Your post feels a bit like a straw man argument. I would say at least quasi-straw man. Maybe 5% of Pentecostals are Oneness Pentecostals. In that group, it is fairly common for people to believe that if someone is saved, he will speak in tongues. Most Pentecostals see baptism with the Spirit as distinct from salvation, something that may happen subsequent to salvation-- an immersion in the Spirit where the believer is filled with the Spirit. In Acts 8, the Spirit fell on Samaritans _after_ they accepted the Gospel message and were baptized. In Acts 19, believers were filled with the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and prophesied _after_ they had received Paul's message and were baptized. Paul also writes to believers to 'be filled with the Spirit.'
..."Unknown"? Is there really such a thing in God's Word Of Truth?
Does God Really Have Two Different gifts of tongues??
We just read, on another thread, where we were judged as non-christian
because we have never "spoken in tongues as the sign of" a saved christian.
We wish this were not so, as we do love and pray for our Pentecostal
brethren, and hopefully this study will be a gentle discussion, in all
kindness In The LORD, answering the above questions:
Again, a straw man, presenting an idea held by a small minority of Pentecostals as representative of the group.
"...Tongues of
men
It is true that when the gift of tongues was introduced at Pentecost, it
empowered men with the supernatural ability to speak in a known,
identifiable human language with which they were not familiar. We
know this because the specific languages in which they spoke are
listed for us in Acts 2:4-11...
We also know that God gave this gift to the Jews because He intended
to make the nation of Israel “a kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6) to minister
His word to the Gentiles (Isa. 61:6), and what good is a priest that doesn’t
speak your language?..."
“ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations,
even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying,
We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you”
(Zech. 8:23)..."
Where does that message mention speaking in tongues? The earliest Christians were Jewish-- the twelve apostles, later Paul, and gradually Samaritans and Gentiles started to come to faith. Gentiles spoke in tongues, too, apparently, according to I Corinthians 12.
But here we have a straw man argument. My understanding is that historically Pentecostals believe in speaking in tongues in 'tongues of men' and still do. If you do a little research on the early Pentecostal movement, there are numerous accounts of people hearing 'speaking in tongues' in their own language. It's in 'The Comforter Has Come'. Val Dez's book "Fire on Azusa" recounts a Russian coming in and hearing speaking in tongues. William Seymour's Apostolic Faith, in the later issues, has numerous accounts from all over from various Pentecostal meetings where people heard languages they knew in tongues or had other people tell them they were speaking languages they knew.
Some early Pentecostals, without Biblical support, believed Parham's theory that speaking in tongues was going to enable Christians to evangelize the nations, but there isn't really any support for that in scripture. Speaking in tongues got the audience's attention in Acts 2, but many were converted after Peter preached. One of them got some indications that he was speaking Bengali, from someone who had been to India, but he couldn't make his tongue be the local language when he get there. Exegetically, he had no basis to expect that as a promise from scripture, anyway. But there have been numerous people recount experiences where others have understood speaking in tongues or they understood what was spoken in tongues. I can think of some I have spoken or corresponded with who had had this experience.
[And/OR the second gift?]:
"...Tongues of angels...
... our Pentecostal friends...contend that when Paul spoke to the
Corinthians about “the tongues of men and of angels” (I Cor. 13:1),
that this was a reference to “an unknown tongue” (14:2) spoken by
angels, and that this is the gift God gave to the Corinthians, and
which He continues to give men today.
Strawman or at the very least a quasi-straw man. What Pentecostal argues this? I don't know of any Pentecostal who says that 'tongues of men and of angels' is two spiritual spiritual gifts. I want a source for yours, or your authors, assertions here.
A lot of Pentecostals you ask will interpret the passage in a straightforward way, without the agenda to eisegete that some cessationist's have. Paul says 'the tongues of men and of angels', so we should allow for the idea that it could be either one. Paul says of the speaker in tongues 'no man understandeth him.' If you read chapter 12, interpretation is a gift of the Spirit. So none of us knows all the human languages. Functionally, it doesn't matter if the language is human or angelic. Someone speaks in tongues and others do not understand, and someone else interprets through a gift of the Spirit. It doesn't matter, functionally, if the language is human or angelic.
There are some Charismatics who think of tongues as a kind of code language between men and God. I might have encountered one person on these forums who called himself Pentecostal who thought like that.
Of course, since none of us “speak angel,” it is impossible to verify
that those who speak in tongues today are speaking in a legitimate
language, as the foreigners visiting Jerusalem were able to do at
Pentecost (Acts 2:11)...
"
(R Kurth)
[/QUOTE]
Grace, Peace, And JOY!
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