14 We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a creature of the flesh [carnal, unspiritual], having been sold into slavery under [the control of] sin.

15 For I do not understand my own actions [I am baffled, bewildered]. I do not practice or accomplish what I wish, but I do the very thing that I loathe [which my moral instinct condemns].

16 Now if I do [habitually] what is contrary to my desire, [that means that] I acknowledge and agree that the Law is good (morally excellent) and that I take sides with it.

17 However, it is no longer I who do the deed, but the sin [principle] which is at home in me and has possession of me.

18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. [I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out.]

19 For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am [ever] doing.

20 Now if I do what I do not desire to do, it is no longer I doing it [it is not myself that acts], but the sin [principle] which dwells within me [fixed and operating in my soul].

21 So I find it to be a law (rule of action of my being) that when I want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with me and I am subject to its insistent demands.

22 For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self [with my new nature].(D)

23 But I discern in my bodily members [[d]in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh] a different law (rule of action) at war against the law of my mind (my reason) and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs [[e]in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh].

24 O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from [the shackles of] this body of death?

25 O thank God! [He will!] through Jesus Christ (the Anointed One) our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

So you see Paul was a very Spiritual man full of the Holy Spirit and still had problems and it’s still the same today!! Paul was a great Apostle of faith and did great things for God in His time of being on this earth … Things haven’t changed my friend, if any thing its gotten worse!!!! The devil knows his time is short so he’s running rampid!!

As far as tongues goes, I believe it’s still for today, but that’s my opinion! I have been baptized in the Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues for about 4 years and I love it, it has empowered me in ways I can’t explain but I know its real! You know the church of God and Assemblies of God started out on fire for God in the early part of the 1900’s and in the middle got set ablaze turning this world upside down, the only thing that’s happened is Satan has realized he’s in trouble so He’s worked over time on the believer! It’s ashamed that people have hurt God in the things they’ve done and made the Lord look bad, but we serve a big God who knows what He’s doing … Amen!!! Every one is different and not all will want to partake in the blessings of the gifts and get as I would like to say undignified!! God causes the foolish things to confound the wise and it does appear to be foolishness to them that parish so maybe we need to get foolish to get the point across if you’ve never felt foolish for God try it it’s great, get beat up and jump up shouting and praising God for his name sake the early church did. We are so blessed to have freedom of religion here in the US, I never said that God did that’s “WORD” our standard of truth … Amen!!!

Tongues, well it is the spirit of man not his mind will or emotions, the Holy Spirit prays through Paul says in1 Corinthians 2:11:

“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.”

1 Corinthians 15:14,15:

“For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.”

It didn’t say I will pray in the “GIFT” of tongues it simply said he would pray … Amen

It is the Spirit of God interceding for man. Man prays (forms the words, etc.), but utterance is given by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:26,27:

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”

We build our self up Spiritually and charge our Spirit man according to 1 Corinthians 14:4:

“He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.”

So right there it tells you there is a tongue for your self, in the other verses it says the gift of tongues which is for the church so , yes we do have a ” Prayer Language” … Amen

Jude 20 tells us to do this so it’s a command it says:

“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost  …”

Please understand I never wrote this to mock or to come against you, but to reveal some of the “truth” of God’s word to you, which we as “Pentecostals” are to live by and yes if your attending an A/G church your Pentecostal, something has kept you there and it’s not the Pastor , it’s the precious Holy Spirit our comforter and friend!!! I wrote all this in love and pray I don’t get any nasty comments back. I pray I have helped you and you will see this a lil differently now …

Seek the Holy Ghost diligently and Jesus will baptize in His fire, you’ll never be the same again I promise … In Love God Bless …

Brother Jeff

You said that historic Protestants also lapse into heresy. That’s true, but it’s interesting to note that the types of heresies they fall into are markedly different than the types Pentecostals succumb to. I assume you’re referring to Liberal Theology when you say that historic Protestants are heretics. This line of thinking came about because people dedicated to reason and inclined to write long, densely-worded books – i.e., introverts – thought long and hard about how the Bible might relate to science, and proceeded from some faulty premises about the nature of miracles and the laws of the physical world (all Newton, no Einstein or Plank). This was an intellectual error, full of premises, hypotheses, and conclusions.

What of the Pentecostal errors? They arise out of experiences people have. Oh, after they have the vision or receive the prophecy, they might look for reasons in the Bible – “Hey, look, it says the church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets! God told me I’m an apostle!” – but it usually starts in the emotions of the person making the claims. Pentecostals have no problems with miracles or direct revelation from God – the problem is when they can’t distinguish these things from their own emotions.

I’ve asked Pentecostals whether we should inquire whether someone’s spiritual experience comes from God or their own emotions. I usually get the answer that we should not do so, as long as the person’s experience doesn’t contradict the Bible. This seems to presume a world view in which every part of our consciousness is infused by God or the Devil and nothing ever happens that is just “Bob” or “Gretchen.” While this sounds like a highly spiritual, almost pantheistic, view of the world, I’m not sure it squares with the Bible. Ez. 13:3 makes it clear that is possible to have false experiences by your own spirit. I worry that many Christians are being trained to accept their own emotions as a source of truth without being aware of the possibility of self-deception. The results of such self-deception could be profound for all of us – for example, there is a strong chance that an adherent of such a congregation may become president by John McCain’s early death, and then we’ll be in a situation where a person who lacks the ability to question her own inclinations and even thinks her notions are from God will be making decisions that shape society for decades to come. I am not hopeful that such a person’s decisions will be wise or informed by thoughtful analysis of known facts.

I spent more than a year traveling around Pentecostal churches when I was young, and I never saw one instance of speaking in tongues that seemed supernatural. Anyone can shout “Glock slock milock ooup tang” while kids on stage are beating a drum and folks are dancing in the aisle. In fact, it seems that people who are very extroverted will do this quite spontaneously in any excited group situation. Every single prophet I ever heard was also very hit-or-miss in what they said and predicted; certainly nothing approaching the “100 %” demanded by the Bible.

The Bible teaches that speaking in tongues in Acts 2 was either the apostles speaking in other languages, or God miraculously allowing the hearers to understand what the apostles said. Later, in 1 Cor., there is mention of tongues that no one understands, and there is a fleeting reference in Romans to some form of non-verbal spirituality (sighs that words cannot express). The descriptions here are too sparse for us to say what exactly they mean. A skeptic will say that the apostles never spoke in other languages, and that it was just a legend, perhaps based on glossolalia that was mistaken for xenoglossia, much like the mistaken beliefs of early Pentecostals about tongues.

The U.S. has one of the highest percentages of extroverts of any country on earth, and it’s predictable that they’d want a form of religion that encourages the open expression of emotion, freedom of physical movement, and group-bonding experiences, and places less burden on the worshiper’s attention span. I have no doubt that the emotions that many Pentecostals feel when speaking in tongues is related to their feelings about God. If modern practice is, in fact, Biblical speaking in tongues, then it’s quite disappointing to those who hoped for something miraculous. Perhaps we’ve reached a point where we recognize that certain things we once thought were miracles aren’t miracles at all. Perhaps prophecy is nothing more than realizing the truth – for people in earlier ages, that lightning bolt of epiphany about something probably seemed divine, and an insightful person was so rare that they seemed to be anointed by God. But perhaps all these things are nothing more than our natural abilities, and they’re “of God” in the sense that these abilities are given to us as part of his plan and providence. If that’s the true, then the gifts haven’t “ceased,” we’ve merely come to know them more intimately. Of course, this explanation is deeply unsatisfying for those who insist that the spiritual gifts are indeed miracles that transcend normal human experience.

But I spent more than a year of my life traveling around Pentecostal churches. I never saw one instance of any gift that wasn’t obviously the result of group dynamics and the person’s own subconscious mind. It took a deliberate act of misplaced faith to take these “gifts” as anything else. There were no physical healings, no raisings from the dead, etc. Sometimes someone thought they were healed – for example, a woman with breast cancer thought that she was healed. For a few weeks, she felt better. A few months later, she was dead.

So what do we make of speaking in tongues? Was speaking in tongues in the Bible “xenoglossia,” where the Apostles spoke miraculously in foreign languages? Or has it always been nothing more than an ecstatic utterance, which the passage in 1 Cor. can be read as suggesting, and were the reports of “xenoglossia” merely a one-time miracle in Acts 2? If we’re skeptics, we can argue that what happened in Acts 2 was merely glossolalia, like modern tongues, and like the early Pentecostals, the early Christians mistook it for xenoglossia and some gullible souls who wanted very much to believe cited a few random syllables that sounded like Latin or Greek as evidence of xenoglossia, when it fact it was never anything but babble.

Personally, I think that whatever speaking in tongues was in the Bible, what is today called “speaking in tongues” results from the structure of the human brain. Those who practice it may associate it with their feelings about God. But it is not a miracle. Those with the right temperaments may find it a blessing, but for those with introverted temperaments, being pressured to do something contrary to your nature is likely to result in mental problems.

Pentecostalism is most successful in societies like the United States where the bulk of the population has extroverted personalities and where extroversion is a valued trait. Traditional Christianity was forged in Europe, during a time when introversion was much more the norm, and spirituality tended to be introspective (e.g., contemplative disciplines like the Jesus Prayer) and theological. It’s predictable that societies with different psychological temperaments would craft a form of religion that values emotions, group-bonding, and the freedom of the physical body, in sharp reaction to the more cerebral religion of their introverted ancestors.

The excesses of introverted spirituality led to an over-valuing of reason and logic that allowed theologians to devalue the plain teachings of the Bible using logical schemes that were based on incomplete human knowledge – e.g., theological liberalism. It also can lead to a detached, paralyzing “mysticism” that degenerates into navel gazing at the expense of taking an active role in the world. That much is history.

Unfortunately, we’re still seeing the excesses of extroverted spirituality emerge. The Health-and-Wealth Gospel, the New Apostolic Reformation, Toronto Blessing, Todd Bentley, etc. are only some examples. Depending on how successful some of these groups become, we might find ourselves living under the “authority” of some of these groups (aided by President Palin, perhaps?), and that’s not a prospect I relish. In my experience, Pentecostal groups that try to keep things level with the Bible are in the stark minority. Most have no controls whatsoever other than the personal charisma of their leaders. That’s not an attack on your tradition. That’s just a frank assessment based on what I’ve observed. In the end analysis, the danger of extroverted spirituality is that it can lead people to mistake their own emotions for the Holy Spirit – and the person who can manipulate your emotions can make you think their agenda is from God.

True spirituality, in whatever form it takes, should enable a person who put aside their pride and ego and see the truth about their lives, enabling them to grow in the image of Christ. For extroverts, this may well be a form of spirituality in which they are allowed to openly, verbally proclaim their feelings, and express them bodily. For introverts, this may be time spent alone with God in quiet observation and reflection. Neither one necessarily has a right to demand that everyone adhere to their paradigm. But each should also be aware of the dangers that might come from their style’s excess.

If you believe the Bible is the Word of God, what do you do with the passages on the charismata?

If you don’t believe in God or the Bible as his Word, then okay, I can see where you’re coming from. Studies have also shown that prayer is ineffective, as well. But naturalistic studies are remarkably ineffective at observing the ineffable and non-natural. So, I remain unconvinced by your claims of imitation as the source of the phenomenon.

Regards,

I find that extroverts engage in “speaking-in-tongues” like behavior quite often, regardless of whether or not they’re saved. It only takes a little rhythmic music, some whipping up the crowd, and within seconds extroverts are screaming “Wooo! Wooo! Ya ha! Yes! Wa-HA!” You can see this at any rock concert, sporting event, or even at parties.

This behavior is merely a way that extroverts bypass the linguistic functions of their brains and let their emotions vent unhindered by logic or reflective awareness. People with extroverted personalities find these types of experiences congenial, and seek them out. I’ve found that Pentecostals very quickly devolve into rank heresy (oneness, New Apostolic Reformation, health-and-wealth gospel, etc.), which suggests that speaking in tongues is completely independent of, and empty of, truth content.

I find no reason to think that speaking in tongues is anything supernatural. If the emotions one is venting have to do with God, then I suppose it seems like a spiritual experience to the extrovert. But it’s a function of the extrovert’s nature, nothing more.

Studies have found that people can speak in tongues after listening to as little as 60 seconds of others doing so. Speaking in tongues is nothing more than learned behavior that builds on extroverts’ innate ability to turn off their logic minds and babble as a way of venting emotions and altering their mood.

Since these kinds of behaviors seem so innate to extroverts, who make up 2/3s of humanity, I suppose we have to find a place for them. But is it really a miracle? Doubt it.

Regards,

Rich
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