Tongues or NO Tongues!?

8/14/2019 Tongues or NO Tongues!?

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EDITOR'S CORNERI believe that running neck and neck with being slain in the spirit, speakingin other tongues is at the top of the list of doctrinal controversy. Shortly afterI got saved in 1977, I knew about the baptisms of water and fire, but I had notyet heard that tongues was believed to be the "initial evidence" of the baptismof the Holy Ghost, as taught by Pentecostal, Charismatic and Word of FaithBelievers.A few days after I was saved, I received supernaturally the name of a pentecostal

church that was on Ferry Street. I searched the yellow pages, and to myamazement, there it was. At that time, I had never even heard the words"pentecostal," "tongues" or even being "baptized" in the Holy Ghost. Soaccompanied by my friend Vivian, we headed for Ferry Street to St. Johns Church ofGod in Christ. When we entered the church, the service was already in progress.The thing that I found so astounding was the music. It seemed like the sounds ofthe musical instruments were actually coming through the walls. It was there thatI first got introduced to what I believed then was "the presence of the HolyGhost." It was absolutely awesome!No words were ever spoken to either one of us. Yet right in the middle of theservice, a group of the members gathered together, walked to the back of thechurch and encircled us. To my amazement, Vivian fell to the ground and began toroll around on the floor. She began to froth at the mouth, jerk, twist, appearing

as though she was having a seizure. Apparently pleased with this manifestation,those who encircled us also went into a kind of ecstatic experience whichordinarily would have frightened me, but I was feeling so much peace from thepower than seemed to be both inside and upon me, that I was in no way disquieted.

Yet, the ecstasy left me when the gathered group and the rest of those assembledall turned to me, with the unspoken expectation that "it was my turn" to fallout and roll on the floor. I didn't want to be disrespectful but once Vivian"came to her senses," we quickly eased our way out the door,while the worshipservice continued without missing a beat. Not one word was ever spoken between usand them. For thirty years, I have marked that day as my"baptism in the HolyGhost", yet without tongues as the initial evidence. I have since experiencedthat awesome presence countless times since that wonderful day in April, 1977.

Even though I myself have spoken in various tongues fluently since 1983, I havehad serious reservations about this practice for almost two decades. As Icontinue to perservere to "try the spirits" in my own very supernatural spirituallife, I have placed several dreams, signs,miracles and wonders to the test. Simplyput, I seek God continually to expose the truth, no matter the results or theconsequences.It turns out that some of my most treasured spiritual experiences, when examinedor "tried," have proven to be sent by a religious demon. Am I hurt ordisappointed? Not at all. For as a result of "trying the spirits," I not onlyhave been liberated by truth, but I have been flooded with an abundanceofknowledge and wisdom since 2004, particularly in the year 2007. If 2008 ismore revelatory than last year, I pray for continued peace and strength tocontinue to adjust to the stark reality of unadulterated truth.

I believe that the reason why I have not been troubled by recent spiritualexposures of error and deception is because truly, I have had nothing to lose.Each day that yet another deception is exposed, I am reminded of the words of theLord about building your foundation upon the solid rock. My salvation experiencethat occurred on March 29th, 1977 at 4pm on a Monday afternoon is MY SOLID ROCK.When I came into the kingdom, I had nothing else built into my "religious"foundation. No church background at all. No doctrine. No memorized scriptures.No prayers. Nothing.I was at ground zero. A hardened atheist. No religion to lose.At ground zero, the Holy Ghost was able to reveal in the twinkling of an eye whatwould last and become in me "a solid rock.. It was so simple yet so unforgettable.


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I knewthat I knew that I knew that Jesus Christ paid for my sins in His death andthat He also defeated death by being raised from the dead. That was it!!!!Therefore, my rebirth experience has been my anchor, my solid Rock.Surely I experience a feeling that is difficult to describe. It is notdisappointment exactly. The closest word to describe what truth brings is a senseof awesome humility. I suspect what I feel is "the fear of the Lord." Truly,the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. For with every revelation Ireceive about error and deception, my foundation remains unmoved. Therefore,

outside of any personal revelations received from the Spirit of God or from thereligious demon masquarading as God, all that I have lost are the traditions anddoctrines of men. NOT MUCH TO LOSE!!!! LOLOnce I sent out issue 4 wherein I expressed my reservations on tongues, I receivedemails from well meaning "tongue talkers," who tried to convince me with scripturethat "a prayer language is for every Christian." There is no denying thatChristians on both sides of the tongues debate have been clearly devisive as thespeaking in tongues has become an extremely emotional issue. I myself prefer totake a rational, objective approach which also includes an examination of tonguesthroughout church history.With the fluency that I myself have in tongues, I could obviously let this issuerest by simply accepting both the doctrine and the practice with my own experienceas confirmation of its reality and acceptability. I could matter of factly

declare, "Oh, well, since I speak in tongues, it MUST be from God and not acounterfeit."No, I do not try the spirits by my own personal experience. For example, as awoman in ministry, I was called by several dreams and visions. Yet I never arguedwith anyone whether or not women should be preaching or not preaching. In allhonesty, I really didn't know. I was prepared to step down anytime in obedience toGod, if my stepping forward to preach was presumptuous. I read the samescriptures from the letters of Paul that antagonists used to deny women asministers, yet I was not convinced by their interpretations that "a woman oughtnot to teach."I have simply followed the leading of the Holy Ghost, expecting that the Lordwould reveal the truth, "bye and bye." Today, 26 years later, I believe that Iknow the truth about the "woman question." The answer to the debate is rather

simple. With few exceptions, women were not called to ministry during the age ofthe organized church in the first 1965 years of its history. God had His reasonsfor restraining women in Christian ministry. Only in the last 10-15 years has theHoly Ghost been calling out women to preach and teach the gospel. Apparently itmust be "the time." Personally speaking, I believe that as a front line warrior,I was drafted as a forerunner, just a little "out of season."I approach the debate of tongues in a similar way. As with the "woman inministry question," I did some research on the speaking in tongues throughout thechurch age. As with all controversial doctrines and practices, people who claimto "know the word", defend tongues with a few key scriptures, with noconsideration of cultural or historic variables. Without a socio-culturalperspective, mass confusion is the consequence.In fact, those who speak in tongues use specific verses taken out of context from

predominately two books to support their position: I Corinthians 12 and 14 andsome key scriptures in Acts. In "Food for Thought," I will take the very samescriptures and present a position that may surprise you, but will hopefully shedsome light on whether or not tongues is to be used "as a prayer language."PamCOMMENTARIESIn this issue, rather than a commentary, I submit a quote from October 1newsletter, Issue 4, as this quotation provides my personal perspective onspeaking in tongues.I received tongues at a meeting held in Albany New York through the ministry of


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the late Kenneth Hagin. Hagin is really the founder of the word of faith movementas it is operating today. I have no idea whether or not Hagin was a false prophetor a deceived one. I simply look around as I view Charismania, and I know Haginby his fruits.

Anyway, I never truly embraced the way that I received tongues because it had noresemblance to the way the early church received this gift as revealed in the bookof Acts. Yet, I grew to speak prolifically, at my own will, what charismatics

call in "a prayer language." The reason why I have not been convinced abouttongues is that in 24 years, I have not been able to find a bonafide interpreter,nor have I been able to interpret myself. So I ask, "Where are the interpreters?"The Holy Ghost does not expect me to throw away my commonsense. If I have prayedoff and on for decades to receive the gift of interpretation of tongues as Paulsuggests that we all do, 24 years have passed and I still have no one, includingmyself to interpret my "prayer language", good sense ought to suggest to me thatthe tongue that I have received is not from God. So if it is not from God, thenwho did it come from? Well, its obvious. It didn't come from me. I suspect thatit came from one of the Ascended Masters, perhaps Sananda or Ashtar.

What would be the reason for the demons to desire to imitate tongues? Well, if

we don't know what we are saying when we speak in an "unknown" tongue, we couldvery possibly be used by demonic beings to "decree and declare" that their will,purposes and agenda be done on earth, rather than that of the will of the Fatherof Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One, True and Only Creator--the one that Luciferrebelled against in the first place.1/8/2007: Wow!!! I certainly drew a bunch of you out into the open with thisone!!! lol. Just emailed a few hours ago, I have received quite a fewcommentaries from you already. I will post some of those commentaries in the nextissue. For some of you, it seems that tongues is really a "sacred cow,"practically an "untouchable." I don't mind the comments. Keep them comin. Idon't presume to have ALL the answers about anything. So if you have a need to"set me straight", I can take it.!!! lol

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Only For the Strong!"TONGUES OR NO TONGUES?

There are some key statements that I believe are important to make from theoutset. The first statement is this. From the words and warnings of Jesus Christ,I believe that the greatest danger ofour time is deception. The elect have beendeceived. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am among the elect of God, yetI myself have been deceived many times. But thanks be to God, those who will beobedient, those who will resist Satan by humbling themselves before God will beundeceived in due season. For me, "this is due season."The next statement that I believe is important is this: To rightly divide the

word, one must be careful of making assumptions. For example, as we study theword, is it "right"---does it make sense---for us to assume that JUST BECAUSE Goddid something in the past, that He is obligated to do the same thing in thefuture? In other words,should we use biblical history to "box in" God into ALWAYSdoing what He once did, the way He once did it?Conversely speaking, just because we do not find in the bible where God did thisor that, must we assume that if a sign or a manifestation is not an exactduplication of something that we can find in the word of God, that it cannot be amanifestation of God today? Taking this a step further, how does one "rightlydivide" the bible? For example, when I read Job, I am careful NOT to read the


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lengthy discourses of Job's friends. Why? Because at the end of the book I findGod's words to one of Job's friends: "My wrath is aroused against you and your twofriends for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has."

When I first studied the advice of Job's friends, I myself didn't see anythingwrong with it. But once I got to Job 42:7, I usually skip over what Job's friendshave to say, to prevent myself from ingesting wrong spiritual precepts. Alongthese lines, a general statement of warning isin order, relative to taking

scriptures out of context without connecting the selected verse to the the"who,what, where, how and why" of the entire book.

With these general statements made and without throwing out of context scripturesback and forth in a useless debate, I think we can all agree that God is a God oforder, and within his order, there is always a divine purpose. When we look attongues and the culture and history ofthe people in the early church, we find thatin one local community, there were people who had different native tongues orlanguages: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians,Judeans,Cappadocians, Pontusand Asia, Phyrgia,Pamphylia, Egyptians, those from Lybia, Cyrene, Romans, Jews,Cretans, and Arabs. I count here 17 different languages.People gathered on the day of Pentecost heard the disciples speak in their own

native tongues "the wonderful works of God." (Acts 2: 11) What are the wonderfulworks of God? That God so loved the world that He sent His Son as a propitiationor "peace offering" to appease His wrath toward sin and that His Son became sin atthe cross, died and was raised from the dead." In other words, through thespeaking in other tongues by unlearned Galileans, sinners could hear the gospelpreached in their own language and be converted. How was this done? Eithereveryone heard their own language in their inner ear while one person wasspeaking, or each of the disciples was speaking at least one of 17 differentlanguages.

Therefore, the major purpose of tongues was "to preach the gospel" to those whodid not understand the native dialect of the Galileans. Was tongues asupernatural evidence that God was with them and in them? Most definitely. Yet

the purpose of tongues was NOT self edification and that is the correction thatPaul brought to the Corinthians in Ch.12, 13 and 14. In a nutshell, Pauls messageto the Corinthians was based upon their misuse of tongues. Their major misuse oftongues is that they were using it "as a prayer language," trying to "edifythemselves", by speaking mysteries to God when Paul nicely corrected them.

Simply put, in present day vernacular, Paul was saying, "I appreciate your zeal.But you must remember, brethren that once "you were carried away by dumb idols."In other words, once you were worshipping demons. (I Cor.12:2) In the doctrinalfootnotes associated with this scripture found in the King James Study Biblepublished by Thomas Nelson, it is noted that prior to their conversion toChristianity, the Corinthians had a pagan practice of speaking in tongues for thepurpose of making contact with the gods. "Pagan worship at Corinth involved a

chanting exercise of "tongues,"---- a practice of ecstatic utterances, common inthe cults and in the worship of various Greek gods and goddesses."Isn't it ironic that present day tongue talkers use this very scripture tojustify their explanation about "a prayer language", without rightly dividingthe context. First of all, Paul's letters to the Corinthians are different fromhis letters to the Romans and the Ephesians because the Corinthian letters consistof Paul's response to a letter that they had sent to him. Furthermore, Paulpoints out that those in the household of Chloe had also informed him of variousdivisive issues. So when you read both the first and the second books to thebelievers in Corinth, you have to read it, keeping in mind, "who is saying what to


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whom?" Are these the words of those from Chloe's household?, or is Paul repeatingthe words sent to him in a letter from the Corinthians that we have no access to?or are these Paul's own words?" It makes all of the difference in "rightlydividing the word."Here is an example that has held women in bondage for centuries. Clearly, the"women keep silent in the church, learn at home from your husbands, etc. etc. etc.were NOT PAUL'S WORDS. Paul was repeating back to them excerpts or quotations

from the letter that he had received from them. How do I know? LOOK AT 1Corinthians 14: 36. In response to all of that, Paul writes, "WHAT! Did the wordofGod come originally from YOU only?" This verse is very insulting to the men asif Paul is saying, "boys, get a grip!!!" What's wrong with you? Are you ignorantfor writing such a thing to me????!!!. Look at the verse in the original KingJames. Yet for centuries, the church has been misreading practically ALL of ICorinthians Chapter 14.In that same chapter, those who hold with the prayer language doctrine of tonguesfor "personal" edification have misapplied and misunderstood Paul's intent.Everyone focuses on the love theme of Chapter 13, but the main subject is reallytongues, ie. though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. Tongues is themain subject. Paul was being very kind to the Corinthians because "they were

fervent and zealous, yet they were babes in Christ. So Paul is gentle with them,writing, if you will be zealous about spiritual gifts, seek not a self gratifyingprayer language but seek a gift like interpretation oftongues so that throughlove, you can benefit the entire church.

In the study notes, I found yet another important statement to refute the prayerlanguage for "self edification":

"This is best understood as a general reference of divine power evidenced in theexercise of the gift. Its purpose was to demonstrate divine power to theunbeliever. However, if an unbeliever should visit a congregation where gifts arebeing exercised without regard for order or understanding, the results will bejust the opposite. The key purpose of the gift is destroyed by the unbridled

exercise of it.Considering Paul's entire point of view about tongues, when he wrote: "I speak intongues more than you all," I don't believe he was talking about a prayerlanguage. Paul was a travelling evangelist so the speaking in tongues other thanhis own native language was most purposeful. Yet consider the evangelists oftoday. Where can we go in the United States and find large populations of peoplethat do not speak English? The predominant "other tongue" of this country isSpanish. I have had Spanish speaking people in my worship services. I speak intongues and I have never studied Spanish. Yet, did I preach to them in theirlanguage? No, I did not. Did I interpret what I spoke in English to them inSpanish? No. I had a bi-lingual member to translate for me. All over the world,charismatic evangelists are preaching in English with translators, yet they "speak

in tongues." SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.COULD IT BE THAT TONGUES HAS CEASED, OR DOES GOD YET HAVE ANOTHER STRATEGY FORUSING THE GIFT OF TONGUES?

In part two, Issue 19, I will address this issue from the standpoint of history.In search of truth,Pam

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Tongues or NO Tongues!?