Tongue Tied, Part 1
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
The following is an excerpt from the preface of the
Chinese edition of Charismatic
Chaos. It explains the origins and early history of the
charismatic movement. With
the Strange Fire conference rapidly approaching, we
believe it is appropriate to share
this material with you. Part one is excerpted below;
check back tomorrow for part
two. —GTY Staff
by John MacArthur
The charismatic movement began at the start of the
twentieth century under the
tutelage of Charles Fox Parham. He was an eccentric
preacher of dubious moral
character who was infatuated with fringe ideas,
mysterious phenomena, and an
aberrant theology known as Holiness doctrine. The story
of Parham’s quest for
the gift of tongues is briefly told in chapter 1, but
some background on Parham
and the events that gave birth to the charismatic
movement might be helpful as
a way of introducing this new edition of Charismatic
Chaos to Chinese readers.
In 1900, Mr. Parham founded Bethel Bible College in
Topeka, Kansas, specifically
to train Holiness missionaries. He believed if his
students could recover the
Pentecostal gift of tongues, they would be able to take
the gospel to all nations
without any need to learn languages. He further became
convinced that the gift
of tongues was the only true sign of Holy Spirit baptism.
Soon his fascination with
speaking in tongues became an obsession. As the year 1900
drew to a close,
Parham urged his students to spend several days in
fasting and prayer, seeking
the restoration of that apostolic gift.
On New Year’s Day, January 1, 1901, one of Parham’s
students, Agnes Ozman,
began uttering random syllables. Those who heard her
concluded she was
speaking Chinese (though none of them knew any Chinese
dialect). For the rest
of the day, she seemed unable to speak in English, and
she wrote with a kind of
stylized scribbling that Parham and his disciples judged
to be Chinese. The
students were convinced their prayers had been answered,
and that what they
were witnessing was the very same miraculous phenomenon
described in Acts 2.
Within days, however, a sample of Miss Ozman’s writing
was published in a
newspaper. It provides objective proof that Parham's
claims were totally false.
It is a scrap of paper covered with crude,
indecipherable, artificial hieroglyphs
that clearly have nothing in common with Chinese
characters. In fact, like the
random syllables she spoke, Miss Ozman’s writing has none
of the characteristics
of any language at all.
Parham nevertheless insisted that Miss Ozman had spoken
and written Chinese.
In fact, Parham himself and at least thirty other
students now claimed that they
too had received the gift of tongues. In the face of
careful scrutiny and hard
questions, Parham defiantly enlarged his original
fiction:
He announced that the students had spoken many languages.
He himself had
received the capability of preaching in German and
Swedish, Agnes Ozman in
“Chinese,” and others in a variety of languages including
Japanese, Hungarian,
Syrian, Hindi, and Spanish. Parham noted that “cloven
tongues of fire” appeared
over the heads of speakers. Sometimes interpretations
followed such as “God is
love,” “Jesus is mighty to save,” and “Jesus is ready to
hear.” [1][Gary B. McGee,
“The Revivial Legacy of Charles F. Parham,” Enrichment
Journal (Summer 1999)]
Parham zealously advertised the phenomenon, insisting it
was a momentous
breakthrough in missionary strategy. At least six months
after numerous
language experts had stated that Agnes Ozman’s scribbles
bore no likeness
whatsoever to Chinese writing, Parham was still feeding
newspaper reporters
his own highly embellished version of events. A typical
report from that time
cited his very words:
"We are expecting thousands of ministers, evangelists and
other people from
all parts of the United States who desire to become
missionaries to attend.
There is no doubt that at this time they will have
conferred on them the “gift
of tongues,” if they are worthy and seek it in faith,
believing they will thus be
made able to talk to the people whom they choose to work
among in their
own language, which will, of course, be an inestimable
advantage.
The students of Bethel College do not need to study in
the old way to learn
the languages. They have them conferred on them
miraculously. Different
ones have already been able to converse with Spaniards,
Italians, Bohemians,
Hungarians, Germans, and French in their own language. I have
no doubt
various dialects of the people of India and even the
language of the savages
of Africa will be
received during our meeting in the same way. I expect this
gathering to be the greatest since the days of Pentecost." [2](“New
Kind of
Missionaries: Envoys to the Heathen Should Have Gift of
Tongues,”
Hawaiian Gazette, May 31, 1901, 10)
Parham was lying, of course. But his students naively
accepted his assurance
that the sounds they were uttering were legitimate
foreign languages. Their
teacher had admonished them not to entertain any doubts
or put their “gift”
to the test. Therefore over the next decade, several
teams of missionaries
under Parham’s influence went overseas expecting to be
able to preach
and converse in languages they had never studied.
The failure of the Pentecostal missionary strategy was
immediate and
spectacular. An article published in 1909 described the
fiasco in these words:
"Missionary S. C. Todd, of the Bible Missionary Society,
has made
investigations personally in three mission fields and
among four groups of
well-meaning but deluded people who have gone from this
country to Japan,
to China, and to India expecting to preach to the natives
of those countries in
their own tongue; but in no single instance have been
able to do so. They
have needed an interpreter in even the commonest affairs
of life.
"Some of them are in absolute destitution and are
dependent on their Christian
brethren there for the necessaries of life and are as
helpless as babes. In
some cases they are in danger of losing all faith in the
supernatural in religion
and drifting into infidelity and sin." [3][A. E.
Seddon, “Edward Irving and
Unknown Tongues,” The Homiletic Review (New York; Funk
and Wagnalls,
1909), 109]
Failure and scandal seemed to sully everything Parham
touched. Less than
a year after its founding, Bethel Bible College in Topeka
closed permanently.
Five years later, newspapers across the country reported
that some of Parham’s
followers in Illinois had beaten an invalid woman to
death in an effort to drive
the demon of rheumatism from her body. Before the shock
of that story
subsided, Parham was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and
charged with
sodomy. He wrote a confession in order to obtain his
release but later
recanted his own admission of guilt.
He had discredited himself in every conceivable sense.
His reputation never
fully recovered from the scandals.
But Parham was relentless, and he always seemed to be
able to attract
willing disciples. When he died in 1929, more than 2,500
followers attended
his funeral, even though it was held in a remote Kansas
town during a fierce
blizzard.
(Please return for part two tomorrow.)
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