@Steefen
Pentecostals do not speak in tongues. What they’re doing is a theatrical performance. No different than being a musician singing a song yet they forgot the words and mumble syllables to the melody. That’s why they commonly dance in groups and become theatrical. I suspect this became a thing down South because of the native African rituals brought to the USA during the slavery era.
Speaking in tongues would be if at the Chinese restaurant, you who do not speak Chinese or know anything about the language, begin speaking English to them, but the all the Chinese people sitting at the table hear you speaking Chinese to them. Somehow the English words spoken by you into the air,traveling between you and them, were supernaturally transformed into Chinese for them to hear. You do not hear the Chinese, and they do not hear the English, yet they perfectly understand and hear your words in their native Chinese language although you’re speaking English. That’s impossible. That’s why it’s a miracle.
Within a group of numerous native languages, all of them would hear your English words as their own native language.
Well, that is how I understood speaking in tongues (what you get in Acts at Pentecost–people speaking such that others who speak various languages understand them, despite the linguistic divide.
But that isn’t what Paul seems to mean. He speaks of needing an interpreter to interpret what is spoken in tongues (1 Cor. 14:27-28). He implies that what is spoken in tongues is unintelligible (1 Cor 14:9,19). And he says that speaking in tongues could make non-Christians think you are crazy (1 Cor. 14:23).
In other words, what the Pentecostals and Charismatics do does seem at least broadly to mimic what Paul is describing. And this contributes to my ever stronger conclusion that Paul was what we today would readily describe as a religious nut.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)