Speaking In Tongues

by Evangelist John R. Rice (1895-1980)

Table of Contents
 

Chapter 1 - Tongues at Pentecost

Chapter 2 - The Gifts of the Spirit

Chapter 3 - Bad Use of Natural Languages at Corinth

Chapter 4 - False Doctrines and Claims of Tongues People

 There are many good people who are misled on this matter of speaking with tongues. They are very eager people. Often they are good Christians in the sense that they want all God has, and they want to please God. They are spiritually-minded, good people, but often they are rather ignorant of the Bible and that makes them a prey to people who come along with false doctrine and a good deal of emotion .and exhortation, with not much Bible teaching. But I want to show you what the Bible teaches.

Let us say it very clearly again, I believe in the enduement of power from on High. Most all evangelists, and certainly all those who are greatly used of God in soul winning, believe that one must have an enduement of power from God in order to do the blessed work of soul winning. I advise everybody, all the time to listen to the command of God to "be filled with the Spirit," to seek the enduement of power from on High. But on the matter of talking in tongues, a lot of people get the shell and not the main thing; a lot of people get the outward form they seek but they don't get any power. And so it gets to be an artificial substitute for what God is talking about -- the mighty power of God to win souls.

I remind you also that the one definitive case about talking in tongues in the Bible is in Acts, chapter 2. And there, devout men out of every nation under Heaven, Jews, came at this feast of Pentecost to Jerusalem. These people heard the Gospel in their own tongue in which they were born. God gave others power to preach to them and to hear them and tell them the plan of salvation. And so three thousand people were saved.

Now, it is a foolish thing to talk about Pentecost and not talk about what God is talking about. God was concerned about three thousand people being saved. That is what the whole thing is about, and that is what you ought to rejoice about, and that is what you ought to try to copy. They had the power of God to win souls. It is true, there was an incidental gift. I say incidental because it was a temporary matter. Here was an emergency, here were some people they wanted to preach to and they couldn't talk their languages, so God gave the miraculous power to talk in those languages in which other people had been born, and to give the Gospel to them in their languages. That is the case at Pentecost.

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