THE DOCTRINE OF THE INITIAL EVIDENCE OF THE BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

    1.      THE UNIQUENESS OF THE DOCTRINE

If it may be said that the distinctive doctrine of the Pentecostal movement is the baptism in the Holy Spirit it may also be said that what is most distinctive about this particular doctrine is the conviction that the initial evidence of this baptism is speaking in tongues.

While Pentecostalism shares with classic Methodism, the holiness movements, and with many in conservative evangelicalism, the conviction of an additional critically important spiritual experience beyond conversion, it is in the understanding of the initial evidence of this subsequent experience that Pentecostals are unique, and it is this evidence which marks its advocates as Pentecostal. Wesley and his holiness followers, as we have seen, made experience or feeling of a particular sort the evidence of what was called the Great Salvation. But feeling is ambiguous and has led Methodism, historically, to quite different emphases. The ambiguity of feeling was removed by Pentecostals in the discovery of the feeling par excellence—the transport of speaking in tongues.28

“The distinct doctrine of the Pentecostal churches,” writes Donald Gee, “[is] that speaking with tongues is the ‘initial evidence’ of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. This article of belief is now incorporated in the official doctrinal schedules of practically all Pentecostal denominations.”29 “Of practically all,” it must be said, for there appears to be here and there and perhaps with the advance of time a certain hesitation in allowing to tongues-speaking the spiritual baptism’s only initial evidence.30 Nevertheless, for majority Pentecostalism to date it is held to be one of the “ ‘verites fondamentales’ ” that in the baptism with the Holy Spirit “ ‘le signe initial est le parler in langues.’ ”31

The glossolalic evidence has thus far marked Pentecostalism as Pentecostalism. It is even seriously argued that the theological act of combining the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of tongues was the catalyst creating the Pentecostal movement. Donald Gee, the most lucid Pentecostal interpreter of this “distinctive of the distinctive,” remarks that “the tongues regarded simply as an isolated phenomenon, rather than as an initial evidence of the baptism [in the Spirit], had not launched a world-wide revival.”32 This doctrine is unique and for most Pentecostals it is an important explanation of the Pentecostal movement.

    2.      THE SOURCE OF THE DOCTRINE

Again it is on the basis of the Acts almost exclusively that Pentecostals justify their doctrine of speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The Corinthian tongues-speaking, as we shall observe more closely in the next chapter, is a particular kind of spiritual expression and Pentecostals do not wish it to be confused with the Spirit’s special sign or evidence of speaking in tongues to which Acts bears witness. “For our information concerning the manifestation given to believers when baptized in the Spirit,” Gee writes, “we are entirely shut up to the instances … in the Book of Acts.”33 It will sometimes be admitted that while Holy Scripture may nowhere explicitly say that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, nevertheless the weight of the events in Acts where tongues-speaking does in fact occur upon the receipt of the Spirit compels the doctrine implicitly. The fact that tongues are not even mentioned in every instance in the Book of Acts where men are baptized or are given the gift of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Acts 2:38–41) is held to be unembarrassing to this conviction because, it is argued, when any outward evidences are suggested they are usually found to be glossolalic (e.g., Acts 2:4; 10:44–47; 19:6).

The Pentecostal believes that it is the divine intention to provide the baptism in the Holy Spirit with an initial evidence of the baptism’s real occurrence and that the argument of the instances in Acts where an evidence is given is such as to be exegetically conclusive for any fair-minded reader: the evidence is speaking in tongues. “Audacious though it may sound to affirm it,” Gee summarizes, “I believe that an unanswerable case can be made out, if we stand on the Scriptures alone, for the doctrine of the Pentecostal Movement that there is a manifest initial evidence Divinely ordained for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and a very strong case for that evidence being speaking with tongues.”34

    3.      THE EXEGETICAL BASIS OF THE DOCTRINE

The “classic instances” of the evidenced baptism with the Holy Spirit are usually found in Acts chapters 2; 8; 10, and 19. In Acts 8, however, no mention is made of speaking in tongues and the argument has to be sustained on grounds other than strictly textual. Therefore we shall turn first to Acts 2; 10, and 19, which are, in any event, the more frequently employed passages in Pentecostal argument, before investigating related texts.

a. Acts 2:1–4: Pentecost. The most celebrated effusion of the Holy Spirit with the manifestation of tongues occurred at the feast of Pentecost and is recorded in Acts 2:1–4 concluding, “and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” If speaking in tongues was God’s evidence of his gift of the Spirit in the church’s first and major experience why, it is asked, should it not also be the evidence for the church’s continuing experience?

It is recognized that the Pentecost occasion was accompanied by unique and unrepeatable phenomena such as the sound of the wind, the vision of tongues as of fire, and the important ancillary fact that here only, apparently, were the tongues understood by the hearers (see Acts 2:5–13). But Pentecostals separate the unique and unrepeatable phenomena (Acts 2:1–3, 5–13) from what is called Pentecost’s repeatable and pattern-making phenomenon: the filling of the Holy Spirit evidenced by the speaking in other tongues (Acts 2:4). Arguing that wind, fire, and comparable remarkable manifestations had occurred as signs under the old covenant, but that tongues never had, the conclusion is drawn that tongues-speaking is meant to be the initial sign of the Spirit’s presence under the new covenant.35

The Pentecostal insists that the unique Pentecost event of speaking in tongues sets the only authentic pattern for every other baptism in the Holy Spirit. The apostles, it is argued, were Christians before Pentecost and yet they received the Spirit in fulness only when they were able to give evidence of this fulness by speaking in other tongues. This fact, it is felt, should establish a precedent for all later Christians. The eighth article of faith in the largest Brazilian Pentecostal body is representative, then, of the majority conviction of world Pentecostalism when it affirms that “the baptism in the Holy Spirit must [deve] be accompanied by the same evidence which the apostles received as their sign: ‘to speak in other tongues as the Spirit [gives] utterance.’ ”36

b. Acts 10–11: Cornelius’ Household. The Pentecostal points to the tenth chapter of Acts in further confirmation of his thesis that glossolalia is not unique to the original Pentecost itself but that the sign is intended for each full impartation of the Spirit. Peter’s attendants in Acts 10 were “amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues” (Acts 10:45–46). Knowledge of the gift of the Spirit to the Gentile household was obtained specifically from the evidence of speaking in tongues (“for”). Apart from this evidence Peter’s Jewish Christian companions would have been hard convinced of the full parity of the Gentile accession to the Jewish. But with this evidence the early Christians knew that only one thing could have happened: the gift of the Holy Spirit had been given in a fulness which fell short in no way of the fulness of the original Pentecost itself. Speaking in tongues signifies everywhere in the church, from Jerusalem to Caesarea, from Jews to Gentiles, the normative Pentecostal experience. Thus Acts 10 joins Acts 2 in the Pentecostal chain of witnesses to the initial evidence of the Spirit’s full coming.

c. Acts 19:1–7: The Disciples at Ephesus. The third and final instance of speaking with tongues recorded in Acts occurs at Acts 19:1–7 where Paul, on discovering a company of Ephesian disciples who were unacquainted with the Spirit, proceeded to instruct them properly in Christian doctrine and thereafter baptized them. Then “when Paul had laid his hands upon them,” the Acts account concludes, “the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied” (19:6). Again the evidence of the Spirit’s real coming was the recipients’ unusual speech including the speaking in tongues. This passage is most frequently cited by Pentecostals when critics raise the objection that speaking in tongues occurred exclusively in apostolic times and then only for the certification of the promised gift of the Spirit to Jews (Acts 2) and to Gentiles (Acts 10). The fact that glossolalia occurred in Acts 19 some time after both the so-called Jewish and Gentile Pentecosts of Acts 2 and 10 impresses the Pentecostal and gives him added confidence that his doctrine is both biblical in content and universal in application.

The events recorded in Acts 2; 10, and 19 lay, then, what Pentecostals feel to be the surest foundations for their doctrine of initial evidence. In each instance the knowledge of the Spirit’s full coming was directly and unambiguously provided through the recipients’ speaking in tongues. By means of this unusual manifestation the recipients, the observers, and future readers could be assured of the real and full coming of the divine Spirit.

d. The Other Acts Incidents (Acts 8 and 9). The other passages adduced from Acts to illustrate the Pentecostal doctrine of the evidence of tongues are Acts 8 (the Samaritans) and, less often, Acts 9 (the conversion of Paul). Although speaking in tongues is specifically mentioned in neither Acts 8 nor 9, Pentecostals feel that there are good reasons for believing that the phenomenon occurred: in the Samaritan incident, because something striking must have happened to evoke the eager request of Simon Magus for the power of the Spirit whose coming he had just witnessed (cf. Acts 8:18–19); and in Paul’s case, because of his later testimony that “I speak in tongues more than you all” (1 Cor. 14:18), indicating that Paul was no stranger to the experience; and since all experiences have beginnings, presumably Paul’s was no different from that of other early Christians recorded in Acts, namely, the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues. Both arguments for tongues in Acts 8 and 9 are admittedly presumptions but, it is felt, on the basis of the accompaniments to the gift of the Spirit in the other Acts notices, warranted presumptions.

The conclusion drawn from these five Acts texts (2; 10; 19; and 8; 9) is that since in three of the five cases the evidence is expressly tongues and in the remaining two cases presumably, there is present in Acts a doctrine which is sufficiently substantial for the church to accept as normative for its faith and life. “We submit, therefore, that the evidence is entirely sufficient for the conclusion expressed in the doctrine that ‘speaking with other tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.’ ”37

e. Mark 16:17 and Summary. The only other passage regularly marshalled for the evidential character of the spiritual baptism outside of Acts is Mark 16:17 where it is said that believers will be accompanied by, among other signs, “new tongues.” This, to Pentecostals, is the glossolalic evidence and not to have experienced this sign is to put in doubt the reality of the faith it is intended to symbolize—not so much the reality of simple Christian faith, but of the deeper Christian faith which grants the Pentecostal experience.38 The passage’s authenticity is not, with Pentecostals, in question.

Does the Bible teach that the initial evidence of the gift of the Spirit is speaking in tongues? Pentecostals answer in the affirmative. They see the spiritual evidence taught in the only place where it could be taught: in the history of those who received it in the Acts of the Apostles. But they also see it promised by Jesus in the Gospels (Mark 16:17).

Had the promised spiritual sign of tongues made an appearance only at Pentecost there might have been room for doubt that it was intended as a perpetual sign. But when the first Gentiles experienced it as well, when an obscure group of Ephesian disciples had the same experience years later, and when the “Pentecostals” themselves experience it centuries later (not to mention now those who experienced it in the years between Pentecost and Pentecostalism), it is felt that Pentecost was not only an event of the past but, in a frequently used term, that it is a pattern for the present and that all Christians, for these several compelling reasons, should be “Pentecostals.” For speaking in tongues is not seen as an oddity; it is seen as a real necessity if a Christian is to have an unshakeable certainty that the Spirit has truly and fully come to him. This conviction is established for Pentecostals by Scripture, but it can be explained by still other means.

    4.      THE APOLOGETICAL AND EXPERIENTIAL BASES OF THE DOCTRINE

a. The Argument for Experience. Outside the specific interpretation of Acts (and Mark 16:17), the first general argument in defense of the doctrine of initial evidence is the argument from—or here, better, for—experience. To the frequent non-Pentecostal objection that the extraordinary manifestation of the Spirit in apostolic times is to be explained heilsgeschichtlich or dispensationally rather than imperatively or archetypically—i.e., the objection that the apostolic period was unique and not to be repeated—the Pentecostals rejoin that just as the benefits of the “once-for-all” event of the cross must still be received in order to be effective in men’s lives, thus also the blessings of the “once-for-all” gift of the Spirit at Pentecost must still be received to be real in men’s experience.39

And the Spirit must be received, Pentecostals continue, in the very way the apostles and early church received him—with speaking in tongues. The only experience guaranteeing that we have received the very Spirit received by the apostles, urge Pentecostals, is the very experience of the apostles. “Where else would you go for a pattern of a true baptism with the Holy Ghost?” asks Duffield (p. 18). “Shall we accept some theologian’s idea? Would it be safe to trust human reasoning? I want to know that I received the fulness of the Spirit with the same accompanying signs that were manifest at the initial outpouring.”

But, Pentecostals continue, while the apostles provide the divine pattern for the Spirit’s reception, they can never provide a divine or even a human substitute for our own personal reception of the Spirit. Pentecost does not supplant the need for every Christian to receive the Spirit into his own experience. “The baptism in the Holy Spirit was not for the apostles only,” declares the Reglamento local (p. 16) in its initial article on the spiritual baptism, “but is for every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ,” to which it appends as proofs Acts 2:38–39 and Matthew 3:11 (the Baptist’s promise of the special experience).

There is no such thing as a dispensational Pentecost, in the Pentecostal understanding, if such an expression means that since ca. A.D. 30–100 the Spirit has been automatically or impersonally received. Without the experience of tongues the Christian is without the sure evidence of the Spirit—biblically and experientially. We may say that, in the Pentecostal understanding, the Pentecost-event should not be placed merely in the aorist or past tenses but it should be rendered in the perfect, for while Pentecost happened decisively in the past in the lives of the first and of all subsequently obedient Christians it should still be experienced continually in the present in the lives of committed Christians.

b. The Argument from Reason. Quite apart from exegesis or experience it should be considered only reasonable, Pentecostals continue, that in an event so momentous—the internal, full, and permanant reception of the Spirit himself—there should be extraordinary external effects attending the Spirit’s advent. At the Fifth Pentecostal World Conference, Gee expressed this conviction as follows:

    A weak human vessel is being filled with a divine fulness. To tell us, as some wish to tell us, that such an experience can be received without any emotional manifestation is to do violence to all sense of reality. With all due respect we refuse to be satisfied that so-called ‘Pentecostal’ experiences without a physical manifestation are valid according to the scriptural pattern or even common logic.40

And what more logical announcement is there, Pentecostals ask, than the announcement first given: speaking in tongues?

That the Spirit employs precisely the tongue to evidence his full coming seems to Pentecostals especially reasonable. For Brandt notes that “the tongue is said to be the most unruly member of the body … (James 3:8). Therefore, to indicate complete domination and control of the spirit of man, we believe the tongue is the most logical member of the body for the Spirit to employ.”41 It is not strange to the Pentecostal that the Spirit releases extraordinary effects with his coming; to the Pentecostal this fact represents the height of good sense. That God’s initial evidence of his Spirit in the lives of Christians is the remarkable expression of speaking in tongues is, for Pentecostals, eminently reasonable.

c. The Argument from the Necessity of Assurance. Finally, the Pentecostal argues not only from Scripture, experience, and reason, but from the most imperious ground of all, necessity. As the Pentecostal understands it there is an absolute necessity for some manifestation to accompany the spiritual baptism if one is ever to be assured of the Spirit’s actual coming. And since no other manifestation is so clearly declared and displayed in the Acts, nor so perfectly bound to the nature of the gift of the Spirit—missionary witness—the evidence of speaking in other tongues takes on an almost compelling character.

First, it is necessary for the gift of the Spirit to be manifested by tongues-speaking if the believer is ever to have an unshakeable assurance that the Spirit is truly in his life. “When I asked Pentecostals what tongues did for them,” reports John L. Sherrill, “the first answer was always, ‘Assure me that I have been baptized in the Holy Ghost,’ ” to which Sherrill remarks sympathetically, “of course it would be a priceless asset in a believer’s life: to know without question that God’s own Spirit was manifested from within one.”42

Accordingly, glossolalia heightens what is of considerable importance to the Pentecostal understanding of the baptism in the Holy Spirit: the tangibility of the experience; one may even say its physicality. “The baptism in the Holy Spirit is identified,” according to the Reglamento local (p. 16), “by the initial physical [física] sign of speaking in tongues.” “ ‘When the Holy Ghost comes in,’ ” the subsequent father of European Pentecostalism was advised, “ ‘you will know it, for He will be in your very flesh’ ” (Barratt, Fire, p. 109). Tongues-speaking, by being at the same time a highly spiritual and a highly physical experience, transforms the coming of the Holy Spirit into a knowable, clear, and datable experience, manifest in time and space.

Therefore a positive polemic takes place in Pentecostalism against what is described as “a vague ‘taking by faith’ ” of one’s baptism in the Holy Spirit.43 Tongues make the baptism in the Holy Spirit a definite experience, removing the vagaries of faith. The Pentecostal believes that now, as in the beginning, “when we ask the Holy Spirit to come, we know that He has come by His speaking through us” (Carter, p. 110). It is quite important to the Pentecostal that he have no doubts about his actually having received his baptism in the Holy Spirit: hence the insufficiencies of the outward evidences of moral life or the inward evidences of spiritual assurance which, it is felt, take time to develop and are, even when developed, largely subjective, ambiguous, and uncertain.

It is the passion unmistakably to know that they have experienced the Holy Spirit—to know even physically—which distinguishes the Pentecostals’ understanding of the evidence of the Spirit.

Finally, by no other means can the observing church be assured of the experience’s authenticity. There must be a sign of some kind to guide the church and preserve her from deception. The scriptural sign is tongues. A baptism in the Holy Spirit without this biblical sign of tongues is, in the Pentecostal movement’s general and majority understanding, an ordinary impossibility. To preserve the church from deception and to provide it with a clear criterion of inward membership, God has provided the church both biblically and experientially with an unequivocal sign. Reed (p. 12) gathers together the several persuasions under this head when he writes, “If there was to be some outward sign or evidence of the bestowment of the Spirit in His fulness, it should be (1) one easily recognized by the person himself, and by those present; (2) one that could be evident any time and always when one was filled with the Spirit; and (3) one that corresponds to the Bible pattern.” For these specifications Pentecostals feel assured that only speaking in other tongues fully qualifies.

d. The Initial Evidence. Pentecostals will always wish to affirm, however, that although they place great stress on the initial glossolalic evidence, nevertheless, in the light of the broad witness of Scripture, there can be no argument for this sign’s being the only evidence of the Spirit’s incoming. It is the only initial evidence of the Spirit’s baptism, but it must be accompanied by the Christian graces to be completed. “The stress,” writes Gee, “must always be upon ‘initial.’ It is not the final evidence of that baptism, and there is no contradiction of Paul’s great saying that divorced from Love the tongues of men are both empty and offensive. But this does not invalidate the use of ‘tongues’ as a sign in their proper place as recorded in the book of Acts.”44 There are many evidences of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostals insist, but there must be but one initial evidence, and it is for this neglected initiatory sign that Pentecostals wish to contend.

e. The Nature of Tongues. There has been no extensive written treatment of the nature of tongues within the Pentecostal movement for the simple reason that the character of tongues is felt to be noncomplex. Speaking in tongues is a Spirit-inspired utterance. After this affirmation the descriptions of the experience separate and vary in detail but may be usually found to unite again, to a greater or lesser degree, around two poles, namely, that the speech is (1) ecstatic and (2) a language. Williams combines both in his remark: “In every case [of a baptism in the Holy Spirit] there is an ecstatic speaking in a language that the person has never learned.”45 One or both of these features will, at times, also be denied by Pentecostals. For example, some Pentecostals would not agree that the tongues are ecstatic and others no longer hold that tongues-speaking reproduces actual language. However, the more extensive opinion of the movement may fairly be represented as affirming both characteristics, even though the ecstasy may at times appear somewhat peculiar to observers and the language usually unknown to the hearers.

f. The Mission of Tongues. With all necessary qualifications, Pentecostals believe, finally, that they must remain true to their raison d’être and namesake—the Pentecostal glossolalic baptism in the Holy Spirit—if they are to be true to Scripture, their movement, their world mission, and not least, their mission to the whole Christian church, particularly to Protestantism towards which they feel, of course, special responsibilities. By ministering this unique doctrinal and experiential trust to other Protestant churches and individuals, Pentecostals believe that they would, in the words of French Pentecostalism (in Eggenberger, p. 280), “be opening to contemporary Protestantism the means of recovering that which it most needs: spiritual reality and conviction.”

On the other hand, Pentecostals believe that whenever their glossolalic distinctive is minimized the result is the imperiling 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.”46 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, and 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.”47 This experience may at least provide a gateway into an understanding of the inner meaning of the Pentecostal movement.

    5.      SUMMARY

Upon the doctrine of the spiritual evidence of tongues—a doctrine which to an outsider might seem to offer mainly embarrassment and little edification—the Pentecostal movement has placed much of its reputation and emphasis. One could imagine that such a doctrine would only force its adherents more and more into an impossible corner and into insignificant, unpopular sectarianism. But quite the opposite seems in fact to be the case. The movement grows rapidly and the doctrine appears to be treasured by the majority of the Pentecostal people.

Pentecostalism justifies its “fundamental verity” with the arguments of Acts, experience, reason, and the necessity of assurance, understands the phenomenon to be ecstatic languages in content, initial in evidence, and with high missionary and even ecumenical usefulness in character. Thus, far from being prepared to abandon the doctrine of the Spirit’s unusual introductory manifestation, Pentecostalism finds exactly here in this unusual experience the answer to the church’s and even the world’s greatest needs. This conviction was given expression in the Statement of the Sixth Pentecostal World Conference in Jerusalem in 1961 where, after reviewing the powerlessness of either the conventional churches or the world’s best wisdom to save men from their contemporary crises, the Pentecostal movement proclaimed in its closing words that “the only way [to save modern man] is a revival of the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit among all believers,” concluding specifically that “a personal experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit with its manifestations, powers, and services, according to the Scriptures, is the great need of our time.”48

28 Of spontaneous manifestations of feeling, Bloch-Hoell remarked, “the holiness movement warmly encouraged the practice of such … and later the Pentecostal movement demanded it, emphasising one kind of motoric movement above all: glossolalia.” Pentecostal Movement, p. 16.

29 Pentecost, No. 45 (Sept. 1958), p. 17. Cf. also Gee, Pentecostal Movement, pp. 7–8; duPlessis, IRM, 47 (April 1958), 193; Pearlman, Doctrines, p. 310; J. E. Stiles, The Gift of the Holy Spirit (Burbank, Calif.: Privately Printed, n.d.), p. 96; Ray H. Hughes, Church of God Distinctives (Cleveland, Tenn.: Pathway, 1968), pp. 32–33. Pentecostals do not normally define the baptism in the Holy Spirit apart from this initial evidence.

30 Pentecostal groups which do not subscribe to this particular article in its standard form: Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance (based in Great Britain), the Schweizerischen (Swiss) Pfingstmission, and some forms of German Pentecostalism, particularly the Christlicher Gemeinschaftsverband Mülheim-Ruhr. See Hollenweger I, 79–97, and particularly 85, 93 for discussion. Significantly, the two Chilean Pentecostal bodies which joined the World Council of Churches in 1961—the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal de Chile and the Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile—differ from majority Pentecostalism in not subscribing to the tenet that speaking in tongues is the only evidence of the baptism in the Spirit. The eleventh article of the declaration of faith of the Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile affirms that “speaking in tongues, having visions, prophecies, or any other manifestation (o cualquier manifestación) conforming to the Word of God, is an evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” Hollenweger II, 986. However, even majority Pentecostalism does not argue that speaking in tongues is the only evidence of the Spirit; it simply insists that it is the only initial evidence of the Spirit’s full coming. See p. 85 below. Yet in Neo-Pentecostalism it can be written, “Scripture does not say that [speaking in tongues] is the only one. But in showing us the pattern, Scripture gives us no consistent suggestion of any other.” Christenson, Speaking in Tongues, p. 54.

31 In Eggenberger, “Geistestaufe,” ThZ, 11 (1955), 276. Even if one may feel that he has received the Holy Spirit in fulness he is not to believe that he has in fact, unless he has this biblical evidence. See, for example, the sixteenth article of faith of the Congregação Cristã no Brasil: “When a believer receives the power of the Holy Spirit he should not say ‘I have been baptized,’ rather he should wait until the Holy Spirit manifests himself in accordance with the Word of God, by speaking in new tongues.” Hollenweger II, 917. Cf. Read et al., Latin American Church Growth, p. 315, where, with the striking exception of Chile, all of Latin American Pentecostalism is seen subscribing to the necessity of the sign of tongues.

32 In Pentecost, No. 45 (Sept. 1958), p. 17. Cf. also Kelsey, Tongue Speaking, pp. 69–70; Kendrick, Promise, pp. 51–53.

33 “The Initial Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” Pentecostal Evangel, 47 (July 12, 1959), 23. In another place Gee writes that “any study on this point must necessarily be confined within these limits, for the New Testament contains no plain, categorical statements anywhere as to what must be regarded as the sign.” Loc. cit., p. 3. See additional qualifications in Williams, Systematic Theology, III, 55 and Pearlman, Doctrines, pp. 312–13.

34 Pentecost, No. 25 (Sept. 1953), p. 17.

35 So Reed, “Pentecostal Truths,” p. 5; Riggs, Spirit Himself, pp. 86–87; McPherson, The Holy Spirit (Los Angeles: Challpin Publishing Co., 1931), p. 168. Conn credits Jesus Christ, the initiator of the new covenant, with having spoken in tongues (“Talitha cumi,” “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani”), Pillars, pp. 45–48. Williams grants the authors of the New Testament the gift because they were Jews writing Greek, Systematic Theology, III, 50–51.

36 The “Fundamental Truths” of the Assembléias de Deus in Hollenweger II, 898. Cf. Vergara, El Protestantismo en Chile, p. 161.

37 Gee, “The Initial Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” Pentecostal Evangel, 47 (July 12, 1959), 3. Statistical suggestions similar to Gee’s are offered by Brumback, What Meaneth This?, pp. 232–33, cf. p. 188.

38 So Frodsham, With Signs Following, p. 242; McPherson, Holy Spirit, p. 167; Horton, Gifts of the Spirit2, p. 147.

39 Pethrus writes that to say one has received the Holy Spirit without having had any particular experience “would be about the same as saying, ‘I am saved, but have never experienced salvation.’ ” Wind2, p. 47.

ca. Circa (about)

40 Pentecostal World Conference Messages, p. 48. Cf. R. L. Brandt, “The Case for Speaking with Other Tongues,” Pentecostal Evangel, 48 (June 5, 1960), 4.

41 Brandt, loc. cit., p. 30. See also Brumback, What Meaneth This?, p. 242; Cantelon, El Bautismo, pp. 16–17; William Caldwell, Pentecostal Baptism (Tulsa, Okla.: Miracle Moments Evangelistic Assoc., 1963), p. 35.

42 They Speak with Other Tongues, p. 79; cf. ibid., pp. 35–36, 115. Cf. also the contribution of James H. Hanson to a valuable symposium on tongues-speaking in Dialog, 2 (Spring 1963), 153.

43 At the 1955 Pentecostal World Conference Gee remarked that tongues “made the Baptism in the Holy Spirit a definite experience. Nothing was left to a vague ‘taking by faith’ with a hoped for change in character and power.” Pentecost, No. 34 (Dec. 1955), p. 10. See also p. 109 below.

44 Pentecost, No. 35 (March 1956), p. 17. Cf. also Brumback who argues in almost exactly the same manner, What Meaneth This?, p. 187. The fruit of the Spirit takes too long to grow to be a useful initial evidence. Gee, Pentecost, p. 27.

45 Systematic Theology, III, 55. The books by Brumback and Christenson are the main Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal developments respectively. For non-Pentecostal studies of tongues-speaking see, in addition to the standard monographs by Mosiman, Rust, Léonard, and Cutten, the recent periodical literature, esp. James N. Lapsley and John H. Simpson, “Speaking in Tongues,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 58 (Feb. 1965), 3–18 and the literature there; also the articles in the bibliography, below, under George J. Jennings, E. Mansell Pattison, and William J. Samarin.

46 Pentecost, No. 45 (Sept. 1958), p. 17. DuPlessis, reporting to Pentecostals on his meeting with the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order at St. Andrews, remarked: “As usual there came the question: ‘Do your people still teach that tongues is essential to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?’ And as usual I replied, ‘No, unfortunately not, and where this standard is dropped, there the fervency and power of the Revival tends to diminish greatly. It seems 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.’ ” Pentecost, p. 19. D. W. Kerr makes the same point in “The Bible Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” The Phenomena of Pentecost (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel Publishing House, 1931), p. 51.

47 Pentecost, No. 17 (Sept. 1951), p. 17. It should be emphasized in this connection that Pentecostalism does not wish to understand speaking in tongues as merely a goal, but as “a beginning of a new kind of Christian living.” Nichol, Pentecostalism, p. 15. Cf. Hughes, What Is Pentecost?, p. 19.

48 In Hutten, MD, 24 (Nov. 1, 1961), 247.

Bruner, F. D. (1997). A Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness (pp. 76–87). Wipf and Stock Publishers.