Gift of Tongues

[psalms 91]

Are they mocking the gift, or mocking those who make a big show of something that some might think was a gift?

Even if the former, it's hard to see how that's any more unforgivable than, say, stripping the man Jesus Christ, hitting him and nailing him to a cross.

I am curu=ious why anyone would feel the need to do that, let God deal with them I think He can take care of Himself and meanwhile accept that toungues is for today, just because some mimic the gift is no reason to throw it all out.

 

[tango]

Biblically, in what circumstances do you think "God may" and in what circumstances do you think "Ain't no way"?

The most obvious example relates to the question of whether God heals. During some discussions there are those who insist "God always heals" and that any disagreement with their stance implies a belief that "God never heals". The stance "God sometimes heals" disagrees with both "God always heals" and "God never heals".

Where tongues are concerned I don't see any reason to assume tongues have ceased - as far as I can tell to draw such a conclusion from, for example, the tail end of 1Co 13 requires a lot of creative interpretation. That said the belief that the gift of tongues is still a valid manifestation of the Holy Spirit does not mean I believe every single person speaking something unintelligible must therefore be speaking in tongues and therefore manifesting the Holy Spirit. I believe it is possible to speak in a demonic tongue, it's possible to just make up some gibberish (it doesn't take much imagination to see how the insistence within some churches that tongues are the only valid sign of the Holy Spirit would encourage people to just make something up, which is somewhat ironic given these "spirit filled" churches clearly lack the discernment to realise what is really going on) and it's possible to hear someone speaking a language they know naturally but to assume they are speaking in tongues. This latter situation is like a guy I know who periodically prays out loud in a foreign language during a church service. He isn't speaking in tongues, he is originally from Lisbon and is praying in his native Portugese - there's nothing supernatural about it at all.

 

[tango]

I am curu=ious why anyone would feel the need to do that, let God deal with them I think He can take care of Himself and meanwhile accept that toungues is for today, just because some mimic the gift is no reason to throw it all out.

I don't think I ever said we should throw it all out.

Why would someone feel the need to record themselves "speaking in tongues" (with quotes because there's no way of knowing just what is really going on) and broadcast it? If people are little more than tongues equivalents of false prophets is it a bad thing to call them out on it? Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal after all.

 

[MennoSota]

The most obvious example relates to the question of whether God heals. During some discussions there are those who insist "God always heals" and that any disagreement with their stance implies a belief that "God never heals". The stance "God sometimes heals" disagrees with both "God always heals" and "God never heals".

Where tongues are concerned I don't see any reason to assume tongues have ceased - as far as I can tell to draw such a conclusion from, for example, the tail end of 1Co 13 requires a lot of creative interpretation. That said the belief that the gift of tongues is still a valid manifestation of the Holy Spirit does not mean I believe every single person speaking something unintelligible must therefore be speaking in tongues and therefore manifesting the Holy Spirit. I believe it is possible to speak in a demonic tongue, it's possible to just make up some gibberish (it doesn't take much imagination to see how the insistence within some churches that tongues are the only valid sign of the Holy Spirit would encourage people to just make something up, which is somewhat ironic given these "spirit filled" churches clearly lack the discernment to realise what is really going on) and it's possible to hear someone speaking a language they know naturally but to assume they are speaking in tongues. This latter situation is like a guy I know who periodically prays out loud in a foreign language during a church service. He isn't speaking in tongues, he is originally from Lisbon and is praying in his native Portugese - there's nothing supernatural about it at all.

On both issues we are addressing God's sovereignty.
God has all authority to heal according to his sovereign will. We never force God to do anything by demanding our will to have someone healed. Lack of faith is insignificant. God will either heal or he won't.

God is the giver of all spiritual gifts. He gives them as he desires. We cannot conjure up any of the gifts, which means no one can "learn" how to speak in tongues. In the Bible, God only gives the gift of tongues for a sign to pagans that he is greater than their gods. It is never a prayer language. Remember, the Corinthians were childish, immature, believers who were mixing up their former paganism into the church. No one should seek to emulate the Corinthians.
God may still give the gift of tongues on the front lines of the mission field, but just as in the book of Acts it is not a commonly given gift. 99.9% of todays "tongues" are not from God. It's at best a simple emotional parlor game and at worst, demonic possession.

 

[Imalive]

God may still give the gift of tongues on the front lines of the mission field, but just as in the book of Acts it is not a commonly given gift. 99.9% of todays "tongues" are not from God. It's at best a simple emotional parlor game and at worst, demonic possession.

So, you are quite certain of that.
I've heard some stuff and seen some stuff, I stay away from it. I don't say it's demonic, except for one guy, that was clearly New Age. I don't say it's all the Holy Spirit. Test it properly or better keep quiet. You need the gift of discernment of spirits to test it.

 

[psalms 91]

Exactly

 

[tango]

On both issues we are addressing God's sovereignty.
God has all authority to heal according to his sovereign will. We never force God to do anything by demanding our will to have someone healed. Lack of faith is insignificant. God will either heal or he won't.

No arguments there. God gets to decide when and how he does miracles for us. I always say it's one of the perks of being God.

God is the giver of all spiritual gifts. He gives them as he desires. We cannot conjure up any of the gifts, which means no one can "learn" how to speak in tongues.

Also agreed. I am very wary of people who conduct things like "prophetic training" for this very reason - most of them turn out to be charlatans who give the idea that if you just open your mind and listen you'll hear God speak. Some go even further - the guy I mentioned earlier (Brent Engelman, if you want to look him up) went as far as saying "when the visions start trust they are from God and accept them like a little child" and something along the lines of "if we ask for a greater anointing in the seer realm we can be confident the power of God to protect us is stronger than the power of the devil to mislead us". This is truly staggering teaching from someone who claims to be Scriptural, given the Bible is full of warnings of false prophets and exhortations to test the spirits. One almost wonders why Paul and John bothered to tell people to "test all things" and "test the spirits" if it's as easy as trusting God to protect us as we wander blindly into spiritual realms with our fingers in our ears. Come to think of it, the idea that God's power to protect is stronger than the devil's power to mislead worked really well for Adam and Eve, so maybe he is on to something there.

In the Bible, God only gives the gift of tongues for a sign to pagans that he is greater than their gods. It is never a prayer language. Remember, the Corinthians were childish, immature, believers who were mixing up their former paganism into the church. No one should seek to emulate the Corinthians.

I'm not sure this is true. The Bible records the Holy Spirit coming upon people and them speaking in other tongues. At Pentecost lots of people heard the disciples speaking in their own language but isn't clear on whether the disciples were speaking those languages or whether they were speaking in their native tongues but the people heard their own languages. (I don't see either as being impossible). I remember an event I attended some years ago where at one point I heard the speaker saying something unintelligible but the person next to me heard plain English (the person next to me was someone I knew very well and trusted absolutely, so I don't doubt their account of it even though I can't objectively validate it).

God certainly does do things to demonstrate he is more powerful than other gods - the plagues of Egypt and Elijah's prayer for fire at Mount Carmel being obvious examples. As you say we shouldn't seek to copy the Corinthians but we can still take Paul's letter to them describing how things should be done as instructional. To take an admittedly silly modern example, if someone says "don't put your fingers in the electrical sockets but, rather, put covers over the sockets to stop people putting their fingers in" we can draw a useful guideline from it even if nobody around us has been putting fingers in the electrical sockets. The fact nobody is doing that doesn't change the potential validity of the advice to put covers over the sockets to make sure it doesn't happen.

God may still give the gift of tongues on the front lines of the mission field, but just as in the book of Acts it is not a commonly given gift. 99.9% of todays "tongues" are not from God. It's at best a simple emotional parlor game and at worst, demonic possession.

I'm not sure you can conclude it's not a commonly given gift from the book of Acts, and I'm not sure it's wise to guess at percentages that are genuine. When "tongues" are not from God I'd be inclined to chalk them up to emotional responses far more readily than demonic possession, unless other signs of demonic activity were present. To be clear I have no issue with your assertion that some things that are called "speaking in tongues" are nothing of the sort, my concern is with your numbers that to be honest appear to be as made up as some of the "tongues"

 

[Albion]

So, you are quite certain of that.
I've heard some stuff and seen some stuff, I stay away from it. I don't say it's demonic, except for one guy, that was clearly New Age. I don't say it's all the Holy Spirit. Test it properly or better keep quiet.

I can sympathize with what you've said there.

You need the gift of discernment of spirits to test it.

But then this wipes it all out.

That's usually the case in such discussions. Having allowed that not all tongues are genuine, you immediately backpedal by saying to test them, after which the person who tests and finds them not to be convincing is almost certain to be characterized by someone here as not having come up with the "right" answer because they are "doubters," don't have the Spirit, just don't believe the Scriptures, or something like that. :scratchchin:

 

[tango]

I can sympathize with what you've said there.



But then this wipes it all out.

That's usually the case in such discussions. Having allowed that not all tongues are genuine, you immediately backpedal by saying to test them, after which the person who finds them not to be convincing is almost certain to be characterized by someone here as not having come up with the "right" answer because they are "doubters," don't have the Spirit, just don't believe the Scriptures, or something like that. :scratchchin:

I can't help thinking that there are so many times when something is presented and it is followed by a demand that people accept it or reject it and if they reject it they are expected to come up with an explanation for what they consider it to be.

In many situations we can draw some insight with some simple questions. The most obvious is "who gets the glory here?". Someone posting a video of themselves "speaking in tongues" on Youtube is the kind of situation where we might ask just what they are hoping to accomplish. Does God get any glory at all, or is it little more than an exercise in "look at me, I pulled off this spiritual gift on demand so you can all see it and, by extension, focus your attention on me? Where prophecy is concerned, is a word being given in humility to a person or a small group, such that the chances of getting a "hit" by little more than manipulating probability is minimised, or is the "prophetic word" delivered from a very public platform to a group large enough that the chances of getting it right based on little more than laws of probability are maximised? To give examples here, a Christian friend I admire once gave a word to an individual, presented along the lines of "I don't know what this means, but I think God is trying to say (message)". The recipient stood with his mouth hanging open - the word meant nothing to my friend but spoke directly into a situation the recipient was facing. On the other hand the speaker addressing the crowd of 50,000 who pauses to "listen to God" and then asks "is there someone here who has a bad back?" can be very confident that in a crowd of that size there are probably several people who have some form of issues with their backs, so can be confident that at least one of them will identify themselves for prayer. In the first situation my friend wasn't taking a platform, wasn't drawing attention to himself, wasn't seeking any glory, and pointed the recipient of his word towards God. In the second situation is the attention going to God or to the speaker? I'd suggest the latter.

Of course as an external observer from a distance, with little more than a third hand account or an internet video we can easily answer the question of whether a specific incident is genuinely a move of the Holy Spirit with the honest answer "I don't know", which may even be followed with "and I don't care". Given an account of a miraculous healing that happened to someone else, somewhere else, is all well and good but it makes precisely no difference to my walk with God. I believe God can heal, so it doesn't change my outlook to hear of a claim that God healed. But if it was all a fake it doesn't change anything for me. At that point I'd just observe that in the early church people who were healed were very visible to those around them, for example the lame man in Acts 3 who was healed - everybody knew he had been lame and now they could see he was healed. This is such a far cry from reading a story on the internet about a guy in a town far far away who was lame since birth and is now walking around that the story on the internet is actually of no value at all, especially since people who don't know the town and don't know the person who was healed have no way of knowing whether it happened as reported, or even whether it happened at all.

 

[MoreCoffee]

It used to be the case that the bishops and the curia in the Catholic Church would examine claims to visions and words spoken by Blessed Mary, a saint, or maybe even Jesus to test them for consistency with Church teaching and credibility as well as internal consistency. The claims had to be counted as sound and credible before they would receive any kind of ecclesiastical support. Now I am not so sure that everything is tested because so many claim to "speak in tongues" and "see visions" and "hear God speak" to them. It would probably be nearly impossible to test the claims because of their overwhelming numbers. And there is the tendency to weigh up things as if pastoral concerns and numbers attending (and contributing funds) excuses neglect of the testing/discerning role that pastors in the church ought to exercise.

 

[Albion]

And another aspect of this that hasn't been gone into very much here (because of the "doubters" not wanting to be unnecessarily unkind to the charismatic posters, I think) is that there have been innumerable investigations into modern tongues-speaking, and the result is that most have been shown to be bogus. They have repeatedly been "tested."

Not only does "lamma klamma lamma" not have the nature of any language, but speakers repeat their few sounds constantly, have thrown in barks and whistles as well, speak their sounds with the regional accents (Southern, Bostonian, etc.) that they bring with them, and so much more in that vein. The idea that someone interprets is about nothing more definite than that the "interpreter" chooses to say something that comes to his mind.

This phenomenon could be explained as an emotional and/or physical release, and there's nothing wrong with that, but of course this doesn't satisfy anyone who wants to believe it's a gift of the Holy Spirit.

 

[MennoSota]

So, you are quite certain of that.
I've heard some stuff and seen some stuff, I stay away from it. I don't say it's demonic, except for one guy, that was clearly New Age. I don't say it's all the Holy Spirit. Test it properly or better keep quiet. You need the gift of discernment of spirits to test it.

I'll stick by my assertion until proven otherwise.
My observation is that many people are taught non-biblical material about tongues and then told they must speak in tongues as an evidence of being filled with the Spirit. That teaching is non-biblical projection and harmful to people.
Others are looking for an experience with God to try hang their faith upon. Instead of meeting the standard of faith, as described in Hebrews 11:1, they require a sign in order to believe. In order to fit in with their community they may even fake tongues as a sign to fit in. What is not displayed is faith in God. Therefore, tongues is not a sign of mature believers walking by faith, but instead it is a sign of immature believers who require from God a sign before they can believe. Tongues, as most display it, are not edifying the body of Christ, but instead feed a prideful need to show others how spiritual you are. It doesn't bring glory to God. It brings admiration to the individual. When that happens God cannot be lifted up.

 

[Imalive]

I can sympathize with what you've said there.



But then this wipes it all out.

That's usually the case in such discussions. Having allowed that not all tongues are genuine, you immediately backpedal by saying to test them, after which the person who tests and finds them not to be convincing is almost certain to be characterized by someone here as not having come up with the "right" answer because they are "doubters," don't have the Spirit, just don't believe the Scriptures, or something like that. :scratchchin:

Well if they say 99.9 percent is rubbish or demonic I dont take it serious. But if someone goes to a person speaking in tongues and asks that Spirit or spirit: Do you confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? and gets a no then it's demonic.
And ppl who believe this gift doesnt exist now, how can they test? The spiritually mature have tested their senses by using them says Paul. If Derek Prince says theres mixture in a place I take that as a good warning. If MacArthur says it I dont even listen. He calls everything evil.

 

[Albion]

Yes, but the issue of tongues that are demonic is only a small part of this issue. Sincere people who think that the sounds they make are a real gift, that it's a real language, that it might even be translatable or angelic...that's the bigger issue by far.

And as for people you say don't believe it, that's a false charge IMO. For the most part you are speaking of other Christians whose faith is as real as any charismatic Christian and many of these have indeed tested with an open mind.

 

[MoreCoffee]

And another aspect of this that hasn't been gone into very much here (because of the "doubters" not wanting to be unnecessarily unkind to the charismatic posters, I think) is that there have been innumerable investigations into modern tongues-speaking, and the result is that most have been shown to be bogus. They have repeatedly been "tested."

Not only does "lamma klamma lamma" not have the nature of any language, but speakers repeat their few sounds constantly, have thrown in barks and whistles as well, speak their sounds with the regional accents (Southern, Bostonian, etc.) that they bring with them, and so much more in that vein. The idea that someone interprets is about nothing more definite than that the "interpreter" chooses to say something that comes to his mind.

This phenomenon could be explained as an emotional and/or physical release, and there's nothing wrong with that, but of course this doesn't satisfy anyone who wants to believe it's a gift of the Holy Spirit.

of course this doesn't satisfy anyone who wants to believe it's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Or a message from God. Because if God is speaking to his people then he is saying important things. It is hard to conceive of God wittering away about some of the things one hears as "interpretation of tongues".

 

[Albion]

Yes. And often it's just a paraphrase of a Bible verse. In other words, something that God has already revealed and which the person speaking or interpreting already knows.

 

[MoreCoffee]

That's right. Even the encouraging messages are couched in generalities that make them little more than rehearsing God's promises in Christ and when the "interpretation of tongues" is specific about a congregation's happy prospects then it's like wishes put into words and the wishes do not come true as often as Christians would expect from a promise made by God.

 

[Josiah]

Here we are on page THIRTY-TWO and still, no idea, no clue on what we're discussing, what this "tongues" is.....

As for the sound associated for what some claim to be tongues, I don't know that any study of it has been done. There are lots of Ph.D.'s in linquistics, there are researchers of such - but I'm just unaware of any studies of recordings of this. But even so, there are no recordings from St. Paul or from anyone in the First Century so no way to know if what is recorded now has any relationship WHATSOEVER with what might have been recorded then; in other words, is "it" what the Bible calls "tongues."


Nearly all of my very limited personal knowledge of this comes from Catholic charasmatics - and they are a secretive, quiet, reclusive group that just doesn't interact with others or share much about this. But I always gathered they considered it not a language at all, and that the sounds they made are entirely irrelevant. What I gathered is that it is a sort of non-words form of prayer. In fact, I read one on a site compare it to singing using sounds, not words. Among them, it seems to be a personal, self-serving, self-blessing kind of thing. A sort of non-verbal utterance of prayer and praise. I question is that has anything to do with "tongues" in the Bible, perhaps it has more to do with laughing or crying? Both have psychological value, both can be seen as a blessing, but are they in any sense "the gift of tongues?" Really hard to get any kind of handle on this..... even after 32 ages of posts.



Just my half cent.....


- Josiah




.

 

[psalms 91]

Yup unless you experience it most are doubters which is why I find it useless to discuss, this thread is the typical with those who have experienced it and those who havent with all the remarks and disbelief accompnyiong such

 

[Andrew]

Yup unless you experience it most are doubters which is why I find it useless to discuss, this thread is the typical with those who have experienced it and those who havent with all the remarks and disbelief accompnyiong such

I find it amusing now how its getting nowhere, every church seems to have its own form of humiliation and criticism coming from other churches. Kind of reminds me of the disciples debating on who is the greatest.

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