Sorry for the big delay, but as a OTR trucker, I am sometimes away for days (have no laptop, and have not upgraded to a smart phone).
**This is a rather puzzling post, my FRiend. Your question is non sequitor.**
The title of the thread concerns conversion: “Joel Osteen and In-N-Out Are our hearts changed by something within us or by Someone outside us?,”
Acts 2:38 is conversion commands to the unsaved. So my question is inline with the thread, and you are quite inline to answer it.
Your interpretation of John 3:8......
**Only means that you will not be able to know where the Spirit comes from or where He is going. You will not be able to tell upon whom He might adopt, or who He might leave in his sins and trespasses.**
.....deals with unknown aspects, but doesn’t touch on the known: Jesus said that, just as you HEAR the wind, you will hear when someone is born of the Spirit, yet wonder how it happens.
Of John 7:38,39........
**This only means that out of the believer will flow living water, not that there will be a babbling (pun intended) brook full of nothing, meaningless words. That is nothing but fleshly lust.**
Are most tongues known languages? The detailed conversions in Acts seem to make that clear. Yet, the conversions were evidently more than just words in a variey of tongues, for in Acts chap 2, some thought (even with these souls praising God in understandable languages) that they were drunk. Peter didn’t deny the appearance of drunken behavior; he just clarified it as not being ‘drunk as ye suppose’. So I’m not going to mock someone that receives the Spirit in like fashion.
Paul addresses the unknown tongues, and does NOT condemn them. He just says that there is a right (and a wrong) place for them. He says that that person ‘speaketh NOT unto men, but unto God, howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries’.
Are there fakers......absolutely! The most positive proof being a soul that is unwilling to WALK in the Spirit; or obey His Word.
**labbilanglia vabaaallleemn[asooije apdsojfsllsda mapojoie fmfpoej ahdosopjsh asadhoisdoisklsdlf/ lkasdflkjfsdfusfdl.**
Is that Russian?....LOL
I used to make fun of the ‘tongue talkers’. It wasn’t long after I said ‘tongues are of the devil’, that my world really took a tumble. Though not as extreme as Paul’s blinding knockdown, it was quite humbling (physically and financially).
Absolutely untrue. You have mangled this to prove your own misconception. He did not mean that you can hear someone being born again.
"...for in Acts chap 2, some thought (even with these souls praising God in understandable languages) that they were drunk."
Yes, of course they were real languages. But, go read the story. There were over 17 out-of-area districts represented at Pentecost celebration. When Bob hears Tom's message, it sounded crazy drunk. Especially coming from one who had never been to Tom's city. So, the crowd hears 17+ languages telling the message of rescue by the Messiah. Don't rewrite the story to make it fit your predjudice.