Tongues November 11 2009
Why does the Revival Fellowship preach tongues ‘as a sign’ if Jesus stipulated that no signs would be given except the Resurrection itself? (Matthew 12:38-40, Mark 8:12-13)
Why are there 8 steps to salvation on the Revival Fellowship website if the Bible repeatedly says that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone? (e.g. John 3:16, Romans 3:28-30, Romans 4:5, Romans 5:1, Romans 10:4, Romans 10:9, Romans 10:13, Romans 11:6, Galatians 2:16, Galatians 2:21, Galatians 3:5-6, Galatians 3:24, Ephesians 2:8-9)
Why are there fifteen salvation accounts in Acts that don’t include references to tongues? (other than the oft-quoted 3 which do) [further reading]
Why are none of the other qualifying signs listed in Mark 16 taken in an essential-every-time way? For example:
- Why aren’t all believers immune to snake bites?
- Why don’t all believers successfully lay hands on the sick?
- Why don’t all believers cast out devils? (What does this even mean?)
- Why aren’t all believers resistant to deadly poison?
Why is tongues treated differently? How is the Revival Fellowship justified in making tongues a universal sign but relegating the other signs to mere possibilities?
Why are there approximately 250 million Christians worldwide who speak in tongues that don’t preach it as a doctrine? Why hasn’t the Holy Spirit (that they have evidenced by their tongues) shown them the ‘truth’?
How could the Spirit be so much ‘weaker’ in these 250 million people than in the 30,000 in the Revival fellowship? How are Revival Fellowship tongue speakers any more enlightened then the other tongue speakers? How is this possible?
What is the statistical probability of 250 million tongue-speaking Christians worldwide, being collectively misled by the Spirit, in contrast with the 30,000 in the Revival Fellowship?
Why are there so many tongue speakers worldwide in all sorts of religious and secular scenarios?
Why do tongues predate Christianity?
Why did Jesus forgo so many opportunities to explain necessity of speaking in tongues in avoiding eternal torture?
Why didn’t Jesus equate tongues with the reception of the Holy Spirit?
Why didn’t the authors of epistles clearly re-iterate the simple requirement that a true believer must speak in tongues, rather than rely on the assumed knowledge of the readers?
Why did Luke, when preaching ‘repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ’ stipulate he had ‘not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God‘? (Acts 20:21-27) Why was there no mention of tongues?
Why does Ephesians 1:13 say the Holy Spirit the seal given after belief? Why aren’t tongues mentioned at all?
Why does Paul write that, ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes’? (Romans 10:4)
Is it reasonable that the God, who will determine the salvation of humanity on whether they spoke in tongues or not, did not state this truth more clearly and unequivocally so that so many people are not misled? Why isn’t it more obvious?
Why do a series of specific scriptures have to be read in a certain order from one translation to validate the Revival Fellowship’s salvation message?
Why is the only scripture that supposedly links tongues with Holy Spirit so hazy? (John 3:8) Why would Jesus only tell one person, at night, in secret and in a nonsensical riddle?
Why did the first people who spoke in tongues in the Bible speak known languages? Why doesn’t this happen anymore?
When did tongues transition from known languages (xenolalia) to unknown languages (glossolalia)? Why did this happen? Why isn’t this explained in the Bible?
Why is the event that happened at Pentecost so different to what happens in the Revival Fellowship?
Why does the Revival Fellowship sit alone in the essential-tongues realm of Chrisitanity?
Why are there are so few people that can ‘really’ understand the Bible to the extent of the Revival Fellowship?
Why didn’t the essential-tongues doctrine exist before the 1900s?
If this is because we are in the ‘latter rain’ now – what about the Christians before the latter rain? What does this mean for those who died for the faith or those who wrote, translated and complied the Bible?
Why has speaking in tongues existed prior to Christianity? If one is of God and one is not – how would an unbeliever discern God’s sign? (I Corinthians 14:22)
Why do tongues primarily include phonemes from the language of the speaker? For example, why are Russian tongues primarily made up of unpatterned reorganizations of the Russian language? Why is this the pattern in every country?
Why can tongues be proven a learned behaviour? (Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1986, Vol. 95, No. 1,21-23 PDF)
Sixty subjects listened to a 60 second sample of tongues (defined to them as pseudolanguage) and then attempted to produce tongues on a 30 second baseline trial. Afterward, half of the subjects received two training sessions that included audio- and videotaped samples of tongues interspersed with opportunities to practice tongues. Also, live modelling of tongues, direct instruction, and encouragement were provided by an experimenter. Both the trained subjects and untreated controls attempted to produce tongues on a 30 second post-test trial. About 20% of subjects exhibited fluent tongues on the baseline trial, and training significantly enhanced fluency. Seventy percent of trained subjects spoke fluent tongues on the post-test. Our findings are more consistent with social learning than with altered state conceptions of tongues.
Why were 20% immediately able to reproduce fluent tongues?
Why were 70% able to speak in tongues after more exposure and practice?
How is ‘practice’ any different to ‘seeking’?
Why were there no seekers meetings in the Bible?
Why are the statistics of this Godless experiment so similar to people who ‘receive’ in the Revival Fellowship?
How will anyone ever be able to distinguish between the two?
How do I know my tongue of God if I repetitiously ‘practiced’ after hearing tongues my whole life (let alone the 60 second samples)?
Why does the Bible condemn repetitious prayer? (Matthew 6:7)
If Jesus was baptised as an example for us and also received the Spirit as an example for us – why didn’t he speak in tongues? If Jesus didn’t ‘need to’ because he was God, why was he baptised?
Why do most new tongues sound like the word they’ve been repeating really fast?
How do the pastors distinguish between repetitive harla-harla-harla’s and tongues that sound identical?
How could anyone tell the difference?
Why do seekers need to be ‘alleluiaering’ (and very repetitively at that) for God to fill them with the Holy Spirit?
Isn’t that doing the hard-yards for God? How is this in anyway a sign ‘to them that believe not’? (1 Corinthians 14:22)
Why didn’t the disciples harla-harla-harla? Or anyone else in the Bible?
Why does someone have to ‘let go’ of their tongue before the Holy Spirit may gain access?
What is stammering?
Why does no one stammer in the Bible?
How much of the Holy Spirit do you have when stammering?
Why are the phrases below so popular? And what do they mean?
– When I was seeking I felt my tongue starting to change, but it just didn’t quite happen
– We were not sure if I spoke in tongues so the pastor prayed with me to confirm it
– When I was seeking I got tongue tied and had to stop for a while
– After I spoke in tongues it still took me a few weeks to realise what I had
– I got a stammering tongue at first, but after a while it got more fluent
Why are these not addressed in scripture? [further reading]
Why are some tongues received ‘quietly’ without a life transformation and other times no tongues are present but a positive life transformation? Which one is God inspired? Which one is Biblical?
Why does Paul ask whether all speak in tongues rhetorically? (1 Corinthians 14:28-30)
Why does the Revival Fellowship preach this is the context of a ‘meeting’ if Paul also asks if all are apostles? Or prophets – which clearly not all ‘in a meeting’ are apostles or prophets? (1 Cor 14:28-30) Why is the answer an implied ‘no’?
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?
Why does the Greek word used in these questions imply the answer is ‘no’? (mē)
Why have other scriptures with the same Greek word (mē) been translated as a negative or rhetorical ‘no’? (E.g. Romans 9:14; Luke 22:35; Romans 11:1; Romans 3:5-6)
Why do other translations read, ‘Not all have the gift of healing, do they? Not all speak in other languages, do they? Not all interpret, do they?’ (1 Corinthians 12:30)
Why is the Revival Fellowship alone in this interpretation? Why doesn’t the Strongs concordance (sold in the Vogue bookshop) back up this unique interpretation? Why aren’t there any other published concordances that have the same interpretation?
Why would Paul write to the Corinthian church asking them ‘do all speak in tongues?’ in the same breath as ‘are all prophets?’ Clearly the desired answer to this series of rhetorical questions are all the same. Is it then a yes or a no?
Was the entire Corinthian church prophets? Is it more likely that everyone in the church was all of these things or not all of these things?
Why does Paul distinguish between differing manifestations of the Holy Spirit? (1 Cor 12:7-11)
Why does Paul say, ‘for to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will’? (1 Corinthains 12:7-11)
Why doesn’t the Revival Fellowship mandate other signs that follow believers in the Bible? E.g. boldness, prophesy, etc
Why haven’t linguists found any identifiable semantics, syntax, or morphology in tongues?
Further reading:
Glossolalia as Learned Behavior: An Experimental Demonstration (PDF)
Why Tongues Can’t be the Definitive Sign
Speaking in Tongues
A study on Glossolalia as language
This website clearly demonstrates how a church can manipulate scripture to suit them.
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Grace, which is Jesus’s meritorious deed (precious blood), is enough for our salvation. The thief at the cross was saved (went to the paradise with Jesus) at the time when the Holy Spirit dwelt in nobody. It is because Jesus told his desciple that he could sent another helper after he ascended to heaven, which means that the Holy Spirit was not residing in people even though prophets like Isaiah were governmed by the Holy Spirit so that he did miraculous things.
Therefore, getting the holy spirit for one’s belief being confirmed by it shoud not be denied. However, getting the holy spirit is not the condition of salvation. If so, we need to accept another mediator for salvation except for Jesus.
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Why would the God of the Old Testament – who didn’t like anybody else to get in on the act – suddenly feel the need to bring in Jesus or the Holy Spirit to help him communicate a bit better with his creation. It doesn’t sound very in character, and what about that bit about being “the same Yesterday, Today and Forever”?
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Why did Jesus come to the earth? Suddenly? No. As planned? Yes.
First of all, not as second, Jesus came to eradicate the devil’s work. (1John 3:8). To save the mandkind from the sins is the second or additional (John 3:16).
The reasons are as follows. (even though I am not indicating chapters and verses, these are all from the Bible)
The devil rebelled against the God in God’s heaven so that he was expelled with 1/3 of angels. Therefore, only the second day of the 6-day creation is the day when God is not said to be happy as the second day is the day when God created the universe into which he put the corrupted devil and following angels. When you have a look at the bible, God was happy for the other five days. God did not want to execute the corrupted devil right away as he is righteous and he wanted to take official measures so that He sent Jesus to fullfill his will. That is why Jesus asked the Father that the Father’s will be realized.
Also, Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is inside you when you expel demons with the Holy Spirit. Demons are followers of the Devil. Likewise, removing the works of the Devil is understood as having the kingdom of heaven in you.
Throughout realization of this first purpose, the eradicatoin of the Devil’s work, God has a pity on the mankind as he used the mankind as getting Jesus as flesh in this world. Therefore, he is giving a chance to be saved. Otherwise, he could have saved all the mankind. However, the God who loves his name wants to save only the people who are his name as the savier. What is his name? Jesus. You can find how the Lord’s prayer starts (Holiness to your name…). Most of christians who are obsessed with hamanism think that the only and first reason of Jesus coming to this world is that the God wants to save us.
Thus, your wondering about why the God sent Jesus suddenly and Holy Spirit suddently is based on humanism, I reckon. However, the Bible is clearly saying that all the stories and episodes are parable or shades of things to come, which is Jesus. Therefore, the God did not send Jesus unexpectedly. It was planned from the beginning.
As stated, Jesus saved people from their sins. Therefore, people who believe in the name, Jesus, are saved from their sins. So, the Holy Spirit has been sent to these people because the Spirit will be testifying for the name Jesus, in spirits of saved people.
Saying in another way, God was invisible and ambigous in the old testaments. This god came to us as a son of man in the world where we lived. Now, this god is living and praying for us inside us. How blessed we are. Hence, people with the name of Jesus by the Holy Spirit can deliver the name to people outside as the grace is so big that they cannot hold it to other people. This is what God wants from us in thie new testaments. That is why the Holy Spirit is still coming from the Father.
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