Has God ever told any tongues-speaking believer that they are speaking gibberish

[1stcenturylady]

You have been onwned on that my friend! Big time!

Sorry, what does onwned mean?

 

[1stcenturylady]

Who is to say though, that tongues does not come from dark places? Could it actually be evil forces at work trying to take away followers of Christ?

The Scriptures should put your mind at ease.

Luke 11:11 If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

 

[Antig]

The Scriptures should put your mind at ease.

Luke 11:11 If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Yes, true, but, we all know that the evil one can trick anyone. He can perform acts that can fool anyone!

I dont want to be harsh in what i say. I am just very cautious about tongues.

 

[swordsman1]

If the Church histories that you have read were written by Cessationist historians, I am not surprised.

I was just looking for the historical facts as to whether the Wesleyans and Moravians claimed to speak in tongues. From your answer and change of subject I take it there are none. If the only claims of tongues speaking after the church fathers said it ceased are a handful of dubious unofficial reports from isolated individuals, and not whole groups decisively claiming the gift throughout Church history, then it seems tongues did indeed cease just as Paul said they would.

 

[1stcenturylady]

Yes, true, but, we all know that the evil one can trick anyone. He can perform acts that can fool anyone!

I dont want to be harsh in what i say. I am just very cautious about tongues.

I wasn't sure what you were saying earlier and asked you, what does "onwned" mean. Your fingers must have slipped.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Who is to say though, that tongues does not come from dark places? Could it actually be evil forces at work trying to take away followers of Christ?

For me its a VERY grey area indeed. One that i myself feel too afraid to try to step into. Oscar knows that i want the Holy Spirit massively in my life and indeed, i welcome the Holy Spirit into my very being.

Yes, the Catholic Church has a Charismatic section but i just feel uncomfortable with it.

It is quite true that occultic and pagan sects involve tongues. But these do not include faith in Christ. They do not seek to have souls accept Christ as Saviour. They encourage the worship of demons and false gods.

But Paul said that no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and John says that no one can say that Jesus has come in the flesh except by the Holy Spirit.

Yes. Some types of tongues can come from dark places, but this is never true when Bible believing, Christ exalting, born of God, holy children of God speak in tongues. Bitter and sweet water cannot come from the same well. Either the whole well is polluted or the well is pure and fresh. In the same way, we cannot have light and darkness in the same place. The place has to be totally dark or not dark at all. Even the weakest light makes it light and not dark. If in a person who has accepted Christ as Saviour, the darkness inside him is taken away by the light of salvation and the infilling of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot abide with a dark spirit in the spirit of a believer. There is either the Holy Spirit in a saved believer, or a dark spirit in a person dead in their trespasses and sins.

Therefore, a believer who receives the baptism with the Spirit and starts to speak in tongues, it cannot come from anywhere else but the Holy Spirit within him, because there is no dark spirit there. But when a pagan or a spiritist speaks in tongues then it surely does come from the dark spirit within him. Because no true believer in Christ can be demon possessed, if a professing believer exhibits the characteristics of a demon possessed person, then that person may have a religious spirit instead of the Holy Spirit inside of him, and so when he speaks in tongues, those tongues could come from that religious spirit instead of the Holy Spirit.

But if you have received the Holy Spirit into your life, the Lord is not going to give you something else. A person with a religious spirit has never genuinely accepted Jesus as their Saviour.

 

[swordsman1]

The blind man healed by Jesus was questioned in the same way by the Pharisees, and when he stuck to his guns concerning the miracle that had happened to him, they called him a sinner and threw him out of the synagogue. Same spirit as the one behind your criticism of her miracle. I can't explain it, and neither can you, but it happened, in the same way that my ginger cat hooked my lost keys from under my upright freezer. I didn't see it happened - all I saw were the keys in the middle of the floor of the laundry. I could quite easily have said that an angel came down and hooked the keys out so I could find them. Who's to say it didn't happen that way? I just chose the cat because because he has a habit of hooking cockroaches out of their hiding places. But it was a miracle to me because the keys would have been so far under the freezer, and so how would the cat have known they were there? And although there are other items under the freezer, he has never hooked them out.

So, be honest! Say that you don't believe in miracles like that and leave it at that, because just because you don't believe in miracles, doesn't mean that they can happen, and in unusual ways.

Yeah I guess I'm just not as gullible as some people who believe every fantastic story they hear on the internet. It's not that I don't believe God can perform miracles (and by miracle I mean supernaturally defying the laws of nature, not finding a set of keys), I do, it's just I don't see any hard verifiable evidence of them happening. It's all just hearsay.

 

[swordsman1]

I have been involved in the Pentecostal movement (12 years as an active member of a Pentecostal church) and 38 years associated with Pentecostal organisations while a member and elder of a Presbyterian church. I have heard all the prominent Pentecostal speakers and teacher who have visited New Zealand, and have been fully immersed in the basic teaching of the Pentecostal movement. In all that time I have seen that the importance of saving lost souls, repentance, love for God's Word, witnessing to the unsaved, importance of holy living, hearing God's voice through His Word, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, knowing where we stand in Christ, having times of praise and worship to the Lord. 99% of all the teaching that I have ever heard over 50 years of associating with Pentecostalism have been on the above topics. I think I have heard only about 3 or 4 actual teaching sessions on the gift of tongues by comparison. If you call that an over-emphasis on tongues, then I think you need to examine Pentecostal theology a little more closely.

That's all well and good. But if there is false doctrine within the body of Christ shouldn't we seek to correct it? Otherwise a little leaven can leaven the whole lump.

 

[swordsman1]

So you are saying that every movement throughout church history that had people falling down in the Spirit were false? You would have to condemn the Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, the Great Awakening, the Hebrides and Welsh Revivals, because they all experienced people falling down. Your comments are on the level of "Everyone is wrong, except you and me and I am not sure about you!"

I never said that. I'm sure those revivals were all genuine. I'm saying the practice of being 'slain in the Spirit' is clearly unbiblical so it cannot be a work of God as is claimed but is most probably a work of the flesh (just as I believe modern tongues is). That doesn't mean the whole revival must be rejected along with it.

Get a life! Augustine in the Fifth Century reported tongues happening then, and later on the established Church, although teaching that if ordinary church members spoke in tongues they were demon possessed, if members of the eccesiastical hierarchy did, it was an evidence of sainthood! If that was the teaching hundreds of years after the last Apostle died, then the speaking of tongues must have still been practiced.

No he didn't, Augustine said tongues had ceased:

For when hands are laid on the baptized, they do not receive the Holy Ghost now, in such a manner as to speak with the tongues of all the nations; nor are the sick now cured by the shadow of Christ’s preachers as they pass by them, and others such as these, which, it is manifest, did afterwards cease;

Brothers, has the holy Spirit not been given now? Whoever thinks this is not deserving to receive. He is given and now. Why then is no one speaking in the tongues of all the nations just as he spoke who at the time was being filled with the holy Spirit? Why? Because this was a sign that has been satisfied.”(2)

When we laid the hand on these infants, did each one of you look to see whether they would speak with tongues, and, when he saw that they did not speak with tongues, was any of you so wrong-minded as to say, “These have not received the Holy Ghost.” . . . If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Ghost be not now given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know that he has received the Holy Ghost? Let him question his own heart. If he love his brother, the Spirit of God dwelleth in him. How then, brethren, because he that is baptized in Christ, and believes on Him, does not speak now in the tongues of all nations, are we not to believe that he has received the Holy Ghost? God forbid that our heart should be tempted by this faithlessness. . . . Since, therefore, the Holy Ghost is even now received by men, some one may say, why is it that no man speaks in the tongues of all nations? Because the Church itself now speaks in the tongues of all nations. Why then is the Holy Spirit given now in such wise, that no one to whom it is given speaks with divers tongues, except because that miracle then prefigured that all nations of the earth should believe, and that thus the gospel should be found to be in every tongue?​

And apart from the odd isolated spurious claim, ceased they remained.

I was putting myself in the shoes of a strict Pharisee who had heard about the event. And the Gospel writer would not have given every detail of what went on at the wedding. Those people were just the same as anyone today who attends a wedding. Any wedding without alcohol usually falls a bit flat, and the Cana wedding was falling flat because the wine had run out. Jesus turned a number of very large pottery jars of water into wine, so there was a large quantity of wine produced and it was just as alcoholic as modern wine. There was no Temperance Union controlling that wedding!

But you said yourself the Pharisees wouldn't have even known about it.

Even if they did there is no evidence the wedding was any more drunken than any other wedding. We don't know how many people attended - there may have been hundreds. And it doesn't say the guests consumed all the wine Jesus produced. So why would the Pharisee accuse Jesus of promoting drunkeness?

Any Pharisee who made that accusation about Moses would have been thrown out for blasphemy. The parting of the Red Sea was one of the greatest remembered and revered miracles of the Jewish faith. And you show a lack of knowledge concerning your second point, because it was not Isaiah who raised the widow's son, and I do not see anything in the Scriptural record that the guy who did it was accused of having a demon.

Exactly. So if it was perfectly biblical for God's servants to perform miracles, then why would the Pharissee necessarily think that Jesus was a false teacher because he was performing miracles. Rather, if they hadn't been so stubborn, it would prove that Jesus was who he claimed to be, and certainly not a false teacher.

How silly of me to mix up Isaiah with Elijah and give you ammunition to take a pop at me! I must remember not to type with too much haste next time.

So, is that all you have got to try and refute my views? The cracks are starting to show. You need a bit more training in Biblical and Historical scholarship to improve your debates!

You said at the start of this thread you would report anyone who started making ad-hominem personal remarks. Will you be reporting yourself?

 

[swordsman1]

Therefore, a believer who receives the baptism with the Spirit and starts to speak in tongues, it cannot come from anywhere else but the Holy Spirit within him, because there is no dark spirit there. But when a pagan or a spiritist speaks in tongues then it surely does come from the dark spirit within him. Because no true believer in Christ can be demon possessed, if a professing believer exhibits the characteristics of a demon possessed person, then that person may have a religious spirit instead of the Holy Spirit inside of him, and so when he speaks in tongues, those tongues could come from that religious spirit instead of the Holy Spirit.

Or it could just be the natural physiological phenomenon where the speech organs go into 'autopilot' and produce strings of language-like syllables - known to linguists as free vocalization or glossolalia.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I was just looking for the historical facts as to whether the Wesleyans and Moravians claimed to speak in tongues. From your answer and change of subject I take it there are none. If the only claims of tongues speaking after the church fathers said it ceased are a handful of dubious unofficial reports from isolated individuals, and not whole groups decisively claiming the gift throughout Church history, then it seems tongues did indeed cease just as Paul said they would.

Here are some quotes for your information:
"in like manner we do also hear many brethren in the Church who possess prophetic gifts and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God" (Irenaeus AD 125-200).

"Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have predicted things to come and have made manifest te secrets of the heart; let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer - only let it be by the spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him. Now all these signs are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty" (Tertullian AD 160-240). Tertullian also taught that the baptism with the Spirit came after baptism.

Origen (AD 185-284) notes that Celcius, a pagan writer remarks on "the strange and unintelligible words that the Christians of the time were speaking. This shows that tongues still existed in the Church during that time. Origen, in his commentary on Romans 8:26, links praying in the Spirit with praying in tongues.

Novatian (AD 210-280) notes that the decay in moral purity was a cause of the gradual decline of the supernatural gifts. He says that this moral declined caused contention and strife in the Eastern and Western Church and the official institution sided against those who advocated strict moral purity.

Concerning the Montanists, Irenaeus and Tertullian both defended the movement, and Irenaeus was sent to the Pope to intercede for them, and because no doctrinal fault was found with them, the Pope issued letters of peace to them. When the Church rejected Montanism, the spiritual gifts disappeared rapidly from the Church. Origen states "The freedom of the Spirit has been replaced by ceremonial ritual and ecclesiastical order."

A.J. Gordon, Baptist pastor stated: "It is not altogether strange that when the Church forgot her citizenship in heaven and began to establish herself in luxury and splendour on earth, she should cease to exhibit the supernatural gifts of heaven."

Pacgimius (AD 292-346) received a visitor who spoke Latin, a language he did not know. After three hours of earnest prayer, he was able to converse with the visitor in Latin. It was reported that on several occasions he was able to speak in a language he had not learned.

Augustine spoke about singing in the Spirit which he called "Jubilation". He said that a person can be so taken with the joy and wonder of the Lord that he cannot express it in words, neither can he remain silent, but to sing in jubilation, not by the limits of syllables.

Benedict (AD 480-547) was endowed with the gift of prophecy in which he foretold future events and his own death.

Hildegard of Bingen (AD 1098-1179) spoke and sang in tongues. Pope Eugenius recognised that her gifts were genuine and encouraged her to continue her course.

Dominic (AD 1170-1221) was travelling with a companion through Europe. He was so concerned about the souls of those he met, that he knelt down in prayer and pleaded with God to enable to give them the gospel in their own language. God answered that prayer and they were able converse in the German language, which they had never learned.

Francis of Assisi (AD 1181-1226). It was said of him that when he was filled with the fervour of the Holy Spirit he "burst forth ardently in the French tongue" which he had never learned.

Vincent Of Ferrier (AD 1350-1419). "On the authority of reliable witnesses, various ethnic groups where he travelled, heard him preaching to them in their own languages." It is interesting to note that when he preached, people fell under the power.

Francis Xavier (AD 1506-1552) in his canonizaton by Pope Urban VIII, much was made that he was able to speak Japanese through his gift of tongues and was able to speak to the different tribes in their own languages.

Martin Luther (1483-1546). It was reported by his biographer, Johann Mathesius that Luther was a prophet, whose many prophecies were fulfilled. Luther was described by Souer, a German historian in his History of the Christian Church as "a prophet, evangelist, tongues speaker and interpreter in one person endowed with all the gifts of the Holy Spirit".

Edward Burroughs, and friend and colleague of George Fox says: "We received often the pouring down of the Spirit upon us, and the gift of God's Holy eternal Spirit as in the days of old, and our hearts were made glad, and our tongues loosed and our mouths opened, and we spoke with new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, and as His Spirit led us, which was poured down upon us, on sons and daughters."

Pastor Rothe, of the Moravians was preaching and the presence of the Holy Spirit became so intense that he sank to the floor, and then the whole congregation sank to the floor with him. It was reported that "
Christian women and children were filled with the Spirit and prophesied".
A person called John Roche accused the Moravians of repeating the excesses of the Montanists. This strongly implies that he was hearing some speaking in tongues. He said that "they broke into some disconnected jargon".

An early Methodist leader, Thomas Walsh, says "This morning the Lord gave me a language I knew not of, raising my soul to him in a wonderful manner."

In the Cane Ridge Revival (August 1801), James Crawford, one of the ministers present reported three thousand slain in the Spirit, "some broke out in loud laughter, while others ran and shouted. Others barked like dogs as they treed the devil." The last sentence comes from southern raccoon hunters where their dog would chase the raccoon up a tree and bark at it to alert the hunter to where the raccoon was. So barking like dogs was not confined to the Brownsville Revival! At the university of Georgia many were "seized" by the power of God: "They swooned away and lay for hours in the strew prepared for those "smitten of the Lord", or they started suddenly to flee away and fell prostrate as if shot by a sniper, or they took suddenly to jerking with apparently every muscle in their body until it seemed they would be torn to pieces or converted into marble, or they shouted and talked in unknown tongues."

Under the ministry of D.L. Moody it was reported: "When I got to the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, Victoria Hall, London, I found the meeting on fire. The young men were speaking with tongues, prophesying. What on earth did it mean? Only that Moody had addressed them that afternoon."

So, these are historical accounts of a whole list of prominent Church fathers, Catholic saints, Protestants, Quakers, Revivals, where the gift of tongues was practiced and heard, approved by at least two Popes, and acknowledged by sound historians as evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit in those people or groups.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Or it could just be the natural physiological phenomenon where the speech organs go into 'autopilot' and produce strings of language-like syllables - known to linguists as free vocalization or glossolalia.

See post #691.

 

[1stcenturylady]

@swordsman1,

In a nutshell, what do YOU believe was the purpose of tongues?

Do YOU believe speaking in tongues was the most important gift?

 

[Antig]

For me, the purpose of tongues was for preaching to unbelievers the Gospel. The Word of God.

 

[1stcenturylady]

For me, the purpose of tongues was for preaching to unbelievers the Gospel. The Word of God.

So in other words speaking in tongues was the most important gift?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

For me, the purpose of tongues was for preaching to unbelievers the Gospel. The Word of God.

At certain times in church history as you can see from my history post, it happened just like that. Not always though.

 

[Antig]

So in other words speaking in tongues was the most important gift?

Preaching the Word of God was and is very important.

 

[Antig]

At certain times in church history as you can see from my history post, it happened just like that. Not always though.

Yes, i see that.

 

[1stcenturylady]

@Antig and @Oscarr,

If tongues was the most important gift for preaching the gospel around the world, then why did Paul tell them to seek the higher gifts?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Preaching the Word of God was and is very important.

And God will use unsual methods to get it across to those who desperately need it where there is no other way.