Posted on 01/25/2011 6:54:48 AM PST by Cronos
I hope there aren’t really any churches teaching that. Please understand that there is a distinction between being saved and being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Praying in tongues is evidence of the latter.
Does God still move with power? I think so.
While I believe that 99% or more of the “tongues”, “prophecy” and “healings” you see in the modern Pentecostal and Charsimatic movements are fake (though many of those “experiencing” them honestly believe they are real), I find no Biblical basis for the idea that these gifts would totally cease, before the return of Christ.
Total cessesationists are effectively (and ironically) practicing experiencial theology (”We haven’t seen these gifts in a long time, so they must have ceased no matter what the Bible says”) just like the crazier Pentecostals and Charismatics.
I agree with John Wesley who basically taught that the miraculous gift were probably rare in biblical times and were even rarer in his time.
>Having said that, I am greatly troubled by what SOME Pentecostal and Charismatic churches teach - that the only evidence one is saved is speaking in tongues. That is most definitely not biblical.<
As a teenager, me and my friends went to a church like that. There was so much pressure put on us about praying in tongues that we used to just start babbling to get everyone off our backs.
I thought there was something terrible wrong with me and I was going to hell for sure because I couldn’t pray in tongues.
The conclusion drawn is based upon the false premise that salvation (accepting the gift of Christ) and Spirit-filled (accepting the gifts of the Spirit) are one in the same. They are not.
Oops. I probably should have said “As teenagers...”
For me, it is a complete misread of the verses describing the Pentecost. The miracle was that the Holy Spirit descended upon the room, and as a result, everyone understood what each other was saying even though they were speaking in their native tongues. There's nothing about made-up languages. It's about understanding each other, despite our differences.
So, when I find myself at a charismatic church and hear people speaking in tongues, it only emphasizes to me that the Holy Spirit may not be in the room. If the Holy Spirit were in attendance, I should understand what these people are saying.
I'd like to believe that whenever I am at church or saying a prayer, that I've got a direct line to God the Father and God the Son via the Holy Spirit. In my church, I can tell you that this is true. At a charismatic church, I have doubts.
I hope my usual ping list doesn't mind being invited into this conversation -- these folks are erudite and opinionated!
Seriously, though -- different phonemes in different languages are -- different. Almost without exception, "tongues" in America = randomized English phonemes, scrambled to the point where meaning is lost. In my 40 years of hanging around with Pentecostals, I know of only one incident where someone was heard worshiping God in a real foreign language (Spanish) that he'd never studied.
Hey, people say it edifies them to pray in tongues, so perhaps (I strongly suspect) some form of interaction with God is in progress. I quite attending our church's prayer meetings, however, because of the unrepentant abuse of the microphone by tongues-talkers who felt no need to wait for an interpretation.
The UPC is not a Christian denomination, but unitarian. Their key dogma is the denial of the Trinity: Jesus is His own Father, and the Holy Spirit is the ghost of Jesus come back to haunt us, and Jesus was raving to Himself in the Garden of Gethsemene -- there was no one on the other side of that conversation!
VERY SAD AND CRAZY EXCESS.
Yes, but Paul addresses the issue in the Corinthian church after Pentecost as well:
1 Cor 14:2 "For anyone who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him, he utters mysteries with his spirit."
This seems to indicate that tongues was not only for the purpose of being intelligible. Indeed, it points to the fact that tongues might very well be used for a prayer language.
When St Paul uses the KJV term “unknown” tongue in Corinthians he is referring to foreign languages, as the Geneva Bible shows. Other bibles use the term “tongues”.
Matthew Henry’s commentaries shows it is foreign languages.
Some of Jim & Tammy Bakker’s people later said they “faked” tongues.
In some Penticostal churches you better come out of the baptismal waters speaking in tongues or you are not “saved”. So there was a private class on how to fake it. I talked with a former Penticostal who told how to fake it, and get children to learn how.
Believe me, `speaking in tongues’ is not only babbling, it’s “Hey, look at me, I’ve got the Spirit!”
Anyone ever wonder why so many famous Penticostal preachers end up on the skids? Remember these?
A A Allen
O L Jaggers
Billy James Hargis
Robert Tilton (proven fake)
Peter Poppoff (proven fake)
Jim & Tammy Bakker
Jimmy Swaggert
All took a fall, some have bounced back into the money gathering game.
And what of 1 Cor 14:2 as I noted in post #32?
***When St Paul uses the KJV term “unknown” tongue in Corinthians he is referring to foreign languages***
And what of 1 Cor 14:2 as I noted in post #32?
1 Cor 14:2 “For anyone who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him, he utters mysteries with his spirit.”
Simple. If a chinese Christian goes into a Greek Church and wishes to address the congregation, but NO ONE understands him he can only be speaking to the air or to God.
That is why a translator must be present, or else hold your peace.
I saw (on TV) Billy Graham speak to a Brazilian crowd. As he could not speak the language he had an interpreter to interpret to the crowd. This is true speaking in tongues.
As St Paul said, everything should be done decently and IN ORDER.
The Bible says when you are “saved” you will recv the Holy Spirit...it’s the same....
The Bible says that there are “divers” types of tongues...and there is an unknown tongue... one type of tongue is the one that one recvs when they receive the Holy Spirit
However, he does not discourage them from using tongues privately, even saying in v. 2 they are speaking to God.
Later in the chapter Paul says in v. 18 "I thank God hat I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in church I would rather speak five intelligible words..." This implies that Paul prayed in tongues not in public but in private, seeming to lend credence to the belief that it could be used as a prayer language.
You know every language there is on earth? The whole point is that the tongue is unknown to the hearer....that is the sign to the people around the person that they have recv the Spirit....
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