Is speaking in tongues the only sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit?
With over 33 million members The Assemblies of God Churches has been the fastest growing Protestant denomination for the last hundred years and is now the fourth largest Christian group in the world. This is their doctrinal position on the filling of the Holy Spirit, which they call a baptism, and how it relates to speaking in tongues. It is very clear.
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ….This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth…….The baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance.
This is not just the official position of the Assemblies of God Churches and other Pentecostal denominations, but also
the unofficial position of the Charismatic movement which has injected so much growth into both Protestant and Catholic churches since the 1960's. Clear evidence of the growth brought by the movement is seen by the success of the Alpha Course taken by over five million people world-wide. The course has a strong charismatic emphasis and though the teaching on being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues is not as blunt as it is with the Assemblies of God, nevertheless in practice it amounts to exactly the same. Participants are encouraged to expect an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and it is clear from testimonies that this often involves people speaking in tongues. As both the Pentecostal Churches and the Charismatic movement have been at the heart of church growth for the last hundred and forty years respectively their teaching should not be lightly swept aside. However the crucial question has to be – is this the teaching of the Bible? And there is no doubt that Pentecostals have a strong case as there is much in the New Testament that supports their position.
If Jesus' followers today are meant to model that of his first disciples, then there is no doubt the Pentecostals are correct. The twelve – who had already believed in Jesus – were told to stay in Jerusalem till they were 'endued with power from on high' (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 1:8), and so they had a distinct, subsequent experience after believing in Christ on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2. And the physical evidence of that experience was speaking in tongues, though in this instance the tongues they spoke in were comprehensible. Likewise if our experience today is meant to model the early church, then also the Pentecostals are correct. For in Acts 8, 10, and Acts 19 there is ample evidence that an experience Luke termed being filled with the Holy Spirit was distinct from repentance and faith, and was often followed by people speaking in tongues. In Acts 8 the Samaritans believe in Jesus through Philip's preaching, but later they receive the Holy Spirit when Peter and John prayed for them (Acts 8: 14-17); in Acts 10 Peter's preaching is interrupted by the Holy Spirit who fills the people in Cornelius' household – and they speak in tongues. In Acts 19 Paul met some disciples in Ephesus who, like Apollo in Chapter 18, only knew the baptism of John. They had never even heard there was a Holy Spirit. So Paul prays for them and they receive the Holy Spirit – and speak in tongues. In his epistles Paul would seem to confirm the Pentecostal position. Not only does he acknowledge that he speaks in tongues. He tells the Corinthians, 'I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all', (I Corinthians 14:18), not only does he insist that the church must not forbid speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:39) he bluntly tells his readers – 'I would like everyone of you to speak in tongues'. Here then is the evidence for the classic Pentecostal position. Being baptised in the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues was both the experience of the apostles and the first Christians – and it was also taught by the most senior apostles. Peter and John prayed for the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit; Paul prayed for the disciples in Ephesus and taught the Corinthians.
The biblical witness seems very clear, but yet there are many who have rendered Christ much service who would not agree. There are three main objections. First there are the cessationists who believe that after the apostolic age the gifts of the Holy Spirit were withdrawn as they were only needed while the New Testament came into being. Once that happened, Scripture was sufficient revelation and the gifts were withdrawn. There is not a shred of Biblical evidence for this belief, i.e. it is no where stated that God is going to withdraw the gifts of the Holy Spirit and furthermore there is an absurd and naïve assumption that everyone had access to the Scriptures, hence no need for supernatural gifts. In fact hardly anyone had access to the Scriptures till the advent of the printing press in the 15th C. Not only is the argument of the cessationists very weak, but if sincerely believed then its proponents have to ask what power is behind those who do claim to speak in tongues. Since they believe such a gift no longer exists they have to answer that either such people are deluded, or worse, they are inspired by counterfeit spirits, in other words, demons beholden to the devil. So these cessationists end up writing off millions of fellow Christians because of a position that has no Biblical or historical support. It is high time this group of Christians came to their senses and renounced the absurdity of cessationism.
Cessationism is very weak, but the other two objections have a lot of strength. One is primarily Biblical, the other ecclesiastical. The Biblical objection takes issue with the Pentecostal use of the phrase 'the baptism of the Spirit'. It refutes the 'baptism' part of the phrase as it implies there is more than one baptism when the New Testament teaches there is only one, as declared by Paul in Ephesians 4:5. He says there is 'one faith, one baptism, one Lord'. So it is clearly wrong to talk about two baptisms. A Christian is someone who has been baptised by water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is the one baptism. And this objection takes issue even more to the 'Spirit' part of the phrase, insisting that the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with the process of conversion as detailed by Paul who says nobody can call Jesus Lord without the Holy Spirit, and that when the new Christian has the revelation that he or she is truly a child of God, this is in fact the Holy Spirit coming into their heart and crying Abba Father. They find the implication the Spirit is not fully at work in Christians who have not had the Pentecostal baptism, preposterous. Given that Acts talks about people receiving the Holy Spirit rather than being baptised in the Holy Spirit these commentators, led by he renowned Anglican evangelical preacher and scholar, Revd. John Stott, argue that at conversion all Christians experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but that after conversion Christians can experience any number of special experiences which might include what Pentecostals wrongly call 'the baptism in the Spirit' and might be followed by speaking in tongues. They prefer to call this, the fullness of the Spirit. This position is much less rigid than the Pentecostal one in two ways. It does not limit the Christian to having one overwhelming experience with the Holy Spirit, rather it stresses, as we see in Acts that believers can be filled more than once. So the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and filled again a few days later after their prayer meeting when they beseeched God for boldness (Acts 4:31). And secondly there is no insistence that speaking in tongues is the only sign that a Christian has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Indeed this school of thinking would say that Paul clearly implies that though he might have wanted all to have spoken in tongues in the Corinthian church, he does not expect them all to because the Holy Spirit distributes different gifts, so he rhetorically asks, 'Do all Speak in tongues?' (1 Corinthians 12.30) and he expects the answer no. So this argument goes it is not biblical to see speaking in tongues as the only evidence for what is not the baptism in the spirit, but further fillings of the Holy Spirit.
The second major objection to the Pentecostal teaching is ecclesiastical. The New Testament emphasizes the priority of unity in the church, indeed in John 17 Jesus prayed for his followed to be one: but the Pentecostal position seems divisive. For the last hundred years since it has been widely preached there are millions of Christians in all the other major denominations – Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptists, Anglicans, and many others – who do not subscribe to the belief that all Christians should have a secondary experience with the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues. The sharpness of the divisiveness is that the implication of the Pentecostals is that they have something that other Christians do not have, or that they are somehow superior. The Pentecostals would quickly protest that it is nothing to do with them, it is just the grace of God and that the gift is available to all. However they cannot escape the fact that their beliefs mean that if a devoted Christian does not speak in tongues, then that Christian subjected to this teaching will feel a second class citizen in the church.
There is much that is mysterious in the Christian faith but two things are very plain. First of all there are devoted Christians who do not claim to speak in tongues, indeed some of them are Christendom’s most famous leaders, people like Dwight Moody, Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, Watchman Nee, Billy Graham, and George Verwer. They have seen hundreds of thousands come to faith as a result of their ministry. These leaders would certainly talk about experiences of being filled, even baptised in the Spirit, but none of them have publicly declared they speak in tongues which would mean according to Pentecostal doctrine they have not had one of the most fundamentally important experiences of the Christian life. Given the impact these leaders have had, this is hard to believe. The second plain fact is that there is a lot more about love and unity in the New Testament than there is about speaking in tongues. These two facts should cause any fair minded Christian to pause before wanting to assert the Pentecostal position too shrilly.
However we need to be careful here. We cannot just kick the Pentecostal position completely into touch just because it seems divisive. As long as Pentecostals present their teaching in love and humility, then it can be rejected with love and humility. There is no need for a divisive spirit to enter in. So just because everyone does not agree with their position, this does not mean it is wrong. Indeed whenever the church has moved forward, as she did under Jonathan Edwards, or John Wesley, or Billy Graham – there has been division. Both the Pentecostals and the Charismatic movement can claim with solid evidence that they have moved the church forward and it is fair to say that many of their spokespeople have dealt with their opponents in a gracious and humble manner. They have defended their position, but not in a divisive way. They have asked people to agree to differ. So it really is not possible to reject the Pentecostal position on the grounds that it is divisive.
If we are going to reject the Pentecostal position we have to do so on Biblical grounds – but this is not so easy. Regarding the use of the term baptism, most Pentecostals would not want to split hairs over terminology and it is fair to say that their opponents have perhaps made too much of this: for Pentecostals certainly believe that the Holy Spirit is active during conversion, but they call the second experience a baptism because John the Baptist promised that Jesus would baptise people in the Holy Spirit, and when in Acts Paul came across those disciples from Ephesus the central subject was which baptism they had received. However few would lose any sleep if others wanted to call the experience receiving 'the fullness of the Holy Spirit'. The important thing is that Christians should believe and expect God to meet them in an overwhelming way after their conversion. Nor do they have any issue with the emphasis that Christians should expect further fillings.
The only biblical point of disagreement then is the title of this article - whether speaking in tongues has to accompany the filling. And though much ink has been spilt on this topic in recent years we have to accept that Christians are able to interpret the New Testament both to support and question the Pentecostal assertion that tongues are a sign. Perhaps the professional theologian can come to a fixed black and white answer, but for the ordinary layman reading both the New Testament and general literature on this question it is really impossible to say the Pentecostals or those who follow John Stott are definitely wrong. It is one of those questions like the role of the sovereignty of God and the free will of man in salvation; or the exact nature of the sacraments; or the government of the church – genuine open minded Christians can come to very different conclusions using the same New Testament.
This writer believes the Pentecostals and the Charismatics and indeed many others such as the late great Dr Martin Lloyd Jones are completely and utterly right to urge all Christians to seek more of God after their conversion, to have an experience with Him they will never forget, more precious and pure and intimately private as any encounter with a fellow human could ever be. And yes, why should we not agree with the Apostle Paul and say it would be wonderful if we all spoke in tongues. There is no harm in encouraging people to expect this gift as a part of this overwhelming experience. Whether they receive the gift or not is completely up to God and He will have His own wonderful reasons if He does not give it. So the answer of this writer is not, yes tongues are the only sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit, nor is it no they are not, rather it is as he once heard in a sermon many years ago.
It was the day of Pentecost and the Anglican preacher was describing what had once happened to an African theological student. In the middle of the night this young man had woken up with electric joy surging through his body, and so intense was the elation in his being that he could not keep quiet. The quietness of the night was suddenly vibrating with his songs of celebration as he worshipped God loudly in a language he had never learned. After telling the story the preacher leaned over the pulpit and with a broad smile asked his congregation whether they had had an experience like that…and if not, why not? He did not dwell on the matter of tongues – though that was clearly a part of the overall experience…but he did ask that telling question – if you have not had an overwhelming experience of God…why haven’t you?
In other words dear reader the ultimate issue is this experience, this anointing, this filling, this baptism, this unction…and if tongues is a part of that experience, rejoice and thank God now that it was and is and still seek God for more; and if it was not, thank God for that experience, and still seek God for more – and if you have not had had such an experience, then hear the command of Jesus to his first disciples – ‘Go and wait in Jerusalem till you are endued with power from on high.’
With over 33 million members The Assemblies of God Churches has been the fastest growing Protestant denomination for the last hundred years and is now the fourth largest Christian group in the world. This is their doctrinal position on the filling of the Holy Spirit, which they call a baptism, and how it relates to speaking in tongues. It is very clear.
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire, according to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ….This experience is distinct from and subsequent to the experience of the new birth…….The baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives them utterance.
This is not just the official position of the Assemblies of God Churches and other Pentecostal denominations, but also
the unofficial position of the Charismatic movement which has injected so much growth into both Protestant and Catholic churches since the 1960's. Clear evidence of the growth brought by the movement is seen by the success of the Alpha Course taken by over five million people world-wide. The course has a strong charismatic emphasis and though the teaching on being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues is not as blunt as it is with the Assemblies of God, nevertheless in practice it amounts to exactly the same. Participants are encouraged to expect an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and it is clear from testimonies that this often involves people speaking in tongues. As both the Pentecostal Churches and the Charismatic movement have been at the heart of church growth for the last hundred and forty years respectively their teaching should not be lightly swept aside. However the crucial question has to be – is this the teaching of the Bible? And there is no doubt that Pentecostals have a strong case as there is much in the New Testament that supports their position.
If Jesus' followers today are meant to model that of his first disciples, then there is no doubt the Pentecostals are correct. The twelve – who had already believed in Jesus – were told to stay in Jerusalem till they were 'endued with power from on high' (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 1:8), and so they had a distinct, subsequent experience after believing in Christ on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2. And the physical evidence of that experience was speaking in tongues, though in this instance the tongues they spoke in were comprehensible. Likewise if our experience today is meant to model the early church, then also the Pentecostals are correct. For in Acts 8, 10, and Acts 19 there is ample evidence that an experience Luke termed being filled with the Holy Spirit was distinct from repentance and faith, and was often followed by people speaking in tongues. In Acts 8 the Samaritans believe in Jesus through Philip's preaching, but later they receive the Holy Spirit when Peter and John prayed for them (Acts 8: 14-17); in Acts 10 Peter's preaching is interrupted by the Holy Spirit who fills the people in Cornelius' household – and they speak in tongues. In Acts 19 Paul met some disciples in Ephesus who, like Apollo in Chapter 18, only knew the baptism of John. They had never even heard there was a Holy Spirit. So Paul prays for them and they receive the Holy Spirit – and speak in tongues. In his epistles Paul would seem to confirm the Pentecostal position. Not only does he acknowledge that he speaks in tongues. He tells the Corinthians, 'I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all', (I Corinthians 14:18), not only does he insist that the church must not forbid speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:39) he bluntly tells his readers – 'I would like everyone of you to speak in tongues'. Here then is the evidence for the classic Pentecostal position. Being baptised in the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues was both the experience of the apostles and the first Christians – and it was also taught by the most senior apostles. Peter and John prayed for the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit; Paul prayed for the disciples in Ephesus and taught the Corinthians.
The biblical witness seems very clear, but yet there are many who have rendered Christ much service who would not agree. There are three main objections. First there are the cessationists who believe that after the apostolic age the gifts of the Holy Spirit were withdrawn as they were only needed while the New Testament came into being. Once that happened, Scripture was sufficient revelation and the gifts were withdrawn. There is not a shred of Biblical evidence for this belief, i.e. it is no where stated that God is going to withdraw the gifts of the Holy Spirit and furthermore there is an absurd and naïve assumption that everyone had access to the Scriptures, hence no need for supernatural gifts. In fact hardly anyone had access to the Scriptures till the advent of the printing press in the 15th C. Not only is the argument of the cessationists very weak, but if sincerely believed then its proponents have to ask what power is behind those who do claim to speak in tongues. Since they believe such a gift no longer exists they have to answer that either such people are deluded, or worse, they are inspired by counterfeit spirits, in other words, demons beholden to the devil. So these cessationists end up writing off millions of fellow Christians because of a position that has no Biblical or historical support. It is high time this group of Christians came to their senses and renounced the absurdity of cessationism.
Cessationism is very weak, but the other two objections have a lot of strength. One is primarily Biblical, the other ecclesiastical. The Biblical objection takes issue with the Pentecostal use of the phrase 'the baptism of the Spirit'. It refutes the 'baptism' part of the phrase as it implies there is more than one baptism when the New Testament teaches there is only one, as declared by Paul in Ephesians 4:5. He says there is 'one faith, one baptism, one Lord'. So it is clearly wrong to talk about two baptisms. A Christian is someone who has been baptised by water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is the one baptism. And this objection takes issue even more to the 'Spirit' part of the phrase, insisting that the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with the process of conversion as detailed by Paul who says nobody can call Jesus Lord without the Holy Spirit, and that when the new Christian has the revelation that he or she is truly a child of God, this is in fact the Holy Spirit coming into their heart and crying Abba Father. They find the implication the Spirit is not fully at work in Christians who have not had the Pentecostal baptism, preposterous. Given that Acts talks about people receiving the Holy Spirit rather than being baptised in the Holy Spirit these commentators, led by he renowned Anglican evangelical preacher and scholar, Revd. John Stott, argue that at conversion all Christians experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but that after conversion Christians can experience any number of special experiences which might include what Pentecostals wrongly call 'the baptism in the Spirit' and might be followed by speaking in tongues. They prefer to call this, the fullness of the Spirit. This position is much less rigid than the Pentecostal one in two ways. It does not limit the Christian to having one overwhelming experience with the Holy Spirit, rather it stresses, as we see in Acts that believers can be filled more than once. So the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and filled again a few days later after their prayer meeting when they beseeched God for boldness (Acts 4:31). And secondly there is no insistence that speaking in tongues is the only sign that a Christian has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Indeed this school of thinking would say that Paul clearly implies that though he might have wanted all to have spoken in tongues in the Corinthian church, he does not expect them all to because the Holy Spirit distributes different gifts, so he rhetorically asks, 'Do all Speak in tongues?' (1 Corinthians 12.30) and he expects the answer no. So this argument goes it is not biblical to see speaking in tongues as the only evidence for what is not the baptism in the spirit, but further fillings of the Holy Spirit.
The second major objection to the Pentecostal teaching is ecclesiastical. The New Testament emphasizes the priority of unity in the church, indeed in John 17 Jesus prayed for his followed to be one: but the Pentecostal position seems divisive. For the last hundred years since it has been widely preached there are millions of Christians in all the other major denominations – Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptists, Anglicans, and many others – who do not subscribe to the belief that all Christians should have a secondary experience with the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues. The sharpness of the divisiveness is that the implication of the Pentecostals is that they have something that other Christians do not have, or that they are somehow superior. The Pentecostals would quickly protest that it is nothing to do with them, it is just the grace of God and that the gift is available to all. However they cannot escape the fact that their beliefs mean that if a devoted Christian does not speak in tongues, then that Christian subjected to this teaching will feel a second class citizen in the church.
There is much that is mysterious in the Christian faith but two things are very plain. First of all there are devoted Christians who do not claim to speak in tongues, indeed some of them are Christendom’s most famous leaders, people like Dwight Moody, Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, Watchman Nee, Billy Graham, and George Verwer. They have seen hundreds of thousands come to faith as a result of their ministry. These leaders would certainly talk about experiences of being filled, even baptised in the Spirit, but none of them have publicly declared they speak in tongues which would mean according to Pentecostal doctrine they have not had one of the most fundamentally important experiences of the Christian life. Given the impact these leaders have had, this is hard to believe. The second plain fact is that there is a lot more about love and unity in the New Testament than there is about speaking in tongues. These two facts should cause any fair minded Christian to pause before wanting to assert the Pentecostal position too shrilly.
However we need to be careful here. We cannot just kick the Pentecostal position completely into touch just because it seems divisive. As long as Pentecostals present their teaching in love and humility, then it can be rejected with love and humility. There is no need for a divisive spirit to enter in. So just because everyone does not agree with their position, this does not mean it is wrong. Indeed whenever the church has moved forward, as she did under Jonathan Edwards, or John Wesley, or Billy Graham – there has been division. Both the Pentecostals and the Charismatic movement can claim with solid evidence that they have moved the church forward and it is fair to say that many of their spokespeople have dealt with their opponents in a gracious and humble manner. They have defended their position, but not in a divisive way. They have asked people to agree to differ. So it really is not possible to reject the Pentecostal position on the grounds that it is divisive.
If we are going to reject the Pentecostal position we have to do so on Biblical grounds – but this is not so easy. Regarding the use of the term baptism, most Pentecostals would not want to split hairs over terminology and it is fair to say that their opponents have perhaps made too much of this: for Pentecostals certainly believe that the Holy Spirit is active during conversion, but they call the second experience a baptism because John the Baptist promised that Jesus would baptise people in the Holy Spirit, and when in Acts Paul came across those disciples from Ephesus the central subject was which baptism they had received. However few would lose any sleep if others wanted to call the experience receiving 'the fullness of the Holy Spirit'. The important thing is that Christians should believe and expect God to meet them in an overwhelming way after their conversion. Nor do they have any issue with the emphasis that Christians should expect further fillings.
The only biblical point of disagreement then is the title of this article - whether speaking in tongues has to accompany the filling. And though much ink has been spilt on this topic in recent years we have to accept that Christians are able to interpret the New Testament both to support and question the Pentecostal assertion that tongues are a sign. Perhaps the professional theologian can come to a fixed black and white answer, but for the ordinary layman reading both the New Testament and general literature on this question it is really impossible to say the Pentecostals or those who follow John Stott are definitely wrong. It is one of those questions like the role of the sovereignty of God and the free will of man in salvation; or the exact nature of the sacraments; or the government of the church – genuine open minded Christians can come to very different conclusions using the same New Testament.
This writer believes the Pentecostals and the Charismatics and indeed many others such as the late great Dr Martin Lloyd Jones are completely and utterly right to urge all Christians to seek more of God after their conversion, to have an experience with Him they will never forget, more precious and pure and intimately private as any encounter with a fellow human could ever be. And yes, why should we not agree with the Apostle Paul and say it would be wonderful if we all spoke in tongues. There is no harm in encouraging people to expect this gift as a part of this overwhelming experience. Whether they receive the gift or not is completely up to God and He will have His own wonderful reasons if He does not give it. So the answer of this writer is not, yes tongues are the only sign of being filled with the Holy Spirit, nor is it no they are not, rather it is as he once heard in a sermon many years ago.
It was the day of Pentecost and the Anglican preacher was describing what had once happened to an African theological student. In the middle of the night this young man had woken up with electric joy surging through his body, and so intense was the elation in his being that he could not keep quiet. The quietness of the night was suddenly vibrating with his songs of celebration as he worshipped God loudly in a language he had never learned. After telling the story the preacher leaned over the pulpit and with a broad smile asked his congregation whether they had had an experience like that…and if not, why not? He did not dwell on the matter of tongues – though that was clearly a part of the overall experience…but he did ask that telling question – if you have not had an overwhelming experience of God…why haven’t you?
In other words dear reader the ultimate issue is this experience, this anointing, this filling, this baptism, this unction…and if tongues is a part of that experience, rejoice and thank God now that it was and is and still seek God for more; and if it was not, thank God for that experience, and still seek God for more – and if you have not had had such an experience, then hear the command of Jesus to his first disciples – ‘Go and wait in Jerusalem till you are endued with power from on high.’
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