1 Corinthians 14

1 Corinthians 14:1-40

VERSUS 1 Corinthians 14 has left no stone unturned in its endeavor to discredit Fundamentalism. It is not at all unusual to have them identify the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association with Pentecostalism. It will be seen by any one who studies our confession of faith that it makes no reference whatever to the peculiarities of that movement. The true Fundamentalist is the man who holds intelligently to the nine points of our declaration. The great majority of Fundamentalists would not at all agree with Pentecostal leaders, but rather with the Apostle Paul who said, “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: yet in the church I had rather speak jive words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:18-19).This is an age of religious novelties. Hundreds of sects now characterize Christendom, and every month makes for a new religious movement.

Athens is no longer distinguished because “the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing”. Almost every American city is now the capitol of some new cult.Shortly ago Maine suggested “Sanfordism”; Boston, “Eddyism”; Allegheny, “Russellism”; Chicago, “Dowieism.” The Pacific coast not to be out-done by the Eastern seaboard, or the middle west, has, among many other movements, and as its most modern, the honor of starting one known as Pentecostalism. This latest religious excitement is interesting for the twofold reason that it is everywhere being associated with the Second Coming of Christ, and that the Scriptures do address themselves, in no small way, to this subject of “tongues!”It should be sufficient to remind our readers that nowhere in the Book is “an unknown tongue” related directly or indirectly to the Second Coming of Jesus; and the linking of these two, in such intimate relation, by the devotees of the so-called “Apostolic Faith”, is purely a question of personal privilege, while the circumstance that “Holiness People” are in most cases the subjects and advocates of this strange movement, is more likely a result of psychical temperament than of Scriptural teaching.Lord Wolseley says of Stonewall Jackson, that “he inspired his soldiers with an unquestionable belief in him as their leader; they did not ask him where he was going, they were content to follow.” Fundamentalists seek assiduously to maintain that attitude toward the Word of God.After having collated every passage in the Bible referring to this theme, we have chosen to arrange them in three topics: The Promise of Tongues, the Experience of Tongues, and the Employment of Tongues.THE PROMISE OF TONGUES This promise is not found in the Old Testament Scriptures. Isaiah, in upbraiding the drunkards of Ephraim, and the apostates of Israel, declares that they have stumbled in judgment; that they are full of filthiness and that God will teach them “knowledge” by men of strange lips, and “with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this people” (Isaiah 28:11). But the context shows that it was not to be an “unknown tongue”, but rather the reproving tongue of conquering aliens.The great passage in Joel, which Peter declared to be fulfilled at Pentecost reads after this manner:“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: * * “I will shew wonders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come” (Joe 2:28-31). but not a word of “unknown tongues”. When, therefore, Isaiah 28:11 is quoted as an “unknown tongue”, the context is disregarded. And when one appeals to Joel, as containing a promise of the “tongues”, he assumes it to hold what the most careful research will never discover. There are few, very few, New Testament circumstances or graces, which are not expressly stated or clearly foreshadowed in the Old Testament Scriptures; but those hoary writings have no knowledge of the “unknown tongue”.In the New Testament, the promise of tongues appears in a disputed passage. Mark 16:15-18 reads,“Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. “And these signs shall follow them that believe; in My Name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; “They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:15-18). In our mind the evidence in favor of the genuineness of this part of the Word of God is convincing. We have no disposition whatever to remove it from the sacred canon because it involves some difficulties for weak faith, nor yet to teach that untenable doctrine that these promises were for Apostles only, or at the most, for an apostolic age. Any believer, who truly trusts the Divine Record, cannot question that “tongues” were one of the gifts of the early people, and in our Bible study we have found no reason for believing that the early Church enjoyed any exclusive privileges.Tongues, however, are distinctly declared to be a gift of secondary consideration. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul says,“desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. “For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. “But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. “I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the Church may receive edifying” (1 Corinthians 14:1-5). In fact, the Apostle goes further and declares that speaking with tongues is profitless in itself:“Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine”? (1 Corinthians 14:6). This is all the more significant in view of the fact that Paul himself had experienced this gift.Again, that he put a low estimate upon it is perfectly evident when one studies his statement of the Spirit’s gifts. In the list of nine gifts recorded in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, the gift of tongues stands in the eighth place. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, where he declares that he has set them in the order of their importance beginning with the most desirable, he puts the gift of tongues in the last place. When writing to the Romans (Romans 12:6-8), and to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4:8-11), he does not so much as mention this as among the gifts of the Spirit.It is never made a sine qua non of the Spirit’s baptism. There is not a place in the Bible where the outpouring of the Spirit is promised, and tongues are distinctly mentioned as the proof of its individual reception. On the contrary, the one promise in that connection relates itself to belief in Christ (Mark 16:17).

It is at this point that the “Apostolic Faith” publications blunder. Almost without exception, they make it the essential evidence of the reception of the Spirit.

In examining a dozen of their publications, we have found it is their ordinary position, and yet no careful reader of the New Testament will so find it. The Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Book of Acts, alone, fifty-seven times, while tongues are mentioned but six, and four of those relate themselves to a single instance. While the gift of tongues is mentioned in some instances as the result of the Spirit, there are at least two dozen other distinct results that are mentioned in the Book of Acts alone. In the 13th of I Corinthians Paul even goes so far as to hint that a man might speak with “the tongue of men and of angels”, and yet be without the grace of God, much less the gift of the Holy Ghost; and that he would remain as “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal”. In the 14th chapter, Paul significantly suggests that when a crowd of men and women assemble to speak with tongues, it may seem more nearly an evidence of insanity than of the Spirit’s baptism (1 Corinthians 14:23), And under no circumstances should more than three bear testimony in tongues, and these always in turn, with some one present to interpret every word (1 Corinthians 14:27). Possibly it may not have occurred to those who believe “tongues” are the sure proof of the reception of the Spirit, that Jesus Christ, who had the Spirit without measure, never in any circumstance, so far as we know, spake in a tongue.THE OF TONGUES It sometimes came with the reception of the Spirit. At Jerusalem, on the Day of Pentecost, “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). At Caesarea, when the Gentiles received Jesus, the Jews “heard them speak with tongues and magnify God” (Acts 10:46). At Ephesus, when the believers were baptized into the Name of the Lord Jesus, and the Apostle laid his hands upon them, “the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied” (Acts 19:4-6). But when in Samaria, Peter and John laid hands on Philip’s converts, and they received the Holy Spirit, no mention of tongues is made. Paul, writing to the Romans (Romans 12:6), declares that we have “gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us”; and when he pens his Epistle to the Corinthians (12th chap.), he declares that the Spirit distributes his gifts, and distinctly states that, whereas “to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues.” In the 30th verse of the same chapter he distinctly teaches that all who are members of the body do not speak with tongues.At Pentecost this experience took the form of “other,” but intelligent tongues.

They preached in languages with which they had not been familiar, but which were the mother-tongues of their auditors. The value and advantage of such a gift no man can question; but it is little short of ludicrous to read paper after paper, where men, writing from Los Angeles, Spokane, Houston, Waco, Fort Worth, Chicago, Minneapolis, and fifty other places for that matter, are reporting a great Pentecost in each instance, and setting the fact—both of its certainty and its greatness—by the circumstance that some one or two, or, as in some instances, half a dozen, or fifteen, have received “the gift of tongues”.

Pentecost meant more than the gift of tongues; it made intelligent tongues through which the Gospel passed to the people in power and demonstration of the spirit, convincing of sin, and revealing the way of salvation!Extravagant uses of the word Pentecost are without power. The sore need of the church is not reporters of Pentecosts which have not occurred, but that experience of the Spirit which would produce a Pentecost after the order of the inspired record.Again, at Pentecost, Peter, the most Spirit-filled, seems to have spoken in his own tongue. When he came to appear in the presence of the people to preach, he used the tongue which he had employed from his childhood, and when he quoted from the Old Testament texts, his auditors needed no interpreter.God forbid that we should speak one word against any demonstration of the Spirit, but we confess to some impatience with them who do not deal in plain speech. We were brought up “down South,” where every uneducated negro preacher regarded it a surpassing evidence to mental and spiritual superiority to employ words that were beyond the ken of his crowd; and we have often known, among white men, not a few ministers of the Gospel of the Son of God, who needed to listen to Dr. John Hall’s sentence, once delivered in a theological seminary, “Young men, it is a good thing to know Greek, but if you preach in this country, speak in plain English.” There is a story of a southern preacher whose black slave was among his auditors. The sermon, on this day, had been particularly long and dry, but the minister had noticed Sambo scribbling during most of the time.

At the close of the service he asked Sambo, “What were you doing with that paper and pencil?” “I was ‘er takin’ notes, Massah.” “Let me see them!” Studying them a moment, he said, “Why, Sambo, this looks to me like nonsense.” “That is what I thought all the time you was a-preaching it, Boss!”I would prefer to have my tongue “cleave to the roof of my mouth”, than to speak one word against the working of the Spirit; but if I am to judge from the reports that appear in Apostolic (?) publications that are now being put forth, I am perfectly convinced that much of what is being exploited as a sure evidence of the Spirit of God is sheer nonsense. For instance, one man reports in these papers that he spoke for half an hour in some beautiful tongue unknown to him, but a well educated minister present told him it was splendid Greek.

There is not one educated minister in a thousand that can pass judgment upon Greek, whether it is good or bad; they do not know Greek well enough, and if it were the kind of Greek the minister brings from college or the theological seminary text books, it would hardly be intelligent to the now living Grecian; so where is the profit? If the Lord ever had any purpose of permitting us to speak in classic Greek, He would have wrought a great accommodation had He given it while we were yet sweating over theological seminary lessons.Arthur T. Pierson, whose mind was sufficiently open to see the truth of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures; who never under any circumstances was shaken in his confidence in the Deity of Christ, nor swerved from the great doctrine of the Atonement; Arthur Pierson, the man who, in his “Miracles of Missions”, revealed his confidence in Divine healing, whose statements concerning the Second Coming of Jesus, were in line with the Word of the Lord; whose deep spiritual life linked him with the great Keswick Conference, quoted an intelligent and Christian writer from India, who declared that the “unknown tongues” which appeared there “were no language whatever, but a jargon of sounds, a mimicry of the gifts of tongues known to the New Testament,” and expressed his fear lest Satan has taken an additional step upon Spiritualism, and by deceiving some of the elect, has taken possession of their tongues also. Whether this was true, it is not ours to say; but we do say, that so long as we hold the 14th of I Corinthians as inspired, it will be necessary for those who profess to have received “the gift of tongues”, to conform their conduct to the rules the Apostle there lays down if they are to enjoy our confidence.THE OF TONGUES The primary purpose of the strange tongue is praise and prayer. That such a tongue existed in the New; Testament experience cannot be sanely disproved; that the gifts of the New Testament time were intended for all ages is not the subject of doubt with some of us. With Gordon we affirm that it is impossible for me to look at that rich cluster of promises that hang by a single stem in Mark 16:16-18, and pluck out what suits us, declaring that the rest of them obtained only for a short time. Such treatment of the Word of God is unworthy the sincere students of the Bible. The “gift” is there, and the “gift” may be here.Now, what is the purpose of it? Paul leaves that in no debate.

In the chapter which is the basis of this discourse, he distinctly says, “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God”; “He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself and again, “How shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air”?Even if he pray in a tongue, he sayeth, “My spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful”. Dr.

A. B. Simpson expressed his doubt as to whether “the tongue” was the human tongue at all, since Paul, in the 13th of I Corinthians has spoken, not alone of the tongues of men, but also of the tongues of angels; and says that in the Apostolic Church the strange tongue was not always the vehicle of preaching to people of other languages, but rather the channel of direct worship and adoration.Horace Bushnell, referring to the gift of tongues enjoyed by Edward Irving, says that it was “an ecstatic utterance in words and sounds, which neither he nor any that heard him, understood.” If genuine it could only be employed, then, in praise and prayer, and Paul intimates that even both of these in your own tongue is more profitable.It becomes the secret closet, not the public assembly. Paul never sought more earnestly to make anything clearer than this—that strange tongues were not to be paraded. We do not belong to the company of those who object to the hearty “amen.” We do not happen to be so sensitively constructed that a “Bless the Lord,” coming from the congregation, jars in the least. Had I been present that morning when Peter lifted up the lame man, and witnessed him going with them into the Temple, walking and leaping, and praising God, we might have joined the Free Methodists, and sent up a shout.

But we have never yet been present in a meeting where colored people, or white, engage in a babel of voices; fall in physical contortion, or trances that take the aspect of the modern medium, to be convinced it was the Spirit of God. In the New Testament records the demons tore men as they came out of them; but so far as we know, the entrance of the Spirit into every man was as sweet and quiet as the coming of the light over the eastern hills at the break of the morn.Finally, the experience of love is better than the tongue of angels.

Some one has called attention to the significant relation which the 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters of 1st Corinthians sustain to this subject. In the 12th chapter, Paul enumerates the spiritual “gifts” which are distributed among believers. In the 14th chapter, he urgently warns against the abuses which had come upon the last and least of all these gifts, namely, “speaking with tongues”, and right between these two chapters he tells us what is best of all the gifts, and beginning with the least of them, the “speaking with tongues”, he rises to the greatest, and says its name is “Charity.”“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, “Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. “Charity never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:1-8). No wonder he concludes this chapter with this sentence, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity”; nor yet that he opens the next chapter after this manner, “Follow after charity”.When the Japanese Princess was in Philadelphia in 1876, in attendance upon the great centennial exposition, an American gentleman, addressing a high officer of the Japanese Commission, said, “What do you think of your mother?” Instantly his eyes filled with tears, and he replied, “Why do you ask me that?” “Because,” said the American, “your answer would reveal to me something of the domestic life of your country, and signify to me the character of its individual citizens; suggest also its customs, and its manners.” “Well,” said the Japanese officer, “since I left home my mother has written to me every week; every week she has had my letter. She is always on my heart! Could I not hear from her so often, homesickness would compel me to return to my motherland.” After all, the great question for the Christian is this, “What about your love to the Lord?” and for the unconverted world, is this, “What think ye of Christ”?Many are familiar with that movement of tongues of nearly a century ago, when Mr. Baxter, who afterward became convinced that it was from beneath, and not from above, and Edward Irving were the leaders. If you have read the life of Edward Irving, by Mrs. Olivant, you may remember that when at last that man of God came down to his dying bed, the friends and relatives who had seen him pray for others to witness their healing, pled in vain for his recovery.

On the Thursday of the week it was evident that his body was going into dissolution; in the weakness of it his mind grew delirious and wandered, and he talked incessantly until Sunday following. While his articulations were distinguishable, those about him were exhorted in spiritual things, and were asked to pray for him and his church and relatives.

At times he would imagine himself back in his church and congregation in London, and the hush of his death chamber was broken by the sound of his voice, as he exhorted his people and prayed. But by and by the clear articulation failed, and they heard him murmur to himself in sonorous syllables of some unknown tongue. Listening to those musical sounds, Dr. Martin found that, after all, they were not so strange, but on the contrary they were the Hebrew measures of the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”, and as he went on in his quotation the voice swelled with unusual vigor when he reached the point, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil”. Finally, this sentence came clearer from his lips, “If I die, I die unto the Lord.” “And so,” says Mrs. Olivant, “at the wintry midnight hour, which ended his last Lord’s Day on the earth, the last bonds of mortal trouble, the saint and martyr entered into the rest of his Lord.”The hour in which we live has such sore need of the Spirit’s presence, that God forbid we should refuse aught He brings. But, as redeemed men, working in the midst of our dying fellows, remember: it is better to speak five words with our understanding, that we might instruct others, than ten thousand in tongues, for “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity” * * “it profiteth me nothing”.