THEY SPEAK WITH OTHER TONGUES

(CONTINUED)

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Acts 2:1-4 NKJV
The Day of Pentecost was one of three major Jewish feasts, also known as the Feast of Weeks, it was celebrated fifty days after Passover. Today, Christian churches remember Pentecost in the Church Calender fifty days after Easter.
The Day of Pentecost recorded in the second chapter of Acts which saw the outpouring of the Holy Spirit - or Baptism with the Holy Spirit on the 120 of Jesus' disciples and followers, was the day the New Testament church began. It was on this day when Peter boldly stood and proclaimed to the crowds assembled in Jerusalem from all parts of the then Roman Empire, at the conclusion of his powerful Gospel message: "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call." Acts 2:38,39 NKJV
The Bible also records in this chapter that around three thousand people who heard Peter's words, responded to his message and were baptized. 
Verse 42 says: They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Sounds like church to me!
The 120 in the Upper Room had been waiting in anticipation for the Lord to move in a new way in their midst in response to the words of Jesus after His resurrection from the dead as recorded in Luke 24:49 "Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high."
THIS WAS IT! Or,as the Apostle Peter himself said in his message on this day: "THIS IS THAT which was spoken by the prophet Joel...." In the first part of this blog, I quoted the verses from Joel 2:28,29 spoken by Peter.
The gift of speaking with other tongues was not to be just a one-off manifestation in the life of the Church. In the Book of Acts, there are three more recorded accounts of people being baptized in the Holy Spirit. These accounts are recorded in Acts 8:14 onwards, when after Phillip had preached the Word of God at Samaria, Peter and John went there and prayed for the new believers to receive the Holy Spirit;  Acts 10:44-48, after Peter had preached salvation through Christ to the Gentile centurion, Cornelius and his household;  and Acts 19:1-7,  when the apostle Paul prayed for believers in Ephesus to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. In the last two of these accounts, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was clearly stated to be evidenced by the gift of speaking with tongues, that is, with a language the speakers had not learned.
Were these accounts of speaking with tongues similar to that recorded in Acts 2 where the hearers from various countries heard the speakers in their own languages (known languages) "the wonderful works of God?"
Maybe - maybe not! In Acts 10:44-46, it is recorded that, when the members of Cornelius' household believed the Word of God through the mouth of Peter, that the Holy Spirit fell upon them, and those Jews who had accompanied Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on Gentiles also. Then it says in verse 46: For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God. This is my personal thought, for what it is worth, but I wonder if the speaking in tongues in this instance was like that on the Day of Pentecost- in a known language, as the Jews heard the new believers speak in tongues and magnify God.
As to the last account in the Book of Acts in Chapter 19, when the twelve or so men who were baptized in the Holy Spirit after the laying on of hands by Paul the Apostle at Ephesus, I wonder if their experience of speaking with tongues was not in a known language, because the account says in verse six that the Holy Spirit came upon them,. and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

To be continued.............................

THEY SPEAK WITH OTHER TONGUES

In the early 60's, a young reporter for the "Guideposts" magazine, by the name of John Sherrill was commissioned by the magazine to investigate and report on a phenomenon which was creating waves in the church as multitudes of Christians experienced the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" , many of those people also attesting to the phenomenon of "speaking in tongues", that is, speaking in a language they had not learned. Traceable to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California - this was a Pentecostal Revival which began in 1906 and lasted until around 1915, led by a one-eyed African American, William J, Seymour, the son of black American slaves. The building at 312 Azusa Street was a flat-roofed rectangular building which one newspaper referred to as a "tumble down shack" - in what was then a black ghetto area of LA. Yet these facts did not deter anything from 300 to 1,500 people packing into this old wooden building - people from many ethnic and socio-economic stratas of society - black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, literate, illiterate, educated, uneducated. They came, some sceptically to look with curiosity at what was happening in the revival, but many with open hearts, who were not disappointed at what they found, and who left having had their hearts and lives transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit touching them, their lives never to be the same again, as Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Lord of the Bible, who is called the Baptiser in the Holy Spirit in all four gospels, again at the turn of a new century was demonstrating His desire for His followers to be equipped more fully for service in the Kingdom of God with His supernatural power and provision - as in the Book of Acts in the New Testament when the Church age was born.
The Pentecostal Movement of the twentieth century began at Azusa Street. In following years and decades, many Pentecostal denominations arose, including the Assemblies of God, the Elim Church Movement, the Apostolic Church Movement, the Foursquare Gospel Church and a number of others. These "classical" Pentecostal movements were considered separate from other Evangelical denominations, because of their emphasis in doctrine and church expression of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as outlined in 1 Corinthians 12-14 in the New Testament, and in particular, the emphasis on the need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit, with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. It must be said that most of the traditional Pentecostal church movements did not teach that the Baptism with the Holy Spirit was a prerequisite for salvation, but rather, it was taught that this further provision from God was an experience to be sought and desired subsequent to the salvation experience.
From the time of the Azusa Street revival up until about 1960, the Pentecostal church movement and the Evangelical Churches, each consisting of numbers of denominations, developed along separate pathways, "never the twain to meet" , or so it seemed. 
In 1960, Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal rector at St. Marks Church in Van Nuys, California, announced to his congregation that he had received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in his life. He went to Canada, conducting workshops on the Holy Spirit, which led to thousands of Anglicans worldwide receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, with the manifestation of the gift of speaking in tongues.
Soon other "traditional" denominations were being touched by this Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit with many clergy and congregational members receiving the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. A Lutheran minister in the USA, Harald Bredeson is credited with coining the term "charismatic renewal" for the phenomenon occurring in so many church denominations. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal commenced in 1967.
Back to John Sherrill, the author of the book, "They Speak With Other Tongues". Initially highly sceptical of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the manifestation of Speaking in Tongues presenting in those in this new cross-denominational movement in the early 1960's, he was determined to remain objective in his observations and investigations into this phenomenon affecting so many churches and the Christians in those churches across America at that time. What he found changed his life, and before his investigations for the magazine concluded, he too was a "charismatic", embracing this revived emphasis on the personal empowering of the Holy Spirit for Christian service through the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the accompanying evidence of speaking forth in other tongues - in a language or languages not known to the person receiving the "Baptism".
To the person who refuses to accept these experiences as Biblical or who rejects the teaching that they are for the Christian Church today, let me conclude this first part of this blog theme with the words of the Apostle Peter in Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the 120 followers of Jesus in the Upper Room. To those gathered in Jerusalem at that time from different countries who heard these Christians speaking the praises to God in their own languages, but unknown to the speakers,Peter said: "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, (some 800 years before Christ);
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy. Acts 2:16-18 KJV
As Peter later said when addressing Cornelius' household in Acts 10:34, when it comes to salvation and the infilling or the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, God does not show partiality. Any person in any nation who fears God and seeks to follow Him is accepted by Him on the basis of the Cross of Christ.
The Pentecostal Revival which began in the early 1900's and the Charismatic Renewal commencing in 1960 were not passing fads, but were part of God's great plan to restore His power and His authority to the Church, with both the Fruit and Gifts of the Holy Spirit displaying God's great love for this fallen world, and His desire for all to know His love in demonstrable ways. 

To be continued.........................