WWUTT 2375 Q&A Speaking in Tongues, Private Prayer Language, The History of Charismaticism

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What is the gift of speaking in tongues? What is the proper practice of this supernatural, spiritual gift?

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What is the history of the understanding of this gift in the church? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

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Visit our website at www .wutt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I'm flying solo again this week, but I appreciate you tuning in anyway.

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Let's open with the Word of God. We've been in Proverbs, now in chapter 10, and I'll read the first couple of verses here.

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The Proverbs of Solomon, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.

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Is there anyone who can relate to that? Verse 2, Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.

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And if you are a follower of Christ Jesus, then you have been clothed in his righteousness, which saves you from death.

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2 Corinthians 5 .21 says, For our sake he became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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So clothed in his righteousness, let us live in his righteousness today.

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On these end -of -the -week episodes, we like to take questions from the listeners. You can submit those questions to WhenWeUnderstandTheText at gmail .com,

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that's the email address, or go to our website, www .wutt .com. You'll see a voicemail tab there at the top of the page.

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Click on that and record a voicemail, either through your phone or through your computer.

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We would love to hear from you. Today I don't have a specific question I'm responding to, but rather a video that I was made aware of.

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And let me do a little recap to set this up. Back in the fall of 2023, the documentary

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Cessationist debuted at the last G3 National Conference. It was a documentary that I was pleased to take part in, thanks to the invitation of creator

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David Lovey. I did not have an opportunity then to respond to any interview requests, because we were moving at the time from our home in Texas to where we are now in Arizona, as I'm the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande.

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However, charismatic pastor Sam Storms and the guys at Remnant Radio, which is a charismatic podcast, did a series of critical responses to the

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Cessationist documentary, and I did a three -part rebuttal to select portions of their combined 24 -part series.

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Remnant Radio did nine episodes, and Sam Storms wrote 15 articles.

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And you can listen to my three rebuttals in episodes 2020, 2025, and 2030.

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Now, in the episodes of Remnant Radio that I was able to watch, and in the articles of Sam Storms that I read,

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I never saw an argument raised against any of what I said in the documentary. Most of my comments addressed either speaking in tongues or having a private prayer language, and then

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I gave a presentation of the gospel at the end, along with G3 president Josh Bice.

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Well, it turns out that Remnant Radio did criticize something that I said in video number nine, the last installment of their nine -part series.

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This is a video that, until last week, I didn't even know existed.

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I did not know the Remnant Radio guys had ever responded to anything I said in the documentary. Apparently, they did.

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And not to my surprise, they treated my comments the same way that they treated every other comment in the documentary that they responded to.

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When I was first responding to Remnant Radio, which was back in October of 2023, it was in episode 2020 of this podcast, when

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I said the following about Remnant Radio's treatment of the documentary cessationist, quote,

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I'm quoting myself here, okay? So here's what I said. Their arguments were not very well done.

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I think they were charitable. I think that they were devoted to the scripture. I think they did their research before they made some of the arguments that they did.

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But there were occasions in which it was like they weren't even hearing what was being said.

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They were responding to an argument that wasn't even being made, unquote.

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And they did the exact same thing with the snippet of mine that they took out of the documentary. They responded to something that I said about a private prayer language, as if I was talking about speaking in tongues.

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But I was not talking about speaking in tongues in that clip. I didn't even use the phrase. I do not believe that a private prayer language is speaking in tongues.

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Now to clarify, speaking in tongues, according to the Bible, is a miraculous gifting of the

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Holy Spirit given to a person to speak another human language they did not previously know.

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This is what we read of the disciples doing at Pentecost in Acts 2. Many charismatics practice a form of prayer in which they babble in a sort of private prayer language that they call speaking in tongues.

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But I do not believe that's what the Bible calls speaking in tongues, nor does the Bible teach us to pray this way.

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Let me play that clip where you will hear my voice from the documentary, and then

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I'll play a brief portion of how the Remnant Radio guys responded to it. So here we go.

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This is Gabe Hughes from the 2023 documentary, Cessationist.

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But I read in Romans 8 that the Spirit speaks with groanings that are too deep for words.

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Maybe that verse is what is meant by this, I feel this overwhelming urge from the Spirit to utter something, and that's what comes out.

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There is no given permission in Scripture to speak some gibberish nonsense that no one is going to understand.

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But think about what Jesus said when he taught us how to pray. In Matthew 6, 7, he said, don't heap up empty phrases like the pagans do.

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And then he says, pray then like this. And Jesus taught us to pray clear prayers.

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He was never praying anything that was some otherly language. And if there was anyone who was going to pray in such a language, it would certainly be the one who was sent down from heaven,

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Christ himself. Interesting. Is Matthew 6 telling us not to speak in tongues?

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Is the fact that Jesus never spoke in tongues evidence that we shouldn't speak in tongues?

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These seem like bad arguments. Now, let me stop it right there. We already have a problem here. What is it? The problem is that was not my argument.

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I was not saying that Matthew 6 is telling us not to speak in tongues. I wasn't even talking about speaking in tongues.

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They did not set the clip up well. They played it out of context. They cut out part of it in the middle.

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You're hearing that background track with the drums playing. If you notice some jumps in the drums, well, that's where they cut parts of that clip out.

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I was addressing a common charismatic belief that we can pray in some kind of heavenly language as a private prayer language.

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When I was in charismaticism, I heard this all the time. Taking first Corinthians 13, one out of context, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, well, if I can speak in the tongues of angels, then maybe that's what this language is.

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When I pray like this, I never shut up. I never shut up.

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I got father. God, thank you for this heavenly language. Yeah, that was a brief clip from a what video that I did on this subject.

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I'll play the full thing here in a bit if I've got the time. But as I explained, we have not been taught anywhere in scripture to pray like that.

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Not one verse says anything about a private prayer language.

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Even the one who came down from heaven did not pray in a private prayer language as if there's another divine, otherworldly language spoken in heaven.

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In his teaching on prayer, he taught his disciples to pray clear, meaningful prayers.

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Praying in nonsense gibberish is not how Jesus taught us to pray. We should pray like Jesus prayed and like he taught us to pray.

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That was very simply my point. There was someone in the comments under this video saying that my exegesis was was terrible.

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Well, sure. If I was saying what the remnant radio guys said, I was saying I and it was such a poor setup of my argument that it was a straw man.

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They propped up this easy to knock down dummy so that their arguments would sound better whether or not they deliberately misrepresented what

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I said. Now, I'm not going to go any further in responding to the arguments that they make against the argument that I wasn't making, at least not today.

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I will get deeper into this video another time. I just wanted to play that part now so you could hear what initially caught my attention.

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What I'd like to do here is what they did not do with me. And that's look at their whole argument in context, especially concerning the way they define and defend the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues.

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I'm going to make this a teaching opportunity, so we're going to take a little bit of time with this and it will stretch out over more than one episode.

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I'll come back and respond to more of this video next week as well. Let's go back a little further in this episode entitled

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Responding to the cessationist documentary part number nine, as it was published on YouTube on December 13, 2023.

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This will begin with a clip from the documentary featuring an answer given by Nathan Busenitz, professor of historical theology at Masters Seminary.

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Now, they don't really start this clip in a good spot, nor do they set it up well. However, I don't have the cessationist documentary at the ready, so I can't give you the original.

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You will hear Joshua Lewis of Remnant Radio cue this clip from Nathan Busenitz, who then explains the

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Greek term glossolalia, which means to speak in tongues. And then he gives a brief history of the understanding of speaking in tongues within the charismatic movement.

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This is unfortunately edited in the Remnant Radio guys. They cut the clip, they speed it up, but whatever.

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This at least gives us a starting point. And after Busenitz speaks, host Joshua Lewis throws it to Michael Miller, a pastor from Denver, and Michael Roundtree, a pastor in in Oklahoma City, with Miller being the first to respond.

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So here we go with Lewis queuing up Nathan Busenitz. This is a good video.

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Let's dive into it and watch this clip. A term that comes from two Greek words, Glossa, meaning tongue or language, and Laleo meaning to speak.

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So when we use those terms together, glossolalia is used to refer to tongue speaking or to speaking in tongues.

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The modern charismatic understanding of the term allows for glossolalia to refer to ecstatic spiritual speech that doesn't conform to any known language.

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Parham was in the newspaper on multiple occasions talking about how now that the gift of tongues has been restored to the church, no one is going to have to go to language school to learn foreign languages and will be able to send missionaries all around the world without them having to spend years training and learning a foreign language in order to be effective.

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Of course, they all came back utterly disappointed and dejected when they realized that what they were doing in terms of their modern glossolalia did not communicate in terms of a foreign language with the people they were trying to reach.

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And so consequently, the Pentecostal movement had to change its understanding of scripture to fit its experience rather than acknowledging that its experience did not fit the clear teaching of scripture.

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You don't find the notion that tongue speaking in the Bible is anything other than real human languages until you get to the modern charismatic movement.

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The modern charismatic movement has invented a new kind of tongues because the tongues that they practice don't match what the scripture reveals as the real gift of tongues.

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And as a result, they had to broaden the biblical category to make room for their experience. Interesting arguments, guys.

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It is really the reason that we believe and preach about the tongues that we believe and preach today is because of a historical event, because of an experience that has nothing to do with the

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Bible. What say you guys? I mean, no, I started believing in tongues before I actually started speaking in tongues.

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However, speaking in tongues has certainly helped affirm what I already believed in scripture, which I actually think that's what the gifts should do.

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They should affirm what you already believe to be true in scripture. And if they don't, then there's something off in your practice of gifts, not the scriptures.

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But man, this is he's really reaching here. One, Josh, you already proved the fact that they thought that you need to learn languages.

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However, there probably were some there was some truth to that. I can't remember the book I read on this about the number of Pentecostal missionaries that went out because of this.

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One of the things I think that they failed to mention is how. Yeah, well, again, one of the things I think they failed to mention, though, is how the

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Pentecostal movement became the fastest growing worldwide denomination on the earth largely because they felt like they were empowered for ministry, which is interesting because that's what

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Jesus says. Go away in Jerusalem so that you'll be baptized with spirit and power. Right.

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That's the point of that. So regarding his idea about the gift of tongues being known human languages, prove it.

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We actually have Paul saying flat out in First Corinthians 14, verse, what is it? Two says for the one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people, but to God, for no one understands he's speaking mysteries by the spirit.

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Well, we have a pretty explicit scripture right there that seems to imply that people could be speaking a language that nobody understands because it says no one understands.

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Now, the question in my mind is, does that mean no one on the earth or no one through history? Does the language itself have no actual meaning or is it that it has no meaning to those who are around that person?

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And I tend to lean towards the second of the two. I think it has meaning. There's no language without meaning.

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But who it's meaningful to is the question. And the question is whether it's meaningful to God or some other person on the earth or some other person through history.

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We're just not told in scripture. And so to to pigeonhole the view of tongues into that small, confined space is not one the

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Bible actually explicitly states. He doesn't have a text to state that. From here,

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Lewis jumps back in and he repeats the verse that Miller just gave. First Corinthians 14, two, as an argument for the gift of speaking in tongues, being an unknown language that is not a real human language.

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This is their starting point on the gift of speaking in tongues. First Corinthians 14, two.

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This is the exact same error I committed when

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I was a charismatic. In my defense of speaking in tongues, I always started with that same verse, it was it was back in man, this was 10 years ago or something now when

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I had a conversation in the living room of a friend of mine. And it was not our intention to talk about cessationism versus continuism.

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But that's where things went. And in in defending my charismaticism, the gift of speaking in tongues in particular,

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I started with First Corinthians 14, two. Now, my friend Joe, rightly handling the word of truth, told me you cannot start there.

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This is the very last chapter in the New Testament that even mentioned speaking in tongues. It never comes up again after First Corinthians 14.

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So you cannot start building your doctrine at the end and work backwards. You must start at the beginning.

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So let's go back and look at the first occasion of speaking in tongues in Acts two.

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And after that, in the second half of this broadcast, I want to address their history of charismaticism argument, which

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I didn't believe they got that right either. First of all, Miller said regarding Nathan Boosnitz, his idea about the gift of tongues being known human languages prove it.

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And then he said that Boosnitz did not have a text to state that. Now, I cannot remember if Boosnitz or the cessationist documentary did prove that the remnant radio guys cut these clips up so bad.

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It's hardly a fair presentation. But Miller has to prove his point with the text of Scripture, too.

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He has to be able to prove that speaking in tongues is not only the ability to speak in another real human language, but it can also mean praying gibberish.

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And I don't believe that Miller did that. Now, I'm reading here from Acts two, one through four, which says.

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When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a sound of a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, where the disciples were sitting and divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.

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And that verse right there, verse four, is the verse that launched the modern charismatic movement.

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And you'll see how in the in the next portion of the broadcast. When I get to the history of Charles Parham, it was specifically a desire for the gift of tongues that was on the nose of this rocket that launched this movement.

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Now, it's interesting because when I left charismaticism and became convinced of cessationism, speaking in tongues was for me the last domino to fall.

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I had heard enough false prophecy and seen enough false claims of healing to make to make me a bit skeptical whenever someone said that God told them something or when they witnessed a miraculous healing.

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But speaking in tongues was the reason that I could not be a cessationist. I did not believe that the miraculous sign gifts had ceased or diminished.

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I was a witness to those sign gifts and I could not be convinced that gifting had ceased in regularity.

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But I had a faulty understanding of what it was. So going on to verse five here.

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Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

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And at this sound, a multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in their own language.

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And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking

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Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language,

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Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both

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Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. We hear them telling in our own tongues.

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The mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean?

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But others mocking said, they are filled with new wine. In these nine verses, it is said three times in verses six, eight and 11 that speaking in tongues is speaking other real human languages.

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Once again, verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

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And observe that the people didn't understand what they were saying, they could hear them telling the mighty works of God, but that didn't mean that they knew what it meant.

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And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean now?

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What did first Corinthians 14 to say? For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God.

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Now, in that context, it's in the corporate gathering of the church. It's not in the open air like what the disciples were doing in Acts two.

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So in the corporate gathering of the church, someone speaking another language, that's not the native language of everybody there.

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They're not going to understand what that person is saying. So who's that person talking to? They're speaking to God, not to men, but to God.

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For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries of the spirit.

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And that's the same reaction the people had to the apostle speaking in tongues in Acts two. There is not one single verse in the

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New Testament that ever says the gift of speaking in tongues is anything other than a supernatural

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God given ability to speak another human language that the speaker did not come to know on their own.

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If you start with first Corinthians 14 to and you think that verse is talking about unknown mutterings that are not real human languages, you impose that on to the text.

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The text says no such thing, nor is there anything prior to first Corinthians 14 to that could lead someone to that conclusion.

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When Miller quoted that verse, he said, we have a pretty explicit scripture right here that seems to imply that people could be speaking a language that nobody understands because it says no one understands.

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Well, that doesn't make any sense. The word explicit means fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, implication or ambiguity.

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So first Corinthians 14 to cannot be an explicit scripture, as Miller called it.

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That seems to imply that it could be about indiscernible mutterings that are not a real tongue in the human language family.

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Again, it is explicitly stated three times in Acts two, five through 13 that the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues is a supernatural occurrence.

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It's it's miraculous, whereby the Holy Spirit empowers a person to speak a language that he did not previously know, nor was he studied in.

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And everybody was amazed by it because they knew what they were seeing was miraculous.

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The modern charismatic practice of muttering gibberish is not explicitly described in any verse in the

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Bible, nor is the practice demonstrably supernatural. It is on the remnant radio guys to prove otherwise.

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And to borrow Miller's own phrase, they don't have a text to back it up. Now, when

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I was convinced. That my whole understanding of speaking in tongues was wrong, when my friend

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Joe walked me through the scriptures and convinced me of that, it took some time, but I had to admit and I ended up leaving my charismaticism behind and I became convinced of cessationism.

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And again, to to say about cessationism, it doesn't mean that God doesn't do miracles, all cessationists, all true cessationists anyway, unless they're hyper cessationists.

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But we all believe that God still does miraculous things. I was just at the hospital recently praying over patients, as a matter of fact, believing that my prayer for this sick person,

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God would hear. And and should it be his will, he would heal that person. I do that all the time.

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We pray for healing every week in our church. More than once a week in our church. And we pray, believing that God would heal.

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It's not that we don't believe in miracles. But we do believe those miraculous sign gifts that were specifically for the confirmation of apostolic preaching, those gifts have ceased or diminished in regularity to the point that it would be very, very rare to ever see anything like that ever happen.

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Do I believe the Holy Spirit can act as the Holy Spirit would will? Oh, absolutely. He will do what he wants.

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He's God. But again, miracles are rare. They're not something that you see practiced every

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Sunday morning in every charismatic church in America or around the world. Now, stepping away from charismaticism,

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I made the following video, which I think is a pretty good summary of the arguments that we just considered.

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Father, God, thank you for this heavenly language. What you just heard is commonly referred to as speaking in tongues, but it's not.

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It's just gibberish. Nowhere in the Bible are we told to pray like this. Now, some will reference First Corinthians 14, too, which says, for one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God, for no one understands him.

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But he utters mysteries of the spirit. But we cannot begin our understanding of speaking in tongues with this verse.

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We must start where the gift was initially given in Acts two there in Jerusalem. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were filled with the

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Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance.

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And the Jews from every nation under heaven came together and heard the disciples speaking in all of the different human languages that were represented there.

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As they testified in verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

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Nowhere else in the New Testament does it say that speaking in tongues is anything other than this. The miraculous ability given by the

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Holy Spirit to speak another real human language that the person speaking did not previously know.

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You have to read First Corinthians in light of Acts two. Speaking in tongues is not a prayer language, and it's especially not incoherent babbling.

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Jesus said, when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the pagans do, for they think they will be heard for their many words.

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Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this.

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And then Jesus taught his disciples to pray clear prayers. Jesus prayed understandable prayers.

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And so should we when we understand the text. Now, as far as exposition goes,

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I'm going to stop here because there's more to this video that will open up our discussion later. Where I want to go next is responding to the historical claim that Boosnitz mentioned in his segment and Miller contended with briefly.

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Boosnitz mentioned Charles Fox Parham, the father of the modern charismatic movement who lived from 1873 to 1929.

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This is actually a guy that I know a little something about because I mentioned him in the podcast. He was ministered not far from where his school used to be.

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And so that's what I'm going to talk about in the next portion of the program. If you listen to the podcast, then there's still more to come.

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And you can subscribe to the podcast by using whatever podcast app that you like to use. Pull up WWU TT and you'll get more of this episode as we continue this conversation on speaking in tongues.

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For those of you who listen on the radio, appreciate you listening in. You can find out more information about our ministry going to WWU TT dot com.

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I want to thank Grace 91 one in Casa Grande, Arizona, for adding this program.

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We're on the air there. And if you know a Christian radio station that airs this program, let us know because we'd like to give them a shout out as well.

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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

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Amen. What is a faith healer?

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A figment of imagination. That's what it is like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. A faith healer is a hoax.

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You might say, wait a moment. Doesn't the Bible say that some will be given gifts of healing? Yes, but it doesn't say anyone will be a faith healer.

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But what about Peter or Paul? They healed people. Sure, they did. And sometimes they didn't. Paul could not heal himself when he got sick and had to stop in Galatia, nor did he heal

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Timothy of his frequent ailments. So what was the purpose of these miracles, like speaking other languages, revealing prophecy or healing the sick and even raising the dead?

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Hebrews 2, 3 through 4 says that the message of salvation, the gospel, was declared at first by the

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Lord and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the

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Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. So miracles were to affirm that the message of the gospel came from God.

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Some people had these gifts, like the apostles, and some did not, like almost everyone else. But even the apostles could only perform miracles according to the will of the spirit.

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As God's message spread, eventually the regularity of miracles diminished, as was the case after Moses and Elijah's ministries.

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Today's faith healers claim to heal by faith. Then why aren't they clearing out hospitals or on the scene after a natural disaster?

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Because they know they're liars. It's as clear as the eyeglasses they wear. There are two places faith healers won't go, children's hospitals and heaven, if they don't repent when we understand the text.

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In our previous segment, Nathan Busenitz said that Charles Fox Parham taught that we can send missionaries all around the world without having to make them go through years of language training to learn the languages of the people they're being sent to, because there's this new move of the

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Holy Spirit happening and the Holy Spirit is just going to come upon those missionaries and grant them that supernatural ability to speak in tongues like we saw the disciples do in Acts two.

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So they'll arrive in those countries and be able to minister to those people by God's will.

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And the remnant radio guys disagreed with the history of that, but all of that is accurate.

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That is what Charles Parham taught. As many of you know, I lived in Kansas for almost 30 years and Charles Parham was someone that I heard a lot about, and I even witnessed the effects of his former ministry in the places where I ministered.

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Many people may be unaware that Topeka, which was just an hour away from where I pastored,

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I was at a church in Junction City, Kansas, what is now Providence Baptist Church, and an hour east of there is

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Topeka. And that's where the modern charismatic movement began. When you hear about the history of charismaticism in America, you often hear about the

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Azusa Street revival. However, what was dubbed the Topeka outpouring occurred a few years earlier on literally the first day of the 20th century.

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Now, of course, there was plenty of what we might categorize as charismatic practices that were going on way before then.

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When I warned my congregation and fellow ministers of the practices around the International House of Prayer, I compared them with the second century heresy that was called

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Montanism. A teacher by the name of Montanus of Phrygia and two of his prophetesses,

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Priscia and Maximilla, were not content with the teachings of Jesus. They desired new revelation.

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And again, this was just the second century. They were already bored with apostolic teaching and they wanted something new and more experiential.

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Montanus believed that he was a prophet of God and that the Holy Spirit spoke through him, whom he called the

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Paraclete. His teaching spread to Africa and Gaul, the region of modern day

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France and Germany, and this lasted for several centuries. However, no

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Montanist writings from the second century exist. We only know of Montanism through those who spoke against it.

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The early church father, Tertullian, was actually a fan of Montanism. He wanted Montanism to be declared orthodox, and some believe that he even joined

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Montanism toward the end of his life. The Montanists called themselves

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Spiritalis, or spiritual people, is what that means, and their opponents, they called

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Sakhichi, or a natural people. It's kind of like an early form of the continuous versus the cessationist debate.

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I'm being a bit tongue in cheek there. But anyway, according to what Eusebius wrote, the

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Montanists would babble in strange utterances. Sometimes they would throw themselves in kind of a spastic frenzy, and then,

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Eusebius said, they would prophesy, quote, in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the church handed down by the tradition from the beginning, unquote.

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So there would be prophecy, but it would not be like prophecy that we see in the Bible, in other words.

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Epiphanius of Salamis, writing in his Against Heresies, captured one of these Montanist prophecies, which sounded like this.

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Lo, the man is as a liar, L -Y -R -E, and I fly over him as a pick.

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The man sleepeth while I watch. Obviously, that's very vague. What does that mean?

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Well, it's kind of like a lot of the charismatic prophecies that are popular today, where they just, you know, they say these vagaries can mean anything.

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And somebody in the audience might even say, oh, that was for me. It's been this way for 1 ,800 years.

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Now, what got Montanists branded a heretic is because he claimed to speak as God, not merely a messenger of God.

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In one instance, it is said that Montanists declared, I am the Father and the Son and the

34:42

Holy Spirit. But again, that's not so terribly unusual to what we might hear in modern -day charismaticism.

34:50

You'll probably remember the controversy that Justin Peters and I responded to a few years back with Steven Furtick declaring of himself,

34:57

I am God Almighty. Now, some debated whether or not it was a gaffe, and I was one of them, but he never recanted it.

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And there are other instances of him saying such claims. This wasn't the only time.

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And perhaps you've seen that clip of Paula White, who is the spiritual advisor to President Trump, and she, along with televangelist

35:19

Larry Hutch, proclaimed that Jesus Christ was not the only begotten

35:25

Son of God. I'm a son of God, and you're a son of God. Listen to this.

35:31

We really begin to understand that when Jesus Christ paid the price, the first thing that happened after he said it is finished is the veil was rent from top to bottom, signifying that no man could do that.

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But the price that was paid was there's now no separation, so that we have direct access in the

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Holy of Holies. We understand, according to Hebrews, that Jesus is our high priest.

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Absolutely. And he's the first of many brethren, which means I now come into a priestly anointing, so I now can walk.

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Say that again, because they don't get it. I now come into a priestly anointing. Jesus is not the only begotten

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Son of God. He is not. I'm a son of God. He's the first fruit. He's the first fruit.

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He's the first born of many. So you hear what they're doing there. They take words that you find in the

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Bible, and they twist and apply them to mean something they don't. Jesus Christ is the only begotten

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Son of God, period. John 114, verse 18, John 316, if you need references.

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You and I are children of God adopted by faith in Jesus Christ. 1

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John 3 .1, how great the love the Father has lavished upon us that we might become the children of God, and so we are.

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But that does not mean Jesus is not the only begotten Son of God. It doesn't mean that we are sons of God like Jesus is the

36:56

Son of God. And it does not mean that we receive a priestly anointing like his.

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So through this, you can see how some of the heresies that we've seen creep into the modern charismatic movement are nothing new.

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You go all the way back to the second century with Montanus, and he was saying very similar things and being declared a heretic because of it.

37:19

And by the way, I've made some posts recently on social media about Paula White that got a lot of attention.

37:25

And I had Roman Catholics telling me, well, she's one of yours. She's a result of Protestantism.

37:30

No, she's not. Montanism was far before Protestantism.

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This was when both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox would claim they were the only true church.

37:43

This kind of stuff is beyond denominational bounds. Roman Catholics are heavily charismatic.

37:49

I'll make that point again later. For now, let's jump ahead from the second century all the way up to the 19th century, right in the middle of the second

37:58

Great Awakening. And like the Montanists, many professing Christians grew bored with sound doctrinal preaching, like the teaching that came out of the first Great Awakening with preachers such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards.

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That that kind of preaching was now regarded as stuffy and bland. Give us something new, something exciting.

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And the second Great Awakening came about. It was very anti -confessional and worship was rather feelings driven.

38:30

Many church services, sometimes outdoor meetings, were filled with all kinds of what we would call charismatic practices.

38:39

The Christian faith was more about having a personal experience. As in the time of the

38:45

Montanists, people were now seeking after new revelation. Charles Finney.

38:53

Perhaps the most well -known and influential evangelist of the 19th century, he claimed to have heard

38:59

God speak to him and received a, he received a post -conversion second baptism of the

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Holy Spirit, he said. He was critical of reforming the church.

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He was more in favor of revivalism. And Finney is still highly regarded among charismatics today.

39:18

I encountered a lot of them who would read his books. Sean Foyt, a musician who is associated with Bethel Church, which is part of the new apostolic reformation, he posted on Instagram pictures of himself putting the hands of his infant son on the gravestone of Charles Finney.

39:38

Bethelites practice grave soaking, this belief that they can soak up or absorb the spiritual mantle that's been left behind by departed heroes of the faith.

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The late Benny Johnson, who's the wife of Bethel's pastor, Bill Johnson, she had taken pictures of herself hugging

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Finney's grave and laying on gravestones. Others in the 19th century included the

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Stone and Campbell movement from which the Church of Christ and the Christian church would arise, churches affiliated with what's called the disciples of Christ.

40:10

And there's still many websites of these churches where you can go and click on what we believe and you'll find something like no creed but Christ or no creed but the

40:18

Bible. Among the more charismatic gatherings, there were the shakers or the shaking

40:24

Quakers. They were called that because of their trembling, ecstatic behavior. They'd fall on the floor and call out incoherent gibberish, which they claim to be speaking in tongues.

40:34

There was the Millerite movement, which splintered into the Jehovah's Witnesses in Seventh -day Adventists, and that was built upon new revelation from God.

40:45

Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, claimed to receive new revelation. He had been inspired by members of his family who were what we might call today charismatics and prophets, including relatives who were seers.

40:59

His mother claimed to receive dreams and visions from God. In the midst of all this religious fervor of the 1800s was the holiness movement, which was a precursor to charismaticism.

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This was born out of a sermon that Finney preached in New York in 1836.

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It eventually led to the Keswick Convention, if you've heard of that. The general holiness conferences that were held in Cincinnati and New York, the

41:26

Salvation Army came out of the holiness movement, as well as the Church of God and the Nazarenes.

41:33

Another major contributor to this movement were the Methodists in the

41:38

Midwest. Lots of Methodist churches in Kansas, by the way. I preached or sang in several of them as a young itinerant preacher.

41:47

At this time, in the 1800s, they were obsessed with more miraculous spiritual gifts, seeking after divine healing and speaking in tongues.

41:57

We probably don't associate the Methodists with that today so much. We see more liberalism that was going on. But this was what the

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Methodists were into a couple hundred years ago. One of these Methodists was

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Charles Fox Parham. He attended Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, which

42:15

I also attended. I was a piano player for one of their traveling choirs back in 2002.

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Parham was a charismatic preacher and not in the spiritual sense, but in the sense that he used charisma.

42:29

People loved listening to him preach, and he often employed memorable gimmicks into his sermons.

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For example, he might dress as someone from the Bible and preach a message from their perspective.

42:40

You've seen that done before, right? Or heard of somebody doing that? Parham loved to do that, and people loved listening to him do that.

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Parham began preaching when he was only 18. I was 17 when

42:53

I preached my first sermon, and I actually had a couple of people tell me that I was like a young Charles Fox Parham.

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That's how influential his ministry was in the region of Kansas. It is recorded that even at that young age, he taught that if one was baptized in the

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Holy Spirit, this would be manifested by the recipient of the Holy Spirit speaking in tongues.

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If you've heard that theology taught today, it originates with Parham. So committed was he to this doctrine that in 1900,

43:28

Parham opened a school in Topeka so that he might teach this doctrine. The name of the school was

43:34

Bethel, meaning House of God. The movement that was spurred by this teaching was called by several names, including apostolic,

43:44

Pentecostal, the latter rain movement, all different labels for the same thing.

43:50

Parham had a newspaper that he called the Apostolic Faith, and all of this was to further Parham's teaching about the spiritual anointing of specifically speaking in tongues.

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Now, when Parham first taught on speaking in tongues, and this is what Busenitz referred to in the clip that we heard a little bit ago, he spoke of the gift only in the sense of it being that ability to speak another known human language.

44:17

This was the clearest understanding of speaking in tongues as we see it demonstrated and talked about in the

44:23

Bible. Even the earliest charismatics understood it that way. Parham preached that the church was on the edge of an end time revival, influenced by the revivalism of the previous century.

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And all of these ministers of God would go out preaching in other known human languages that they had not previously learned, and they would go out into all the world, into all the nations, spreading the gospel.

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And in so doing, the church would bring about the end of the church age and usher in the return of Christ.

44:56

This was all part of Parham's teaching. So on New Year's Eve, 1900, last day of the 18th century, or sorry, last day of the 19th century, and heading into the first day of the 20th century,

45:12

Parham was only 27 years old. He and his students conducted what they called a watch night service.

45:19

One of Parham's students asked that hands would be laid on her and that she would receive the gift of the

45:24

Holy Spirit to go out into foreign countries and share the gospel. And it was said that as they laid their hands on her and prayed, her head began to glow and she started speaking in Chinese.

45:39

Now, no one in the room knew Chinese, so no one was ever able to verify that this claim was true.

45:46

But from that point on, everyone in the school claimed to speak in foreign human languages.

45:52

And this began on the very first day of the 20th century. From there, other revivals happened across Kansas and the rest of the

46:00

Midwest. But despite all this excitement, the Bethel School actually closed. Parham decided that he would go out preaching up the

46:07

East Coast and into Canada. And from there, his teachings made it across the sea. There was a big revival in England, which led to the founding of the

46:14

Apostolic Church. And shortly after shortly after that, there was the Apostolic Church of Nigeria.

46:20

And all of this came from Parham's teaching. In 1905, Parham went to Texas and he set up a school there where he continued to teach what he had been teaching about speaking in tongues.

46:33

And his teaching attracted the attention of a black minister named William Seymour. It was through his friendship with Parham that Seymour was invited to join a little

46:43

Baptist church in Los Angeles that had split from another church because they wanted to openly practice the miraculous spiritual gifts.

46:51

Long story shorter, it was this move Seymour going to L .A. with Parham's teachings that would lead to the famous Azusa Street revival meetings in April of 1906.

47:04

And it all kicked off believing that they could and did speak in tongues.

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Seymour's first sermon was out of Acts 2, which says, and they were filled with the

47:17

Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterances.

47:24

This verse, as I said before, this was what launched the

47:29

Azusa Street revival. And the meetings that resulted would go on for hours, sometimes all day from 10 a .m.

47:37

to 2 a .m. And this was all very novel. Hardly anyone had ever heard or seen anything like this before.

47:47

And it was all during a time of segregation. Yet these meetings brought together blacks and whites and Hispanics and Asians.

47:54

It attracted a lot of attention to the little church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles.

48:00

All kinds of people came to see what these meetings were all about, even preachers from other churches, and maybe by the power of suggestion or whatever it was, they too, even though they may not have had any history with charismaticism, they would get caught up in the frenzy.

48:16

And the revival meetings just continued to grow. It's difficult to know how many attended altogether because the building on Azusa Street was not that large.

48:26

A few thousand people altogether may have come to Azusa, but as word spread and revival meetings broke out in many other places, that that number easily could have been into the tens of thousands.

48:38

And by the way, it might be hard to picture it now, but L .A. was less than a quarter of a million people at that time.

48:44

So it's possible that 10 percent of the city or more attended some kind of revival meeting, if not the

48:53

Azusa Street revival meeting in those days. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times came to observe and wrote in the paper that a prophet from one of these meetings said that there would be awful destruction against the city of L .A.

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Now, they may have printed this to get people to think negatively about what was going on at Azusa Street.

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But that very same day that that prophecy was printed in the paper, April 18th, the

49:19

San Francisco earthquake hit April 18th of 1906, killing hundreds. And tremors from that earthquake were even felt in L .A.

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So though the prophet had specifically said destruction was coming to Los Angeles, this was received as an accurate prophecy.

49:35

And it caused the revival to just grow all the more. Now, these 12 to 16 hour revival meetings did not consist of hours upon hours of preaching.

49:49

Seymour would actually just say like a few words and then he'd walk around the room and get in people's faces and tell them to repent or tell them to start speaking in tongues.

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Some of these utterances that came out were the babbling gibberish that's called speaking in tongues today.

50:04

The Times reported on these nonsensical outbursts that would happen in a frenzy of religious zeal.

50:10

And they said the most fanatical were blacks with a sprinkling of whites. This kind of thing was all brand new to most people.

50:18

It's not like there were charismatic or Pentecostal churches every few blocks like you might find today.

50:25

The Assemblies of God wasn't founded for another 12 years after this. And this had an influence on the founding of the of the

50:33

Assemblies of God. The Apostolic Church was just beginning through this influence by the teachings of Charles Parham.

50:39

The Four Square Church, founded by Amy Simple McPherson, was still 20 years away. So few people had ever seen this kind of worship style and especially this kind of tongue speaking.

50:53

Despite these occasions of ecstatic ramblings, it sounded to most people like the speech of a toddler.

50:59

It was still believed among Parham's disciples that genuine speaking in tongues was the utterings of other languages.

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They thought they were speaking languages like Chinese and Hebrew in Hindi in their ecstatic ramblings.

51:16

But they had no one to verify that these were actual languages. The Azusa Street Revival went from April to October of 1906.

51:27

It ended due to some pretty sharp divisions. There could be as many fights as there were fits of religious frenzy.

51:33

I hardly ever hear this side of the Revival talked about. Most people think it was this big kumbaya where the

51:40

Holy Spirit moved and there was all this great preaching and singing and there was communion and foot washings and people were saved and they were healed and other miracles were observed.

51:52

But in fact, the gospel itself played very little role in any of this.

51:59

Again, this started with an errant application of Acts 2 .4. Throughout the

52:04

Revival, there were surely preachers that shared the gospel and perhaps even people got saved. I think

52:10

I even remember reading a couple of testimonies from people who say they came to believe in Christ through the

52:16

Azusa Pacific. Well, not Pacific. That's something else. But through the Azusa Street Revival.

52:22

So, yeah, there was preaching of the gospel that happened there. But when you get below the surface, you see that the

52:28

Azusa Street Revival was filled with so much spiritism and false doctrine and rivalry that you would have to say that any work of the

52:39

Holy Spirit was contrary to the Revival, not through it.

52:45

And it's not just skeptics of Azusa who say this. This is according to the same people who started it.

52:54

William Seymour was troubled by what was going on. And he even had sought

53:01

Parham's counsel in dealing with mediums and necromancers and the seances that were being conducted during the

53:09

Revival. There were all manner of strange doctrines being taught, so much so that Charles Parham tried to distance himself from taking any credit, even though Seymour wanted to give him all the credit.

53:22

Ernest S. Williams was one of the attendees. He was a future leader in what would become the Assemblies of God.

53:27

He came from Denver to see the Azusa Street Revivals. And remember, in those days, you traveled that kind of distance by train.

53:35

Even he was put off by the extreme level of fanaticism, spiritism and false teaching.

53:42

But still, there was this genuine spirit in it, he thought. And when

53:48

I was in charismatic churches, I saw this constantly. There would be this flood of fakery.

53:55

Even someone like Mike Bickle. He's the now disgraced founder of the International House of Prayer.

54:02

He said that only 20 % of what you might see in charismaticism is ever genuine.

54:09

Listen to him talk about it here. I don't rate a lot of people, but it bugs a lot of people, and so I'll live with it, because I think it's more helpful than it is hurtful.

54:16

Is that in the last 20 years, I have concluded in manifestation meetings all over the world, again,

54:23

I've been to several thousand of them, a couple thousand at least, that 80 % of them are not real, but 20 % of them are.

54:32

Some people go, what? 80 %? That's horrifying. If you say that, people will be afraid of opening themselves to the

54:40

Holy Spirit. I go, no. What happens when people hear that? I've said that in different countries around the world.

54:46

I've got applauses for it, because people go, wow. If somebody's got enough discernment to see what's really happening, maybe there's hope to keep pressing in.

54:54

But if I have to believe all this, I can't believe any of it. I go, you don't have to believe it all.

55:01

You can enjoy it without believing all of it, because you see some of it. Now, I think he's being way too generous with that number.

55:08

I've not been to thousands of manifestation meetings like he claimed, but I have seen dozens, if not over 100.

55:15

And well less than 20 % of any of that is real.

55:21

But that aside, this is one of their own admitting that the vast majority of it, at least four out of every five manifestations of the

55:31

Holy Spirit that you might see are completely fake. But no matter how fake it is, they still defend it, just as Bickel was defending it here.

55:41

There's just an energy here, they might say. I heard this all the time. Yeah, all this stuff is fake.

55:48

It's bad. If you question it, well, sure. But couldn't you feel that the Holy Spirit is really doing something here?

55:56

And so despite how bad Azusa Street really was in the flood of spiritism and fakery that was going on there, there were still all these people that witnessed it.

56:08

And they felt this energy and believed it's the Holy Spirit doing something.

56:13

And so you have so, so much charismaticism that went out from this, the founding of entire charismatic churches that came out of this.

56:21

And though Parham tried to distance himself from Azusa Street revivals, there's no question that his teaching launched it.

56:29

And he is today considered to be the founder and most prominent leader of Pentecostalism, or what we might call modern charismaticism.

56:38

Was it ever authentically verified that what Parham taught about the gift of speaking in tongues actually manifested itself in fervent

56:48

Christians being able to speak in the tongues of men, languages that they were not previously learned or studied in?

56:55

Even Parham himself had to admit that any genuine manifestation of this gift to speak another known language was extremely rare, but still he was invested in the rare.

57:11

He put all of himself behind, however rare those occasions might be. He considered them real and that the spirit was genuinely moving and built his entire teaching ministry around this.

57:24

But then as these revival meetings break out in these different places, and they come to find that they're not speaking other foreign languages, then their understanding of tongues had to change.

57:39

We think the Holy Spirit is moving here. OK, fine. We're not speaking real human languages.

57:44

You've proved it. That's not what's going on, but it's still the Holy Spirit. So maybe we've not had the right understanding of tongues in the first place.

57:54

So what Busenitz said was true. The Pentecostal movement had to change its understanding of Scripture to fit its experience rather than acknowledging that its experience did not fit the clear teaching of Scripture.

58:06

And that doesn't mean that they were organized. They had some sort of meeting and they said something like, guys, this tongues thing that Parham taught, it ain't working.

58:14

So going forward, maybe tongues aren't real human languages. Maybe it's speaking ecstatic utterances, and that still counts as speaking in tongues.

58:24

This is a change that came about organically, not organizationally. The fact that you cannot easily find anyone speaking a real human language today, a real human language that they did not previously know, they're empowered by the

58:37

Holy Spirit to speak it. Have you ever seen that? How often do you even hear about it?

58:43

The fact that it's not going on, and it's more likely that you'll be struck by lightning before you'll ever see a genuine manifestation of this spiritual gift, is proof of cessationism.

58:59

Praying in gibberish is not supernatural. The Montanists did it.

59:06

The Shakers did it. There are people of all kinds of religions and spiritual practices around the world who do this all the time.

59:15

I could do it right now if I wanted to. Anyone could do it whenever they wanted to do it. But for the genuine gift of speaking in tongues as we see it in the

59:26

Bible, speaking in another human language, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12 30, not every

59:33

Christian can or will do it, nor is it one of the higher gifts.

59:39

Verse 31, earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way, the way of love.

59:48

Because what's the reason for the spiritual gifts? They are for building up the church.

59:54

And as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14 6, the gift of tongues does not build up the church.

01:00:01

Verse 22, thus tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers.

01:00:10

That's a point I'm going to come back to next time. Because when the Remnant Radio guys explain what the gift of tongues was for, they miss that.

01:00:20

Miller will actually make the argument that the gift of tongues was for prayer. Here's a teaser of him saying that.

01:00:27

I think the, like I've said, said this already, but I think if you just look at 1 Corinthians 14, it's pretty clear that tongues is about prayer predominantly.

01:00:35

It's about praying to God. And that to me seems like a really obvious thing because prayer is important to God.

01:00:42

And he's helping us to pray when we're not really good at it. Yeah, he helped us to pray by teaching us how to pray, by giving us a whole book of prayers and praise songs called the

01:00:56

Psalms. How does Miller's explanation fit with 1 Corinthians 14 22, that tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers, a private blathering prayer language that no one can understand.

01:01:11

Not even you who are praying it, that's supposed to be a sign for unbelievers. And we'll flesh that argument out next time.

01:01:21

Back to something else Miller said, he responded to Busenitz quote, one of the things

01:01:26

I think they failed to mention is how the Pentecostal movement became the fastest growing worldwide denomination on the earth, largely because they felt like they were empowered for ministry.

01:01:36

Unquote. It's true that Pentecostalism grew immensely after Azusa Street. There are estimates today that put the number of Pentecostals between like 200 million and 600 million people who practice it.

01:01:47

And that means they've adopted charismatic practices. It doesn't necessarily mean that they attend a

01:01:54

Pentecostal church. As I said earlier, you could be Roman Catholic and be Pentecostal. Roman Catholicism is filled with mystic practices that we would call charismatic dreams and visions and voices from God and prophecy and miraculous manifestations.

01:02:12

Casting out demons is big in the Catholic church. Statues that cry blood, appearances of Mary or angels or other saints.

01:02:21

This is not just a Protestant thing. The largest Pentecostal denomination is the

01:02:27

Assemblies of God. And while there are only 3 million people attending the Assemblies of God churches in the

01:02:32

US, there are over 90 million worldwide. And that's about six or seven times larger than the

01:02:39

Southern Baptists, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the US. So yes,

01:02:44

Pentecostalism is huge. But I disagree with Miller when he says that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing denomination on Earth largely because they felt like they were empowered for ministry.

01:02:58

I did not get that sense when I was charismatic. I never even heard that when I was charismatic.

01:03:04

I was doing more ministry and especially more effective ministry after I left charismaticism than when

01:03:11

I was a charismatic. The number one reason why someone is charismatic is for an experience.

01:03:22

That is the reason to experience God, to experience the

01:03:28

Holy Spirit. Now, let me clarify what I'm not saying. I'm not saying this is the reason everyone who is charismatic is charismatic.

01:03:38

Michael Miller says he's charismatic because he was convinced by the scriptures. Who am I to sit here and tell him that's not the reason?

01:03:44

I'm also not saying that they don't have a desire to be empowered for ministry, as Miller said. I'm not saying they don't want to be biblical.

01:03:53

Charles Parham thought that he was being biblical. He rooted his teaching in scripture, but he attracted so many people to his movement because he promised them an experience, a real felt move of the divine.

01:04:12

This is the reason why charismaticism is so large, perhaps the largest movement within Christianity.

01:04:20

Just think about it on a common sense level, a common sense practical level. If someone were to ask you, which would you rather have?

01:04:30

A real felt experience of God, especially if you could be given some miraculous ability or prophecy or another spiritual gift, or would you rather not experience that?

01:04:44

What would you say? Who in the world is going to go? No, I'd rather not experience

01:04:51

God. I'm good just staying flat like this. Nothing too exciting.

01:04:56

I don't really want to, my heart can't take it. I mean, who would say something like that?

01:05:03

We would all love to have some real tangible experience in the divine in some way.

01:05:09

That's a really powerful thing to promise something like that, as all charismatic churches believe they can promise.

01:05:20

That is what continues to attract people to the charismatic movement today. They can be totally solid everywhere, everywhere else in their doctrine, in their theology, but there's that yearning for something just a little bit more.

01:05:39

I understand that desire. I've been there when

01:05:44

I was 18. I begged God for that kind of experience, begged him.

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I would go on walks by myself and I, and I would beg God for something to affirm to me that he was there.

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And I chased after that charismatic experience for years. I was convinced I had experienced such things.

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I wrote songs about it, songs that I still sing to this day. My aha moment came when

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I was reading Exodus. I wanted a burning bush type of sign like Moses had.

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And I really thought studying Exodus would unlock it. Maybe I'll figure out how did Moses have that experience?

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Can I have the same experience Moses had? And I was reading about all these incredible, miraculous signs that the

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Israelites saw, the miracles that Moses did with his staff and with his hand, turning the

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Nile to blood, put his hand in his cloak and it would be leprous. And then he puts it back in and takes it out. Now it's all cured.

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And they saw all the plagues of Egypt. They saw the Red Sea part. They had manna and quail come down for them out of heaven.

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The voice of God himself spoke to them from a mountain. And what did

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Israel do? Did it cause them to believe in God more?

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Were they advanced to some kind of higher spiritual level? No, they grumbled and complained.

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They disobeyed. They rebelled and they worshiped a golden calf.

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The experience does not make you believe more. In fact, it will probably make you less of a believer because you pin the reality of your faith on your experiences rather than trusting

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God and his word. Listen to 2nd

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Peter 1, beginning in verse 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us into his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

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For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self -control and self -control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

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For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

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Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.

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For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our

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Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. So tell me, brethren, where in that did

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Peter say to go out and confirm your calling and election through speaking in tongues, through miraculous healing or having these incredible revelations or casting out demons?

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What did it say? What did he say that it meant to become partakers of the divine nature?

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He said to love. Paul said the same thing, but earnestly desire the higher gifts and I will show you a more excellent way, the way of love.

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Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. The higher gifts are those gifts that benefit the church and speaking in tongues will not benefit the church.

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Even if you speak in tongues the way they did in Acts 2, it does not benefit the church.

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How much less then to be babbling to yourself. Brethren, let me conclude with this frankness and I tell you this with all the love of my heart because I've been there.

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If you believe that the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues means an ecstatic utterance of praying gibberish, you are acting out of a desire, a want to experience something and you are imposing that desire onto the text.

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Just like I did. You don't draw that from the text. It is not a supernatural move of God.

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Desire the higher gifts which build up the body and pursue the more excellent way of love.

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And we will come back to this debate about speaking in tongues next time.

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As always, I thank you for listening and if you have any questions that you'd like to contribute to this discussion, which we will answer in a future broadcast, send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Voicemails once again, you go to www .gmail .com. Click on that voicemail tab. From Becky and me and from our church family,

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Providence Reformed Baptist Church here in Casa Grande, Arizona, peace be with you. Grace be with all who love our