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OutlineA BIBLICAL STUDY ON THE GIFT OF TONGUESINTRODUCTION
The
Holy Spirit gift of tongues have been an issue of Christian "in house"
differences. It
seem as if whenever something is "in-house", Christians generally
become dumb minded and jump to a conclusion by "what I feel about it".
When I was still in my first year in Christ, I remember asking many
fellow brothers and sisters in Christ about the issue of tongues: Is the gift of
tongues as we know it today (such as in the Pentecostal movement currently)
biblical? What
I was asking was whether the "ya-la-shah-shi-bah!" stuff recited during
a Church service was being Biblically correct, and if so, prove it from
Scripture. A
simple, direct and straight forward question.
Yet, I was surprise at the reply given:
Those
were the typical reply I got.
It seem as if the two sides (Tongues is legitimate, Tongues is not
legitimate) were stuck in a trench warfare of "I this", "I
that". When
you look inside the trench, you find people growing fat from all that
"I".
Everyone seem comfortable that the fact tongues is a "in-house"
matter, so "let's do whatever we want and go party!"
But I guess people didn't hear me right: "My question is, are
today's tongues' BIBLICAL?!"
How I love the Bible... BIBLICAL
RESPONSE
It
is a gift from the Holy Spirit (1Cor.12:10) given by the Holy Spirit's own
choice.(1Cor. 12:11)
It is not necessarily our own choice.
Receiving tongues isn't to a requirement to receive the Spirit's baptism.
(1Cor. 12:13) To
say we have to speak in tongues when we are baptize by the Spirit is not only
wrong, but unbiblical.
Not everyone therefore, speaks in tongues. (1Cor. 12:30) The
gift of tongues will not last forever, but cease. (1Cor. 13:8&10)
Since I don't know Greek and the tense of these verse to see if it has
ended already or not yet, and since I don't know that much of Church history,
let's just assume that speaking in Tongues have not cease yet.
So what are the Biblical method of speaking in tongues?
(Check
this out at your church or elsewhere)
Now,
ALL this is required to be Biblical.
If one of these is lacking, then we have a problem: The tongues could not
be from the Holy Spirit since God cannot go against his own Word.
In this circumstance, to claim that tongues was from God is to make up
lies about God, which is a sin and not approved of by God.
It is either made up by the persons involved in tongues (motive might
range from peer pressure, learned behavior, pride, search for
"spirituality", or tricked in thinking they are really speaking in tongues) or worst, it comes from another force we wouldn't we really want... CONCLUSIONIf
you are allegedly speaking in tongues and you really are not, and you know it,
then the thing is to repent!
Come back to God and confess it to him.
He will forgive you.
And remember: Hold on to God's Word, the only thing that is dear and
trustworthy. God
bless you. By Jimmy Li [Last edited December 18, 2001]
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