In connection with this movement much is made of the instructions in Luke 24:4949And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (Luke 24:49)—"Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but TARRY ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." Now if the claims of these people are true, and the Holy Spirit indwells them in such a special way as they profess, are we not right in expecting that the Holy Spirit would unfold to them in a very deep way the Scriptures, that they would be preserved from ignorance and the misconstruing of the Word of God?
Yet we shall find these "tarrying" or "waiting" meetings are based upon a misconstruction of Scripture. They are not justified by the Word of God. They are accompanied by characteristics that are far removed from the ways of the Spirit of God.
A very slight examination of the text will convince the reader that Luke 24:4949And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. (Luke 24:49) records a special instruction to the disciples to wait for the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They were to wait at Jerusalem and nowhere else. Their "tarrying" lasted ten days and no longer. It lasted till the descent of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled to them, and only till then. There are no instructions, outside this specific case, to believers to wait or tarry for the Holy Spirit. To do so today is really the denial that He has come as promised on the day of Pentecost.
Moreover believers were not bidden to go to the lengths the Pentecostalists go to today, as if it were a hard thing to wrest this favor from the Lord.
When we turn to Ephesians 1:1313In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, (Ephesians 1:13), we read:- "In whom [Christ] ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." From this passage we clearly gather that when a sinner is brought by the Spirit of God to repentance, and receives the gospel of his salvation, God seals His own work in the soul by giving unasked the Holy Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost when the convicted hearers asked the Apostle Peter what they were to do, he replied, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost " (Acts 2:3838Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:38)). There is here no word as to beseeching, agonizing, supplicating, but "ye shall receive the Holy Ghost." No word of any "tarrying" meeting.
The same thing was true when Cornelius and his friends were converted. We read:- " While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word " (Acts 10:4444While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. (Acts 10:44)). They had not time even to ask for the Spirit; if, indeed, up to then they had ever heard of the Holy Spirit. On the reception of the Gospel God graciously sealed His own work in their souls by bestowing on them the gift of the Spirit without their asking. There is no word of their having "tarrying" meetings.
In the third case we are distinctly told that the men, though baptized with the baptism of John, had not so much as heard of the Holy Spirit, but having believed the Gospel they received the Spirit through the laying on of the hands of the Apostle. Again there was no "tarrying" meeting.
Here is an account of a "tarrying" meeting written by a missionary, who attended two Conference meetings of the Pentecostal Movement in London. Again we ask, Is this like the Spirit of God? "I returned to the hall before the commencement of the evening meeting, and soon noticed a stream of men and women passing through the hall on their way to one of the many basement rooms, for prayer I supposed. Presently, from the direction in which they had gone, there arose a bewildering babel of tumult. Wild gusts of chorus singing, broken by discordant yells and screaming ejaculations, died down into a shouting recitative. This went on for some time, and it became evident to my own mind that if I wished to touch the pulse and sound the heart, so to speak, of the evening meeting, I must get down to its prayer gathering, so I went down. The room was packed, with a perspiring, panting, breathless crowd of people, the majority of whom were probably children of God. Men and women, young and old, crouched, sat, knelt, lay and stood upon the ground, crushed closely together. All were shouting and screaming snatches of choruses, unintelligible ejaculations, and the deafening hallelujahs, together with the heat, rendered the place insupportable. Some were crouching round a central table, beating their hands upon it, and one man snapping his fingers in the air, and uttering howls, danced in the confined space. I noticed with grief that two missionaries were present; they sat together with the rest, and were entirely abandoned to this wild orgy of self indulgence. Not a snatch of intelligent prayer did I hear." We are ashamed to have to transcribe an account of such abominations practiced in the name of the Lord.
Christians are exhorted to "let themselves go," "not to resist the Spirit," "to let their minds become a blank." This is dangerous advice indeed, laying open the bodies of those who follow it to demoniac influence. Similar advice is given in Spiritist circles.
Keith L. Brooks of Los Angeles, U.S.A., writes:- " I hear of others who have tarried for a repetition of Pentecostal Tongues night after night, letting the mind go blank as they were directed, and agonizing in prayer. Then they have gone into a trance, felt delightful sensations in the body, and mumbled strange things. But some of them have found themselves thereafter frequently subject to these spells. The least excitement brings them on and each time they are left in a weaker physical state. One young man of my acquaintance became insane as the result of these experiences." We could produce similar testimony from more than one pen, if space permitted.
We would ask if this is anything like the quiet, sober account of the Scriptures? Does it bear the marks of the Spirit of God?
Frank Varley, writing in the Bible League Quarterly, says, " From a friend in India, who knew a great deal here [Australia], but learned much more there, I heard of grave moral disorders resultant from associations commenced in these ' tarrying ' meetings!" The writer was told the same thing in Sweden by a gifted and godly servant of Christ, details not fit for publication.
The writer remembers meeting a German in Norway, who was in the thick of the Tongues Movement. He said to him, "You speak English with a pronounced foreign accent. I am really anxious to test the claim you put forward that you speak with tongues. If you will speak to me in English without a trace of accent I will believe what you claim is true."
He could only look at me in a sheepish fashion. If he had been asked for some gibberish that could not be checked he might have shown off. The man had a bad reputation morally as well, and the movement was under suspicion in that locality, and the writer was told it was so in other places in Sweden.
There is one test as to speaking with tongues. Where are the Pentecostal missionaries, who, going to a foreign land and not knowing the language, are able at once to preach the gospel in that language? There would be some sense in that, if it occurred. If the speaker is English, and all understand that language, what is the use of speaking in an unknown tongue? But if the Pentecostal evangelist finds himself in the midst of heathen, who do not understand his language, how beautiful it would be, if he could preach the gospel in their own tongue to them. How is it with all their claims to a Pentecost that this does not happen? It happened on the great Day of Pentecost.
From The Elim Evangel we extract the following from a missionary's printed letter:- " Then I thought how I could just manage to express simple things to the natives in their own lingo, whereas then I could only badly pronounce Incivadi ' (i.e., book, letter). Don't think from the above that I will soon be able to preach—it will be many months yet. I think the language is easy in many senses—but the pronouns are a nightmare. Hundreds of them!" It is extraordinary to read this in the magazine that stands for speaking with tongues.
The Rev. A. A. Boddy claimed that his two young children spoke fluently in Chinese. How is it that we do not hear of such going out to evangelize Chinese, where-ever found, and preaching the gospel at once to them? The writer remembers a young man in Norway, who professed to speak with tongues, and yet told him that he was learning the English language, and finding it very difficult. The practices connected with "tongues" have undoubtedly brought grave discredit on the movement, and that side of it is being more carefully handled.