Tongues (Speaking In)

. We must accept the statement which Paul makes through the Spirit, — “that which is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6), and that no flesh can “be justified in his sight.” But to ask whether all children who die in infancy are saved, is another question, and in reply I would say that undoubtedly they are, from Jesus’ own words in Matthew 18:1-11, and would belong to the company of those who “are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Cor. 15:23). There is no scriptural warrant for saying that they constitute part of the “body of Christ,’ which is His bride. Again, it would be impossible to make a distinction as to the children who die in infancy, as all of them are “born in sin,’ therefore the passages quoted above would seem to include all children who die in infancy.

TONGUES (Speaking in)

What is your opinion in regard to speaking in
tongues?

We cannot go into the matter historically except to say that from time to time down the history of the church this very course has arisen and flourished for a time, only to end in disordered minds and wrecked faith in hundreds of cases. Let it be noted, first, that nowhere, from beginning to end of the New Testament, is any human being told to seek the baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Christians are told that they have the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19) and that by one Spirit they are baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:12, 13). Then Paul exhorts those who have the Spirit to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), but nowhere in all his fourteen epistles, nowhere in the two epistles of Peter, in the three epistles of John, is the Christian exhorted to seek anything in connection with the Holy Spirit.

Second, the true biblical gift of tongues was speaking in languages of men (Acts 2:4-12). The so-called gift of tongues in Los Angeles and other places where it has sporadically broken out is a mere gibberish. This has been investigated and we say this with absolute assurance of the truth of what we say.

Third, the biblical gift of tongues was in connection with an immediate testimony to unbelievers (see Acts 2:4-12), and with the purpose of bringing them to Christ. These modern so-called “‘tongues’ consist of unintelligible sounds uttered not in the presence of sinners who by those sounds are informed concerning the death and resurrection of Christ and the necessity of salvation through Him, but in gatherings of excited Americans who all understand the English language, and have no evidential value whatever.

Fourth, the use of tongues even in the biblical sense, that is, of speaking languages that were understood by the natives of the different countries where those languages were used, — even that was rebuked by the Apostle Paul in the 14th of 1 Corinthians when indulged in, in gatherings of believers who all understood one language. It was all to no profit, he said, and that certainly marks the present-day manifestations. ‘They are absolutely profitless and Co not rise even into the sphere of the disorderly Corinthian manifestations, for these were, as I have said, utterances of languages. The whole thing is another instance and illustration of which there are so many in the history of the church, of Satan’s way of pushing earnest and spiritual Christians over the brink of sobriety into fanaticism. Our only safety is to abide by the Bible and to give no value whatever to so-called experiences which are not strictly

biblical.

Can Mark 16:17, 18 be used as authority for speaking in tongues, etc.?

Mark 16:9-20 is not found in the two oldest manuscripts, the Sinaitic and Vatican, while others have it with partial omissions and variations.