They Speak with Other Tongues by John Sherrill

They Speak with Other Tongues by John Sherrill

Author:John Sherrill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Charismatic Interest;REL079000;REL067090
ISBN: 9781493418909
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-02T16:00:00+00:00


If, then, two manifestations of tongues, both the sign and the gift, were known to the authors of the New Testament, and if along with them went such obvious advantages, why did tongues ever disappear from the Church?

To this second of my questions I found an immediate answer: They didn’t.

Tongues continued to play a part in Christian experience down through the centuries. They were de-emphasized—probably as a result of such warnings as Paul sounded. People who experienced them kept so quiet about them that it is easy to miss the references to them altogether. But the minute I looked for them, there they were.

Way back in the second half of the second century, some Christians were complaining that the Church had lost its contagious fire. A revival led by Montanus urged Christians to look for a new Pentecost and to expect the same manifestations that had accompanied the first.

At first, Montanism was well received. Two of the most respected and influential of the early Church fathers, Tertullian and Irenaeus, found in the movement much that needed saying and gave it their support. But as tongues and other charismatic phenomena increased, Rome feared excess. Montanism was branded heretical, and even the influence of Tertullian and Irenaeus could not soften the charge.

There were, however, other instances of charisma that were not so branded.

In the fourth century, St. Pachomius, who founded the first Christian monastery, was reportedly able to speak in both Greek and Latin, neither of which he had learned.

This mysterious ability to speak in an unlearned language crops up again in the fourteenth century in the experience of St. Vincent Ferrer.

And in the sixteenth century, St. Francis Xavier received the gift. St. Francis was one of the first Jesuit missionaries, preaching among the Indians and among the Japanese. He was reportedly able to preach in languages he had never learned.

Tongues appear at the beginning of many of the great revivals. The early Waldensians spoke in unknown languages. So did the Jansenists, and the Quakers and the Shakers and the Methodists. “While waiting upon the Lord,” wrote W. C. Braithwaite in an account of early Quaker meetings, “we received often the pouring down of the Spirit upon us and . . . we spoke with new tongues.”

Beginning with the nineteenth century, I found more original source materials in the library and more references to tongues.

Scotland, 1830: Mary Campbell, a young girl from Fernicarry, is planning to become a missionary. One night, while praying with a group of friends, Miss Campbell begins to speak in a language unknown to her. She assumes, at first, that it is a language that will help her in her missionary work, but she is never able to identify it.

England, 1834: A young and fashionable London minister of the Presbyterian church, Edward Irving, finds and encourages glossolalia in his church.

United States, 1854: A certain V. P. Simmons reports glossolalia in New England. “In AD 1854 Elder F. G. Mathewson spoke in tongues and Elder Edward Burnham interpreted the same.



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