Incredible reports are coming in about a massive move of the Holy Spirit in Papua New Guinea, Faithwire reports.

What is particularly interesting is that there are reports of people being healed and even a suggestion that some were saved after hearing the gospel being presented in their language through the Gift of Tongues.

The island of New Guinea, located 150 miles (ca. 241 km) north of Australia, is the second-largest island in the world and has a population of 14.8 million. The revival broke out in the country of Papua New Guinea (PNG), located on the eastern half of the island, where the bulk of the people live (11.8 million).

According to a report on Adventist Today, over 300,000 people were water-baptized in PNG during a two-week campaign sponsored by the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) called PNG for Christ.

The campaign was led by the SDA president, Ted Wilson.

In a statement that Wilson released through a May 19th Facebook post, 278,369 people were water-baptized at locations across the country during the two-week campaign.

He added that the actual number of water-baptized was undoubtedly higher since only 52% of the 2,000 sites where the campaign was held had reported at the time Wilson wrote the post.

Since then, the number who were water-baptized has surpassed 300,000 with some campaign locations reporting around 1,000 water baptisms and one hitting nearly 3,000.

However, an unusually worded statement in Jarrod Stackelroth’s article for Adventist Today (AT) suggests that some may have been saved through the gift of tongues.

“Stories of drug lords burning their marijuana crops and being baptised, prisoners responding to calls, whole villages declaring themselves Adventist, healings and people understanding the gospel presentations in their own languages are just some of things that have been reported,” Stackelroth wrote.

The campaign featured 200 international speakers, which would obviously require interpreters for the various tribal languages.

With that presumed, why would the SDA report cases of “people understanding the Gospel presentations in their own languages” as being among the unusual occurrences, that included healings, taking place during this campaign?

It seems to imply that the Gift of Tongues was in operation and that is certainly a possibility as the Seventh Day Adventists believe in spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues.

What Seventh-Day Adventists believe

The Seventh Day Adventist church was co-founded by Ellen White, who died in 1915. The church believed she was a prophet of God who received upwards of 200 visions, many of which were written down and distributed.

The church holds to traditional Christian doctrines. It believes in the inerrancy of scripture and that a person is saved by faith in Christ.

SDA varies from traditional churches because it holds its services on the seventh day of the week, Saturday, instead of Sunday, which was the practice of the early church (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2). The early church met on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, because it was the day Jesus rose from the dead.

Obviously, with SDA’s founder apparently functioning with the gift of prophecy, the church believes in spiritual gifts, including the Gift of Tongues.

In a question-and-answer article on his website, SDA President Ted Wilson wrote that “speaking in tongues is one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, and yes, it is possible for a Seventh-day Adventist to speak in tongues — as long as it is the true gift of tongues described in the Bible, given to him or her by the Holy Spirit.”

This is where the church differs from traditional charismatics. The SDA limits the expression of this Holy Spirit gift to the speaking of other human languages, similar to what happened on the Day of Pentecost, which resulted in 3,000 people being saved after hearing the Gospel in their own language (Acts 2:6).

This is what appears to have taken place in New Guinea.

However, according to the SDA, tongues would not include angelic languages, which Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 13:1.

Though over the years, some in the SDA have elevated White’s visions to that of scripture, the church’s official position is that these are beneficial but remain subject to the Bible, which is the final authority.