CadyandZoe
Well-Known Member
Again, you are using your experience to justify your interpretation of a Biblical passage. The process should work the other way around. Bible passages are intended to stand as a critique of our experiences and correct our understanding of them. First understand what Paul was saying to the Corinthians and then judge your experience on that basis.I set out what Paul actually said about tongues in 1 Corinthians 14. If you don't believe what Paul actually said as he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, there is nothing more to be said. The Scripture says that if someone wants to be ignorant, let them remain ignorant.
Actually, what knocks the stuffing out of your argument against modern tongues is what happened to two people in the very church where I was a deacon during the late 1970s. One person was praying in tongues during a prayer meeting and his language turned out to be a Ghanaian rural village dialect in which he was talking about the wonderful works of God. The Ghanaian visitor was excited because he knew that the speak could never have known that language. Another person was praying quietly in tongues during a church service, and the New Zealand Maori lady sitting beside him told him that he was praying in the Maori language and God was speaking encouraging things to her through it. That person was New Zealand European and knew no Maori language. These are times where God steps in and shows that anti-tongues teaching is nothing but foolishness.
Don't tell me that these are unsubstantiated stories, because the first person was a close friend and the event was witnessed by more than 20 people in that prayer meeting, and the second person was me and the lady was a Mrs Samuels whom I had known for a number of years.
Both of your examples suffer the same fatal problem: corroborating evidence. What do I mean? First, let's review the second chapter of Acts where we see the apostles speaking in tongues. In that context, we understand that the gift of tongues involves a miracle whereby one person speaks his native tongue, while a crowd of people each hear him speak in his or her own language. Acts 2:7 The process is similar to a foreign film in which the foreign dialogue is overdubbed in English. The audible voice we hear does not correspond to the lip movements of the person on the screen. Such a discontinuity between voice and lip movement can easily be taken as slurred speech by those unfamiliar with the process. Acts 2:13
Thus we see that the miracle of tongues, as is the case with all miracles, has evidentiary value since both the speaker and the listener know the content of the message and can corroborate the idea that the Holy Spirit was involved in the process. All miracles share this feature. The action taken is humanly impossible, which leads one to conclude a divine source or agent is responsible for the outcome. More importantly, as Paul points out, the question remains whether the agent behind the miracle was the Holy Spirit or a demon. Thus Paul is careful to remind his readers to judge the message according to the veracity of the message, not the source of the message. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3
Now consider the examples you gave. And let's not question or impeach the testimony at all. Let's assume everyone was telling the truth as they understood it.
One person was praying in tongues during a prayer meeting . . .
From what I understand (based on discussions of this subject over the years,) this statement can indicate one of three different scenarios: 1) He is praying with his mind in his own language, while presumably speaking a language he doesn't know, 2) He is praying with his mind in his own language, while inarticulate sounds are coming out of his mouth, 3) His mind is unfruitful while presumably a foreign language is being spoken. The fact is, given the testimony, we don't know what was happening to the man.
. . . his language turned out to be a Ghanaian rural village dialect . . .
This is a conclusion, not a description of what actually happened. Remember, the miracle of tongues involves the listener, not the speaker. The apostles were not speaking a foreign language that day. Instead, those in the crowds were each hearing them in their own language. We have no need to doubt the Ghanaian visitor, since we have Biblical evidence that the Holy Spirit causes people to hear messages in a tongue native to the listener. We can take his testimony at face value.
We know that both human and miraculous communication involves both a speaker and a listener. So the question remains, who was speaking to the Ghanaian visitor, the one in prayer or the Holy Spirit himself directly? Presumably, the one in prayer didn't know the meaning of the supposed language; therefore, it wasn't the one in prayer communicating with the Ghanaian visitor. We must conclude, therefore that it was the Holy Spirit himself communicating with the visitor directly.
And since the one in prayer didn't understand the supposed language he was speaking, there is no way for the one in prayer to corroborate the conclusion that he was the one speaking the Ghanaian language to the visitor. The testimony doesn't say that the one in prayer intended to communicate anything to the visitor. What we lack is correspondence between the content of the prayer and the content of the message heard by the visitor.
Finally, and most importantly, the testimony under review doesn't relate what message the visitor heard. God himself commanded Israel to examine the message itself to see whether it contradicted previous revelation. Paul says a similar thing in his letter to the Corinthians. He tells us, "no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit." In other words, the message itself is of primary importance.