Featured 1 Cor. 12-14

Oneness Pentecostal is a cult. They believe that everyone must be baptized by the Holy Spirit, and that the evidence of the baptism of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. In short, if you do not speak in tongues you are not saved. That is their believed. They also throw in baptism into the mix.

Your belief is similar.
I challenged the Oneness Pentecostal, when they were permitted on the board, to show me the plan of salvation without using the book of Acts. They couldn't do it. They could not show how to lead a person to Christ or how to present the gospel without the book of Acts. The entire Book of Romans is a great thesis on soteriology. In spite of that they couldn't explain salvation without Acts.
Why?
Because "the baptism of the Holy Spirit," resulting in tongues, was a part of their theology. And that is only found in the Book of Acts.

Acts is a historical book, a book of the acts of the apostles; a book of the history of the church; a book of transition where the church is in its infancy. One cannot depend on the Book of Acts for doctrine. They must use the epistles for solid doctrine.

For example, to use Acts 2 for your basis of speaking in tongues. Was your experience also accompanied by a mighty rushing wind, cloves of fire appearing over you? Did that happen to you? Then your experience, per Acts 2, is null and void.
As for Acts 2 being in a church, yes it was. It was in the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem. Read 2:41.
They that heard the word were baptized and the same day were added to the church. What church? The church at Jerusalem of course.
Look at the last verse in the chapter.
"And the Lord added daily such as should be saved to the church."
What church?
The local church in Jerusalem.

Acts 10 and 19 had different purposes.
But you cannot build doctrine on experiences in the Book of Acts.
That doctrine is from the epistles. And there is only one epistle that speaks of the gift of tongues and that is First Corinthians.

 

The Pentecostal doctrine that baptism in the Holy Spirit occurs after conversion/regeneration and that the initial evidence of same is speaking in tongues is false doctrine which makes those who don't believe it into second class Christians in the eyes of those who do.

 

Yes, ALL Scripture is profitable; but not all Scripture is not applicable to you! That is your mistake.

If that is true, tell me how this Scripture applies to you:

Isaiah 3:18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
21 The rings, and nose jewels,
22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.

Do you have cauls, tires, mufflers and wimples that you wear?
And how do they affect your Christian life?

 

I was not addressing my post to you. Sorry if you thought I was.

 

Does he speak in tongues?

You have misunderstood my position. My position is that the gift of tongues in 1 Cor. is an ability to learn languages, and the gift of interpretation is an ability to translate. To those of us who minister in a foreign language it is patently obvious that many have no gifts in these areas.

Again you misunderstand. It was the Charistmatics themselves who tried to take members away from my church, and even succeeded in one case. According to you, then, the Charismatics were filled with Satan!

You are sidestepping. It doesn't fit your bias to say that there is no evidence of tongues in Jude. There are only three places where the term praying in the Holy Spirit occurs: Jude and Eph. 6:18 and arguably Rom. 8:26. None of them are 1 Cor., and neither one of them speaks of tongues. You are interpreting with bias.

The baptism and filling of the Spirit are the same. Compare Acts 1:5 and 2:4. So when Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and preached the Gospel in Acts 2 and 4:8, and everyone was in 4:31 and spoke the word with boldness, they were witnessing for Christ because they were filled. So it is most certainly for leading people to Christ, tongues or no tongues. For you not to admit this shows a shallow and biased view of the matter.

 

Well, if it is a language, it is either miraculous or learned. It is not miraculous in 1 Cor. 12-14, so it is learned. Case closed.

Nor did you condemn the Charismatics who wickedly stole the sheep. You seemed to think it was fine. Sheep stealing is okay in the view you posted, as long as it is the Charismatics who are stealing. That is the clear implication of what you wrote.

By saying it was Satan's work to stop the Charismatics, ergo, since I did not believe in tongues, the Charismatics were right to steal away the precious Japanese sheep that I had labored and sacrificed and wept and prayed to win to Christ. You showed no concern at all for God's shepherd--all was hunky dorey since it was the Charismatics had done it.

I heard of a missionary in Japan who went on furlough and while he was gone a Charismatic came in and stole the whole church. But I guess that's okay with you. Tha was actually the main operating procedure in the 1960s when the movement started. So you are advocating a sheep stealing movement.

Yes, your mistaken interpretation is very clear. Paul spoke of praying with his own spirit, therefore, to you every mention of prayer and the Holy Spirit is tongues. Very weak.

The Bible said it. That settles it. I believe it.

You wouldn't have such trouble if you simply took the Bible as it says. There are no tongues in Jude and Eph. where praying in the Holy Spirit is mentioned. Period. End of story. You can squirm all you want, it doesn't change the Bible.

 

Here is an historical example of what I've been saying, that the Charismatics started in the '60s by being divisive and splitting churches:

"In addition to fellowship activities for Neo-Pentecostals, the Blessed Trinity Society offered a sophisticated and expensive quarterly ($1.50 an issue), Trinity, to inform its readership of current news of the movement and to introduce Charismatic Renewal to non-Pentecostals in the historic...denominations" (The New Charismatics, by Richard Quebedeaux, p. 57).

Unlike the old line Pentecostals, who started their own denominations, the Charismatic movement started out being divisive and splitting churches, and continues the same to this very day.

 

To be fair, having said that tongues was not practiced until the 20th century, I have to add that there may have been isolated instances: "Data exist suggesting that speaking in tongues was practiced infrequently in sixteenth-century Germany by the Anabaptists, and in seventeenth-century France by the Jansenists" (The New Charismatics, by Richard Quebedeaux, p. 21). And ther were the 19th century cultic Irvingites.

I would also like to point out that all of the linguists I've ever read about who have researched the matter universally consider Charismatic/Pentecostal tongues to be simple sounds devoid of meaning, not real languages. I'll quote.

"glossalalia 'Speaking in tongues': i. e. uttering sounds under conditions of religious ecstasy that are believed, wrongly, to be in unknown languages" (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, P. H. Matthews, p. 160).

Linguist William Samarin observed Charismatics for five years, and said, "Glossalalia is indeed like language in some ways, but this is only because the speaker (unconciously) wants it to be like language. Yet in spite of superficial similarities, glossalalia is fundamentally not language" (quoted in Charismatic Chaos, by John MacArther, p. 278, from Samarin's book Tongues of Men and Angels, 227).

And check out this quote from ongoing research by Paul de Lacy, who has examined 19 hours of tongues speaking: " So far, my research suggests that glossolalia has no lexicon (i.e. no words/morphemes), and by this no syntax, morphology, or semantics. It is essentially 'pure' phonology and phonetics" (http://www.pauldelacy.net/webpage/research-glossolalia.html). In other words, tongues are not language.

 

I would like to hear what a learned Philologist would have to say about the topic of "glossalallia" as in...does it contain ANY of the normal properties of "language" that could be recognized? Know of any John? I guess you already posted here:

I suppose an adherent Could argue that it would make sense that a purely "Spiritual Language" might readily be assumed NOT to posses those qualities...but that would be mere assumption.

 

Try this from Mario Pei, noted linguist of the past: "Of late, glossalalia has become increasingly the vogue with certain religious bodies, notably the Pentecostal groups, which attempt to repeat, for 'charismatic' purposes, the 'speaking in tongues' of the New Testament. The difference between glossalalia and creative word coinage lies in the fact that the former lacks a recognizable basis of both etymology and meaning" (The Story of Language, p. 170; 1949 & 1965). Translation: words from tongues speaking have no traceable source (etymology) nor meaning (semantics).

 

In order for someone's tongue to be considered an actual language, it would have to have:

1. Morphology, meaning sounds with meaning. Tongues have phonemes, which are the most basic unit of sound, but not morphemes.

2. Syntax, meaning sentence structure. Tongues do not have this.

3. Lexical units, meaning sounds with complete meaning, or actual words with discernable meaning. Charismatic tongues do not have this.

 

Linguistically speaking, that would be an exercise in futility. Noam Chomsky, the most influential linguist of our day, has a theory of universal grammar (UG), in which all people all over the world learn their language the same way, with an innate sense of what grammar and meaning are. If Chomsky is right (and I think he is), then God of course put that within us. And God Himself has always spoken in intelligible languages to humans all throughout history.

Tongues are often an unlearned activity in the sense that they seem to come naturally. But when learned they are not learned like languages. Tongues speakers usually teach you how to speak in tongues by gimmicks. A book I have by an ex-Pentecostal, I Once Spoke in Tongues, talks about this. Also, I myself have been approached by a member of the Spirit of Jesus group here in Japan and taught how to do it by repeating "Jesus is Lord" over and over quickly for a half hour. (I didn't take the offer of course.)

awaken says he got his tongues on his knees all by himself. I believe him. But for Charismatics who don't know how, there is always a gimmick.

 

There is a lot of online help if you desire it.
Here is an example:

http://www.teachingpages.co.uk/spiritequip.php?articleGroanings

When you have to learn it you know it is not of God.
I know it is not of God anyway, just further proof.

I like the part "groanings that cannot be uttered." Is that an oxymoron or what?????????
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