Grosey's Messages

More than twenty five years ago I went to Papua New Guinea, the Baiyer River Valley, at the height of the revival there (Some 10,000 or more were swept into the kingdom of God during the 1978 Enga revival).
The beautiful Baiyer River Valley was a 2 hour road trip North down a muddy dirt road down deep ravines and valleys from the top of the Central Highlands, Mt. Hagen. The Baptist mission station there had been in existence for about 20 years. 30 years before, two courageous godly men (Albert Kroenert and Harry Orr, both ex service chaplains during WW2 stationed to that region with the Australian Army fighting the Japanese invasion).had walked into the valley in 1949 just after World War 2. The Baiyer River had been off limits to Westerners, because of the furious nature of the cannibal tribesmen. Close to50, 000 lived in that isolated region of Papua New Guinea.
Specifically, although on a work party, I wished to gather data for a University thesis on the tongues movement that was affecting some parts (not all parts) of the revival region.
The trip to this small village was amazing. The complete trip to the village took a further 2 hours drive and a further 3 hours walk from Baiyer River -Kumbwarata base station. At one stage the party of 5 forded a wild mountain river. A bridge over the river had been washed away many years ago. The clear cool mountain water surged against our bodies as we carefully navigated our feet from one large rock to another. It was amazing that no one caught their feet between rocks, or were dragged away by the river. After negotiating the river we were led down a long jungle path, about 18 inches (.5 metre) wide. The head high Kunai grass at times masked the directions in which we were travelling, and for sometimes half an hour, all we could do was trust that the track lead somewhere.
I remember entering a village with a small group of 5 other Australians. This village had not seen a westerner in their region for many years. The entire village and people from outlying areas had travelled to the small clearing and grass church hut to meet us. Although we had decided just a few hours before that we would travel to this particular village, word had somehow spread, and hundreds were gathered expectantly for our arrival.
There was a language barrier. One of our party, an ex Vietnam vet walked to the gathered crowd of 300 at the village entrance. Unable to communicate (they knew only the Enga language, not even Pidgin English) except for the basic hello "Kinganuya", the gathered multitude excitedly extended their hands "Kinganuya". Some began to talk excitedly to Jim in their own language. Jim, the salty ex vet, responded, "Kinganuya, - and your mother wears army boots too!" in a smiling happy greeting, which flashed his broken front teeth..
Surprisingly, the women in the crowd reacted immediately with shaking, ecstatic languages and trances. Jim's greeting had brought REVIVAL!
The group of ladies gathered there began to shake violently, standing upright, as though they were on some vibrating machine. Some began to take little jumps up into the air jumping up and down continuously. Others began to babble madly, as though they were in a prophetic frenzy. The whole scene became one of obvious religious fervour. The ladies involved seemed possessed of something greater than themselves.
That evening we sat down in a small smoke filled wooden hut on a dirt floor to the lavish banquet supplied by the church members there. The meal was canned fish (Mackerel) and spinach. Soon, as we completed the meal, there appeared at the door of the hut the leaders of the community. “Were we ready now to conduct the church service held in our honour?” One of our party, Rev. Max Knight, had ministered in the region for twelve years. He had translated the gospel of Mark and the book of Acts into the Enga tongue. He had then come home to Australia for medical reasons in 1969. Max, (now 50 years old) informed us that we needed to get ready for the church service. We would each be expected to speak. The service would begin at 9 pm, and conclude about 3 am. After that trek, I , a very fit 19 year old, was struggling to keep awake.
The church service, conducted in a large grass hut, with, a plaited matting floor seating on the floor around 200 people, continued for some hours until about midnight. It had been a good old Baptist service, lots of singing, lots of praying lots of preaching. The people generally had green water proof New Testaments that had obviously been well used. This was so incongruous to our minds, because everything else about these people spoke to us of their ancient stone aged ways. The only elements of civilisation that we had seen in their region were what was obviously a church building (grass hut with a pitched roof, so unlike their other constructions) and a vacated medical nurses hut with a red cross painted on a whitened wall of the wood hut. To see a New Testament (in Enga) held by each man of that tribe, and obviously read and laboriously studied seemed incongruous.
At midnight the ladies took over. It wasn’t as though the elders of the church had planned it. It seemed like it was something spontaneous. But they came to the front and started jumping again in front of the meeting. Then came the shaking, as though they were in the grip of some monstrous ghoul shaking them too and fro. Then came the tongues. The ladies became trance-like. They began to prophecy. They spoke in tongues.. obviously unknown to the hearers, and more unknown to us there. The tongues were musical uses of monosyllables, a “huh, huh , huh” repetitive panting and then a babble.
This continued for about an hour, until Max, and the younger missionary decided the continuation of the service was useless, and shepherded myself and the two other young adults to bed, all the while being careful not to give any offence, lest the situation grow suddenly dangerous.
What were we to make of these events, in such a distant and isolated place?

On the 24th of June 1949, a few months after their arrival into that region, Albert Kroenert and Harry Orr baptised 47 Enga Christians in a makeshift dam in front of 10,000 plumed and painted Enga tribesmen. Nearly 1,000 would indicate that day their desire to follow Christ and their desire for baptism. Over the next 30 years 20, 000 would come into the Kingdom of God by the slow hard work of committed and sacrificial missionaries. Many of these Engas had become Christians in a widespread revival that swept through that region in 1973. Reports of the second revival of 1978 had come to Sydney where I lived, and I was keen to see first hand a mighty work of God.

Had Jim’s greeting "Kinganuya, - and your mother wears army boots too!" really brought revival?
I discussed this later with two men, the missionary who had brought us there ( a young accountant from South Australia who had lived at Baiyer River Mission station for about 4 years) and the first convert of the Sau Enga tribe and head pastor, Pastor Saui, then about 60 years old.
These discussions revealed an interesting sociological phenomena.
1. Where the people were well versed in the scriptures, there was revival with little or no ecstatic expressions of shaking, jumping or tongues.
2. Where the women of the community were scared of losing their newly gained rights (The revival had brought new rights to women on the mission field: no more sleeping with the pigs since the revival and conversions of their husbands; no more polygamy; and no more sacrificial murders to spirits; and no more mutilation or violence towards wives)because their husbands may be backsliding into the old ways, there the WOMEN exercised the outward visible expressions of the charismatic movement. The missionaries I spoke to expressed their belief that this was a sociological phenomenon, where the women of the community were looking for the security of their rights gained through the gospel.
In short, they did the revival dance to protect themselves and their children from the paganism that threatened to swallow them up again at the hands of their husbands. It allowed them to exercise control!
As Chuck Swindoll notes: “I do not believe the modern tongues movement belongs in the church today. It does not square with Scripture nor does it edify the Body... 1 Cor 14:34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. 35 And if they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church meeting.
The woman is to be an example of quiet submission.. But let me ask again: is this happening in today's tongues movement? .. Have you noticed how many ministries are dominated by women?" (Tongues 1981 Multnomah Press p. 7, 16).

Here for the first time I was confronted with the reality of what I have grown accustomed to recognising as "spurious revival".
I think Jonathon Edwards comments on this in some of his work on religious experiences. Where there may be true revival, there the devil may sow false revival to bring the gospel into disrepute.
There in the back blocks of PNG I was privileged to see true revival, and false revival sown with it (for all the right reasons sociologically).

If that is not so, then one of our greatest evangelistic and revival messages should be "Your mother wears Army boots!"
I personally believe they were expecting some "prophetic message" from Jim, and were self-deceived into reacting in tongues and "revival phenomena".