they are something their fellow-Christians are not- They do not pray that their fellow-Christians may realize a deeper and closer walk with their Lord, but rather urge upon them that they, too, must "g e t the gift of tongues.” (5 ) The great upsurge in this “tongues movement” is characterized by a great confusion and splitting of local churches. We are receiving an increasing number of letters from disturbed pastors and people whose churches are being ripped assunder by this movement. Those who claim to "get the gift” are not satisfied to have it for themselves. Immediately they begin to make trouble, to judge others and to create such a disturbance in the church body that the others must in large measure cease doing the work of their Lord in evangelizing the lost and teaching the saved in the things of the Lord. Instead they must devote their attention to combating this insidious program. The tongues movement has failed to produce anything constructive whatever in the life of a local congregation. So far as the Christian is concerned, the emphasis throughout scripture is not to "get” the Holy Spirit in this ecstatic tongues experience, but rather to give oneself more and more to the leading of the Holy Spirit, to make one’s life consistent with his testimony and his words easy to be understood by the unsaved rather than to seek an experience that is completely emotional, unintelligible and quite ludicrous, if not obnoxious, to the person of the world. It is one thing to become a fool for Christ’s sake; but it is quite another thing just to become a fool. (6 ) The whole “tongues movement” is characterized in large measure by the effort to proselyte. People in churches today who claim to have "the gift” do not go out immediately and begin to evangelize the lost; rather, they stay in the churches and split them wide open in their effort to gain additional devotees, not to Jesus Christ, but to the “tongues movement.” (7 ) The popularity of the tongues movement is to be observed in large measure among those groups who have long since departed from the great historic doctrines which have characterized the Protestant church from its early beginnings even to the present. A great doctrinal vacuum has been created in the minds of the clergy who find themselves with nothing of a vital nature to preach and in the minds of the hearers who never hear of any of the great truths of scripture on which to base their own thinking. As a result there has come about a gradual realization of the utter paucity of soul-satisfying truth as it is revealed in the Word of God. But, instead of returning to a doctrinal type of preaching and thinking, they are endeavoring to fill this vacuum with this ecstatic type of emotional experience which, in the long run, will never satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart because it is not in accordance with the great system of truth as revealed in the Word of God. It is true, we need a great revival in the church of the living God, but the Word of God reveals that the gift of tongues is not any evidence whatsoever that such a revival is in the making. We, as Christians, should be much in prayer these days that the Holy Spirit will indeed revive our hearts and stir us anew to the preaching of the Word of God and our personal study and applica tion of its holy truths
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JU N E . 1963
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