>Re: Speaking in Tongues

[James]

Re: Speaking in Tongues

*curmudgeon*
"The best read illiterate in the country"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia
"Comments anyone ?"

I don't particularly have a problem with speaking in tongues. I don't
have that spiritual gift but I believe people should express their love
of the Lord however they can.
Zoen

Hello,

Actually, the speaking in tongues, and well as other first-century
miracles GIVEN BY GOD, were to be done away with. And that is just
what the historical records show.

They were to be done away with:

"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is
knowledge, it will pass away." (1 Co 13:8; NIV)

No record of them right after those who used them in the first century
died off. Tongues were:

"missing in the 2nd-century church, the writers of those days speaking
of them as a thing in the past-in the apostolic age, in fact." (The
Illustrated Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, 1980, Vol. 1,
p. 79.)

Thus any alleged 'tongues' used today, have no evidence that they are
from God, and so genuine Christians today have to be cautious
concerning such things.


Sincerely, James

If you wish to have a discussion with me, please use email since I do
not follow all conversations in ng threads


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[Skippy]

Note to readers: this is a traditional view of the Jehovah's
Witnesses, not shared by a large proportion of the Evangelical
Christian church.

The section from 1 Cor 13 is indeed applicable, but when read in full
can be understood not to be about post first century but to be about
when we ourselves are perfected. I don't expect any of us to be
perfected in this life!

[DKleinecke]

Post by Skippy
Note to readers: this is a traditional view of the Jehovah's
Witnesses, not shared by a large proportion of the Evangelical
Christian church.
The section from 1 Cor 13 is indeed applicable, but when read in full
can be understood not to be about post first century but to be about
when we ourselves are perfected. I don't expect any of us to be
perfected in this life!

I am curious about who you consider the Evangelical Christian Church
to be and why one should not suppose Jehovah's Witnesses to speak for
it. Why would any of us, aware of the eccentricities of JW theology,
imagine they spoke for it?

It seems to me that you have excluded the entire pentacostal movement
from your Evangelical Christian Church. This is very odd.

How do you interpret the Azusa Street revival and everything that
followed from it? Do you deny the existence of pentacostal phenomona
or just their validity?

On the balance it seems to me that the Witnesses approach the mainline
of Christian thought more closely than you do. But then I don't know
what you meant by Evangelical Christian Church. And why you felt it
necessary to specify a special subsection of Christianity rather than
the Church as a whole.

[Skippy]

Looks like I wasn't very clear. Sorry!

My definition of the Evanglical Christian Church would be those who
emphasize the need for personal conversion (or being "born again"),
salvation through grace not works, personal faith, the authority of
the Bible, and an emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus the
Messiah.

The pentacostal phenomena would be included in this and I very much am
excited by the Azusa Street revival and everything that followed from
it.

What I am saying is that speaking in tongues is for anyone who wishes
to, because the gift has not passed away because we have not been made
perfect. When we have been made perfect, which is when Jesus returns
and we go to the place that he has prepared for us, there will be no
need for the gift.

----

[I believe Skippy mentioned JWs in a previous posting because of
James' posting. James is a JW. I will say however that his belief that
tongue-speaking was a temporary gift is not restricted to JW's. I
think it's less common now than it was shortly after the Pentecostals
started. --clh]