AN APPEAL TO PENTECOSTALISTS

 

By A. G. TILNEY, B.A.

 

First of all let me say that we do not depreciate you dear good People.  You are at times described as the ‘cream of Christians,’ and we are prepared to agree, though preferring, instead, the Scriptural epithet of ‘very elect’ (Matt. 24: 24), whom Satan is after deceiving.  Poor dull Cbristians who are already listless, if not lifeless, the devil can afford to neglect.  But as an ‘angel of light’ he aims at the orthodox, keen and devoted; and you, as we, need the whole armour of God, with the piercing, discerning Sword.  What we emphasise is that in this matter of Tongues we are not assured and satisfied that you are not deceived, and assured that you are not we can never really be so long as the Divinely appointed tests are not applied and passed.

 

As to your Tongues, there seems to he a contradiction; for while on the one hand they are emphasised and insisted upon as the test and touchstone of our having received the Holy Spirit, they are, on the other hand, pushed or put into the background as something less secret and esoteric than questionable.  Apostolic speaking in Tongues was the means of converting multitudes of unsaved foreigners (for which outsiders Tongues were intended, 1 Cor. 14: 22), and, negatively, the 3,000 converts were not made to talk in Tongues; but these tests you Pentecostalists have simply inverted.  For Tongues are useless to your missionaries, yet you encourage them in your proselytes.  Tongues (though not, if true, to be forbidden) are the least and lowest of the miraculous Gifts - 1/20 of 1% of words with the understanding, says the inspired Apostle; and, especially if no interpreter be present, the easiest to counterfeit and be deceived by

 

Satan sends out “ministers of righteousness” - not unrighteousness, but righteousness, we are told.  They can talk about God, quote Scripture, recommend the Lord’s servants and the way of salvation - as thev must be able to, if they are to deceive - take in and be taken in by the very elect, the cream of Christians.  Blasphemy would not do, obscenity still less.  They must be orthodox, earnest, zealous, able to cast out demons, to heal, to inspire, to prophesy in Christ’s name, to do many wonderful works.  They disarm and attract rather than alarm and repel.  Who then can tell them, detect them, expose them?  How unmask those who wear no mask?  How analyse their poisoned sweets, how fight their dope?  How probe the unorthodoxy of the apparently quite orthodox?  It just cannot be done, the disguise is too complete; so the unsuspecting are taken unawares, while the convinced and satisfied - the overcome - will heed no warning.

 

The God who has given us the tests and commanded their application will surely be more affronted if we refuse than if we use them.  It is neither presumption nor blasphemy to use God’s own recommended safeguard, to make honest and reverent inquiry.  Rank disobedience and wilful pride it is to refuse to test as God ordains.  Otherwise you dear good people have an unprotected and vulnerable heel of Achilles.  For you have steadily and studiedly failed and refused in this one vital thing.  You have rejected a counsel of God against yourselves. This test alone is the key, proof and guarantee.

 

Prayer to-day is quite inadequate, we have no oracle to give reply; hence asking God is not His present way; nor is inventing our own questions and testings.  By John’s day many deceivers and false prophets had gone Out into the world, and the result was uncertainty, confusion with – to-day - a clear and clamant call for these critical tests (put not to the medium but to the speaking spirit):- “Is Jesus Christ come (and coming) in the flesh Silence, here, is denial.  And on these points all untested spirits are allowed to be silent and therefore denying.  “Every spirit that confesseth NOT that Jesus Christ is come (1 John 4: 3) - and coming (2 John 7) - in the flesh is NOT OF GOD Believe not every spirit.  Have you tested “your spirit,” my brother, my sister? Have you given it (or him) the chance of the positive confirmatory reply? (1 John 4: 2).  God gladly responds to His own gracious passwords, His friendly “shibboleths”; for these are the incarnation and bodily resurrection and return of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, our Saviour: passwords hateful however, and impossible, to the enemy.  You believe these, of course ; but does “your spirit”?

 

Even in 1 Cor. 12: 1-4 (where it concerns less “spiritual gifts” than ‘inspired’ people) there are tests not of the man, but of the spirit speaking through him under inspiration from above or from below.  Of course, a good Christian (like yourself) would call Jesus Lord, but, a deceitful spirit speaking through him (and only a deceiving spirit could get into him, with its forged papers and false passports, so to speak), a deceiving spirit would refuse - and make his medium refuse - to reply when so addressed, refusing to call Jesus Lord, freezing into sullen silence.

 

Let “your spirit” confess Jesus as God manifest in the flesh in His own appointed way, and I am for you, and with you.  Will you?  Dare you?  Dare you not?  “TRY THE SPIRITS, WHETHER THEY ARE OF GOD

 

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