Tongues

Speaking in tongues or glossolalia is practiced by an estimated 100 to 400 million Christians in the world today and the number engaging in tongue speaking is growing at a massive rate every year. That is approximately 20% of all Christians. At this point I would like to point out that my family made up part of these figures just so you are aware we have had first hand experience with speaking in tongues which is also called glossolalia.

Many Christians believe that speaking in tongues is the fulfilment of the Latter Rain promised in Joel 2:28-29 and that it is the final manifestation of the Holy Spirit before the Second Coming of Christ. It is also commonly taught that you have not received the Holy Spirit and are not saved unless you have demonstrated the gift of speaking in tongues and tongues seems to be the only sought after gift in the tongue speaking Church today.

So what is the real truth about tongue speaking? (or version thereof) Can we go by experience and feelings or do we go by the Word of God? The only way to find the truth to these questions of course has to be the Bible and the Bible alone. There is no other way. Everything we need to know for our Christian walk can be found in the Word of God and if not clearly taught in God’s Word, then we should not follow it less we be deceived. The Bible warns us of this fact many times. In this document we will cover all aspects of speaking in tongues (glossolalia) from the Bible alone. We will not be going by experiences, feelings or so called “physical evidence.” We cannot afford to adopt an interpretation which demands a change in God’s Word. It is our interpretation that should change if necessary to fit the Bible – not the Bible changed to fit our interpretation. Since the enemy can and does counterfeit miracles of God we must follow the scriptures only.

Lisa Gerrard uses "her own" language.

Lisa Gerrard sings in what some christians might call 'tongues'. She sings in her own language - it's that simple!

Lisa Gerrard uses "her own" language.

Lisa Gerrard's lyrics in "Now We Are Free" have no language known to man. She uses her own "language" or glosalalia, similar to what young children use to talk or sing or what some pentecostal groups use to pray. At least this is how LG has described her process in many interviews. She has said she makes up the words as she goes along. Sort of like Jazz vocalists when they scat sing. My impression is that she finds doing this doesn't hamper the listener's ability to add their own experience with the song itself - words get in the way, kind of like now, for example.

I verified this in Lisa Gerrard's homepage.

Her stuff gets a tad repetitive after awhile for some (I myself find it absolutely beautiful, but then I'm a crazy Enya fan) you might recall her stuff in the sound tracks of a few movies - namely "the gladiator'....she from Melbourne originally - imagine her as a 'pub act'....but that's how she started out.

She's not a christian in case anyone wants to know...She borrows her sound from a wide range of ideas..including the arabic styles - yep Muslim culture.

Check it out ...it might intrigue you. I don't think she's singing in the same tongues as the revivalists/penties...but even the Revivalists weren't as weird as some other church groups who encourage singing in tongues. Of course to sing in the spirit (in Chartdoctor's view) would be to sing in tongues as if that's the only way to spiritually sing.

I think its a bloody good example of how the 'act' can be done by anyone who trains themselves in this very unsupernatural and extremely over-rated gift(?)

"The words are in my own internal language, and mean more than I could ever explain,"

The phonemes one uses when one sings, regardless of their meaning, alter the musical shading and tone quality of one's voice. We have to put our tongues in different positions, tighten or loosen different parts of our throats, change the shape of the inside of our mouth, close or open our lips, etc. For example, if I am singing "feet" my voice is going to sound very different than if I am singing "wow" at the same pitch and volume. As a violinist, I can tell you that the angle at which the bow touches the string, the pressure of the violinist's fingers, even the angle at which the instrument faces (or doesn't face) the audience are all used for different musical effects.

Well, a singer's instrument is her body. When she's singing predetermined words, she is limited in how she can alter the timbre and tone quality of her words. For example, she might want the bell-like clarity that can be achieved when producing an "oh" sound, but she if she's singing the word "please," she's just going to have to attempt the best she can with that vowel sound, despite the fact that it's a high, tense, front vowel. On the other hand, if she's not singing predetermined words, but rather shaping the sound the way an instrumentalist does, she's free to sing "oh" went she wants a more clear, open sound, or "ee" if she wants a more constrained, higher tension vowel sound. If she wants an emphatic, staccato sound, she can put in "t" sounds or "p" sounds.