So, Now You Speak In
Tongues

It is very gratifying when someone receives the Spirit of God, for what precedes it is often a long road.

It is even more delightful when you have rescued people from false teaching that holds them captive by shutting out God’s Spirit and His supernatural gifts. Such is the case with the proud Sabbatarian churches who think they have so much when they have so little.

The SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists), WCG (Worldwide Church of God), CoGs (Churches of God) have all taught AGAINST the supernatural gifts of God, one of which is speaking in tongues.

Their teaching closes the door of the mind and heart, shutting out the moving of God’s Spirit so that spiritual gifts are not accepted or welcomed.

If a rare individual exists in any of those groups who speaks in tongues, it is only because they had previously accepted it or learned it elsewhere. It is certainly NOT to the credit of those organisations. They all block the moving of the Spirit!

What they have instead is a mix of hypocrisy, gross ignorance about spiritual gifts, and deep-seated prejudice. So, when rare individuals hunger and thirst for the spiritual things of God, and are able to receive the baptism in the Spirit with a manifestation of gifts of the Spirit, that is delightsome.

Having had such a dead background in one of the above churches, and then receiving an immersion in the Spirit, I have laboured for 15 years to lead others into the same experience via MM literature.

I remember really thirsting to receive tongues myself, and wondering why I only ever spoke a few words in tongues. At the end of my inquiry, God said quite simply: “You don’t need it.” (Tongues, that is.)

Instead, He gave me other gifts of the Spirit. Remember, these gifts are for use – to benefit others. He has given me a writing gift, words of knowledge, interpretation of tongues, discerning of spirits and prophesying. And, with the revelations in dreams, He can use me in the job He has assigned. It’s not for my benefit, but for all who will hear and heed.

Likewise, speaking or praying in tongues is a gift for the benefit of others besides yourself. Certainly you can pray in tongues and be uplifted yourself, but one main benefit is for others. God wants you to bless them through your gifts, just as He wants to bless you through them too.

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all (1 Cor 12:7).

Here are some of the ways others can profit:

1) Intercession

Jude encouraged believers who knew the Spirit:

You, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God... (Jude 20,21).

Praying in tongues is often unintelligible speech – called by some, glossolalia. But, as you yield to the Spirit, allowing God to inspire your utterance, He lifts you up AND works out His amazing divine purposes. For those who don’t understand, you don’t relinquish your control over your tongue. You can stop it any time you want, but you should learn to be sensitive to the Spirit, so that you flow as the Spirit directs. God has a purpose of love behind it. For example this happened in 1945, in Fairbury, Nebraska, USA:

During evangelistic meetings, Christians in the Fairbury community gathered daily to pray that God would move in the services. At these meetings, the evangelist, Gertrude Beck, often became so burdened for souls without Christ that she was moved to intercede in other tongues. In fact, when she tried to pray in her own language, English, the spirit of prayer lifted. So she continued praying in the Spirit.

One afternoon the evangelist noticed something different was occurring in her praying in other tongues. She was conscious of the fact that her lips were forming different words from those she ordinarily used when manifesting glossolalia.

That night there was a special move of God in the service with numbers seeking God for salvation at the altar.

Next day, Miss Tillie Plies said to Gertrude Beck: “I want to tell you that yesterday afternoon when you were praying in tongues you prayed in the German language. You were praying for souls [people to be saved], and you quoted the Scripture which was your text for last night’s sermon.”

Gertrude Beck knew nothing of the German language. The incident was especially encouraging to her, since on occasion she has been criticized elsewhere for praying in tongues in a public meeting. (Spoken by the Spirit, p 45. Documented accounts of “other tongues” from Arabic to Zulu by Ralph W Harris, 1973.)

2) As a sign to unbelievers

According to 1 Corinthians 14:22, tongues can be a sign to unbelievers.

John and Elva Horn were having a hard time getting a Pentecostal church established in Olean [New York]. The many Ukrainian and Assyrian people who lived in the community were good hearted but would not disobey the clergy and enter the forbidden Protestant churches.

One Sunday, however, Bader Bader, an Assyrian, came in to the service. At one time he had been an altar boy in the Episcopal church, but for a long time had been searching for truth and inner peace. He had tried one of the cults and even attempted to drown his unhappiness in alcohol, but without success.

As the Holy Spirit moved in the service, William Dodge began speaking in other tongues. The pastor and his wife wondered what the visitor’s reaction would be, especially since there was no interpretation.

At the close of the service, Pastor and Mrs Horn went to greet Bader Bader – and found him leaning over as though wilted. The Assyrian said: “Who is that man? Does he speak my language? Did you see the light? Did you feel the building shake?” (No, they had not.)

Bader Bader went on: “He told me in my language [Assyrian, (Aramaic)] perfectly all the wonders and marvels of God. A great light shone, and the building shook. Didn’t you feel the building shake?”

God came into the man’s life and also into his home which had been on the verge of breaking up. God sent the light and the shaking for one man that morning. (Spoken by the Spirit, pp 62,63.)

3) Calling to repentance

The middle-aged couple had been married about a year. The husband had come to America from Scotland and had become acquainted with a young widow. He had been filled with the Holy Spirit a few months earlier. She had received the same experience in her teens but had drifted away from God.

It was somewhat aggravating to the wife that her husband had found such a blessed place in the Lord, while she could not seem to pray through.

After returning from a church service one night, the wife knelt in the living room to pray – but could make no progress. Suddenly, she felt God was impressing her to ask her husband to pray with her. Although it humbled her considerably to do so, she obeyed the impulse.

The husband was glad to pray. As he knelt by her side immediately words began to pour from his lips in a language he had never learned.

The wife could hardly believe her ears. He was speaking Italian, a language she had heard from her parents from earliest childhood, a language she knew her husband did not know.

It was a message from God to her heart. The Lord was telling her in Italian about some sins she had allowed in her life. He was calling her to repentance and a separated life. He was promising her that if she would obey He would fill her mouth also with a heavenly language.

When the altar call was given the next night in the service, the woman hurried to the prayer room, and in a very short time she was praising and singing in a tongue inspired by the Lord.

(Later she told evangelist Gladys Pearson that if the evangelist or her pastor, Kenneth Short, had spoken to her the way the Holy Spirit had done, in Italian, she would have resented it deeply.) The Lord knew just how to deal with her. (Ibid, pp 50,51.)

I relate in Miraculous Manifestations, an experience which our son Richard had, when aged about 17. He had just received the gift of tongues, and was working on the car one day. A nut was so corroded that it was impossible to turn. Suddenly, the Spirit spoke to him and told him to pray in tongues. He did. When he tried the nut again, it turned as easily as a knife slicing through butter!

The incident did not merely demonstrate that miraculous power is released when you pray in tongues, but something more besides. It was a symbolic representation of what we are all like as people. We are all stubborn nuts – some more so than others – but God knows how to ‘turn’ each of His children.

4) Countering doubt

This occurrence happened in September 1970 in Rome:

With his wife and 11 other people, William Buechel was visiting the Eternal City, Rome. While there, they went on a tour of the Catacombs, that network of underground passages which lie beneath the city. It is estimated that they reach for a total of 500 miles and contain 100,000 bodies of Christians who were buried there.

Because the Buechels’ group was a small one, it was included with a group comprised of 40 to 50 Jews from America. The leader of the larger group was a professor.

While going through the tunnels of the Catacombs, Buechel felt an irresistible impulse to go up to the professor at the end of the tour and speak to him in other tongues. In fact, he mentioned this to his wife and others in his group.

This impulse in itself was strange, for although William Buechel had been baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1968, and had often spoken in tongues since, he had serious doubts about the experience. He was nagged by the thought that possibly he was forming the sounds out of his own mind.

But Buechel followed his impulse and after the tour went up to the professor and began speaking to him in other tongues. But let him tell his experience himself (his wife and others were witnesses):

“I had no sooner started to speak in tongues than I saw his eyes widen perceptibly, and I thought to myself, ‘This man knows what I am saying.’ When I had finished what probably was a sentence or so, I said to him the one word, ‘Translate.’ And he did! It was something of praise to the Lord, but I cannot recall now exactly what it was, I was so excited!”

William Buechel asked, “What language is it?” And the professor replied, “It’s Aramaic-Hebrew of the third century, neither before nor after.”

Buechel doesn’t doubt glossolalia now! (Spoken by the Spirit, pp 58,59.)

Unfortunately, many people do doubt it. Those who have not experienced it, but who think they are wiser than they are, tend to decry the experience, particularly because it is generally unintelligible.

But God does not work through the wisdom of man, nor via human reasoning. He works at cross purposes with anything and everything that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God, as Paul said:

Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:4).

Tongues is a spiritual gift which is given so that he who glories, may glory in the Lord (2 Cor 10:17).

To be continued...