Fourth

I once attended a meeting held by the modern tongues people and occasionally they would jabber some incomprehensible something they called “unknown.” Well, they rightly named it, and it sounded like this, “kiuka, kioka,” repeated over and over. This is what they got when they “received the baptism.” I asked them what they said, but they did not know. I asked them to tell me how they instructed their converts to get it, but they could not, or did not, tell me. But I listened when they had a young man down on the floor flat on his back and they were urging him to say “the blood” as fast as he could until he began to stutter; then the ministers sprang to their feet, saying, “He’s got it!” Sometimes they would repeat, “Glory, glory,” until their tongue would seem to get twisted and then they would begin to jabber.

Oh, that God could open the eyes of these poor, deluded souls! Right in the beginning the serpent got the tongues from Satan and there is no end of the trouble that has come from it ever since. It is a fact that many of the dear modern tongues people believe that everybody who tries to correct them are of the devil. Paul says, “Though we, or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”* (Galatians 1:8) We should be warned by this not to accept everything that claims to be the Holy Ghost or an angel from heaven. Remember the language of Jesus in John 8:44: “[Satan] is a liar and the father of it.” Then again in 1 Kings 22:22: “A spirit said, I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” He mixes enough truth with error to deceive the people and makes them believe they have the Holy Ghost when sometimes actually they are devil possessed.

In a little town where I used to live a certain woman told another woman in the tongues faith that she need not be surprised if she eloped with one of their ministers, as she intended to obey her “Holy Ghost” in whatever he told her to do. Sometime after this she saw her awful deception, which rarely occurs, and had to have hands laid on her and her “Holy Ghost” cast out. Another woman in the same town who claimed to get the Holy Ghost, left her husband, went wild on the streets and had to be locked up in jail until she had mind enough to behave. O dear readers, “God is not the author of confusion.”* (1 Corinthians 14:33) Beware of false spirits! “Let all things be done decently and in order.”* (1 Corinthians 14:40) We find among these people missionaries who claim to have received their baptism according to Acts 2:4 before going to foreign fields, but somehow they always have to learn the language of the people before they can preach to them without an interpreter. Now if they received it as those on the day of Pentecost had, would not the results be the same? They were all Galileans and spoke the Hebrew tongue perhaps, but after receiving the Holy Ghost they spoke in all the different languages of the different nationalities represented there that day.

I have met people of the modern tongues movement who claim that Satan also gives some people the tongues and they are unable to tell the difference. I think right here that the gift of discernment would be real beneficial, for if they cannot tell the difference between the genuine and the false, one might think he had the Spirit of God and yet be possessed with a Satanic spirit. “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.”* (2 Corinthians 11:13-15) Some will say, “But look at the miracles they are doing, is not this sufficient proof that these modern tongues people are right?” No; emphatically no! Now turn to Revelation 16: “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, For they are spirits of devils working miracles.”* (Revelation 16:13-14)