The Baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues

 

WHAT IS THE PENTECOSTAL DISTINCTIVE? ACC REMIT 2025

A. We believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is a transformative experience, distinct from and subsequent to salvation. It is available to all believers and accompanied by the 

initial evidence of speaking in tongues. It results in empowerment for effective witness to the world.

B. We believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is a transformative experience, distinct from and subsequent to salvation. It is available to all believers and accompanied by the

sign of speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. It results in empowerment for effective witness to the world. 

WHAT IS THE CHANGE?

The change: from "initial evidence of speaking in tongues' to the "sign of speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives utterance."

WHERE DOES 'AS THE SPIRIT GIVES UTTERANCE' APPEAR?

On the day of Pentecost, the people were overwhelmed and dominated by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5). Their natural tendencies and tastes were brought under the subjection of the divine will.

In Acts 2:4, each person began to speak what the Holy Spirit dictated, in the dialect that the Holy Spirit had chosen for them. They spoke at a level of sophistication higher than what their natural resources would have dictated.

The continuing influence of the Holy Spirit in the perfect tense in ‘edidou,’ says “was giving to them to speak out.” The Holy Spirit gave the disciples tongues a known language. This phrase appears only once, in Acts 2:4, in the context of multiple languages being spoken.

"At that time you will be given what to say, for it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you," Matthew 10:19-20.

Matthew 10 affirms the role of the Holy Spirit, through whom the human mouths would deliver messages from the Lord. The Holy Spirit can speak through believers, and in the case of Acts 2:4, specific languages unknown to humans can be used to glorify God, in this instance.

But is this normative?

The phrase "as the Spirit gives utterance" is not mentioned in Acts 8:15-16 10:44-46, 11:16, 19:6. It was a falling upon Acts 8:16; 10:44; 11:15); a pouring out of the Gift Acts 10:45; and a coming upon Acts 19:6, without the actual phrase "as the Spirit gives utterance."

To say a person has received the Holy Spirit baptism but without speaking in tongues, or may receive the language at a later date, is NOT supported by the phrase "as the Spirit gives utterance."

“How may one receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit?”

The experience is described as a gift (Acts 10:45) and is therefore undeserved and unearned in any way. It is received by faith—active, obedient faith. God has promised to pour out His Holy Spirit on those who are hungry for Him and open their hearts to Him, and to those who ask.

All would agree on this, but if your heart is not hungry?

The 120 who received the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost worshipped Jesus and spent much time praising God (Luke 24:52-53). Joyful praise and expectation prepare our hearts to receive the blessings.

We note also that when they were filled with the Spirit they all “began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). That is, they did not hold back, but in obedient faith used their tongues, lips, and voices to speak out what the Spirit gave them.

SIGN

The only time the phrase 'speak in tongues' and the word 'sign' appear together is in the disputed verses of Mark 16:17; however, the sign also includes casting out demons, laying hands on the sick, and healing from snake bites and poisons.

The use of the word 'sign' in these verses is broad in its application.

The word 'sign' (semeion) means proof, confirmation, and indication. (The baby wrapped in clothes lying in the manger was the confirmation of angelic testimony about the good news of the saviour's birth.

The phrase "signs and wonders" (semeia kai terata) Luke does not use it in his Gospel but it occurs twice with false prophets Matthew 24:24 and Mark 13:22 and healings and exorcisms (Acts 8:6,13) Signs confirm God's activity, miraculous power among Gentiles (acts 15:12) and summon faith in Him. Signs have a broad range of applications.

Therefore, a sign can be interpreted in different ways and may not be a definitive indicator, whereas evidence is concrete information that supports a claim or statement.

EVIDENCE

The word evidence הוכחה – proof, confirmation, evidence. Is only found in the OT in Jeremiah 32:10,11,12,14,16,44, cepher, "a writing," is translated (the King James Version) "evidence" (of the purchase of the field in Anathoth), the RV (British and American) "deed".

The word 'evidence' is not used in each Holy Spirit Baptism event, but is inferred at each event after Pentecost.

Donald Gee views speaking in tongues as the "initial evidence" of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. He also notes that the value of the 'initial evidence' exists only because the value of the experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is beyond calculation.

Pentecostals believe that whenever their glossolalic distinctive is minimised, the result is the imperilling of their unique existence and their ministry as a movement.

“Experience has proved,” declares Gee, “that wherever there has been a weakening on this point, fewer and fewer believers have in actual fact been baptized in the Holy Spirit and the [Pentecostal] Testimony has tended to lose the Fire that gave it birth and keeps it living.”

Pentecostals believe that it is precisely this experience—the Holy Spirit’s baptism with the evidence of tongues—which is Pentecostalism’s treasure to contribute to the church universal. In Gee’s words, it “may well be the appointed gateway into the whole realm of an experience of the Holy Spirit as intimate and powerful as that enjoyed by the early church.

Do ACC people still teach that tongues is essential to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?’

No, unfortunately not, and where this standard is dropped, there the fervency and power of the Revival tends to diminish greatly. We must either accept all the manifestations of the Spirit in Scriptural order, or we lose the power that follows the Baptism in the Spirit.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is subsequent to conversion.

Why must this be? The baptism in the Holy Spirit is evidenced by speaking in tongues. How can this occur?

The doctrine of the conditions for the baptism in the Holy Spirit is the sustained Pentecostal effort to answer both these questions; to answer why the spiritual baptism cannot usually accompany initial faith, detailing the conditions that believers usually failed to meet at that time, and to announce how the spiritual baptism can be brought to the crisis event where tongues will occur, detailing the conditions that, when fulfilled, will lead to the experience.

The doctrine of conditions, then, is actually a corollary of the doctrine of subsequence and a premise for the doctrine of evidence, and as such occupies a cornerstone position in the edifice of the distinctive Pentecostal doctrine.

It is regularly suggested under the doctrine of conditions that specific fundamental steps must be taken for the believer to be a suitable recipient of the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit “does not automatically fill men,” writes Reed, “unless they meet certain definite conditions and definitely seek to be filleD. It is essential to note that not only must certain conditions be met (which can occur unconsciously), but that these conditions must also be intentionally sought to be met (making the matter conscious).

Unless there is a definite desire to have this experience, it will not occur. The desire to have the experience is expressed appropriately in the willingness to meet its conditions.

In other words, the (full) gift of the Spirit is not just a privilege received simply or perhaps unconsciously in receiving Christ; rather, it is an obligation to be explicitly sought and experientially along with or as a result of receiving Christ.

In a Pentecostal tract the question is asked, “Is it simply a privilege, or is it a duty, to seek this infilling …?”

And the answer is unequivocally, “We are commanded to seek it and are not obeying God unless we do.” The gift of the Spirit, we may say, then in preface, is not understood as a gift which comes simply as the result of

(1) receiving

(2) salvation in Christ

(3) by faith, but it is an obligation that comes through seeking the fullness of the Spirit through conditions, including, of course, the condition of faith in Christ.

Pentecostals do not wish to minimise Christ in their doctrine of the spiritual baptism and the conditions leading to it.

Quite the opposite.

But the problem is, as Pentecostals see it, that in the lives of too few Christians do the events of baptism (or conversion) and the Pentecostal baptism coincide. The solution must be, then, that beyond becoming a Christian, there are definite, stated conditions to be met; conditions that had to be met by the disciples; conditions that must be met by all who receive the Holy Spirit today.

Somehow, the faith that leads to Christian baptism is not the same as, or at least is not usually sufficient for, the commitment that leads to the Pentecostal baptism. The Pentecostal doctrine of conditions is necessary to explain why this is the case and how it may be overcome. But a doctrine of conditions may be most easily commenced in the pre-Pentecost events of Acts 1:1 to 2:1. This passage is studied by Pentecostal interpreters and found to teach that the embryonic church (1) in obedience to its Lord (1:12) was (2) in one accord and (3) persisting in prayer (1:14; 2:1), providing subsequent generations with at least three conditions for the baptism in the Holy Spirit: obedience, spiritual unity, and prayer.

But after Pentecost, the difficulty in finding conditions increases with the passages, for, in most of the instances, no particular program of conditions is apparent.

There could appear to be in Acts a kind of disinterest in detailing steps toward the baptism in the Holy Spirit, except for the apostolic laying on of hands in two interesting passages (8:14 17; 19:6).

And yet even the laying on of hands in both texts seems to be an act which is not initiated by the candidates but by the apostles. Nevertheless, to help modern seekers, Pentecostalism can provide the enigmatic Acts texts, often with the aid of material outside of Acts itself, with steps and conditions that will lead to the translation of believers into the apostolic events recorded in Acts. Acts 2:38 we hear, then, in prelude some of the thematic notes in the Pentecostal orchestration of the doctrine of conditions:

(1) the attitudes or actions preceding ultimate faith, usually described as repentance and obedience (here as repentance and baptism);

(2) correspondingly, the necessity of a clean heart before the Holy Spirit may fully enter the life of the believer (where it should be observed that the Holy Spirit is not yet considered as definitively or fully come: “It is hopeless,” Gee emphasized above, “to expect the Holy Spirit to come in and fill you until your heart is clean”); and then joined to these preliminaries and following them

(3) the insistence that human work is not necessary for the reception of the gift, for the gift is ultimately received through faith.

This exegesis of Acts 2:38 should provide an introduction to the important and sometimes difficult task of understanding how Pentecostalism finds the conditions it suggests in the passages it interprets.