They Bought
Tickets to China

What is this page about?

Arguments about speaking in tongues usually go nowhere. One person says the gift is real and still happens. Another says it ended with the apostles. Both use Bible verses. Nobody standing outside can check what either one believes. So the argument ends where it began.

This page is about seven years when things were different. In those years, a person passing by could test the claim in fifteen seconds. And someone did.

The short answer

1. The first Pentecostals believed that tongues were real foreign languages. They did not mean a language of heaven. They meant Chinese, Bengali, Zulu and the languages of West Africa. God gave them, so that a missionary did not have to study a language for years. They said this in newspapers in 1901 and in their own church paper in 1906.
2. They acted on it. Their paper printed a list of the languages. Within three months, groups left Los Angeles for Liberia, Angola, India and China.
3. It did not work, and they said so themselves. In 1908 one of these men wrote home from Hong Kong. He had not met one person who could preach in a language that God had given. He was preaching with the help of an interpreter, like every other missionary.
4. Several of them died. Two groups went to Liberia in West Africa. Within weeks, members died of fever. They had gone without the usual preparation. People had told them it was not needed any more.
5. Ten years later the movement’s own paper took the belief back. In June 1916 it printed: “We see that the belief that the gift was for the preaching of the Gospel to foreigner, is unfounded.” “Unfounded” means it has no good reason.
6. A new teaching took its place. Six weeks before, the same paper had said that tongues is “an emotional or heavenly language, in which the speaker speaks only to God”.
7. Almost everybody means this new teaching when they speak of tongues today. Notice what changed. Any person who spoke the language could test the old belief. Nobody at all can test the new one.

Why people could check the first claim

Read Acts 2 carefully. The followers of Jesus never say which language they are speaking. The crowd says it.

How do we hear, everyone in our own native language?

Acts 2:8 · World English Bible

In simple words: How is it that each of us hears them in the language of his own country?

The writer, Luke, lists fifteen different peoples in the crowd. They all say: “we hear them speaking in our languages the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11). Luke even tells us that some people thought the followers were drunk.

This is strong evidence. The people who say the miracle is real are people from other countries. They are the hardest people to fool. If the followers had spoken nonsense, fifteen nations were there to say so.

Now look at the other main passage. It is about a church meeting.

For he who speaks in another language speaks not to men, but to God; for no one understands

1 Corinthians 14:2 · World English Bible

In simple words: A person who speaks in another language is speaking to God and not to people. Nobody understands him.

Nobody understands him. That is a very different situation. Paul says that someone in the same church should explain the words. That is a much weaker test than a stranger from another country who walks in from the street.

What they printed

In January 1901, people first spoke in tongues at a small Bible school in Topeka, Kansas. Six days later the local newspaper printed the claim:

The Lord will give us the power of speech to talk to the people of the various nations without having to study them in schools.

Topeka State Journal, 7 January 1901

In simple words: The Lord will give us the power to talk to people of other nations. We will not have to learn their languages in schools.

Five years later there was a great revival in Azusa Street, Los Angeles. The mission there began to print its own paper. The first paper said the same thing:

The gift of languages is given with the commission, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.’

The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, September 1906

In simple words: The gift of languages comes together with the command of Jesus: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every person.”

The same paper listed the languages that people had received: Chinese, Japanese, Zulu, Bengali, the languages of India and Africa, and more.

Enemies did not say this about them. They printed it about themselves, when they were most sure.

What happened when they arrived

A pastor named Alfred Garr left Los Angeles for India at the end of 1906 with his wife Lillian. He believed that God had given him the Bengali language. Then he arrived in the city of Calcutta. He wrote:

After reaching Calcutta I noticed another change but could not understand the words.

Alfred Garr, in the Pentecostal paper Confidence, May 1908

In simple words: After I came to Calcutta, I noticed that my speaking changed again. But I could not understand the words.

Later he wrote from Hong Kong. He told what had happened to everyone, not only to himself:

So far I have not seen any one who is able to preach to the natives in their own tongues with the languages given with the Holy Ghost. Here in Hong Kong, we preached the word to the Chinese through an interpreter.

Alfred Garr, Confidence, May 1908

In simple words: Until now I have not seen anyone who can preach to the local people in their own language, with a language given by the Holy Spirit. Here in Hong Kong we preached to the Chinese with the help of an interpreter.

Not one person, in two countries, two years after the list of languages was printed. And the 1901 claim had said that interpreters would not be needed any more.

Garr wrote one more sentence. It is the most important sentence in this story.

Whether or not I was speaking an Indian language in Los Angelos does not shake my faith or even cause me anxiety. I know that God was talking through me.

Alfred Garr, Confidence, May 1908

In simple words: Maybe I was speaking an Indian language in Los Angeles, and maybe I was not. This does not shake my faith or even worry me. I know that God was talking through me.

Read it two times. In 1901 the claim was: “You will be able to talk to people in their own language.” In 1908 it is: “It does not matter if it was a language.” These are different claims. Only the first one can be tested. The part that could be tested was taken away, and the belief stayed.

Who said it?

Here are four sentences from those years. Who wrote each one, a friend of the movement or an enemy?

1. “I have not seen any one who is able to preach to the natives in their own tongues.” A friend. A Pentecostal missionary wrote it in a Pentecostal paper.
2. “The belief that the gift was for the preaching of the Gospel to foreigner, is unfounded.” A friend. The movement’s own paper printed it ten years later.
3. Tongues is “an emotional or heavenly language, in which the speaker speaks only to God”. A friend. The same paper printed it.
4. “Chattering, jabbering and sputtering, speaking in no language at all.” Not a friend. A man who visited the Azusa Street mission in 1906 described it in this unkind way.

Most readers think that an enemy wrote the first two. That is the lesson. This story does not depend on the movement’s enemies. The movement wrote almost every hard sentence about itself.

Sentence 4 is unfair. But it shows one thing. In 1906 friends and enemies agreed how to test the claim: ask a person who speaks the language. Nobody thought that was a foolish thing to do.

The part that really matters

You could read this as a story about people who were wrong, and stop there. But that is not the interesting part. Movements are often wrong, and they correct themselves. It is a good thing to correct yourself in your own newspaper.

The interesting part is the direction of the change.

This does not prove that the modern belief is false. A belief can be true even if nobody can test it. But something was given up: the one part of the first claim that let anyone find out.

Notice one more thing. In 120 years the change has only gone one way. No Pentecostal church has moved a teaching back from a form that cannot be tested to a form that can. When every change goes in the same direction, the changes are not only following the facts.

The two best answers

Two answers to this page are good. The full page agrees with both.

“Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 never described the same thing.” This is probably right. The Bible nowhere promises a language to every missionary who asks. So the failure in 1907 tells us nothing about tongues in a church meeting. But this page is not about the Bible passage. It is about a movement that made a clear claim. People risked their lives on it. It got a clear answer. Then the movement moved to a claim that cannot get an answer.

“Experience always makes teaching better. That is normal.” This is true, and it is the best answer. But two things must be said. First, honest correction names the mistake. This mistake was named once, in 1916, and then forgotten. Today people can know the story of Azusa Street well and never hear that its first mission teaching was taken back. Second, over a hundred years, correction should go in both directions. This one never has.

Three other answers do not work.

• “Almost nobody really believed it.” The newspapers and the church paper show that they did.
• “It was one man’s private mistake.” His mission’s paper printed it, and people from his mission sailed because of it.
• “The movement grew very large later, so it must be right.” Growth cannot tell us if eighteen people could speak Bengali in 1907.

Where this page ends

Check it yourself

1. Read Acts 2:1-21 two times. The second time, mark who says what.
2. Read 1 Corinthians chapters 12, 13 and 14 from start to end.
3. The old papers are free to read online in public collections: The Apostolic Faith (September 1906), Confidence (May 1908), and The Weekly Evangel (22 April and 3 June 1916). If you think this page has used the words unfairly, check them there.