Southern Baptist and tongues

Evry Southern Baptist is different. Some Southern Baptist pastors do speak in tongues and other abhor it. Often those who speak in tongues say little or nothing for fear of retaliation.

 

Here is an SBC member ministry that has all the Spiritual Gifts including Tongues

http://www.ronphillips.org/

 

Most SBC Ministers and theologians that I know believe that "tongues" is the ability to deliver the word of God to people in the language of the listener, even if the speaker has never learned that language. This is what Acts described.

I know a few who believe the gift died totally, but they seem to be in the miniority.

In the 70's, a lot of Wiccans would mutter a lot of gibberish, and a lot of hippies-in-churches would put on quite a show by standing up and shouting out a lot of gibberish, then telling the churches it was talk from God, and offering to tell them what they claimed the message was. About 9 out of 10 times, the message directly contradicted God's word.

Tongues, if it still exists, will exist to glorify GOD, not the speaker. It will exist to win souls to Christ, not attention to the speaker.

 

I do not preach "in tongues" as the modern phnomina pushes----basically because all of my church members understand English perfectly well!!!

 

This is what my pastor believes. We talked about it once and he told me of a friend of his who works in the hispanic ministry in Paducah, Ky the guy teaches spanish speaking, non english speaking migrants bible study class. He reads from a spanish bible and teaches in spanish. He fully reads,writes, speaks, and understands spanish. But has never had a spanish lesson, has never learned spanish, and had never heard it spoken till a few years ago when we started getting a lot of hispanic migrant workers in Ky. He just started teaching right out of the blue, then picked up a spanish bible they give away to the migrants and started reading from it to the people he was teaching. Many men who wouldn't otherwise be able to study and be taught about God are now being saved and growing in their faith becasue of his teaching the bible in their laungage.
Now thats biblical tounges. Not the gibberish the charismatic church do while running in the isles and falling on the floor.

 

I had a missions professor in seminary tell our class one day that while he was on the mission field in Brazil he had an opporutnity to preach, but there was no translater available and he had only started his language training. But he trusted God, and got up and said he was able to preach in their language fluently, and then when he was done, he didnt know any more of the language when he started. He believed that was the true gift of tongues as seen in the Bible.

 

If speaking in tongues means that the Word is not able to be understood or discerned by anyone hearing it, then it glorifies no one but the speaker which is contrary to scripture and would not be consistent with being a gift from God.

With that said, the ability to speak in tongues to the extent that means speaking in a language(s) that the hearer(s) can clearly discern that the Word of God is being spoken, then that would be a more appropriate application of the gift of tongues.

How one is able to acquire and how quickly they acquire that ability to speak in tongues (or other languages) would therefore be the gift that scripture speaks of, and that would be consistent with the thought that the gift still exists today as it did when scripture was inspired.

Ultimately it falls to who is being glorified - God or the person speaking. If the only who understands the sound is the speaker, then I would argue it is not the gift of tongues because God isn't glorified through that speech.

 

Many Southern Baptists do have strong, stiff tongues, but they're usually not strong enough to stand on.

 

Many Southern Baptists do have strong, stiff tongues, but they're usually not strong enough to stand on. </font>[/QUOTE]What is said is true, true, true, cindig2!!! I heard of a lady who walked down the Baptist isle during the invitation one Sunday---grabbed the preacher by the hand and told him

"Preacher! I want to lay my tongue down on the altar!!"

The preacher knew the lady to be a gossip---replies

"Lady! Our altar isn't but 14 feet long---but---go ahead and lay it down---and we'll do the best we can!!!!"