Revival Churches Discussion forum
Click the banner to view the old forum
Showing posts with label Ecstatic speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ecstatic speech. Show all posts
Thursday
Tongues - An Unsound Evidence of Salvation
By Nick Greer
"as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination ... Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, 'I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.'" (Acts 16:16-18)
Acts 16 is a deep Scripture - deceptively simple, but one of those scriptures we come across from time to time that is bursting with meaning beneath the surface. Paul was much annoyed with this girl who had a 'spirit of divination'. Let's look at those words. In Greek, she had a pneu'ma py'tho·na, or literally, "a spirit of python". The NRSV Harper-Collins Study Bible notes of Acts 16:
"Spirit of divination, lit. 'a spirit of the Python,' which was associated with the Delphic oracle."
The Python was a mythical beast which guarded the Oracle of Delphi, near Corinth. At the Oracle of Delphi, travellers would congregate to hear a prophecy of the future for themselves or their country. According to some historians, the Pythoness (priestess) would cry out in unintelligible sounds which were interpreted by another person to form ambiguous verses. To have a spirit of the Python would be to be like the Pythoness - it would be someone who was filled with the demonic spirit of the oracle... someone who would prophecy by crying out in unintelligible sounds!
And as such, there is scriptural evidence in Acts 16 for false tongues. That is not to say that all tongues are wrong. While Paul excorcised this slave girl in Acts from the spirit of the Python, he himself spoke in tongues, and was glad of the experience (1.Cor.14:18).
...
What have we learned from the experience of the slave girl? When someone 'speaks in tongues' we cannot be sure that they have salvation, becuase tongues is not a solely Christian phenomenon. According to Professor Maja-Lisa Swartz of the Helsinki University, after her research of the Tanzanian tribes people, "speaking in tongues is nothing specific for the Christian religion. It appears in all religions and is no guarantee for what type of spirit it is that the speaker is speaking for".
...
For example, John MacArthur writes, in Charismatic Chaos, "Ecstatic speech is a part of many pagan religions in Africa, East Africa. Tonga people of Africa, when a demon is exorcised, sing in Zulu even though they say they don't know the Zulu language. Ecstatic speech is found today among Muslims, Eskimos, Tibetan monks. It is involved in parapsychological occult groups. Did you know that the Mormons, even Joseph Smith himself advocates speaking in tongues? ...." An Encyclopædia of Occultism says, "Speaking and writing in foreign tongues, or in unintelligible outpourings mistaken for such, is a very old form of psychic phenomenon."
Continued at http://rc.cutlweb.net
"as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination ... Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, 'I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.'" (Acts 16:16-18)
Acts 16 is a deep Scripture - deceptively simple, but one of those scriptures we come across from time to time that is bursting with meaning beneath the surface. Paul was much annoyed with this girl who had a 'spirit of divination'. Let's look at those words. In Greek, she had a pneu'ma py'tho·na, or literally, "a spirit of python". The NRSV Harper-Collins Study Bible notes of Acts 16:
"Spirit of divination, lit. 'a spirit of the Python,' which was associated with the Delphic oracle."
The Python was a mythical beast which guarded the Oracle of Delphi, near Corinth. At the Oracle of Delphi, travellers would congregate to hear a prophecy of the future for themselves or their country. According to some historians, the Pythoness (priestess) would cry out in unintelligible sounds which were interpreted by another person to form ambiguous verses. To have a spirit of the Python would be to be like the Pythoness - it would be someone who was filled with the demonic spirit of the oracle... someone who would prophecy by crying out in unintelligible sounds!
And as such, there is scriptural evidence in Acts 16 for false tongues. That is not to say that all tongues are wrong. While Paul excorcised this slave girl in Acts from the spirit of the Python, he himself spoke in tongues, and was glad of the experience (1.Cor.14:18).
...
What have we learned from the experience of the slave girl? When someone 'speaks in tongues' we cannot be sure that they have salvation, becuase tongues is not a solely Christian phenomenon. According to Professor Maja-Lisa Swartz of the Helsinki University, after her research of the Tanzanian tribes people, "speaking in tongues is nothing specific for the Christian religion. It appears in all religions and is no guarantee for what type of spirit it is that the speaker is speaking for".
...
For example, John MacArthur writes, in Charismatic Chaos, "Ecstatic speech is a part of many pagan religions in Africa, East Africa. Tonga people of Africa, when a demon is exorcised, sing in Zulu even though they say they don't know the Zulu language. Ecstatic speech is found today among Muslims, Eskimos, Tibetan monks. It is involved in parapsychological occult groups. Did you know that the Mormons, even Joseph Smith himself advocates speaking in tongues? ...." An Encyclopædia of Occultism says, "Speaking and writing in foreign tongues, or in unintelligible outpourings mistaken for such, is a very old form of psychic phenomenon."
Continued at http://rc.cutlweb.net
Saturday
Christian glossolalia, properly understood, is voluntary
I have yet to find the term "prayer language" in either the Bible or in ancient Christian writers.And you would think that people who speak in tongues would have an edge with Biblical languages. But they have the same difficulty that non-glossolalics do.
"So if I'm speaking in a room where no one understands me the only one that could possibly understand me is GOD. Does that fit into the context?"
First thing He'd say is "tone it down. I'm right inside you, not across the room." - 1corinth 14:28
I would suggest that Christian glossolalia, properly understood, is voluntary. This was its practice in the New Testament, where it is seldom if ever characterized as "ecstatic" in the popular sense of the term.In fact, regulations are laid down by the Apostle Paul for the public exercise of glossolalia in which he takes pains to tell people not to exceed three utterances in a tongue because it defeats the goal of the rational edification of those in attendance at gatherings.
Paul gives his own example as one heavily devoted to the practice and discusses how he of his own volition can choose to either speak/sing "in the spirit" or in the vernacular, as it were. You can read about this in First Corinthians chapter 14 if so inclined.
To tie speaking in tongues to the term "ecstatic" clouds the issue in my opinion and we do not typically see "uncontrolled" overwrought tongues speaking in the New Testament.
Full disclosure: I am a charismatic Christian and have been around this for 25 years +. Most people I know who speak in tongues do this voluntarily as and when they so choose and usually tongues is taught to be a volitional act under the control of the speaker who can "turn it on and off" at will.
"So if I'm speaking in a room where no one understands me the only one that could possibly understand me is GOD. Does that fit into the context?"
First thing He'd say is "tone it down. I'm right inside you, not across the room." - 1corinth 14:28
I would suggest that Christian glossolalia, properly understood, is voluntary. This was its practice in the New Testament, where it is seldom if ever characterized as "ecstatic" in the popular sense of the term.In fact, regulations are laid down by the Apostle Paul for the public exercise of glossolalia in which he takes pains to tell people not to exceed three utterances in a tongue because it defeats the goal of the rational edification of those in attendance at gatherings.
Paul gives his own example as one heavily devoted to the practice and discusses how he of his own volition can choose to either speak/sing "in the spirit" or in the vernacular, as it were. You can read about this in First Corinthians chapter 14 if so inclined.
To tie speaking in tongues to the term "ecstatic" clouds the issue in my opinion and we do not typically see "uncontrolled" overwrought tongues speaking in the New Testament.
Full disclosure: I am a charismatic Christian and have been around this for 25 years +. Most people I know who speak in tongues do this voluntarily as and when they so choose and usually tongues is taught to be a volitional act under the control of the speaker who can "turn it on and off" at will.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)