Speaking in Tongues a Cessationists’ View

[Saint Steven]

I posted before that I saw FIFTEEN different possible languages among the 'visitors to Jerusalem' on day of Pentecost.

I am very interested in just what occurred there - for I don't see 12 apostles by themselves conveying the message to fifteen nationalities -- nor am I sure all of the 120 disciples were involved, and scenarioes switch between an Upper Room, to a house, until ultimately -- we are in a scenario where all the various tongue-talkers yield to Peter alone, and Peter is SOMEWHERE in an area where at least 3000 people hear him. I have seen a re-enactment of Pentecost where Solomon's porch is the scene - but just looking at the Bible alone is what I want to do. I am glad I don't remember much about the re-enactment, I was quite young.

Pentecost itself is very important to understand exactly what went on, but again, Acts 2 is not the only kind of Tongues in the Bible.

We are told that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues.

Acts 2:4
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

 

[Saint Steven]

Here's an article series link that may be helpful to filling in the historical gap between today and the Apostles.
Manifestations of the Spirit in Church History

- The French Huguenots
- The First Awakening in America (1730-1780)
- John Wesley
- George Whitefield
- Jonathan Edwards
- Francis Asbury
- The Cane Ridge Revival
- Charles Finney
- George Fox
- Frank Bartleman and the Azusa Street Revival of 1906
- John Alexander Dowie
- John G. Lake
- Aimee Semple McPherson
- William Branham
- The Welch Revival of 1904
- Commentary on the revivals from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

 

[Saint Steven]

Here's a link to a thread from this forum from 2012
Did anyone in the 2nd - 4th century church speak in tongues?

 

[Traveling teacher]

those of us who have belonged to cesaationist churches
\and have also belonged to charismatic/pentecostal churches
\can have a little better vision on this controversy..i hope..imo

i grew up COC conservative
babtized in Holy Spirit age 25 ...speaking in tongues....
dropped the tongues as others threw scripture at me...
picked it up again 10 years later....

wanted to go to a charismatic church...wife didnt...
we settled on a bible church.....10 years
then went to a charismatic/HS church...4 years

then went back to the Bible church...8 years
now we are in an Assembly of God

dont say i am a church hopper ...this was a period of 35 years
in my marriage.......

so i understand both sides....
as thier can be extremes on both sides...
tongues must be orderly as written in 1 corintians
so unbelievers outsiders and other unfamiliar christians
dont freak out......

but you cant throw out the babtism of the holy Spirit or you will lose power in your church and family.....
people will get sick and die.....
1 Corinthians 11:30
That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

 

[Anto9us]

I agree with what TT says of losing power if you throw out the Baptism of the Holy Spirit -- the actual cause of those getting sick and dying in that passage seems to be unworthily partaking of Lord's Supper

 

[Anto9us]

1Co 11:27
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
1Co 11:28
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
1Co 11:29
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
1Co 11:30
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

Boy, those BAD Corinthians -- they could screw EVERYTHING up -- tongues, prophecies, even the Eucharist

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I do see Paul address outsiders later in 1 Corinthians 14, however starting with verse 5 he is clearly showing the required order for the edification of the church. Not outsiders or general public. Which again leads me to the conclusion, chapter 14 is showing there are some who speak and pray in tongues and there are some who don't---thus requiring an interpreter for the edification of the church.

I fully agree with the need to edify the folk in church with language that can be understood. It makes logical sense. That's why I don't try to teach or preach in tongues, and because my church is a middle of the road Presbyterian church, I never speak in tongues during the service.

But a prayer meeting where there are no members of the public there should be no restrictions if the folk there want to pray in tongues as well as English. When we have prayer meetings in our church, I find them boring and they are largely eyebrow wiping sessions for me, because none of the others pray in tongues, so our prayer meetings are short because we run out of things to pray about fairly quickly. So there is no sense of intercession and "praying through" to victory, which using tongues helps us to do. A prayer meeting when people pray in tongues can take up to a couple of hours and the presence of God is there and the time seems just like 10 minutes. But, I guess you have to be in one of those prayer meetings to really appreciate it. When I was first converted in the AOG and went on a youth progressive dinner, which was a lot of fun, we ended up having a prayer meeting where 30 young people all prayed in tongues. I had never experienced that before and it was exciting. Those young people were enjoying themselves as much while praying as they were eating in different houses!

But you see, what you don't experience, you don't miss. So I understand that what I am saying is foreign to many. They are so used to the three hymns and sermon type programmed services and prayer meetings where the prayers are just as much directed to each other as well as God (and Jesus was not supportive of long prayers designed to impress people).

But those who have experienced the fun and joy of being in prayer meetings where folk have prayed in tongues know exactly what I am talking about.

 

[Saint Steven]

those of us who have belonged to cesaationist churches
\and have also belonged to charismatic/pentecostal churches
\can have a little better vision on this controversy..i hope..imo

i grew up COC conservative
babtized in Holy Spirit age 25 ...speaking in tongues....
dropped the tongues as others threw scripture at me...
picked it up again 10 years later....

wanted to go to a charismatic church...wife didnt...
we settled on a bible church.....10 years
then went to a charismatic/HS church...4 years

then went back to the Bible church...8 years
now we are in an Assembly of God

dont say i am a church hopper ...this was a period of 35 years
in my marriage.......

so i understand both sides....
as thier can be extremes on both sides...
tongues must be orderly as written in 1 corintians
so unbelievers outsiders and other unfamiliar christians
dont freak out......

but you cant throw out the babtism of the holy Spirit or you will lose power in your church and family.....
people will get sick and die.....
1 Corinthians 11:30
That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

Welcome to the thread.
I can appreciate your perspective.

We have mostly been wrestling with this as a doctrinal issue.
Thanks for sharing your personal testimony. Can you add anything from a doctrinal perspective?

The Cessationist position that has come up time and time again is that:
The charismatic gifts came only through the two outpourings and through the apostle's hands.

However, they keep expanding the definition of "apostles" to include more and more events. For example, they have given Ananias apostleship due to him being called by Christ to pray for the apostle Paul.

 

[Traveling teacher]

I agree with what TT says of losing power if you throw out the Baptism of the Holy Spirit -- the actual cause of those getting sick and dying in that passage seems to be unworthily partaking of Lord's Supper

sorry i didnt finish the interpretation.....
all of chapter 11 talks of division
1 Corinthians 11:18
In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.

matthew 22:25
a house divided cant stand

there is something deeper in ch. 11 corinthians than just a 1 time taking of the Lords supper

this doctrinal division over ...babtism of the HS speaking in tongues...
is the most divisive doctrine I have seen in my lifetime.....
not to be grouped with out right sin....

 

[Anto9us]

Another factor in the ever-shifting goalposts established by Cessationists here is that the OP Dave L says tongues was a heavenly language (right in the OP) and Swordsman says no - all tongues were human languages

 

[Saint Steven]

…
this doctrinal division over ...babtism of the HS speaking in tongues...
is the most divisive doctrine I have seen in my lifetime.....
not to be grouped with out right sin....

You have never talked with a Sabbatarian, I take it? lol

 

[Anto9us]

is the most divisive doctrine I have seen in my lifetime

good insight into the divisions

 

[Traveling teacher]

Welcome to the thread.
I can appreciate your perspective.

We have mostly been wrestling with this as a doctrinal issue.
Thanks for sharing your personal testimony. Can you add anything from a doctrinal perspective?

The Cessationist position that has come up time and time again is that:
The charismatic gifts came only through the two outpourings and through the apostle's hands.

However, they keep expanding the definition of "apostles" to include more and more events. For example, they have given Ananias apostleship due to him being called by Christ to pray for the apostle Paul.

there is something deeper than the arguement over speaking in tongues.....

my wife and I have been on different camps for 35 years....
but have found peace and unity in the midst of it all....

After belonging to 4-5 different churches on both sides of the fence..
I can tell you from experience that when you discredit tongues and the babtism of the HS/cesationist....
every time without fail charismatics will not have a place and leave...

every time without fail from my experience when they leave..
the prayer team goes with them and is shut down and ceases to exist or exists on a partime basis with little or no power.....because they always are a big part of the prayer team and spiritual warfare....

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Many of your fellow Pentecostals say otherwise.

What? All believers have already been given all the gifts of the Spirit, and they are just laying dormant? So I am already an apostle, a prophet, a miracle worker, a teacher, an evangelist, etc....I just need to muster up enough faith to activate them?

I am amazed that you can make such a wild unsubstantiated assertion when there are numerous scriptures that state precisely the opposite. Or were you joking?

1 Cor 12:29 "All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of [t]miracles, are they? 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?"​

Romans 12:4-6 "For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us."

1 Cor 12:8-10 "For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. "
​

You are totally correct in the Scriptures you quote. I have no argument about that. Just because the Holy Spirit indwells us, it doesn't mean that we have to use every resource that is available to us. The Scripture says that the Spirit gives severally as He wills. So, although we have the whole toolbox with all the tools in it, we have to seek the will of God to find out what He wants us to do and which tools are most appropriate for the job we have to do.

So, if the Lord wants me to go to South East Asia and plant churches throughout those countries (for example), then He will give me an apostolic ministry and the spiritual tools to accomplish it. But if I try to be a prophet, it won't work, because that is not the job that God has equipped me to do. It is the same if God has given me the ministry of administration and I try to be a pastor. Or if He equipped me to be an evangelist and I tried to be the church treasurer. I am trusting that you have a brain to work this out for yourself.

It is like having vocation as a wall paper hanger, and I am trained to do that well and have the tools for it, but then I try to fix my neighbor's car and make a hash of it, because I don't have those skills nor the tools to do it successfully.

So we have the complete Holy Spirit in us with the potential to do anything and go anywhere God wants us to go. But it is humanly impossible to be all the ministries that are available and only brainless people would try. Just because we say we have all the gifts and ministries available to us, it doesn't mean that we can automatically do them. We need to ask God, "What do you want me to do?" And when He replies that he wants me to be the church janitor and clean the toilets, I will be happy to do it, and He will give me the tools to do the work successfully.

 

[swordsman1]

You are totally correct in the Scriptures you quote. I have no argument about that. Just because the Holy Spirit indwells us, it doesn't mean that we have to use every resource that is available to us. The Scripture says that the Spirit gives severally as He wills. So, although we have the whole toolbox with all the tools in it, we have to seek the will of God to find out what He wants us to do and which tools are most appropriate for the job we have to do.

So, if the Lord wants me to go to South East Asia and plant churches throughout those countries (for example), then He will give me an apostolic ministry and the spiritual tools to accomplish it. But if I try to be a prophet, it won't work, because that is not the job that God has equipped me to do. It is the same if God has given me the ministry of administration and I try to be a pastor. Or if He equipped me to be an evangelist and I tried to be the church treasurer. I am trusting that you have a brain to work this out for yourself.

It is like having vocation as a wall paper hanger, and I am trained to do that well and have the tools for it, but then I try to fix my neighbor's car and make a hash of it, because I don't have those skills nor the tools to do it successfully.

So we have the complete Holy Spirit in us with the potential to do anything and go anywhere God wants us to go. But it is humanly impossible to be all the ministries that are available and only brainless people would try. Just because we say we have all the gifts and ministries available to us, it doesn't mean that we can automatically do them. We need to ask God, "What do you want me to do?" And when He replies that he wants me to be the church janitor and clean the toilets, I will be happy to do it, and He will give me the tools to do the work successfully.

So I take it you've changed your mind with regard to your statement that every believer has all the spiritual gifts already given to him, and just needs to have sufficient faith to activate them?

 

[Traveling teacher]

good insight into the divisions

this is my last experience at a cessastionist church..
it is sad but true.....

we left the COC 22 years ago and moved to a another church...cesastionist....
there were a few charismatics that were there who had the blessing from the pastor to run the prayer teams as long as they kept in the back rooms and didnt try to indoctrinate the church....
so I felt comfortable as I was called to pray....

church grew my wife and I were at peace......
i could still exercise my gifts in the prayer room...
or more freely in a Promise Keepers mens prayer that met at the church 1 time a week...comunity wide.....

we left after 10 years to go to a HS charismatic church...
came back after 4 years as our girls needed a High School youth group...

when we returned one of the charismatic prayer sisters came up to me and said they/charismatics had a falling out with pastor and or leadership and many or most of the charismatic brethren had left...
she said she had been praying and I was one of the first to return back.....

when we returned I could tell power had gone from the church....
but we stuck it out for another 8 years.....
i told my wife this was dangerous shutting down the prayer rooms as they had no warfare protection......
tried to get prayer rooms started again ...never worked.....

we prayed diligently for leadership, pastor....
during our last few years the pastor got struck with terminal cancer...but with much prayer after 4 years God may be healing him...

we left 1.5 years ago

i just talked to someone at our old church our class teacher, one of the main leaders of the church...... who I had set under off and on as a bible teacher for 20 years had gotten a fast moving cancer and died this week....

1 corinthians 11:30
has a completely different meaning to me than others....
has to do with division..imo

 

[Major1]

I do not agree with that, Major1 -- in this thread there have been NUMEROUS quotes from Early Church Fathers both pro and con regarding continuationism/cessationism.

Augustine was the most recent example of an early church father discussing tongues and their alleged cessation.

BTW, if I do not specify someone's name by either spelling it out or putting one of their quotes right above my comments -- I am addressing ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE READING THIS THREAD!!

THEY the unnamed passer-by in the thread may be the most important recipient of my thoughts of all, after all, most of those actually posting here have an opinion which they are not going to change anyway, so here in this public venue we charismatics are subject to accusations of voo-doo-ism, opening ourselves to evil spirits, doing tongues just to 'get a high off of it', etc.



Thank you for bringing that up, Swordy, anyone who looks at an Interlinear easily sees the word UNKNOWN is not there in the Greek, but not everyone uses Interlinears, and you make a valid point that should be known.

No problem. Thanks for the insight.

I do understand what you are saying however I do not think that there was much debate on the subject of tongues then as we have seen in the past 100 years when the Pentecostal faith developed.

That is just my thinking and is not an argument one way or the other.

 

[Major1]

this is my last experience at a cessastionist church..
it is sad but true.....

we left the COC 22 years ago and moved to a another church...cesastionist....
there were a few charismatics that were there who had the blessing from the pastor to run the prayer teams as long as they kept in the back rooms and didnt try to indoctrinate the church....
so I felt comfortable as I was called to pray....

church grew my wife and I were at peace......
i could still exercise my gifts in the prayer room...
or more freely in a Promise Keepers mens prayer that met at the church 1 time a week...comunity wide.....

we left after 10 years to go to a HS charismatic church...
came back after 4 years as our girls needed a High School youth group...

when we returned one of the charismatic prayer sisters came up to me and said they/charismatics had a falling out with pastor and or leadership and many or most of the charismatic brethren had left...
she said she had been praying and I was one of the first to return back.....

when we returned I could tell power had gone from the church....
but we stuck it out for another 8 years.....
i told my wife this was dangerous shutting down the prayer rooms as they had no warfare protection......
tried to get prayer rooms started again ...never worked.....

we prayed diligently for leadership, pastor....
during our last few years the pastor got struck with terminal cancer...but with much prayer after 4 years God may be healing him...

we left 1.5 years ago

i just talked to someone at our old church our class teacher, one of the main leaders of the church...... who I had set under off and on as a bible teacher for 20 years had gotten a fast moving cancer and died this week....

1 corinthians 11:30
has a completely different meaning to me than others....
has to do with division..imo

What does it mean when you say....."Power had left the church"?

The power of the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of believers and not in the concrete building. How could ALL the believers in a church have lost the power of the Holy Spirit as He is the "Seal of approval of God to believers"

 

[Traveling teacher]

Welcome to the thread.
I can appreciate your perspective.

We have mostly been wrestling with this as a doctrinal issue.
Thanks for sharing your personal testimony. Can you add anything from a doctrinal perspective?

The Cessationist position that has come up time and time again is that:
The charismatic gifts came only through the two outpourings and through the apostle's hands.

However, they keep expanding the definition of "apostles" to include more and more events. For example, they have given Ananias apostleship due to him being called by Christ to pray for the apostle Paul.

doctrinally...yes
but what really convinced me was going to charismatic churches and seeing these gifts operate then going back to the scriptures...
acts 19:1-20
paul came into a church full of believers but cesationist(in our terms)
as Apollos had started the church and had not been babtized in the HS.....we can see that from
acts 19:26...had to be taught more correctly

and in acts 19:2....his converts had not been babtized in the HS....
and asked them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They answered, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

so here was a non charismatic church in the NT that had little power...
after Paul taught them the way correctly they spoke in tongues and prophesised
acts 18:6
then signs wonders, miracles healings, deliverence....
and many believed....
acts 19:18

 

[Traveling teacher]

I agree with what TT says of losing power if you throw out the Baptism of the Holy Spirit -- the actual cause of those getting sick and dying in that passage seems to be unworthily partaking of Lord's Supper

YES when you dont love your brother you discredit them over divisions such as tongues......
results in division...sickness and death
1 corinthians 11:17-19