The Purpose of Tongues by Smith Wigglesworth

The Purpose of Tongues

I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all; yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may teach others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue. —1 Corinthians 14:18–19

This Scripture has been greatly misunderstood. Here the apostle Paul was saying that he spoke in tongues more than any others. Now, you can understand that he felt he spoke in tongues more than all of them, meaning that he lived in the utterances of the Spirit. Very likely, this would be lovely!

I remember one time in London when I asked for a meeting to commence at 7:30 p.m. I was not well acquainted with London, and I knew I had two hours to spare before the meeting. I was walking in one of the busiest places in London; all the theaters were just getting ready for their big Saturday night.

“Now, Lord,” I said, “let me just be enveloped in Your glory for these two hours in the midst of the world.” And I went up and down Fleet Street and the Strand, lost in the Spirit, in tongues the whole time. It was lovely. Yes, the world was filled with “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16), but God had His child in the midst of these blazing worldly affairs, lost in the Spirit.

I want you, I implore you, beloved, to desire earnestly to be in God’s will so that at any time, wherever you are, you may pray in the Spirit, you may sing in the Spirit, you may have a good time thinking about the Lord. Remember that it is at these places and times and seasons when the Father and the Son come and make themselves known to you.

Now, a word in season regarding the next point. Paul knew that if the whole church turned to tongues, and tongues only—tongues! tongues! tongues!—there would be confusion and much distress, and there would not be that lift of divine power and fellowship that Paul knew was needed.

So Paul’s great heart as a builder of churches was moved; he saw that the Lord was breathing through him this glorious desire to form these churches, and he said to the Corinthians, in effect, “Think seriously, and let your speaking be with carefulness. The people who have been filled with the Spirit and speak in tongues should not go on constantly with that; they should not come to the meeting and continually have it taken up with speaking in tongues.” You know, the flow of the Spirit through you is very lovely; yes, it is very lovely, but we must always be mindful that our brother and sister sitting next to us have to be helped. There are weak people in the church who need your careful attention. Then there are people of different kinds of temperament and makeup. We must always remember that we have to guard the church, look after it, keep it with sober mind, until no person coming in may be taken up with the thought, “Why, these people are mad! There they are, all speaking in tongues.” (See 1 Corinthians 14:23.)

Paul said, “I would rather speak five words with my understanding than ten thousand words that they couldn’t understand.” (See verse 19.)

Wasn’t he right? Wouldn’t I prefer the same thing? Is there anybody who is really in wisdom who would dare to continue speaking in tongues without interpretation and without opening the knowledge of God to the people? Who would dare to do that? It would be foolishness, it would be madness, and you would lose the opinion of the people. You need to remember that whatever you do when you are in the church of God, you must seek to excel to the edifying of the body of Christ.

Tongues, a Sign to the Unbeliever

There is a word here that says that tongues are “a sign” for the unbeliever: “Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers” (1 Cor. 14:22). We have a wonderful word there, and I know it will require some explanation. It is important, and I want to explain it so that it edifies you.

A friend of mine was attending a Wesleyan brotherhood meeting in England, a large, packed meeting. He saw a young man there who was full of desire for the salvation of his people. He looked it, and his body posture and his face looked it. My friend knew he was laboring there under great difficulty.

At the close of the service, he wrote him a check. He said, “Take this check and go to Bradford to Brother Wigglesworth, a friend of mine, and have a rest in his home. All you have to do is to say that I have sent you. They will take you in and make you comfortable.” When this young man got the check, he was in need of a rest, and he said to my friend, “Yes, I will go, and I thank you.”

He arranged to go the next Friday. The first thing he did when he got to Bradford was to go to the Young Men’s Christian Association to inquire if they knew anything about Wigglesworth.

“Oh, yes, we know everything about him. Why?” “I have brought a letter of introduction to him and have been advised to go to his home for a rest.”

“Now, you be very careful,” they said. “This man is among those people who believe in tongues, and we believe it is of the Devil. So you be careful lest you be taken in.”

“Oh!” he said. “Don’t be afraid; they will not take me in. I am too wise for that.”

So he came. I want you to notice that the Scripture passage we are dealing with now is about tongues as an evidence to the unbeliever—not to the believer but to the unbeliever. This man came to my house full of unbelief. He is a great preacher and a wonderful man with great abilities, and I tell you—I know him well—that he is a godly man. But he was full of unbelief.

There are any number of people who are believers filled with unbelief. I have very little difficulty when I am dealing with a sinner about being healed. I scarcely ever see a sinner who knows nothing about Jesus fail to be healed when I pray for him. But if I pray for a believer, I very often find that he is not healed. Why? There is unbelief in the believer. It is a very astounding thing. God speaks in the old prophetic language nine times as much to the backslider as He does to the sinner. So I want you to know there is no place for you except to only believe what God says. When you come to that place, God will bless you; you will be amazed at how much He will bless you.

For God has not chosen you that He might make you as a waster, but He has chosen you to bring you on the hill of perfection, that you might know that there will not be weakness in you but strength and character, for God has chosen you.

This message is for someone in the meeting: “God has chosen you.” Do not be afraid. God has chosen you. To resume my story, when the young man got to my house, my wife was in the house alone. He went in and he talked, and talked, and talked, and talked. When I got home, my wife came out and said to me, “We have the strangest man we ever had in our house. He has been in there for half an hour, and he has never stopped talking. You never heard such a talker.”

“Let him alone,” I said. “He will come to an end.” I was introduced to him, and he went on talking. He talked through the dinner hour and right through to nighttime.

That night we were having a meeting at our house. He didn’t stop talking. He knew that if he stopped, he would allow something else into his mind, so he was going to talk and block everyone else who talked. He wasn’t willing to be taken in with this.

The meeting began to fill up; the room was packed. “Brother,” I said, “you have talked ever since you came. We are now going to pray. It is our meeting night; you must cease to speak.”

He got down before God. My, it was wonderful! The power of God fell upon us, and something happened that never happened before, as far as I can remember. We always began our meeting with a song—always—but this time we began it in an attitude of prayer.

At one side of the fireplace knelt one young woman and at the other side of the fireplace knelt another. I have never known it to happen before or since, but, deliberately, instead of praying, those two began speaking in tongues.

As soon as they began speaking in tongues, this man jumped up, startled. He ran to the one nearest him, his hands on his ears, and bent down over the girl; then frantically he ran to the other, then back to the first, then to the other one.

Finally he came and said to me, “Can I go to my room?” “Yes, Brother.”

He was shown to his room. We had a wonderful meeting. At about 3:30 the next morning, he came to my door and knocked.

“May I come in?” he called.

“Yes,” I said. “Come in.”

As soon as he got in, he stammered, “Bl—bl—bl—” with his hand to his mouth. “It’s come! It’s come!”

“Go back to bed, Brother,” I said.

The next morning he came down to breakfast.

“Oh, wasn’t that a wonderful night!” he exclaimed.

“Which do you mean?” I asked.

We had had a wonderful time. I wanted to know what he had done.

“Oh!” he said. “When I came here, I heard in Bradford that you had received the power of the working of evils; I was warned to keep away, and I was filled with unbelief. I was determined that nothing of that would affect me. I made up my mind that I would talk every moment. But when you told the people to go to prayer, the moment those people began speaking in tongues, I went to them. I know Greek and I know Hebrew, and one was saying to me in Greek, ‘Get right with God,’ and the other was saying in Hebrew, ‘Get right with God.’”

Oh, yes, God has a way to do it, and God can do it. When we get unbelief out of the way, the baptism of fire, revelation, the gifts of the Spirit, the harmony, the comfort, the blessed unction will abound until there will never be a dry meeting; every meeting will be filled with life and power and joy in the Holy Spirit. Continuing his story, this man said, “When I heard that, I knew it was for me. I went upstairs and I repented. I knew I had been wrongly interpreting what God meant, and I repented. As I repented, I found myself overcome by the power of the Spirit. I tried to resist, but God was dealing with me in such a way that I fell down under the power of the Spirit over and over, until God sanctified me.

At 3:30 the power of God fell upon me. I found myself speaking as the Spirit gave utterance, and I came to your door.”

That man is a wonderful man today. God has blessed him everywhere.