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Conclusion

Nothing Justifies Us to Divide the Church of the Lord.

The Pentecostal insistence that baptism in the Holy Spirit must always occur "with evidence of speaking in other tongues", has caused awful division in the Church. By these words, many in Pentacostal and related circles, have come to believe in their own superiority, and regularly teach of their own superiority.

Is speaking in unknown tongues, invariably the evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit? It is not always. This is shown from the Scriptures in detail on this page. The short of it is: in most of the instances where we have it written in Scripture that persons were baptized in the Holy Spirit, we have not the slightest discussion of speaking in unknown tongues: and in some of these instances, we have it very explicit that the evidence was not speaking in unknown tongues.

One of the events oft cited as justification for these divisions, is recorded in the tenth chapter of the Book of Acts. The Lord Personally caused certain people to gather, and then He sent the Holy Spirit in Person, and there was speaking in tongues. But it is not written, that these were unknown tongues. The very thought that speaking in unknown tongues might be an event God would choose to cause, does not occur in Scripture for a very large number of calendar years after this event.

It is written that God has sometimes caused the speaking in unusual, unexpected, and even unknown tongues, as the evidence of His presence. And there can be no justification for us to proclaim a limitation upon what God will choose to do. But this is a far cry from the self-exaltation of any of us, all of us atoms on dots of pinky toenails of the Body of Christ, over any other. The Body consists altogether of brothers and sisters who know "only in part". We all know only in part; and in many different parts, indeed, to be made One by Him and in Him alone.

Ian Johnson & Jonathan Brickman
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