125th Anniversary Series: Nearing the End of the Gospel Age
In May 1910 R. G. Spurling held several services and prayer meetings in the community of Jones, Georgia. Both the rural community and the local Church of God were known by the name of the Jones family that resided there. In his report to the readers of The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel, Spurling noted that exhortations, speaking in tongues, interpretations and praise accompanied the meetings.
Prior to the Sunday evening service a desperate father pleaded with Brother Spurling to come pray for his son. The boy had been sick for five weeks, and the doctor had been unable to help him. Touched by the father’s appeal, Brother Spurling agreed to travel to the boy’s home and anoint him with oil after the service.
Arriving about 11:00 p.m. at the home of this Missionary Baptist family, Spurling was astonished to see the large number of people gathered there as well as the father’s faith in divine healing. He soon learned that another member of the family had already been miraculously healed. When Spurling entered the room where the boy lay, he observed how “thin, pale and weak” he was. According to his report, “We sang a few songs, prayed a few prayers, during which time I anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord. He had previously been saved, so he was healed and received the baptism with the Holy Ghost and spoke in other tongues. His clothes were put on him and he walked the floor for more than an hour, praising God, talking in tongues and embracing his friends, while the saints that were there shouted and laughed and cried and glorified God for what He had done.” The impromptu prayer meeting lasted until 2:00 a.m. in the morning.
Such healings and baptisms in the Holy Spirit were not unusual for Church of God members. In recounting this healing Spurling took an opportunity to discuss the role of tongues in the end times. According to Spurling, such events are clear and certain evidence that the church was “nearing the end of the Gospel Age.”
Spurling compared the present-day outpouring of the Holy Spirit with the tower of Babel. God had confused the building of the tower by sending unknown tongues. Just as certainly, God was confusing the building of modern human towers, such as nominal churches, with a fresh outpouring of tongues. The building of human monuments will soon come to naught, he maintained. Similarly, Spurling noted that Nebuchadnezzar had left a great kingdom for Belshazzar; but, God broke in with handwriting in an unkown language, and the mighty Babylon fell. He concluded, “Now God is speaking again in other tongues to the nominal churches of today, and they are rejecting the counsel of God against themselves, not being baptized with the Holy Ghost.”
Thus for R. G. Spurling and other early members of the Church of God, speaking in tongues and divine healings were both a fresh outpouring of God’s blessings and a word of warning to those who refused to believe that we are “nearing the end of the Gospel Age.”
This article was written by Church of God Historian David G. Roebuck, Ph.D., who is director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center and assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University. This “Church of God Chronicles” was first published in the June 2000 Church of God Evangel.
