Subject: Is speaking in tongues for today? |
Bible Note: This is a very good question, as there is an entire denomination based upon this very thing. I wondered about this "tongues" thing and decided to have a look in the Word, as a friend of mine, when she was VERY ill, had someone pray for her, and he apparently did it in "tongues". I cannot find anything except that each time it occurred in the NT, it was only so that people who heard it understood the message that was being said, or in one case, so that the person hearing the message would know it was for real as they knew the person speaking in another "tongue" could not speak the language they were speaking in. I could only find 3 references to it in the Word. I guess it could be for today, if it is needed...God doesn't seem to have any rules about not doing things today, we have the other gifts. It frightens me when people get dogmatic about stuff like this, and base a whole belief system around it. I went to a church as a child with my gentile father, where people were doing this in the church all the time, and molesting their kids at home...It was a big status thing to "speak in tongues" and you were not considered "saved" until you had done it...frankly it gave me the creeps, and I stayed away from anything like that, until the story with my girlfriend and the man who prayed for her. He is a policeman, VERY sane and grounded...it REALLY surprised me to hear that it had happened..she told me she didn't feel creepy about it and then we got into looking into the Word for confirmation about this. That's when I found the 3 scriptures, and the qualifiers. Thoughts? |