5. Pentecost Tongues and Missions.
Languages play a vital part in missions since they are the most important method of human communication and because culture and language are inextricably linked.
Language and ethnicity too are closely related because language is a key factor in identifying ethnic groups or ‘nations’
Babel’s scattering resulted in the multiplication of languages from 1 to 7,164 today!
However, Pentecost was the reversal of Babel’s confusion.
Pentecost attracted people “out of every nation under heaven. ‘who were “confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. ‘Acts 2:5,6.
Although these were the Jewish diaspora scattered among 16 nations in the Roman empire, it revealed Pentecost’s missional role in Discipling all the Nations.
a. Pentecostal Missions.
Early Pentecostals believed that the ‘gift of tongues’ was for Missionary proclamation.
Therefore, they traveled to places such as Japan, China, and India and communicated in tongues, believing that the heathen would understand as it happened on the day of Pentecost!
Critics of Pentecost investigated eighteen Pentecostal missionaries overseas and noted that “Tongue-speaking evangelism wasn’t working.” Some denominations argue against Pentecostals’ use of tongues devotionally saying:
“Speaking in tongues, as described in the Bible, involved the ability to speak in different languages to communicate the Gospel across language barriers… and that they manifest in different ways, including missionaries preaching in foreign languages.” (Howard Culbertson: Tongues)
The critics seem to have greater faith in the Pentecostal mission than tongue-speaking Pentecostals!
b. Tongues: Both Devotional and Missional!
Today, we honor the above radical Pentecostal missionaries who boldly demonstrated the pioneer spirit of Pentecost! It’s better to celebrate such heroes who ventured out rather than counting millions of Pentecostals staying home and speaking tongues inside their Churches, not even going across the street to share the Gospel.
These ‘tongue-speaking missionaries’ blazed a trail for thousands of others, who, together with ‘language learning skills’, took the Pentecostal message to nations. Today, there are over 500 million Pentecostal/Charismatics in every nation on earth!
c. Awakening the Pentecost Spirit of Missions:
“The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.”
Henry Martyn.
These words were spoken nearly 100 years before modern Pentecost by Henry Martyn, who was not a Pentecostal! Yet, he focused on taking the ‘message’ to people of different ‘tongues.’
He labored among Muslims translating the New Testament into Urdu, Persian, and Arabic languages and died in 1812 in a remote part of Turkey at the age of thirty-one!
Today, you may be reading the Bible in your own language because of such Missionaries!
Cameron Townsend pioneered Wycliffe Bible Translation mission to give the Bible to people in their own language and noted:
“The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue!”
It is estimated that 2 billion people can’t read scripture in their own language as 25% of the world’s people are left out because of language-related barriers.
This is why this Pentecost Sunday while we Pentecostals celebrate speak in tongues, must prioritize to send someone to give the ‘Unreached‘ the Gospel message in their mother tongue!
6. The Holy Spirit is a Cross-Cultural Spirit.
Jesus promised the Spirit’s empowerment to move the Church beyond geographic boundaries which requireed cross-cultural engagement:
‘… in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” ‘
The Jerusalem Church was inward-focused on revival, but persecution forced Philip to cross to Samaria. While Samaritans experienced Pentecostal power through Peter and John, the Spirit further moved Philip to minister cross-culturally to the Ethiopian Eunuch.
Apostle Peter reluctantly crossed the cultural boundary to gentile Cornelius because the Holy Spirit wanted to fall on them “as at the beginning” in Pentecost.
Missionary Paul encouraged Ephesian disciples who experienced a ‘tongue-speaking Pentecost’ to move beyond their boundaries, so that within 2 years, “all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.” Acts 19:6,10.
Tongues must empower us to cross cultures and speak the message more effectively!
Finally, Apostle John saw the finality of Pentecost missions: the gathering of nations in an innumerable multitude standing before the Throne of God saying:
“With your blood, you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. ‘ Revelation 5:9
This Pentecost Sunday is the Global Day of Prayer for the Unreached!
Praying for the ‘Third of Us’ in the World who are Unreached.
As the Christians globally focus on this Pentecost Sunday as the ‘Global Day of Prayer for the Unreached,” let us join and pray that many Pentecostals will cross the linguistic and cultural barriers to the Unreached People Groups awaiting the message of the Lamb. For, we can not celebrate ‘tongues’ when 2.5 billion have not heard the Message in their ‘mother tongue!”
Access more resources from ‘Third of US’
Join us Next week to Pray for the Unreached on Pentecost Sunday.
Sources:
Wycliffe.org
SIL International.
Cambridge University Press.
Non Pentecostal view on speaking in Tongues: Howard Culbertson
The Third of Us.