Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

The Prophetic Confusion at Corinth

spoke in tongues. Some of those speaking in tongues, the missionaries reported, were actually speaking pure, proper English, in which they had no training! A similar story is told of Carlton Spencer, president of Elim Bible School in New York State, visiting East Africa in the early 1950s. "What a glo rious time it was," writes biographer Marion Meloan, "a veritable tidal wave of the Spirit. Carlton was privileged to behold the unusual sight of an African woman lost in worship and speaking in a language unknown to her-English! She sat with her babe at her breast, oblivious to all about her, even the babe's sucking and then slumber, as she worshiped on and on in English. Similar Baptisms swept through the crowds gathered, beyond numbering." 11 Dennis J. Bennett gives several illustrations. Here is one of them: I have encountered many examples of someone speaking in known lan guages, but unknown to himself. At our Thursday communion service not long ago, an elderly lady presented herself at the altar rail for healing prayer. I had never seen her before and I have not seen her since. I didn't know her needs. Laying my hands on her head, I said the liturgical prayers for heal ing, and then added some of my own. Then realizing that although I did not know her needs the Holy Spirit did, I prayed quietly in words the Holy Spirit gave me to utter. I did not recognize the language that came to me, and I'm sure the woman did not either. Soon, feeling that my prayer had been completed, I moved along to pray for others. The next day a friend called: "Did you realize that Gloria S. was kneeling next to that woman yesterday, and she says you prayed in Japanese?" Gloria S. is an old acquaintance, the daughter of a well-known family in the diocese who were occasional attendants at St. Luke's. She and her husband had just returned from four years in Japan, where he had been with the State Department. I called Gloria. "Oh, yes," she said. "You prayed in Japanese." She proceeded to tell me some of the phrases of the prayer in Japanese and then in English. She had not heard the whole prayer but had picked up phrases. "Your conclusion was, 'Because you have asked this thing,"' she said, giving it to me in Japanese and English. "By the way, your accent is perfect!" 12 After I had demonstrated speaking in tongues in an Oregon church (to show the people the ease of speaking in a devotional prayer language), I was surprised to learn from a couple who had served in China as mis sionaries that I had spoken in Mandarin Chinese. David Sell, one of our elders who now pastors in Pleasanton, California, prayed once in Span ish at a prayer meeting in our San Jose church, and once later in Por tuguese. David did not speak either language, but some in the congrega tion did and they confirmed hearing these languages. 13 215 ■