THÉ KING’S BUSINESS
361 eyes of the public. The leader in these meetings, a woman of wide renown, threw these unfortunate men and women into this condition by methods that were plainly hypnotic and precisely the' same employed by the heathen in Africa and by hypnotic adventurers in spiritualistic and other gatherings in this country. A person desir ing to be healed, or to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, would be placed in a chair before the audience with their back turned to the audience, and then a man would grab them by the head, putting one hand on the top of the head and another on the back of the head violently, and then this woman would rub down the bodies, some times rubbing down the bodies of men in the most immodest way. Later when they arose from the chair, their arms would be struck up from below and they would be told to keep their arms up, and they would hold them up until they fell unconscious. In one definite case of which I know one boy held up his arms for at least an hour before he fell under what they call “the power.” It hardly needs to be said that this does not bear the slightest resemblance to anything in the New Testament, but does bear the most striking resemblance to what is done by the heathen in Africa, the “fakirs” in India, and by hypnotic adven turers in this country.. The whole thing is repulsive to anyone who really knows the teachings of thé Bible and what the real operations of the Holy Spirit are. We are taught in 2 Timothy 1:6, that the Holy Spirit is not a Spirit of fear but of power and love and of a sound mind. The spirit who manifests himself in meetings of the tongues people is anything but a spirit of a sound mind. But the confusion, as dis honoring as it is to the Word of God and as plainly as it is rebuked by the Word of God, is not the worst thing in the “Tongues Movement.” There has been,, as said above, gross immorality connected with it. The originator in point of time of the modern “Tongues Movement” was arrested for grossest immorality, a form of immorality for which we have no name in our Eng lish language though it is described in the
The Word of God plainly teaches in 1 Corinthians 14 that speaking with tongues should be done in private rather than in public. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:19, “Howbeit in the church (i. e., in the public assembly) I had rather speak five words with my understanding that I might in? struct others also than 10,000 words in a tongue (R. V .)” He goes on to say that when men do speak with tongues in the public assembly no more than two or at the most three should speak at any one gathering, and that where two or at the most three do speak they should only speak in turn and not two or more at the same time (1 Cor. 14:27), and he still further says- that unless there is someone to in terpret what is said then no one should speak in tongues in the public assembly, that whenever there is not an interpreter present the one who would speak in tongues should keep silence and speak to himself and to God (vs. 27, 28). Now in the gatherings of the “Tongues” people, often times many speak in tongues in a single gathering; oftentimes several speak at the same time, ■ and they constantly speak even when there is no one present to interpret In these matters they disobey God in the most unmistakable way and certainly a movement that so persistently disobeys what God plainly commands in His’ Word is not of God. r Fifth—The “Tongues Movement” has been accompanied by the most grievous dis orders and the grossest immoralities. God plainly declares in His Word in 1 Corin thians 14:33 that “God is not a God of confusion” (the word here translated “con fusion” means “a state of disorder,” “dis turbance,” “confusion”). At one of the most prominent of the gatherings of the “Tongues” people recently held in this city (Los Angeles) there has been the most in describable disorder, disturbance and con fusion. Men and women in large numbers have lain for hours side by side on the ground or on the platform in the most un seemly and immodest way, in a state of hypnotic unconsciousness, far into the night, subject to shameful disgrace in the
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