Nikola Nikoloff founder of the Bulgarian Pentecostal Union

Nicholas Nikoloff (1900 -1964) pastor educator, and missionary to eastern Europe. Nikoloff was born to Bulgarian orthodox parents in Bulgaria. His mother had been educated at an American college, and through her influence he attended a Protestant church in Bourgas. He was converted in 1914 while reading a Bible he had purchased.
Five years latter he began to study la at the University of Sofia. When Ivan Voronaev passed through Bugaria on his way to evangelize in Russia, Nikoloff learned of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Immigrating to the US in 1920, Nikoloff attended college in New York City and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit under the ministry of Robert and Marie Brown at Glad Tidings Tabernacle. He pastured several churches in New York and New Jersey and at the same time attended Bethel Bible Training School in Newark, NJ, graduating in 1924. He then taught at the school until 1926.

Feeling called of God to return to Bulgaria, Nikoloff and his American-born wife, Martha, spent five years (1926-310 evangelizing and pasturing in Bourgas. He also served as he first superintendent of the Evangelical Pentecostal

churches in Bulgaria. From 1935 to 1938 he worked as principal of the Biblical Institute in the Free City of Danzing (now Gdansk, Poland). While there he assisted in the training of young people who went back to various Eastern European countries to preach the gospel. He returned to Bulgaria in 1939 to evangelize and teach.

With the coming of WW2, Nikoloff returned to the United States and served as president of Metropolitan Bible Institute, North Bergen, New Jersey (1941-50), and New England Bible Institute, Framingham, Massachusetts (1950-52). In 1952 he joined the faculty on Central Bible Institute of Springfield, Missouri, where he served (chair of the Department of religious Education in 1954; the Bible department beginning in 1956) until his retirement in 1961 due to ill health.

During his years in the US, Nikoloff earned the B.R.E. and M.R.E. degrees from the Biblical Seminary in New York (now New York Theological Seminary). In 1956 he completed the PhD from New York University; his dissertation is entitled; ?Bogomilism, A Study of the Bulgarian Heresy as and Expression of the Principle of Puritanism.? In recognition of his scholastic record, he received the University?s Founders Day certificate of Achievement.

Nikoloff? publications include two Bulgarian church magazines, several books and tracts, and a songbook in that language. He also worked for five years (1954-59) as editor of the Sunday school quarterly Youth Teacher at the Gospel publishing House. The Nikoloffs had three children.

Nicholas Nikoloff made important contribution to the development of the Pentecostal churches in Bulgaria, the advancement of Pentecostalism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and training of AG ministers and missionaries.

Burgess, S.M. G. B. McGee Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Zondervan Publishing House. 1993.

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