http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2566995/posts
For They Heard Them Speaking in Tongues & Praising God Acts 10:46 [Missionary experience, bk]
Bk: From The Field: 365 Missionary Stories to Encourage Your Daily Walk p125 | 2002 | Dr Leland Edwards
Posted on Sunday, August 08, 2010 5:45:32 PM by Quix
The train from Colon, Panama, brought several passengers to the village of Frijoles one Sunday morning. Many had heard of the miracles of God in this church and came for physical healing. One was an elderly woman known as Mama Mecha.
That morning Mama Mecha received Jesus as her Savior. After the service, the congregation went to the inlet of Gatun Lake, which is a short distance from the church, to baptize the new converts. Her testimony of her conversion that morning stirred many hearts.
As Mama Mecha came up out of the water, she lifted her hands in praise to the Lord, and suddenly she began to speak in another tongue. Standing in the crowd was a man from Spain. He had been an archeologist in Egypt for several years and also served as a Roman Catholic priest in Spain and Panama.
Late that afternoon, while on the train returning to Panama City, he said to missionary Arthur Edwards, "After her baptism, that elderly woman spoke in an ancient Egyptian language and quoted a psalm of praise from the Old Testament. There is no way she could even speak one word of that language which I learned in my work as an archeologist in Egypt. That had to be God."
Dr Leland Edwards
Former Missionary to Panama
Missions Director, 1965-1988
Lord, I think you for giving me a prayer language. Let me use my gift to glorify you. . .
A bigger question would have been, not how the old woman knew ancient Egyptian, but how the missionary would have recognized it as ancient Egyptian and been able to understand it sufficiently to know what the old woman had said.
We know the ancient Egyptian language today only as a written language with some presumptions as to pronunciation. But like all languages there was an evolution of the language over the 4,000+ plus years it was spoken. Add to this the regional dialects between upper and lower kingdom and between social classes, occupations, and sea port regions and you have sufficient suspicion to conclude that the missionary was full of it.