Pentecostals believe that one must be saved by believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior for the forgiveness of sins and to be made acceptable to God. Being descended from Methodism and the Methodist Holiness Movement, Pentecostal soteriology is mostly Arminian rather than Calvinian, believing that the ability to believe in Jesus is a power of the human free will.
Pentecostals believe in water baptism as an outward sign of conversion, and that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a distinct spiritual experience that all who have believed in Jesus should receive. To be more precise, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a separate and distinct “second grace” received in a personal subjective and often emotional religious experience. All classical Pentecostals believe that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is always accompanied initially by the outward evidence of speaking in tongues. It is considered a liberalizing tendency to teach contrary to this historic position. This is a major difference between Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians, who believe that a Christian who is baptized in the Holy Spirit may exhibit physical signs, including but not necessarily including speaking in tongues, such “being slain in the spirit” where people fall to the ground as if asleep or in convolutions. Most major Pentecostal denominations reject any connection between personal salvation or conversion and the Pentecostal Baptism in the Holy Sprit and teach that it is not necessary to be saved but a gift from God available to all Christians. Many early Pentecostals believed that the revival of the gifts of the spirit were a sign from God of the latter rain, a period of restoration before the end of the age and the coming millennial reign of Christ. Traditional Protestants believe that one is baptized with or in the Holy Spirit upon Regeneration, the work of the Holy Spirit that enables faith and belief in the unbelieving heart. They most often reject such concepts as a “second grace” though not rejecting the idea of periodic or even weekly renewal in the sacraments.
Pentecostals also typically believe that the Bible has definitive authority in matters of faith like most other evangelicals.