Discussing the spiritual.gifts as found
in 1 Corinthians, John Chrysostom (A.D. 345-407) begins his "Homily
XXIX" (on 1 Corinthians 12:1, 2) thus: "This whole place is very
obscure [referring to 1 Cor. 12:1, 2], but the obscurity is produced by
our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such
as then used to occur but now no longer take place." 4
Was this perhaps the crucial point where
glossolalia had done its work and was no longer given? There is no reason
to doubt the validity of Chrysostom’s statement, especially since
Augustine (A.D. 354-430) reaches practically the same conclusion. In his
"Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of St. John," Homily
VI, section 10, he writes: "In the earliest time,’the Holy Ghost
fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues,’ which they
had not learned, ‘as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ These were signs
adapted to the times. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy
Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through
all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening,
and it passed away." 5
Some theologians have tried to build a
case for a continuation of the supernatural languages on the basis of an
isolated questionable example (Montanus), but after having been manifested
in strength in the apostolic age and possibly up into the third century,
it faded from the scene, and no historian since that time has ever
uncovered concrete evidence to the contrary. If it had remained within the
church, the writings of other church fathers of those early centuries
surely would have referred to this "gift of the spirit" in
glowing terms, as it was a major manifestation of God-power. The gift was
so controversial and so clearly supernatural from its inception that a
continuation of it could hardly have gone unnoticed.
True glossolalia disappeared because of
its decreasing need-but what about the other "gift of tongues,"
the gibberish, the senseless syllables that resembled the devil worship of
the pagans?
Occult practitioners maintain that it has
never disappeared, but has remained active within the coves of the
witches, the magicians’ caves, and the seance rooms of the mediums.
Theirs is a satanic counterfeit, for God would never manifest Himself in
this manner within their circles. Even then their gift lay semidormant
until a full thousand years after Christ, when a woman, Hildegard, Prophet
of the Rhine, (A.D. 1098-1179) forced it back into the limelight.
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