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Student Work Sample |
Speaking
in Tongues: My
Early Experience With Speaking in Tongues When I was a little girl, my mom did a missionary program, on the island of St. Kitts. We originally lived in America. When we came to St. Kitts, my father stayed in the United States, because he had to work. Every weekend my father would come to St. Kitts to visit us. Because my Dad wasn’t there, my little brother and I sometimes slept with our mother. Every night she would get down on her knees and pray. Often times she would speak something we could not understand. She must have said it was called “praying in tongues”. Somehow, however, my little brother and I started calling this form of prayer “praying in lips”. Since we only talked about it to each other, no one corrected us, so we called it “lips praying”, and knew what we were talking about. We would get down on our knees, and just start talking in lips. My brother would look at me, and say, “Are you done?” I would say, “Yes.” Then I would look at him, ask him the same question and he would say, “Yes”. We would then get up and get in the bed and go to sleep. Even though I probably didn’t have the language to explain it at the age of four, I knew that “speaking in lips” was something that had to do with having a special relationship with God, a Holy Spirit thing. One day a man named Brother Harry came to my mother’s school. He was an American evangelist with the Rock Church. He was looking for volunteers to help him with street ministry, to pass out different items to the needy. My mom is always inviting visiting pastors to come and preach at her church, so she did the same for Brother Harry. He preached maybe three Sundays in a row. He would do things like start laughing in the middle of the service. I never knew if something was funny or we were supposed to laugh too. My older sister said that it was because of some passage in the Bible that referred to laughter in the spirit. On the third Sunday brother Harry tells everyone that in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit you have to be able to speak in tongues. When he said that I knew something was wrong. My little brother Peter and I really loved Jesus, believed in him, and had confessed him as our Lord and savior, way before we started speaking in tongues. Brother Harry asked the youth who wanted to be spirit filled. Of course, we all raised our hands. He placed his hand on each child’s forehead, and pressed really hard. Then he tried to force us to speak in tongues. I heard him whisper to my brother Luke, “Just make noise, just make noise.” He made some people feel bad because, they could not speak in tongues. I know there were kids in our congregation who really had personal relationships with Jesus. I know that day, Brother Harry didn’t give them the gift of tongues, he gave them the demon of doubting. When I imagine how many lives he might have discouraged or confused about knowing Christ on that day, it’s like taking a glance at hell. The Initial Evidence Doctrine states that in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit you must show the evidence of speaking in tongues. This doctrine is the unique feature of a new but powerful church called Pentecostal Church. Pentecostalism is less than 100 years old. The religion justifies Initial Evidence through scripture. Initial Evidence relies heavily on the fact that those who were assembled in the Upper Room at the time of the Pentecost following Jesus’ death spoke in foreign languages that they had never learned, when the Holy Spirit came upon them. This paper will explore the history of speaking in tongues in the Bible and in Church. It will look at whether the gift of tongues is the only gift that evidences the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It will also explore the real purpose and power—apart from man-made religious doctrine--of speaking in tongues. Where
Do We Find Speaking in Tongues in the Bible?
The
Bible tells of people speaking in tongues in the Old Testament and the
New Testament. The first incident of speaking in tongues occurs in
Genesis 11. At this point in the history of the world, all the people
spoke the same language. The Bible says that men were on a journey,
when they decided to stop at a place called Shinar. While they were in
Shinar, they decided to build a city. They used brick, instead of
stone, and tar instead of mortar. They used all their men, and built a
tall city, saying, “ Come, let us build ourselves a city with a
tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for
ourselves, and not be scattered over the whole earth.” This
statement is usually interpreted to mean that the people of the earth
wanted to elevate themselves to the status and power of God, and they
thought they could achieve this through unity, or one world power. When
God saw their city, He said, “ If as one people speaking the same
language they have begun to do this then nothing they plan to do will
be impossible for them.” God
decided to send them a spirit of confusion. Through divided tongues,
or languages, He created a communication barrier amongst people, and
took away their power. They all started speaking different languages,
and the Lord scattered them all over the earth. Predictably, they
stopped building the tower. It
is really interesting to consider that the Lord can use the same thing
to be a curse as well as a gift. This probably means that the act of
speaking in tongues is not as much of a gift as the spirit of God,
which causes someone to speak. For those who believe that speaking of tongues is evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit, the first and most significant occurrence of speaking in tongues is in the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2 verses 1 –13, when local Jews from Jerusalem started speaking foreign languages during the time of Pentecost, as they received a visible sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. But the Bible says that earlier, the disciples had received the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven (John 20:22,23). Luke, chapter 24, verses 36 through 49 says that Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, just before ascending to heaven. The Gospel of Luke says that they were all just standing around talking about all the things that had happened when He appeared. The scripture says that they thought He was a ghost, but He showed them his natural body and wounds, so he must have still been in human form. He ate with them, and gave them some instructions: “(verse 49) I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. Later, after Jesus’ ascension to heaven the apostles gathered in an upper room. A huge wind came from heaven, and filled the whole house where they sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Some people made fun of them, saying, “ They have had to much wine.” Acts
chapter 2 verse 14-21 says, that Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples,
stood up, talked to the crowd. He asked them, “How could these
people be drunk, it is only nine in the morning.” He explained that
God said in the end days, He will pour at his spirit. There will be
clouds of smoke and that the sun will become dark. The moon will be
red like blood. He said that everyone’s sons and daughters would
begin to prophesy. The
crowd took his word seriously. Church
History and Speaking in Tongues
History
tells of people speaking in tongues since the beginning of the early
Christian church, although it is difficult to find a lot of historical
accounts of speaking in tongues. Maybe this is because people thought
that groups of Christians who spoke in tongues were strange or crazy,
so they kept these gifts private. An example is that the early church
concentrated on the source of the gift, namely the church, the nature
of Christ and the ways, of the Holy Spirit. In 325 A.D., the Council
of Nicene, a group of Christian leaders assembled to establish a
mainstream Christian doctrine, said speaking in tongues was a form of
jubilation. It is said to show your expression to God by any form of
praise to God. They were the same qualities that Paul told the
Corinthians about. It was used when words couldn’t express your
feelings for Christ. St. Augustine thought that speaking in tongues
was only in the time of the apostles. He thought it was used to help
evangelize the early church. Augustine thought that speaking in
tongues, was used to bridge foreign languages. Augustine
also thought that miracles only occurred in the time of the apostles,
until he witnessed a miracle himself. In a sermon called City of
God, Augustine shares how his ways changed when he witnessed a
faith healing miracle of two children
that had a body problem which caused shaking and convulsions.
Augustine wrote “The people [who witnessed the healing along with
him] shouted God’s praises without words, but with such a noise we
could scarcely stand it.” Men
of the middle ages recognized the gift of speaking in tongues of
having the personality of mainly xenolalia, and jubilation. Some
people thought that the gift was used to preach to people with foreign
languages. Xenolalia is one type of speaking in tongues.
This is when you speak a human language other than your own
that you have never studied. Glossolalia is the gift of
speaking a heavenly language that deepens your prayer relationship
with God. Thomas
Aquinas, a theologian of the 13th century breaks down the
meaning of the expression jubilation, by describing it as “an
unspeakable joy, which cannot be expressed. The reason that this joy
cannot be expressed in words is that it is beyond comprehension.” A mystic writer of the 16th century by
the name of Teresa wrote about jubilation. Her writing was often in
songs and dance. She worked with the Carmelite sisters, in liturgical
dance and melodies that were praising to God. Sometimes such praise
would bring a trance of the Holy Spirit for the whole day. Not
only Catholics owned the charismatic gift. Small Christian groups were
also found in southern France. People who were associated with them
gave gifts, and they prophesied.
The people who most often exhibited gifts of prophesy and tongues were
children. They were soon called,
“the little prophets of Cevenned.” Shaking
Quakers, the Moravian Church, and Huguenots spoke in tongues in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although
it is often said that speaking in tongues originate in the early
twentieth century, the truth is that receiving the Holy Spirit,
speaking in tongues and seeing visions have not been lost or died off
since the Pentecost. Catholics and Protestants have continued to
believe in such gifts for the past two thousand years. The main men
who created a theology from these beliefs were John Calvin and John
Wesley. They wrote complicated theology about the baptism of the inner
soul, and the signs that will accompany the experience of accepting
Jesus Christ as your personal savior. History
of the Initial Evidence Doctrine The
Initial Evidence Doctrine, which is the basic teaching of the
Charismatic Church, started in February 1906 in California. A man by
the name of William Seymour
was asked to be a pastor of a small church. The church was in Los
Angeles. Seymour believed and taught that in order to be filled with
the Holy Spirit you had to speak in tongues. Seymour held his church
meetings at people’s houses. Because of this new teaching, some of
his hosts thought he was crazy and stopped hosting his church
services. On April 9th the first people to speak in tongues that were in Seymour’s life were the person who was housing him and his services, Edward Lee, and his closest associate, Jennie Evans Moore (she later became his wife). Soon a lot of people In Seymour’s group started speaking in tongues. Seymour decided that too many people were being filled with the Holy Spirit to be staying in the little living room of Edward Lee, so he rented a warehouse. The warehouse was on Azusa Street. This is how the Initial Evidence movement got the name, “Azusa Street Revival”. In mid-May the Pentecostal Initial Evidence Doctrine was born. Their theory is that true proof of being filled with the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. The movement became national as many people joined the church. People from national magazines, newspapers were coming to interview Seymour. Seymour often used to sit in meetings with is head in shoe box. The reason he did that, is that he is blind, and that he wanted to fix his attention on God. It says in the Bible, Romans 12. “Fix your attention on God, and you will be changed from the inside out”. One day Seymour let a man by the name of Charles Parham visit their church. He was soon not welcome to their church. It was said that he had racist views, and he had personal conflicts with leadership. He was also accused of indecent practices, but this was never proven. Parham left, and tried to build another church, which he was soon not welcome into either. Because of his bad personalities, his bad reputation with women, and his racism he had a bad reputation. Because of Parham, his bad reputation, and the internal conflicts with people in the church, the Pentecostal church started to shrink. Seymour was eventually able to settle his church down into a stable black Pentecostal church. The church continued to be a medium size church until Seymour died in 1922. Jennie Moore, who by then was Seymour’s widow took over the church. The church continued for several years, until they lost the building in 1931. Seymour’s
history has one slightly weird twist. Although he had received Holy
Spirit understanding that speaking in tongues is evidence of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Seymour himself did not speak in
tongues at the time he first started preaching this doctrine. It wasn’t
until two months later, on April 12, 1906, after Pastor Seymour and
his tongues theory got to be really hot in California, until he
received the gift himself. This was after his associates had begin to
speak in tongues earlier in the month. So here’s the question:
how is it that someone can claim Holy Spirit inspiration that the
proof of Holy Spirit indwelling is speaking in tongues, when the
person making the claim doesn’t show this evidence in himself? Why
didn’t Pastor Seymour have to prove that he was directed by the Holy
Spirit, before people took his doctrine to be from God? Even before the Azusa Church, different people started Pentecostal Churches. There was one in Italy, and there was also a Spanish Pentecostal Church. Charismatics
and the Initial Evidence Doctrine Today
Charismatics
are people who belong to a movement that brought back the Christianity
of “speaking in tongues,” or heavenly language in the 1960s. This
action is a revival of Pentecostalism, except now; it has made its way
through Christianity, and the Catholic religion. The word charismata
or charisms means “spiritual gifts”. These terms are regularly
used and accepted in most churches. Before
the Charismatic movement became widely accepted, some churches that
didn’t even believe in Pentecostalism had received the Holy Spirit,
but didn’t tell anyone. There
resistance was because not a lot of people looked at speaking in
tongues as a proper act of worship. Because
the charismatic movement represents a revival of Pentecostalism, it is
also called neo-Pentecostalism. The origin of neo-Pentecostalism is
difficult to trace. It first attracted public attention in 1960 when
Rev. Dennis Bennett, rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Van
Nuys, Calif., resigned his office rather than see his congregation
divided over the practice of speaking in tongues by himself and some
members of his congregation. But instead of keeping things quiet, news
of Rev. Bennett’s experience made other traditional ministers start
admitting that they had experienced gifts and signs from the Holy
Spirit, too. Many historians say that this was the beginning of the
charismatic movement. People who were shy about admitting to speaking
in tongues started sharing their experiences, even people from
Catholic churches. There
was one time when a Catholic University has a Holy Spirit Visit that
became known as “Duquesne Week-end.” This happened in February
1967, a year after four catholic school professors started praying
together to strengthen their Catholic faith. A group of people met
with these professors for a weekend. An engaged couple, who had
heard of the Holy spirit, wanted to be filled with it, so they asked
if the professors, could meet with them, to pray. They soon left their
living room, and went upstairs to pray. Soon they all were filled with
the Holy Spirit, and they started speaking in tongues. Soon a little
girl felt the presence of the Holy Spirit; she felt it was leading her
to a chapel. She ran to the house, and told all the professors, and
the couple about the intangible experience she had. They all left the
house, and went to the chapel. They all had the experience of the Holy
Spirit coming upon them. That even was thought to be the beginning of
the charismatic movement. In 1964, Pope John established
Vatican Council. He thought that it would energize the Catholic Church
by encouraging the live presence of the Holy Spirit. The event was
known to give encouragement to Pope Paul’s VI’s movement, to
demand the necessity of Christ presence in the church. My
Opinion: Tongues, Yes! Initial
Evidence, No! I
think that the Pentecostal/Charismatic requirement that in order to be
filled with the Holy Spirit, you have to speak in tongues is made up
by man, and it is not right. Acts 2 says that several different things
happened when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit. They
acted drunk, and saw tongues of fire that separated and came upon each
of them. However, the Pentecostal religion only says that when you are
filled with the Holy Spirit, you have to speak in tongues. Why don’t
we require leaping flames of fire that split into two to prove it’s
the real thing? In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks of the signs and
wonders that will follow those who believe: “In my name they will
cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up
serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt
them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
(Mark16:16-18) There are churches where people walk on snakes as a
form of worship, but most other people do not believe this is
something that makes God happy or shows obedience to Him. We know that
when Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she went to visit Elizabeth, who
was pregnant with John. The Bible says that John was filled with the
Holy Spirit and leapt in his mother’s womb, but there was no
evidence of speaking with tongues. Evidential
tongues are to prove that someone has been baptized in the Holy
Spirit. Nowhere in the Bible is there a mention as tongues as a sign
of proof of believer’s true conversion and receiving the baptism of
the Holy Spirit An
intercessory tongue is a prayer language for talking to God in a
supernatural way. The
Holy Spirit develops a prayer language in you.
Ephesians chapter 6 verse 18 says, “At all times, pray by the
power of the Spirit. Pray all kinds of prayers. Be watchful, so that
you can pray. Always keep on praying for God’s people. ” The
ministry gift is when your speaking in tongues and it can be
translated into another language. First Corinthians chapter 14 verse
22 says, “ So speaking in other languages is a sign for those who
don’t believe. It is not a sign for those who do believe. But
prophecy is for believers, it is not for those who don’t prophecy.”
Paul
says in first Corinthians 12 verse 30, “Do all have gifts of
healing? Do all speak in languages they had not known before? Do all
explain what is said in those languages?” The way this is phrased is
as a rhetorical question, to which the answer is no. In 1 Corinthians
14 Paul set out a kind of logic that maybe means all spirit-filled
believers do not have the gift of tongues. Most Christians would agree
that in order to have any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the
believer must be spirit filled. But Paul in 1Corinthians 14 speaks of
the believer who has the gift of prophecy, rather than tongues, as
being greater than the believer who has the gift of tongues. The
apostle Paul says in this same passage to this group of believers that
he wishes they could all speak in tongues, which means some do not. Praying in the Spirit and in the Holy Ghost is really meant for Christians. All Christians are to have faith. Being baptized is a major experience in a Christian’s life. You can get baptized in the Spirit and receive any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit right when you accept the Lord as your personal savior, or as some scriptures point out you can receive it after you are saved. When a person gets saved, the Holy Spirit dwells in their heart. The Holy Spirit is what produces love peace and joy inside you. However, when you get baptized in Holy Spirit you receive supernatural power within you. Acts chapter 1 verse eight says, “… but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Then you will be my witness in Jerusalem. You will be my witness in all Judea and Samaria. And you will be my witness from one end of the earth to the other.” To be filled with the Holy Spirit and have the power to exercise any of the I Corinthians 12 gifts is a privilege. You can love God, be spirit filled, the Holy Spirit can dwell in you, you can exercise a variety of other gifts, die and go to heaven without speaking in tongues. God is similar to us in his spirit. We have to reach a high level before we can grab hold of what he wants us to. You can pray to God and ask him, to let you be able to relate to him without any problems. When you use the gift of tongue, it is just like the Holy Spirit is praying. Sometimes when your praying in tongues God reveals stuff to you that, you have been having trouble with. A reason for the death of Christ is so that we could have the experience of being able to talk to the Holy Spirit in our every day walk with God, through the gift of the Spirit, whichever ones God choose to give us. ConclusionI was taught when I was growing up to love Jesus and worship Him, not any rules that were made up by men, and don’t seem based on scripture. No religion can change my love for Jesus, or even judge it. I personally think that anybody or any religion that tries to make you think that you don’t have the Holy Spirit unless you do it their made up way is horrible. Many of the scriptures that I have put into this research paper, say simply that speaking in tongues is a gift. A gift is usually a surprise. It comes wrapped up, and you don’t even know what it is until you get it. Many times a gift is something you didn’t ask for. It is freely given. If you have the gift of the Holy Spirit, that means God saw one of His children, and knew they were spirit filled and ready to use one of His gifts as a tool for service, and gave him or her the gift. I believe the way you can get the gift of speaking in tongues by praying for it, but God still may not give it to you until you are mature enough to handle it. I believe that if we are His children, and we have a desire, we can ask God, and that He will grant you the desires of your heart. I know my greatest desire is to please Him and do His will. If that means speaking in tongues, I am so happy. If that means not speaking in tongues, I am still happy and will continue to praise the Lord.
References
The Holy Bible, NIV translation, Zondervan Press Eding, Lon Short Summary Of Tongues Book James
and Dave’s Bible Page From Frequently Asked Questions. Longman,
Robert from Azusa street timeline. McNeil,
Mark Is
Speaking with Tongues the Initial Evidence of the Spirit Baptism? Unknown
author, Azusa Street, |
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