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Pastor David Mitchell
Okay, man named James Hastings in his two volume book called Hastings Dictionary of the Apostolic Church written in 1918 says this, moreover, most of the ecclesiastical miracles are mere prodigies and can in no sense be called true signs.
In many cases, they are demonstrably the invention of later biographers and contemporary writers show no knowledge of them. Isn't that interesting? Some of these historical points that are brought out by Mr. Sherrill, you cannot go back to the day when this was supposed to have happened and find anyone who wrote about it.
You won't find anybody writing that it happened. Isn't that interesting? Now you notice Mr. Hastings is writing in the year 1918. If you remember when we started this subject, the modern Pentecostal charismatic movement began in the year 1901.
It did not exist before that moment in history. And so there were quite a few people, not a lot of people, but a few serious scholars who began to study the phenomenon that Amy Semple MacPherson, the adulteress, brought into the world and popularized.
And that's why you have books like we just quoted from. There's another man named B .B. Warfield, which has written a monumental book called Counterfeit Miracles. He wrote this book in the year 1918, and he also points out that the miracles cited, such as Mr. Sherrill cites, indicate a merger of Christianity with heathenism.
He never for a moment thought that it was true Christianity. Now let me give you a fourth reason that books like this man wrote are not conclusive. Many of the outbreaks of tongues, which charismatics cite, were in clear connection with known heretical movements.
Let me give you an example. One of the places that is cited in this book that's supposed to prove to us, by Mr. Sherrill, that tongues has always existed in the form of gibberish in the church, he mentions in his book a man named Montanus.
And this occurred in the second century. It was claimed, he was actually claimed to be a heretic because he claimed that he was the paraclete through whom the Holy Spirit spoke to the church, just as the Spirit had spoken through Paul and the apostles.
And so in his day, they claimed him to be a heretic, and yet he's quoted as proving tongues has always existed throughout time by Mr. Sherrill. Now, this was noted by a man named Earl E. Carnes in a book called Christianity Through the Centuries, written in 1967.
Yet Sherrill cites a revival led by Montanus as a tongue-speaking revival. This man was a known heretic in the church. You know why he was pronounced a heretic? He claimed to be the paraclete or the comforter.
Who is that? He claimed to be God. He says, I can reveal things to the church just like the Holy Spirit revealed things through Paul and the apostles, which is a lie. And that's why tongues and prophesying and words of knowledge and words of wisdom ceased from the scene when the apostles passed off the face of the earth.
And yet this man claimed it two centuries later, and they put a stamp on him as a heretic, and Sherrill quotes him as proving tongues exist. Well, yeah, they did. It was gibberish of the satanic type.
That doesn't prove it's for the church, does it? Now, the fifth reason that this book is fallacious is the judgment of the leading church historians agrees that there has been no reoccurrence of the tongues phenomenon of the first century in succeeding centuries of the church.
If you go and read all of the well-known church history scholars of the world, none of them agree or would ever say for a moment that tongues went beyond the first century in the church, and most of them will show where they began to cease even at that time.
Let me give you a couple of quotes. A man named Philip Schaff, and if you've gotten really into Bible study very much, then you will be familiar with that name because he is known as the father of church history.
He wrote a book called The History of the Christian Church in the year 1910, and Schaff is the acknowledged dean of church historians. He says that historically, the gift of tongues passed from the church at least by the time of Chrysostom, which was 353 to 430 AD.
He further said that analogous phenomenon of an inferior kind to the New Testament gifts of tongues and not miracles, miraculous, yet serving as illustrations either by approximation or as counterfeits appeared from time to time in seasons of special religious excitement.
So he does say that this gibberish had appeared from time to time, but he calls them counterfeits. He mentions that this phenomenon has occurred among the Mormons and other non-Christian sects, and he is referring to ecstatic utterances or gibberish.
Now, we can talk about the modern church historians, but let me throw something at you, put this in your notes. Let's go back to the year 347 AD. That goes so far back in Christian history. It's so close to the time of Jesus and the apostles that very little of what now has been church history had even occurred yet, and this man named Chrysostom, who was one of the early church fathers in the Eastern Church.
Now, if you remember, the church at that time divided into the Eastern Church and the Western Church. The Western Church became the Roman Catholic Church later, but at first, it was not in the bad sense.
It was the very church that Paul wrote the book of Romans to, but it evolved into a heretical church called the Roman Catholic Church, and it's the Western Church, but Chrysostom was in the Eastern Church, which later became the Greek Orthodox Church, and so Chrysostom, who lived in the fourth century, one of the early church fathers, testified that the gift of tongues had passed by his time.
In his writings on 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and he has written a book called Homilies on the First Epistle of Paul, the Apostle to the Corinthians by Chrysostom, and here's what he says. This whole passage is obscure.
Now, he is talking about 1 Corinthians chapter 12 through chapter 14, and he says this. This whole place is very obscure. Now, why is he calling it obscure? Because he has not seen it happen in his lifetime, so it's difficult for him to understand everything that he's talking about because it's not happening anymore.
This whole place is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation being such as then used to occur, but now no longer take place. Now, let me give you a quote from Augustine, who is the great church father of the Western church, and who Martin Luther studied after, and God used Augustine in Martin Luther's life along with the scriptures to bring him into the light, and out of the darkness of Roman Catholicism, he used to study after Augustine.
Now, Augustine lived from AD 353 to AD 430, so we go all the way back to within a couple of hundred years of the time of the apostles. This great leader of the Western church said this, and this is in Augustine's Homilies on the First Epistle of John, volume six, and sentence number 10.
In earliest times, the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed, and they spake with tongues, which they had not learned. Isn't that an interesting phrase? Apparently, Augustine thought that tongues was a language that could be learned.
He says, they spoke with tongues, which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These were signs adopted for the times, for there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues to show that the gospel of God was to run through all tongues all over the whole earth.
That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. Now, don't you find it interesting that if you go into the New Testament, that Jesus and Peter and Paul all indicated that tongues were ceasing and were passing away off the scene from the church, and don't you find it interesting that you will not find a book in the New Testament written beyond 65 to 70 AD that has one mention of these gifts any longer?
They had already passed off the scene by the time the book of Hebrews was written. It's obvious by reading the book of Hebrews that they were dealing with something that was back in the past, and that they were supposed to go back and remember, and that's because God used this to authenticate his prophets and to bring a sign to Israel, and God does not continue to authenticate anything.
He expects us to look back at the authentication that already took place, and that's supposed to be good enough. That's why Jesus said an evil and adulterous generation requires a sign. God's already spoken.
Why did men like Luther and Calvin and Wesley, why did men like Whitefield and John Knox and Charles Spurgeon and D .L. Moody and Billy Sunday and Gypsy Smith and Lester Olaf not have the faith to speak in tongues?
Why did great missionaries like Adeniram Judson or Judson Taylor not speak in tongues? They could have used that gift out there on the field and it could have avoided 15, 20 years of language study. Why is it that all the tongue speakers are segregated into Pentecostal and charismatic churches and not found in fundamental Bible-believing churches like this one?
Does God not give out his gifts as needed in the local church? If it were a true gift that was needed in the church today, wouldn't one of you have it? 1 Corinthians 13, eight says, charity never faileth, but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.
Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away, for we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When the purpose of the sign has come, then it is vanished, it goes away. 1 Corinthians 5, six says, your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump as you are unleavened, for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice or wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. This speaks of fellowship. And I have never meant from the beginning of this study to be divisive in any way.
But I will say this, this passage speaks of fellowship, and it says that we are not supposed to fellowship with folks that we cannot have fellowship with in sincerity and in truth, and that a little leaven will permeate through and ruin the entire loaf of bread.
So we have to be careful with this. It's not an insignificant thing we're talking about. It's a very important device that I believe Satan is using to bring together the one world church. Have you ever seen anything in recent history that would cause a Catholic and a Baptist to sit down and fellowship together, only if they both speak in tongues?
And that's what's happening. Now, we're out of time today, so we'll have to continue this one more time, because I wanna ask the question next time, is our biblical tongues a prayer language? That will be the question we ask next Sunday morning, the Lord willing, and we'll let the scriptures answer that question.
Because out of everything we've shown today, to me, it's irrefutable. The only thing that could be said after hearing what God's word has said thus far is, well, yeah, but what we do is different. It's a prayer language.
So we're not talking about the sign gift that's given in the book of Acts. We're talking about the prayer language gift given in Corinthians. Is there in fact such a thing? And so we'll discuss that next Sunday.
I wish we could go on into it this afternoon, but we're gonna talk about the book of Amos this afternoon. So let's stand and have prayer together. Be here next Sunday, and we'll talk about is tongues a prayer language or not.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you've given us a book, an eternal book that will steer us in the straight way all the way through the end of this age. We thank you that even as you say in the last days, there'll be many false prophets and those who teach by luring to the flesh.
And if even possible, the very elect could be affected by this and deceived by it. We thank you that you've given us the book that is the rudder that will steer us straight through all of the garbage that's in our world today.
What a joy it is, Father, to study your word. What a joy it is to be with other people who study your word and who see things straight forward and clear from the word of God. Help us to always stay in the word and out of the world.
And we ask that in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.