After reading the posts on another thread, I decided this would make for interesting discussion.What percentage of our membership believe in and actually speak in other tongues?How soon until we are no longer a Pentecostal denomination________________
How about xenoglossia?Doesn’t glossalalia mean something different from the component parts? Doesn’t it mean free-vocalization gibberish in the field of Linguistics________________
Please create a link to the other thread. Thanks________________
Roughly 20 years. Our present church approx 3%, most still believe in speaking in tongues. Actually I seldom am urged by the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues other than in private. So I could be very wrong. I am referring the 3% as public display…. ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
So many times over the years I have heard the same person speak in tongues and give the same message,over and over.Once there was a message given using a man’s name, saying the Holy Ghost was asking him to go to the alter. The named man had left the service a good while before the message was given. I question myself and pray sincerely when a message is given out and my spirit questions the message. In those cases the message is usually generic and the interpretation is given by the speaker.I was a member of the 4Square for two years influenced by a wonderful man of God Brother Aldridge and also because I could at the time understand him when he preached. He had a problem that was tough to handle with a brother and sister in the church who about once a month would take over a service with message after message . One interpreting the others messages. My soul cringed in these episodes. I knew the man very well and he was very sincere My impression was he wanted to be a preacher and used that venue to get his message out. But it left me cold.I have felt that way in many services over the years. I personally do not prefer wild fire over no fire. I do not think it boils down to one or the other. ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Where might we find such stats________________
I think it depends on the church and the pastor as to whether or not these kinds of manifestations of the Spirit are welcome. And in some places, they are not. The church I attend honors and welcomes the Holy Spirit…He comes where He is welcome.A coworker attended a COG that I attended for several years and insisted they did not believe in speaking in tongues. Blew my mind, as I knew the (same) pastor did believe in it and practiced it. The times…they are a-changing________________More of Him…less of me.twitter.com/camiracle77www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691241499&ref=name
Where do you an John attend church, Carolyn? PM, OTCP________________More of Him…less of me.twitter.com/camiracle77www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691241499&ref=name
Speaking in Tongues is alive and well at SPWC.We just concluded our annual Youth Conference, outstanding ministry of the Word followed by powerful altar services.Pentecost is not going away, maybe in the denominations, but not here.In our neck of the woods fellowship between C/G, A/G, C/H, UCH, WPC, and Independent Congregations is a growing concern.I am convinced the Lord is pleased, He is blessing abundantly. ________________Charles A. HutchinsSenior Pastor SPWCCongregational Church of Godwww.spwc.church
It may be that there are just as many in-fillings as ever and maybe even more but less pseudo-fillings. I’m sure most everyone who has been around Pentecost very long has seen and heard learned behavior that simulates a genuine outpouring and infilling of the Spirit of God. I have been concerned and even upset with folks who quickly validate what may appear to be a pseudo-Pentecostal experience. After the tongues are gone what does the life look like? Does the fruit of the Spirit begin to manifest or is there any real change at all? Is the Pentecostal experience only manifested at church or is it manifested at home, work and the community (not the tongues but the fruit)?
In ref to S of S above, for many years and still today ‘tongues’ are the most easily counterfeited. I also agree with his contention of the prayer closet. I have wondered all my life of the very little appearance of the actual speaking in a foreign tongue and interpreted by someone who does not speak that language. I have heard of a happening, but I have never seen that myself in this country or any country I have visited.I guess what I have witnessed has always been ‘the unknown tongue’ rather that a foreign language as on the day of Pentecost. ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
I speak in tongues on a regular basis________________Recorded Sermons @ http://www.pastorwiley.com
I am sure I come across as negative. BUT growing up, in every church dad pastored, there were always two or three people who gave a message in tongues (Sis. Sasser, Bro Brittian, Garland Page, Claude Setzer, Bro Turner many more) The church became calm, quiet and anticipatory. There was no question to me as a kid, this was different, THIS WAS REAL. Even I wanted to know the interpretation.The COG was considered a cult most of my young life. I meet people today who say you COG people scared me to death when I was a kid. You may never have seen bench walkers. But we had men who would walk the back of pews speaking in tongues. As a matter of fact I used to go out to the church and practice walking the pews just in case God told me to do it. He never did, but I was prepared.We are part of the main stream now, good, bad or indifferent. Our pastors even switch pulpits on special days with Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian. I don’t think that happened in the 1950s.I think the REAL STUFF, is still available in every church. I think every church I attend in the COG has several saints in tune with GOD. They are willing to Speak in tongues if ordered or directed by the Holy Spirit.(Using the term Holy Spirit reminds me of that early day, if the term Holy Spirit was used by a preacher he would be censored for being ‘nominal’.) The correct terminology was/is HOLY GHOST! ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
Is it better for someone not to speak in tongues, or speak in some pseudo tongues, tell himself he’s filled, and tick the box? I was in a church conference in Indonesia about 19 or 20 years ago, sponsored by a COG (GBI) at the time, called itself by ‘Karismatik’. Roberts Liardon was the guest before his scandal. The worship leader told everyone to speak in tongues. I refrained on Biblical grounds, so I got a chance to hear. It sounded like everyone in that room either said’ba ba ba ba’ or ‘bada bada bada bada’Liardon, in his sermon, told them they were speaking in ‘baby tongues.’ He then demonstrated his ‘warring tongues’ and they clapped. At the end, he had everyone who wanted to be baptized with the Holy Spirit not think of anything and say whatever ‘bubbled up out of your spirit.’ I think he’d used a living waters verse for that. He had other people gather around them and told them to speak in tongues.If you blank your mind, surround yourself with people who say ‘bababa’ or ‘bada bada bada’, and say whatever comes to you, couldn’t you say ‘bababa’ or ‘bada bada bada’ without getting filled with the Holy Ghost? But you join the club.I’m not saying the Lord can’t or won’t respond to someone’s faith, but I’ve seen a lot of methods to try to pull some kind of utterance out of someone’s mouth. I don’t think the way tongues as initial evidence as presented by Classical Pentecostalism as justified by scripture. It sure can create some social pressure. I believe we should relax a bit and trust God to gift people if He wants to. Teach people to believe. I’ve seen tactics to try to push people to prophesy, and that can be very dangerous, IMO. I was at a healing meeting where they instructed people to declare that they were healed. At the end, they asked people to raise their hands if they were healed. That looks great– dozens of people who say they were healed you can report at some other meeting. When you do that, you get people still in wheelchairs raising their hand________________
My son was told twice (two different occasions) by COG preachers that he had been filled with the Holy Ghost when he had not spoken in tongues. He tarried long in the altar both times but did not speak in tongues. Once was at youth camp and once at church. I told him later that he had received the promise of the Holy Ghost. When he did receive the baptism at a Benny Hinn meeting (where no one laid hands on him), there was no doubt he had received. No one had to tell him. But those instances disturbed me greatly. I don’t know about the youth camp one, but the minister at church was someone I knew well and who had been a COG minister for many years. I never asked him why he told him that, and I have no idea why he did it. My mother received the baptism in the 50s, before they became associated with the COG. She & my dad attended several large meetings with ministers like Thea Jones, as well as smaller services and cottage prayer meetings. At one of the smaller ones, the minister (not COG) told everyone who wanted to receive the baptism to come forward for prayer. He would lay hands on folks and they would speak in tongues. He would remove his hands and they would stop. Mama thought she received that night, but when she told my grandmother (a seasoned saint, a shouting Methodist) about it, she told her no, that wasn’t the way the Spirit worked________________More of Him…less of me.twitter.com/camiracle77www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691241499&ref=name
So, I heard five or six years ago that the percentage of CofG members professing to receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, according to CofG doctine was 28% but I cannot verify or give credibility to that number…BUT, if you take one of our STRONGEST states, and see a sampling of their ministerial report statistics here is what you get… YOU GET SAD!
Are there spikes in the water baptism numbers? It’s not unreasonable that they would be low for a single month, since a lot of churches baptize quarterly (or even less often ). However, if that one month is representative, it doesn’t even make sense to have a conversation about the gifts of the Spirit when a