I would not say that what has risen from the ashes of Pentecostalism is a fully matured view but it does feel to me that it is at least a view that is more consistent with the agape nature of God and the story of the New Testament.  

One of the things that hastened my departure from Pentecostalism was the suicide of one of my former students.  A gifted, but like so many who are attracted to Pentecostalism an impressionable and highly suggestible young man.  We’ll call him Martin, [that was not his name], having graduated from the 1st year of the Bible College where I was the Director of Studies, Martin decided on the basis of a ‘prophecy’ that God had called him to give his life to a very remote part of the world and be their missionary.  In common with just about every other person with a brain I counselled him not to go but to wait.  I suggested that he attend the 2nd year in the college instead.  I did not think that he was secure enough in his identity to embark on such an adventure and certainly wasn’t about to advocate that life for a newly wed.  Anyway he didn’t heed my advice and left.  Within a few months his wife returned to England and within a year he committed suicide.    I will never forget attending that funeral.  I will never forget his widow’s grief stricken face.

Now admittedly that is the most extreme example that I know.  I have received and even given words of knowledge and prophecy which have proved to be edifying and confirming.  However, that does not mask the fact that the particular expression that I was in vacillated between promoting a recklessness in which everyone speaks in the third Person and every sentence begins “Thus sayeth the Lord” or worse [maybe worse] is so controlled that only ‘the man of god’ can prophesy and if you want to give a word then you have to give it to the man and he will decide if it is from God or not but when he speaks he does so ex-cathedra.  So what you end up with is living in a world that is either controlled or out of control.  What you don’t have is any real evidence of the gift of the Spirit which is self-control; on the contrary the problem is that ‘self’ is very much in control. 

Interestingly the greatest stumbling block for my wife who remained patiently aloof from the whole circus act thing was that she could never understand how tongues seemed to work on pastoral demand.  So for instance we could be in a meeting and then the person leading it would say rather like a driving test examiner telling you to do an emergency break, “everybody speak in tongues” and bang there it was – this most insane ‘spirit’ language. Which she would always parody by saying “I’ll have a shandy in a rubber dinghy.”   Inevitably we would be instructed that we needed to warfare or breakthrough or intercede or whatever and that we were to press-in and do battle so this insanity would be ratcheted up to fever pitch.  I am sorry if this offends anybody but for the main and for the most it was nothing more than an insane babel.  Depending on what type of meeting it was this could go on indefinitely.  Never [or exceptionally rarely] would there be any interpretation of a tongue, [that I am sure is because not even God knew what we were saying] the chaos seemed completely at odds with the Apostle Paul’s teaching on tongues in 1 Corinthians.  Invariably someone[s] normally the same ones would bring a predictable testimony about what God was going to do through this church and especially the pastor.  

I don’t want to say it was nonsense but well it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that’s for sure. Needless to say when we began The Grace Project I for one was a bit sheepish about the whole issue of the charismatic and literally put it to one side for more than a year concluding that what I had experienced was more preying on that praying in the Spirit.   I may have stayed a conscientious objector had it not been for some dear folk who themselves refugees from Pentecostalism found their way to The Grace Project and stayed three or four years, they more than anyone restored my faith in the possibility of a resonant charismatic practice.  Although once again as we opened our hearts to these workings of the spirit our experience was very mixed and suffered from albeit fairly benign excesses, but in fairness there was also a lot of healing.   Our version was a lot more elegant.  Yes elegant is a good way of putting it. We saw a number of artistic people released into writing, drawing, singing, poetry – it was beautiful.  

Where am I today seven years on?  Well with certain caveats I am happy to admit to you that I am a cautious charismatic.  I am sure that the operation of the gifts should be normative and very unremarkable but I also think that the gifts belong more in the context of community than mission.

From my study of the New Testament [which of course is highly subjective] my tentative conclusions are:
 
• I don’t accept the Pentecostal idea of that the baptism is subsequent to salvation.  [That is entirely wrong we received everything pertaining to godliness at salvation.]
 
• I don’t accept the Pentecostal notion that tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism of the Spirit.  [The hallmark of God is love and more than that the bible specifically teaches that not all speak in tongues and if tongue speaking is the evidence of the spirit and you’ve no evidence how can you know you’re saved?]

• I understand the Spirit to be the agent and not the substance of baptism – the substance is and can only be Jesus.

• I do believe in the gift of tongues and all the gifts come to that but in respect tongues I think that tongues is more an intimate prayer language which I think is primarily designed to edify the person speaking in tongues which if so makes it very much the ‘lesser’ gift in the public setting where the main purpose is to edify others.

A real tongue twister ….

In a very real way Pentecostalism has a lot riding on the issue of tongues.   Of course they are able to firmly anchor the gift of tongues in the New Testament.  However, we need to be a little more objective in our approach to what actually happened in Acts.  In the classical text – Acts 2 The Day of Pentecost it is sometimes overlooked that what happened in the Upper Room and then spilt over into the streets to the aghast onlookers does not remotely resemble what occurs today.  Leaving aside the tongues of fire settling on the heads of those gathered in the Upper Room the nature of the episode was materially different from anything we see today. 

You will recall that when those who were in the Upper Room spoke every one heard them in their own language.  That was certainly not normative and certainly was not repeated even in the case of Cornelius’ household which many call Pentecost II.  However, bizarrely there have been those outside the NT era for whom that was an entirely reasonable expectation.  Witness the case of one Alfred Garr who hotfotted from Azusa St arrived in India and began preaching to the natives in what he believed to be their own languages.  I seem to remember reading somewhere that even dear old Hudson Taylor went to China expecting to be given the gift of speaking Chinese.   

When I read the Acts narrative it seems to me that tongues if anything were a sign to the unbeliever.  Each episode seems to hint that.  On one occasion the Jews disbelieve the apostles on another the Apostle Peter’s entourage can’t bring themselves to believe that the Gentiles have been accepted into the kingdom.   It is not until we get to Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians do we get a fuller orbed view of the gift of tongues.  Intriguingly Paul’s gifts chapters 12 & 14 are sandwiched between his love chapter …. Which begins let me show you a more perfect way.   And that seems to me to be the point.  When I read the account of the Day of Pentecost I see the reversal of the curse of Babel the moment where the Lord confused the people languages so that none could understand each other.  To me the Day of Pentecost reverses that by saying there is a new language – the language of indwelling agape and when we speak it to one another there is nothing that we cannot achieve.  

I think that if you take the time to study the New Testament you will surprised how few references to the tongues there are.  Outside the New Testament we seem to have a great period of silence [exceptions accepted] until 1901 and the birth of Pentecostalism.  I have written a lengthy paper entitled Cain & Babel – Voices from the Past” which you can find on this site but suffice to say that the reflective conclusions of the fathers of the Welsh Revival seem to pertain here, namely that “much of what occurred in its intensity during the 1904-1905 Revival in Wales , should be attributed to demonic activity.” 

My observation of the activity that I have witnessed in Pentecostalism accords with Jesse Penn-Lewis’ assessment of the Welsh Revival. As she put it in her most famous work War on the Saints “The Revival in Wales, which was a true work of God revealed numbers of honest souls were swept of their feet by evil supernatural powers which they were not able to discern from the true working of God.” 

Agape