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Tongues: To Preach the Gospel, July 15
So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be
understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak
into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world,
and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the
meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian,
and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.
1 Corinthians
14:9-11
.
Ministers who labor in word and doctrine should be thorough workmen,
and should present the truth in its purity, yet with simplicity. They should feed
the flock with clean provender, thoroughly winnowed. There are wandering
stars professing to be ministers sent of God who are preaching the Sabbath
from place to place, but who have truth mixed up with error and are throwing
out their mass of discordant views to the people. Satan has pushed them in to
disgust intelligent and sensible unbelievers.
Some of these have much to say upon the gifts and are often especially
exercised. They give themselves up to wild, excitable feelings and make
unintelligible sounds which they call the gift of tongues, and a certain class
seem to be charmed with these strange manifestations. A strange spirit rules
with this class, which would bear down and run over anyone who would
reprove them. God’s Spirit is not in the work and does not attend such
workmen. They have another spirit. Still, such preachers have success among
a certain class. But this will greatly increase the labor of those servants whom
God shall send, who are qualified to present before the people the Sabbath and
the gifts in their proper light, and whose influence and example are worthy of
imitation.
The truth should be presented in a manner which will make it attractive to
the intelligent mind. We are not understood as a people, but are looked upon as
poor, weak-minded, low, and degraded. Then how important for all who teach,
and all who believe the truth, to be so affected by its sanctifying influence
that their consistent, elevated lives shall show unbelievers that they have been
deceived in this people. How important that the cause of truth be stripped of
everything like a false and fanatical excitement, that the truth may stand upon
its own merits, revealing its native purity and exalted character.—
Testimonies
for the Church 1:414, 415
.
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