Tongues As A Sign For Unbelievers.

[tdidymas]

Why should anyone choose to have their prayer language evaluated by someone? If tongues is a prayer to God, then God is the only Person who has the right to evaluate it. Do you know who Jesus really is, or who the Holy Spirit really is, that having some human being made more important than Him?

So, who is going to evaluate my prayer language? You? And who are you? Are you a specially appointed person by the Holy Spirit to evaluate the prayer language of Charismatic Christians? If you are not that person, who do you think is? A secular, unconverted linguist?

Actually, I fully support Michael L Brown, who has a PhD in the linguist Old Testament study of God the Healer. He is totally fluent in Hebrew and Greek. If he says that modern tongues is genuine, then I would take his word over any lesser mortal.

Everyone has a bias, including Dr. Brown. When the "I had an experience" bias colors one's interpretation of scripture, all bets are off in attaining truth. I don't know him, nor have I read anything by him. But if he is the same man as the radio host, then yes, he is a gracious person, and I believe him to be a genuine Christian. Nevertheless, he has a bias and an agenda, regardless of what anyone says.

A person ought to have their "prayer language" evaluated because they don't know what they are saying. How does a person speaking modern P/C tongues know if they are blessing God or cursing Him? Just because Paul wrote "if there is no interpreter, then let him speak to himself and to God" (meaning be silent), doesn't justify the meaningless jabber that people are doing today. Where is the edification that Paul said should happen? How exactly are you edified? Can you please explain? All I see in modern P/C tongues is inspiring gullible people to believe in modern P/C tongues. I see no Biblical edification in it.

I am passionate for the truth found in scripture, because I just got tired of being deceived, and spent a lot of time and energy studying the scripture and doing lots of research. But where is your passion coming from? It appears to me that you are passionate for your experience. So it begs the question, have I touched a sacred cow?

But if you believe I'm a nobody, then why pay any attention to me?

 

[PaulChristensen]

Everyone has a bias, including Dr. Brown. When the "I had an experience" bias colors one's interpretation of scripture, all bets are off in attaining truth. I don't know him, nor have I read anything by him. But if he is the same man as the radio host, then yes, he is a gracious person, and I believe him to be a genuine Christian. Nevertheless, he has a bias and an agenda, regardless of what anyone says.

A person ought to have their "prayer language" evaluated because they don't know what they are saying. How does a person speaking modern P/C tongues know if they are blessing God or cursing Him? Just because Paul wrote "if there is no interpreter, then let him speak to himself and to God" (meaning be silent), doesn't justify the meaningless jabber that people are doing today. Where is the edification that Paul said should happen? How exactly are you edified? Can you please explain? All I see in modern P/C tongues is inspiring gullible people to believe in modern P/C tongues. I see no Biblical edification in it.

I am passionate for the truth found in scripture, because I just got tired of being deceived, and spent a lot of time and energy studying the scripture and doing lots of research. But where is your passion coming from? It appears to me that you are passionate for your experience. So it begs the question, have I touched a sacred cow?

But if you believe I'm a nobody, then why pay any attention to me?

I would never say that you are a nobody. But in the area of praying in tongues, the personal prayer room is a sacred place where God is the only listener. No one else has the right to intrude.

But the public use of tongues and interpretation is open to having the interpretation judged, in the same way that when a person prophesies, the others judge the prophecy - but not by their religious or theological bias, but by the Word of God.

Paul did not comment on the nature of the tongues spoken by the Corinthians. His view of the tongues was that the people were "giving thanks well enough", so he didn't have any problem with tongues speaking per se. It is the speaking of tongues without interpretation that concerned him. He said that it is much better in public meetings that people spoke in ways that others understood them rather than speaking like "Barbarians", not being understood by anyone. His view was that if there were no interpreters in the meeting it is much better to keep the tongues speaking to oneself and to God. At no stage did Paul ever say that the tongues spoken were of the flesh or the devil. If he did, he would have counselled the forbidding of tongues, but he counselled the opposite.

The trouble with many churches that oppose tongues is that they blatantly disobey Paul in that they actually forbid the speaking of tongues in their churches and kick people out who do speak in tongues. In these churches they don't even prophesy, which is another form of disobedience to what Paul taught. One has to wonder whether these churches actually believe what Paul taught at all!

 

[tdidymas]

I would never say that you are a nobody.

And yet, you said "who are you"? The nature of your response shouts that I'm a nobody to you, as if that justifies you not paying any attention to what I have to say.

But in the area of praying in tongues, the personal prayer room is a sacred place where God is the only listener. No one else has the right to intrude.

If you were confessing sin, then I might agree. Since Jesus said "go into your closet and pray to your Father in secret," I might agree, except He was talking about religious pride, not about the content of the prayer. If you really want to pray in secret, then why don't you just pray silently, since verbalizing anything (including 'tongues') will cause anyone to hear who is near enough to the door. And if P/Cs want to obey this command of Christ, then why do they pray in their gibberish in church, as they commonly do?

But if God let the apostles hear those who spoke in Biblical tongues in Acts, in order to confirm that the gentiles had received the Holy Spirit, then why can't your activity be evaluated by a 3rd party to verify the same thing? Like I said before, I get the idea you don't want your 'tongue' evaluated, because you intuitively know that it's just gibberish and not a real language.

But the public use of tongues and interpretation is open to having the interpretation judged, in the same way that when a person prophesies, the others judge the prophecy - but not by their religious or theological bias, but by the Word of God.

In order for there to be an interpretation of a miraculous tongue, that tongue has to carry an intelligible message, which modern P/C tongues don't. So 'interpretations' of those tongues are made up by those giving it, out of their imagination. This makes modern P/C tongues activity and all that surrounds it nothing more than a pretentious attempt at copying what the apostles did in Acts.

Paul did not comment on the nature of the tongues spoken by the Corinthians. His view of the tongues was that the people were "giving thanks well enough", so he didn't have any problem with tongues speaking per se. It is the speaking of tongues without interpretation that concerned him. He said that it is much better in public meetings that people spoke in ways that others understood them rather than speaking like "Barbarians", not being understood by anyone. His view was that if there were no interpreters in the meeting it is much better to keep the tongues speaking to oneself and to God. At no stage did Paul ever say that the tongues spoken were of the flesh or the devil. If he did, he would have counselled the forbidding of tongues, but he counselled the opposite.

He was talking about Biblical tongues, which are real languages that carry intelligible messages. He did not need to comment on the nature of the tongues spoken, because his assumption is that they were speaking Biblical tongues, not gibberish that is commonly done by P/Cs today.

The trouble with many churches that oppose tongues is that they blatantly disobey Paul in that they actually forbid the speaking of tongues in their churches and kick people out who do speak in tongues. In these churches they don't even prophesy, which is another form of disobedience to what Paul taught. One has to wonder whether these churches actually believe what Paul taught at all!

I disagree with you on this matter. If anyone has been kicked out of church, it is because they blatantly disobey the scripture by:
1. speaking out their gibberish without permission and out of order
2. have no interpreter, and even if they do, it's a conspiracy to disrespect the authority and order of the church
3. continue to assert their belief that their gibberish is biblical when it's not
or, there are other possible reasons.
IMO modern P/C tongues is not biblical, and is caused by a fleshly motive.

The subject of prophecy is a side issue and off topic. But since you mentioned it, prophecy is both foretelling and forthtelling what God has spoken. I don't know what churches you're talking about, but the ones I know of they do much forthtelling. But in my 20 years experience of P/C circles, there was much foretelling that didn't come true, and that means that prophets among the P/Cs are a dime a dozen. Just because someone can 'prophesy' to someone else and make them feel good in the moment by telling them what they want to hear, doesn't mean it's from God. Psychics and mediums can do that.

It appears to me that you are grasping at straws, claiming that the churches are in a "form of disobedience." Yet the P/Cs commonly disobey scripture in the things I mentioned. And as I've said before, if anyone speaks gibberish that is a natural ability, and claims that it's a gift of the Holy Spirit, such a person is taking the name of the Lord in vain (even if they don't know they are doing it) - would you agree with this statement?

Therefore, IMO the P/Cs have a tall order to prove that what they are doing is really miraculous. Until that happens, there will always remain a rift in the churches, because people with wisdom and Biblical knowledge can see right through it.

 

[hawkman]

You might see it as meaningless babble, but you have no proof that God does. There is a Scripture that says that God uses the foolish things to confound the wise. How do you know that God is using what you think is "meaningless babble" to confound those who prefer man's wisdom instead of God's Word?

I have done a full exegesis of 1 Corinthians 14 and find nothing in it that proves that the way modern believers pray in tongues is just babble that is meaningless to God. Just because you decide that modern tongues is meaningless, doesn't mean that God agrees with you about it.

There have been many instances where modern believers have prayed in tongues in a meeting, and it has sounded meaningless to everyone in that meeting except one who heard a believer speaking in his own language dialect. There could have been cessationists in that meeting doing a linguistic study of the language and purported to prove that the language was meaningless when it turned out to be an understandable language spoken for the ears of a specific person in the crowd.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:2 that when a person prays in tongues he speaks to God [and not to man], so what could be meaningless to man [howbeit man does not understand him] could be openly understood by God, who knows the mind of the Spirit, so that when someone prays in the Spirit using tongues, God knows what the Spirit is saying through the person, and all the while it sounds meaningless to everyone else, including you.

My wife told me of one such service she attended . There was message given out in tongues and there was the pause after waiting for an interpretation but no one spoke with an interpretation which was not normally what happens . As everyone was leaving the service a visitor to the church that night told the pastor that the message in tongues had been for him because it was a language that he spoke .

 

[hawkman]

I spent 20 years among the P/Cs, and the many times I heard modern tongues, not once did I hear anyone speak an intelligible language. Every time it was much like what I heard and saw on the video link you provided. Why should I waste an expert Linguist's time leading them around a wild goose chase? Your suggestion isn't good enough. If you want others to be sure that your tongue is miraculous, then you'll have to prove it. Otherwise, I don't believe a word you say, because your word is no better than any other exaggerative word of any other P/C IMO. Like I said, I've no doubt you believe in it, but I don't. That's where we're at.

And if you say that you are uncomfortable with the proof-positive method I suggested, then my conclusion is that you know intuitively that it would prove your tongue is just babbling without meaning. So your refusal is just confirmation to me that you don't have a miraculous gift from God, but that your tongues is the same thing as what other P/Cs do, and the same thing they do in pagan religions. And if that's the case, then you are as deceived as anyone in pagan religions who think they are speaking "languages of the gods."

As far as putting God to the test, it seems to me you don't know what that means. In reference to whether God will do what He promised, He said "put Me to the test..." (Mal. 3:10, ESV) or "prove me now herewith" (KJV). Jesus used that phrase against the devil when He was tempted to cheat death. Can you see that there is a world of difference? If you prove God with your "miraculous gift," are you tempting Him or are you glorifying Him? It just seems to me that you are afraid to expose yourself, lest you find out that what you're doing really is pretention, and that you are self-deceived.

So I don't care what you think you know. I care what the Bible teaches, and modern P/C tongues isn't it. If you're interested in how I come to that conclusion, then you should read all my posts in this thread. If you have any questions about that, or about how I exegete the scripture, I'd be glad to respond. Otherwise, is this where our paths diverge?

The proof of the miraculous nature of us being born again is felt in our spirit . But do we have any hard proof we can display for experts to evaluate ?

There is no " proof -positive method " that I know of that would prove someone is speaking as the Holy Spirit gives the utterance .

Here is how it could play out with a linguist present to interpret the tongue . A message is given out in tongues . The linguist interprets it and tells you it is Aramaic as spoken in the first century . The linguist then tells you the person was fluent in the language so that means the person that spoke KNOWS the language how else could he speak it ? So no proof of the Holy Spirit giving the utterance . Just another trick from the modern P/C tongues crowd would be your response .

 

[tdidymas]

The proof of the miraculous nature of us being born again is felt in our spirit . But do we have any hard proof we can display for experts to evaluate ?

A miracle is seen and heard in the physical universe, not just felt in your imagination.

There is no " proof -positive method " that I know of that would prove someone is speaking as the Holy Spirit gives the utterance .

I already laid it out for you, and is the same method used in Acts 2, but using modern technology.

Here is how it could play out with a linguist present to interpret the tongue . A message is given out in tongues . The linguist interprets it and tells you it is Aramaic as spoken in the first century . The linguist then tells you the person was fluent in the language so that means the person that spoke KNOWS the language how else could he speak it ? So no proof of the Holy Spirit giving the utterance . Just another trick from the modern P/C tongues crowd would be your response .

No, I'm asking you to record your tongues so that it can be evaluated by more than one linguist, so that truth is established by the testimony of 2 or 3 witnesses, as Jesus instructed. Expert linguists can tell if something spoken has vocabulary and structure to convey meaning, it's the nature of the academics.

But I expect that you'll not do this, because I believe you are inherently afraid that the counterfeit nature of your P/C tongues will be exposed. I have an open mind, and am willing to concede that I'm wrong, if that is what the evidence bears out. But I don't believe you have an open mind, or the willingness to be evaluated (based on your responses in this thread).

 

[Serving Zion]

My wife told me of one such service she attended . There was message given out in tongues and there was the pause after waiting for an interpretation but no one spoke with an interpretation which was not normally what happens . As everyone was leaving the service a visitor to the church that night told the pastor that the message in tongues had been for him because it was a language that he spoke .

Did he explain why did he not make the interpretation known for all?

 

[hawkman]

Did he explain why did he not make the interpretation known for all?

Quite possibly he was not a Christian since was a visitor to the church , this is why he waited and told the pastor after service . The pastor was probably perplexed why no one interpreted the message and the visitor shared why .

 

[Edward]

No, I'm asking you to record your tongues so that it can be evaluated by more than one linguist, so that truth is established by the testimony of 2 or 3 witnesses, as Jesus instructed. Expert linguists can tell if something spoken has vocabulary and structure to convey meaning, it's the nature of the academics.

I remember a video on youtube that a young Christian girl sang in the spirit in tongues. When she was on her way to record it the Holy Spirit told her to do it twice so they did and then they mixed them together to see what it sounded like and it sounded perfect so they posted it.

I'll see if I can find it for you and post it.

 

[Edward]

Here it is. Have fun.

 

[PaulChristensen]

And yet, you said "who are you"? The nature of your response shouts that I'm a nobody to you, as if that justifies you not paying any attention to what I have to say.

If you were confessing sin, then I might agree. Since Jesus said "go into your closet and pray to your Father in secret," I might agree, except He was talking about religious pride, not about the content of the prayer. If you really want to pray in secret, then why don't you just pray silently, since verbalizing anything (including 'tongues') will cause anyone to hear who is near enough to the door. And if P/Cs want to obey this command of Christ, then why do they pray in their gibberish in church, as they commonly do?

But if God let the apostles hear those who spoke in Biblical tongues in Acts, in order to confirm that the gentiles had received the Holy Spirit, then why can't your activity be evaluated by a 3rd party to verify the same thing? Like I said before, I get the idea you don't want your 'tongue' evaluated, because you intuitively know that it's just gibberish and not a real language.

In order for there to be an interpretation of a miraculous tongue, that tongue has to carry an intelligible message, which modern P/C tongues don't. So 'interpretations' of those tongues are made up by those giving it, out of their imagination. This makes modern P/C tongues activity and all that surrounds it nothing more than a pretentious attempt at copying what the apostles did in Acts.

He was talking about Biblical tongues, which are real languages that carry intelligible messages. He did not need to comment on the nature of the tongues spoken, because his assumption is that they were speaking Biblical tongues, not gibberish that is commonly done by P/Cs today.

I disagree with you on this matter. If anyone has been kicked out of church, it is because they blatantly disobey the scripture by:
1. speaking out their gibberish without permission and out of order
2. have no interpreter, and even if they do, it's a conspiracy to disrespect the authority and order of the church
3. continue to assert their belief that their gibberish is biblical when it's not
or, there are other possible reasons.
IMO modern P/C tongues is not biblical, and is caused by a fleshly motive.

The subject of prophecy is a side issue and off topic. But since you mentioned it, prophecy is both foretelling and forthtelling what God has spoken. I don't know what churches you're talking about, but the ones I know of they do much forthtelling. But in my 20 years experience of P/C circles, there was much foretelling that didn't come true, and that means that prophets among the P/Cs are a dime a dozen. Just because someone can 'prophesy' to someone else and make them feel good in the moment by telling them what they want to hear, doesn't mean it's from God. Psychics and mediums can do that.

It appears to me that you are grasping at straws, claiming that the churches are in a "form of disobedience." Yet the P/Cs commonly disobey scripture in the things I mentioned. And as I've said before, if anyone speaks gibberish that is a natural ability, and claims that it's a gift of the Holy Spirit, such a person is taking the name of the Lord in vain (even if they don't know they are doing it) - would you agree with this statement?

Therefore, IMO the P/Cs have a tall order to prove that what they are doing is really miraculous. Until that happens, there will always remain a rift in the churches, because people with wisdom and Biblical knowledge can see right through it.

My point was that you are not qualified to evaluate the personal prayer life of any other believer, and any evaluation of public speaking of tongues along with interpretation of the same is reserved for the elders of the particular church in which the gift is manifested, not for any tom dick or harry who thinks they have the 'gift' of evaluation of spiritual gifts. I think you are over-reacting by accusing me of referring to you as a 'nobody'. It is just that you are unqualified to evaluate the manifestation of spiritual gifts when you personally don't believe they are supposed to manifested in today's churches. It is exactly the same as a person who has no mechanical qualifications evaluating the work of an A Grade Mechanic, or someone who has never learned to fly a plane telling a commercial pilot how to fly his aircraft.

I am not referring to you personally, but one of the problems with churches these days is that when a person gets a bit of religion he or she thinks they are experts in Christian matters and run around being pseudo-consultants in how people should run their spiritual lives.

I notice that you have not quoted even one Scripture to support your view. Therefore I conclude that your views are based solely on your personal experience, and maybe you are judging all Pentecostals and Charismatics on just a small minority of lunatic pseudo-charismatics.

 

[PaulChristensen]

My wife told me of one such service she attended . There was message given out in tongues and there was the pause after waiting for an interpretation but no one spoke with an interpretation which was not normally what happens . As everyone was leaving the service a visitor to the church that night told the pastor that the message in tongues had been for him because it was a language that he spoke .

A brilliant testimony!

 

[Serving Zion]

Quite possibly he was not a Christian since was a visitor to the church , this is why he waited and told the pastor after service . The pastor was probably perplexed why no one interpreted the message and the visitor shared why .

Is it possible that he was a Christian though? How much do you know about this story? Is it worthwhile for me to ask more about it?

 

[hawkman]

Is it possible that he was a Christian though? How much do you know about this story? Is it worthwhile for me to ask more about it?

Possible that he was but if he a had of been pentecostal he would known to share the interpretation with the congregation . You have all the info that I have with story , this happened over 35 years ago .

 

[tdidymas]

I remember a video on youtube that a young Christian girl sang in the spirit in tongues. When she was on her way to record it the Holy Spirit told her to do it twice so they did and then they mixed them together to see what it sounded like and it sounded perfect so they posted it.

I'll see if I can find it for you and post it.

It's very aesthetically pleasing. (But it doesn't mean it's any language that conveys a message).

 

[tdidymas]

My point was that you are not qualified to evaluate the personal prayer life of any other believer, and any evaluation of public speaking of tongues along with interpretation of the same is reserved for the elders of the particular church in which the gift is manifested, not for any tom dick or harry who thinks they have the 'gift' of evaluation of spiritual gifts.

This is a typical exaggeration of someone who doesn't want to be evaluated. Examination of glossolalia is not an evaluation of a prayer life. It appears to me that you just want to argue about it, and if you keep doing this, I'll probably ignore you in the future, which IMO is likely what you want in order to make you feel like you won the debate.

I think you are over-reacting by accusing me of referring to you as a 'nobody'. It is just that you are unqualified to evaluate the manifestation of spiritual gifts when you personally don't believe they are supposed to manifested in today's churches. It is exactly the same as a person who has no mechanical qualifications evaluating the work of an A Grade Mechanic, or someone who has never learned to fly a plane telling a commercial pilot how to fly his aircraft.

You jump to conclusions as is typical of P/Cs. When did I ever say that? And it appears to me that you either did not read my previous posts, or you forgot what you read, or you just didn't understand it.

I am not referring to you personally, but one of the problems with churches these days is that when a person gets a bit of religion he or she thinks they are experts in Christian matters and run around being pseudo-consultants in how people should run their spiritual lives.

Yet more exaggeration. It appears to me that you just want to justify evading the real issue about modern P/C tongues, which is that it is not Biblical.

I notice that you have not quoted even one Scripture to support your view. Therefore I conclude that your views are based solely on your personal experience, and maybe you are judging all Pentecostals and Charismatics on just a small minority of lunatic pseudo-charismatics.

Again, you either forgot my previous posts, or you didn't read them. Case in point:

Tongues As A Sign For Unbelievers.

Well that's wrong. I'm just saying that the way it's done in every way I've seen it is not the same as the scriptural description, it's just babble. When you speak in tongues, what does it sound like? A language, or jibberish? A baby when first learning a language sounds like incoherent at...

christianforums.net

And if you really were interested in how I come to my conclusions based on scripture, you would ask questions, as opposed to just arguing your opinion. I've quoted scripture, but you seem to not want to discuss how to interpret it.

 

[PaulChristensen]

Is it possible that he was a Christian though? How much do you know about this story? Is it worthwhile for me to ask more about it?

I found the story very interesting, and it seemed to me that the Holy Spirit didn't prompt anyone to give an interpretation because the tongues "message" was for that person who understood the language. I tend to believe the story because of the many testimonies of people speaking in tongues and the language spoken understood by a native speaker of that language. Two such events happened in the very Charismatic church I attended in the 1970s. One event involved me praying in tongues alongside a NZ Maori lady who heard me say encouraging things to her in the Maori language. I can attest to that story being absolutely true because it happened to me, and the lady was a regular attender of the church.

The other event was when a close friend of mine was praying in a church prayer meeting where people prayed out loud in tongues while others prayed in English. A Ghanaian visitor, who was a committed Christian stopped the prayer meeting and told my friend what he said in his own rural village dialect. My friend could never had known that dialect, but he did speak it while praying in tongues and Bahdu, the Ghanaian understood it perfectly, because my friend spoke it without any trace of an accent.

 

[PaulChristensen]

This is a typical exaggeration of someone who doesn't want to be evaluated. Examination of glossolalia is not an evaluation of a prayer life. It appears to me that you just want to argue about it, and if you keep doing this, I'll probably ignore you in the future, which IMO is likely what you want in order to make you feel like you won the debate.

You jump to conclusions as is typical of P/Cs. When did I ever say that? And it appears to me that you either did not read my previous posts, or you forgot what you read, or you just didn't understand it.

Yet more exaggeration. It appears to me that you just want to justify evading the real issue about modern P/C tongues, which is that it is not Biblical.

Again, you either forgot my previous posts, or you didn't read them. Case in point:

Tongues As A Sign For Unbelievers.

Well that's wrong. I'm just saying that the way it's done in every way I've seen it is not the same as the scriptural description, it's just babble. When you speak in tongues, what does it sound like? A language, or jibberish? A baby when first learning a language sounds like incoherent at...

christianforums.net

And if you really were interested in how I come to my conclusions based on scripture, you would ask questions, as opposed to just arguing your opinion. I've quoted scripture, but you seem to not want to discuss how to interpret it.

When you can quote a Scripture in context that shows that either Jesus or Paul said directly that the gifts were temporary and for use only until the Christian church became established, or that the gifts were confined for the use of the Apostles of Christ only, then I might find your comments about modern tongues of some merit.

You can read my previous post just before and what I told actually were real events. You can call all my friends and me liars if you want. That is your choice, but the fact that two people prayed in tongues and what was said was understood by others, is real and true, and undermines your opposition to modern tongues.

 

[Serving Zion]

I found the story very interesting, and it seemed to me that the Holy Spirit didn't prompt anyone to give an interpretation because the tongues "message" was for that person who understood the language.

I'm not comfortable with making such assumptions as to the why - and I suggest you look carefully at your reasons for having done so. 1. It is not right for tongues to be spoken without an interpreter present, therefore there is an implied responsibility upon that one who has the gift to interpret. 2. If the congregation was paused waiting for an interpretation, there was an awkward moment when everybody knew that they couldn't interpret the message. Why did nobody call out "is there anyone who can tell us what that means?". Something doesn't add up, but that doesn't mean that it is necessarily not true. Only that somehow the one who could interpret it has failed to do so. I don't think you should be making excuses for him, but it's typical that you would do so if you are trying to defend the practice.

I tend to believe the story because of the many testimonies of people speaking in tongues and the language spoken understood by a native speaker of that language.

I didn't perceive any cause to doubt the truthfulness of the story until you had mentioned it. Even now that you have mentioned it, I don't see a cause to doubt it. I am looking for an explanation as to why the interpretation wasn't given. That's the #1 problem with tongues: not that it is being practiced, but that it isn't being practiced in a God-given way (ie: 1 Corinthians 14:40).

Two such events happened in the very Charismatic church I attended in the 1970s. One event involved me praying in tongues alongside a NZ Maori lady who heard me say encouraging things to her in the Maori language. I can attest to that story being absolutely true because it happened to me, and the lady was a regular attender of the church.

A first-hand testimony is most useful, thank you

The other event was when a close friend of mine was praying in a church prayer meeting where people prayed out loud in tongues while others prayed in English. A Ghanaian visitor, who was a committed Christian stopped the prayer meeting and told my friend what he said in his own rural village dialect. My friend could never had known that dialect, but he did speak it while praying in tongues and Bahdu, the Ghanaian understood it perfectly, because my friend spoke it without any trace of an accent.

I remember that. Another great testimony! These examples are much different than the glossolalia babbling that comes from the flesh. The distinction needs to be made.

 

[Serving Zion]

Possible that he was but if he a had of been pentecostal he would known to share the interpretation with the congregation

Did you actually mean to suggest that some types of Christians would not encourage visitors to participate in the gifts of the spirit? If so, could you give some examples?