ABSTRACT
The ‘baptism of fire’ was followed by speaking in tongues when girls who knew no English prayed in it and in Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit and unknown languages. In the United States Pentecostalism moved generally from west to east, tongues appearing successively in California, Utah, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maine. The charismata in it were regulated, and today half the Chilean pastors have not spoken in tongues. Spontaneous and unrelated outcroppings of tongues appeared in widely separated parts of the world which, through publicity and the ease of travel, pollinated each other. W. T. Ellis, travelling round the world in 1907 to investigate Christian missions, was convinced by the genuineness of tongues in India. Yet Pentecostalism has been recognized by the World Council of Churches and, if statistics are to be believed, is numerically strong enough to have been called a third force in world Christianity after Catholicism and Protestantism.
