CHAPTER TWO

Tongues: Sign and Gift

THE PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT is known throughout the world as "The Tongues Movement". This is because from the beginning of the century ever-increasing numbers of Christians have received an experience of God, which has included uttering His praises in a language hitherto unknown to them.

Many Christians both before and after this outpouring have preached a Baptism in the Holy Ghost as a Scriptural and desirable enablement which they had themselves received, but of which they had no tangible evidence to give to others. This blessing was normally connected by them with sanctification or a clean heart. Such experiences are undoubtedly true and scriptural; e.g. Isaiah 6:1-8; but the Pentecostal Baptism in the Spirit was connected in Scripture not with sanctification but with supernatural power, not with a clean heart but with a miraculous enablement.

Pentecostals did not deny the need for sanctification and a clean heart, but they stressed that these blessings were not enough. Our Lord was always sanctified and the possessor of a clean heart, but He needed His experience at Jordan before He possessed power (Luke 4:14). The Apostles had clean hearts and sanctified souls before Pentecost (John 15:3 and 17:19) but they