Is speaking in tongues for today?
Hi, welcome to the Little Lessons, and is speaking in tongues for today is today's question.
Well, if you ask the millions and millions of Christians all over the world who speak
in tongues, they would tell you yes, and that is a fact.
And you say well how do you know that?
Well, of course there have been surveys and studies done by this.
David Barrett, who's the author of "The World Christian Encyclopedia," I believe he's now
with the Lord.
I spoke to him one time years and years ago, but widely respected within evangelical Christianity
for his knowledge of what God was doing all over the world.
He said that the Pentecostal/charismatic camp/group of Christians makes up, it comprises the largest
group of Protestants in the world.
There are millions.
I have traveled and taught in somewhere close to 80 countries of the world over the last
four decades and man, I've run into a lot of people, a lot of Christians who say that
speaking in tongues is a regular part of their prayer life and they do it all the time.
I'm a person in that category.
I received a baptism in the Holy Spirit back in 1976 and I spoke in other tongues.
I speak in tongues as part of my devotional prayer life, you know, just about every single
day.
It's a wonderful, wonderful thing that I really wish that more Christians could enjoy.
I believe many more Christians could if they knew about it and if they studied the Scripture
about it.
Now, before I go onto that, does speaking in tongues make you better?
No.
Let's just be honest.
Amongst the people in the Body of Christ who speak in tongues today around the world, some
of the them are the most flaky people on this planet.
I mean, TV preachers I'm talking about who are within the tongue-speaking camp and oh
my goodness, you'd actually think that' speaking in tongues makes you a worse person if you
were just to look at the evidence of what's on TV.
Let's not look at TV.
Let's look at the Bible, okay?
I can't imagine any Christian not wanting all that God might have for them, and it certainly
is worth investigating from the Scripture, right?
I mean, this is not a hidden theme or a hidden idea in the Bible.
Jesus himself said that one of the signs that will follow those who believe in Him is that
they'll speak in tongues.
So Jesus was talking about it.
On the day of Pentecost when the Church was born, we've got about 120 people speaking
in tongues.
And you can read about it in later chapters in the Book of Acts when the Holy Spirit fell
upon new believers and they began speaking in other tongues.
Then you've got a couple of chapters in the Book of First Corinthians where Paul discusses
speaking in tongues and he corrects some of the misuse of speaking in tongues in the Corinthian
Church, so there is some Scripture, folks.
There are some things that, you know, are worth your while to look into.
When I was first baptized in that experience, that Holy Spirit baptism that I enjoyed back
in 1976, it was the greatest experience of my life up until that point other than the
day I actually was born again and believed in Jesus Christ.
When I think about it, what a blessing speaking in tongues has been in my life.
Oh my goodness, I just wish that every Christian, honestly, would at least look into it and
ask the Lord, "Lord, is this your will for me?"
and then go into the Word of God and try to figure it out for themselves.
I have actually spoken in the Japanese language on three occasions when people were present.
As I was praying, they heard me praying in Japanese and they told me some of what they
recognized, understood that I said because they were either fluent in Japanese or they
knew a little bit of Japanese.
I have said at times in Japanese things like for example you are so good.
Well, that certainly is Scriptural.
God is good, right?
And I've said thank you very much in Japanese, and I couldn't even say it right now if you
asked because I don't know how to say thank you in Japanese.
I know it begins with 'o', [ogishoki 00:05:07] or [ogisogi 00:05:08] or something like that.
I've said one time in Japanese come quickly, come quickly, I am waiting for you.
Wouldn't that sound like a beautiful prayer to be praying to Jesus?
Sure, it does, okay.
So whole books have been written on this subject.
I have written on this subject.
If you go to davidservant.com and type in there speaking in tongues, you'll find a couple
of chapters of a book that I wrote on that subject.
It'll tell you just about everything that I know and naturally I hope you still love
me, I'm trying to persuade you to believe like me.
All right, now I still love you and that's much more important that we love each other
than that we speak in tongues.
If you haven't got that figured out, you need to go back to First Corinthians Chapter 13.
Got a lot of people in the Body of Christ who have the ministry of being a noisy gong
and a clashing cymbal because they're speaking in tongues but they don't have love and respect
for those who don't speak in tongues.
Speaking in tongues can be abused.
It was in the Corinthian Church.
People were speaking out in tongues and there was no translation.
So Paul said you shouldn't be doing that.
You're not walking in love.
You're not edifying other people.
Just do it privately on your own private prayer times and you'll edify yourself.
You'll build up yourself.
It'll be a blessing for you but you won't be offending someone else.
We need to be honest folks on love is the most important thing.
But I wish, I wish like Paul, Paul said I wish that you all spoke in tongues.
Well, I wish that same thing for you.
I also know this, that it'll never happen to you if you don't think that it's something
for today.
I hope I've at least eradicated that thought from mind.
It's for today.
And it'll never happen to you if you don't believe it's for you and so you have to dive
into the Word and I've done what I can on our website to provide some information, okay?
Anyways, thank you for asking that question and again, let me affirm my love for you.
You look good today.
All right, thanks for joining me.
See you next time.