published documents, and the links are at the bottom so you can read them in full rather than take this page's word for it. That is the standard this site holds itself to when describing someone else's tradition.

What is not claimed here is that the Statement of Fundamental Truths tells you how any particular AG congregation runs its Bible study, or what any individual member believes. A doctrinal standard describes what a denomination officially teaches and what its ministers affirm. It does not describe the range of practice in thousands of local churches, and no honest outside account can.

It is also worth saying plainly that this page is written by someone outside the tradition, working from its public documents. If you are AG and something here is off, the source links are right there and the documents win.