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ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: TONGUES

G’Mornin�? Folks!

A couple of days ago, in one of the pieces on Praying God’s Will, I made a rather inappropriate comment about the “silliness of those walking in this dimension,�?referring to folks who live in the midst of opposition to the operation of the Holy Spirit with an attendant opposition to the demonstration of the Holy Spirit in the speaking in or with other tongues. The statement came out of some personal frustration in dealing with religion and religiosity, and reflected poorly on me. My apologies for any offense caused.

I often take to task (at the command of the Holy Spirit) leaders within the body of Christ for their compromise of God’s word, and their watering-down of truth. That understandably brings consternation and opposition directed towards me, and that I gladly accept as the consequence of delivering what to many seems a very hard word.

That does not justify, however, slamming individuals who are only acting with personal integrity upon that which they have been taught, nor engaging in name-calling or the belittlement of folks who believe they are acting in faith. I began leading people to salvation in Jesus Christ nearly sixty years ago in my early childhood. Salvation is not simply a matter of getting one’s “fire insurance�?taken care of so they don’t go to Hell. Salvation encompasses a process of redemption that brings people back from a life of zero relationship with Jesus Christ all the way to total fellowship in love, union, and the operational authority lost with the fall of Adam and Eve.

To diminish one’s walk with the Lord because they have not come to the same place of experience and understanding is to do so in a wrong spirit and attitude. The Disciples came to Jesus wanting permission to rebuke and/or put to a stop those who were not teaching the “fullness�?of truth they had come to. In fact, they had adopted a religious spirit against the Samaritans who were not receptive to them or their teaching, and asked permission to “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them.�?/FONT>

Jesus�?response to them was clear and unequivocal, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.�?/FONT>

That said, I am rebuking myself for having editorialized and unnecessarily impugned the integrity of folks whose understanding has not yet come to encompass a realm I have known and walked in for the better part of a lifetime. My responsibility before the Lord is to share the life He has built in me and led me into, and to invite others into a realm of spiritual living that knows no bounds. It is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to reveal truth in the inward heart of a person and to draw them onward. Except that happen, my sharing falls on deaf ears; and I cannot open ears myself that the Holy Spirit does not open.

Jesus frequently said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,�?or alternatively, “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith.�?/FONT>

Well, now that we have all of that out of the way, maybe we can get on with today’s discussion. Pour yourself a cup of some good java or some really healthy tea (

Hehehehehehe…�?.) and let’s fire up this day.

I frequently make reference to speaking in tongues, and have talked in the last few days about the fact that this is a realm of prayer (among other things) in which a person can pray perfectly in the will of God. Speaking in tongues, however, opens up a vista of spiritual life unavailable any other way. It is that vista I would like to discuss.

As Jesus prepared to depart this earthly realm following His resurrection from the dead, He called His Disciples together to commission them and send them forth. (The word, apostle, incidentally, literally translates to �?U>one set apart, commissioned and sent forth.�?

The first thing He says (Mark 16:15-16) to them is, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.�?/FONT>

But Jesus doesn’t leave it there. This is critically important for understanding. He then makes clear that He never expects anyone to go forth at His bidding without His physical presence, without their being empowered to fully demonstrate that HE was the sender, HE was the commissioner, HE was the reason they were going forth to preach. After all, when Jesus was physically present, He did absolutely everything He was about to empower them to do in His name and His onoma.

So He says to them, “And these signs shall follow them that believe (notice that the evidentiary proof of these signs is their belief in Him and His operational authority in them): In my name (onoma) they shall cast out devils (the actual word is daimonion: demonic beings, as opposed to the Devil); they shall speak with new tongues (glossa: a language not naturally acquired through academic learning and study); they shall take up serpents (ophis: metaphor for “sharp-tongued, wily, deceitful men or women�?or “an artful, malicious person�?; and if they drink any deadly thing (thanatos: poisonous or death-dealing), it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick (arrhostos: sickly and infirm), and they shall recover.�?/FONT>

Just a few verses later, Mark tells us, “And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.�?/FONT>

Mark’s gospel account leaves out mention of something Luke reports that Jesus said where He gives instructions to the Disciples (now the apostles). (See Luke 24:49)

“And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on High.�?/STRONG>

So, what was “the promise of my Father�? John puts it like this, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.�?nbsp; (John 14:16-17)

So “the promise of my Father�?was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. Thus, “power from on high�?/FONT> was to come from the Holy Spirit. The Disciples were instructed by Jesus NOT to go out and preach “until ye be endued with power from on High.�?nbsp; Luke confirms in Acts 1:4-5 what John writes in his gospel.

One of the most unfortunate and false doctrines perpetrated in some sectors of the body of Christ is the teaching that once you accept Jesus Christ, you are automatically “filled with the Spirit.�?/FONT>

Jesus�?statement to the Disciples makes clear that is NOT true. He does say that the Holy Spirit “dwelleth with you.�?/FONT> This is where the differentiation occurs in what Jesus says. Once the Holy Spirit has come, and they have been “endued with power from on High,�?Jesus says, “[He] shall be (future tense) in you.�?/FONT>

In order for the Holy Spirit to “be in you,�?they were instructed to wait for a separate experience which would take place in Jerusalem. I’ve never been able to figure out how someone can teach that once you accept Jesus Christ, there are no other experiences that await you when Scripture and history plainly demonstrate otherwise. If it is necessary for us to accept Jesus Christ as a life-changing turnaround, repent of our sin (that’s one event) and be baptized in water (as a separate event), how is it that the third event (being filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit) suddenly becomes automatic.

It wasn’t automatic for the Disciples. It wasn’t automatic for the early Ekklesias. Scripture plainly makes clear the fact that when the apostles taught on the Holy Spirit and being filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, they laid hands on those who were to receive, and a new and separate experience took place for the believers �?one in which the evidence that it took place was speaking in previously unknown languages (tongues). (Acts 8:15, 17, 9:17, 10:44-45, 47, 11:15-17, 19:1-7)

Now, consider what happened to them when they did as Jesus instructed them. They headed to Jerusalem and gathered together with 120 other disciples (many more than the eleven remaining [Judas was dead] from Jesus�?first call for disciples). Luke’s account in the book of Acts records a really interesting error that the Disciples made prior to being “filled with the Holy Ghost.�?nbsp; It highlights something that still happens in the body of Christ today among folks who are not filled with the Spirit.

In Acts 1:15-26, we read where Peter (he was still his old, brash self �?not yet filled or empowered by the Holy Spirit) stands up in the midst of the gathered and waiting believers and tells them they need to appoint someone to replace Judas. They all agree that this would be a good thing, pray together, and then cast lots �?essentially gamble �?with the lot falling on one of those gathered, Matthias by name. The end of the chapter says that they then “numbered [him] with the eleven apostles.�?/FONT>

Funny thing. Jesus didn’t! Neither did the Holy Spirit. It was a mistake they would never make again. In fact, the one chosen by the Lord to fill out the original twelve came later when the Pharisee, Saul, who was persecuting the Christians and putting them to death, was arrested by the Holy Spirit on the road to Damascus. The change that came in his life was so dramatic, and the experiences that he was given in walking and talking with the Lord Jesus Christ �?supernaturally, I might add �?were such that Paul later wrote that he was among those chosen who saw Jesus in person “as of one born out of due time.�?/FONT>

Paul later attests to this fact as he opens up virtually every one of his epistles, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God�?�?/FONT> or with similar words.

Apostles (and prophets, and evangelists, and pastors and teachers) are not called by the will of man. They are not chosen by man �?not true apostles, anyway. One does not bestow apostleship or prophetic calling or anything else among the five ministry gifts by the choice of man (or men). In order for the calling and subsequent ministry to have the necessary life and evidentiary proof following indicating that the Lord is backing that person up, the calling MUST come by and through the Holy Spirit. Men and women can attest to it and bear witness to the fact that they see the calling and the anointing, but without the Holy Spirit initiating that calling and commission, those who go forth do so under their own steam.

It is the primary reason why we have so many dead, lifeless churches and dead, lifeless preachers and would-be pastors or church leaders in the body of Christ. I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve met throughout the years who made an intellectual decision to become preachers. They thought “it would be a good thing to do,�?despite the fact that they were neither called, commissioned, appointed or anointed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Their intellectual decision took them to seminaries (cemeteries) where they received their D.D. degrees or Ph.D. degrees by the recognition of similarly academically-recognized men or women, and then took the leadership of churches under the guise that they were called and sent by the Lord.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with a D.D. or a Ph.D. after someone’s name. It just means you’ve passed a set of required academic courses of study in order to get that degree. It DOESN’T mean you’ve been called by the Lord. In fact, if you’ll pardon my boldness in saying so, these degrees don’t impress the Lord one iota. Degrees don’t bring the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Degrees don’t bring the presence of the Lord. Degrees don’t result in the Kingdom of God being enlarged and established. Degrees only bring esteem for the person and the academic institution that bestowed those degrees.

The Holy Spirit only brings esteem to the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.�?/FONT> (I Corinthians 1:27-29)

Well, I’m sort of off-track here, and we need to get back to the topic at hand. I’ve had folks ask me many times why speaking in tongues is such a critical part of the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit. The apostle James put it like this in his general epistle:

“And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.�?nbsp; (James 3:6-8)

What happens when a person is filled with the Spirit is that the one thing they cannot control is taken over by �?yielded to, actually �?the Holy Spirit. Instead of their speaking by their understanding and learning, the Holy Spirit begins to speak through them, bypassing their intellect and their thought processes, and glorifying the Lord in a language they cannot normally speak or understand.

On the Day of Pentecost, it was the single greatest evidence to onlookers that something supernatural had taken place to the gathered believers in Christ. Acts 2:5 -13 tells us,

“And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.�?/STRONG>

Thus, there were seventeen (count them) different languages spoken among a group of gathered believers whose native tongue was the Aramaic dialect of Galilee �?a rather coarse, colloquial dialect generally spoken by the unlearned and unschooled of the region.

I’ll never forget the first time I was in a gathering of believers where we were praying and praising the Lord. I opened up as usual and began to praise the Lord in a language I had never heard or learned. At the close of the gathering, a young couple came up to me and said, “Where did you ever learn to speak such gorgeous Japanese? That was so marvelous! We haven’t heard Japanese spoken that way except when we lived in Japan, and then only among a group of highly-educated upper-class Japanese business people.�?nbsp; I told them I’d never heard Japanese spoken to the best of my knowledge, and certainly had never studied the language. The magnificent praise that came forth in that unknown tongue (for me) was the proof to that young couple that the Holy Spirit was real, and that He was indeed speaking through me.

That experience has been repeated more times throughout the years than I can count.

Speaking in tongues, praying in tongues, or prophesying in tongues all have different purposes and objectives. I don’t speak in all these different languages because I’m on some kind of “bless me�?trip. There is sovereign design and purpose behind it. Tomorrow, I’ll try to address some of the reasons and purposes why this is an essential step in the growth of every Christian, and why those who don’t press through the resistance of their minds, their natural understanding and their fleshly desires until they receive the Holy Spirit miss out on a dimension of life in Christ that exceeds their wildest imagination.

I’ll share with you as well some experiences I’ve had with folks who have accepted Jesus Christ and gone for years without any understanding of this realm of the Spirit, who have subsequently received the Holy Spirit and experienced an empowering that dramatically changed their lives forever.

I’m an Extremist! I’m extreme enough to believe God can do ANYTHING �?for me -- AND for you.

Blessings on you!

Regner A. Capener
R & DC MINISTRIES
Ekklesia House
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355

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ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: TONGUES II

Howdy, Howdy, Howdy!

Well, guess I should’ve known taking up this topic would spur a lot of controversy and debate. It’s one area that has polarized much of the body of Christ. Even though history clearly shows that many of the great leaders throughout the past centuries were filled with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, (e.g., Martin Luther, John & Charles Wesley, etc.) it wasn’t until the Pentecostal Revival that hit Azusa Street in 1906 that the Holy Spirit once again began to be poured out on large groups of people spanning segments of just about every church denomination and organization.

The Pentecostal Revival actually began before 1906 and was spreading throughout Europe and the eastern United States in the 1880’s, but the events that happened at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles under the ministry of a black preacher by the name of William Joseph Seymour turned what had been little flames of fire here and there into a bonfire as the Holy Spirit began to be poured out in unprecedented fashion.

Denominational leaders whose doctrinal understanding didn’t allow for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in modern times (they held that this was a one-time phenomenon on the Day of Pentecost that died out early in the second century) began to contrive all sorts of excuses and doctrinal teachings opposing what the Holy Spirit was doing. By the 1930’s and 1940’s, the body of Christ �?in particular, so-called “Protestantism�?�?had become polarized into opposing camps: the Pentecostals (as they were called) who had formed several major denominations or organizations of their own, having been essentially disfellowshipped by the other camp: the Evangelicals.

Most Evangelical denominations had adopted a doctrinal stance back in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s holding that speaking in tongues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (with miracles, laying on of hands, and instantaneous healings) had ceased with the early apostles; and that the baptism in or of the Holy Spirit as it occurred on the Day of Pentecost was now relegated or limited to an inward gift of sanctification and fruitfulness.

The contention was so great between the Pentecostals and Evangelicals that when a Pentecostal (a major Pentecostal denomination) minister by the name of David Duplessis attempted to bridge the gap with ecumenical councils, he was subsequently disfellowshipped by the Assemblies of God for what they viewed as compromise and heresy. David Duplessis had been the General Secretary of the Apostolic Faith Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa prior to his invitation to join the Assemblies, and their disconnection from him �?while sad at the time �?proved to be a catalyst that spurred him all the more the bridge the dividing line between Pentecostals, Evangelicals and Catholics.

Ironically, David Duplessis had such a reception and subsequent rapport with many Catholic leaders that his ministry inspired and triggered the Pentecostal Catholic movement during the leadership of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI.

My father met him in the late 1930’s, and I was very blessed and privileged to meet David Duplessis when he was around 90 years of age. The presence of the Lord was so strong with this man that you couldn’t help but be awed. I was present at a meeting in which the then-General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God publicly apologized to David Duplessis for the division and strife their organization had been a part of in disfellowshipping him. He grinned and said, “Your leaders may have meant it for evil, but the Lord meant it for the good of the body.�?/FONT>

Over the years, his efforts to unite the body of Christ and bring understanding to the non-Pentecostals concerning the ministry and outpouring of the Holy Spirit earned him the nickname, “Mr. Pentecost.�?nbsp; As a result of his efforts, Lutheran ministers like Harald Bredesen, Episcopal ministers like Dennis Bennett, Southern Baptist ministers like Charles Simpson, and Presbyterian ministers �?including David Duplessis�?own son, Matt �?and John Hinkle experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. It spawned the Charismatic Renewal that began in the early 1960’s, again spanning every major denomination and lasting for some two decades as the Day of Pentecost was revisited among people who had not only preached against speaking in tongues, they had violently opposed it, often calling it demonic.

For me personally, growing up and walking with the Lord in the 1940’s and 1950’s and being in the ministry pretty much nonstop since the 1960’s, has allowed me a perspective on the moving and operation of the Holy Spirit from which I can share things that many Christians have never seen. The experience of the infilling of the Holy Spirit �?some call it the Baptism in the Holy Spirit �?is no doctrine: it is a literal, tangible experience with demonstrable proofs resulting in a drastically altered and empowered life in Christ.

Yesterday, I said that there were three purposes incorporated into speaking in tongues. Let me spell those out for you.

First, speaking in tongues is an unnatural experience. If I don’t study a language, unless I’m otherwise imbued or empowered supernaturally, I can’t speak it. When I was in college, I first studied Latin and French. I soon found that unless I practiced my French (Latin is not really a conversant language), my ability to speak it dried up, as did my memory of the meaning of many French words and terms. Not living in a place where French was spoken regularly impaired my ability to converse well, and it didn’t take long for me to lose much of what I learned and studied.

The same thing held true of Greek and Hebrew when I first began to study them. I was fortunate that my first Greek instructor was also the senior pastor of the church where I was the associate pastor. He was Greek by birth and upbringing and spoke it fluently. Having him as an instructor, as well as one with whom I could converse, made a big difference in my retention of the Greek language.

One thing became very clear to me in my study of these languages: they were not natural to me because I didn’t grow up speaking them. In order for me to speak them, it required an enormous of amount of effort, study and practice on my part.

When I received the initial experience of being filled with the Spirit and began to speak in an unknown language I’d never heard before, I’ll admit that my mind went a thousand directions. It was illogical from a reasoning standpoint. Nevertheless, there was a supernatural peace that swept over my whole being that was indescribable. It was as though my mind and reasoning processes shut down entirely. Yet I could hear this language being articulated from my mouth. It was almost like an explosion. Once it started, it became an unstoppable river. For hour after hour after hour, words poured out of my mouth that my mind and intellect didn’t understand at all. I knew, however, that the Holy Spirit was giving glory to the Lord in a dimension and using phraseology that went beyond natural human abilities.

Like millions of other Christians who have experienced the same thing, the infilling of the Holy Spirit �?the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, if you will �?came with tangible proof: evidence that my natural being had been superintended by the Spirit of God. The first and very important reason for speaking in tongues, therefore, is to provide evidentiary proof �?first to you, personally; and secondly to those around you �?that the Holy Spirit is more than just dwelling with you: He now dwells in you!

That isn’t some kind of semantical difference. That is a difference with a life-changing purpose.

Yesterday, I quoted from John’s gospel, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.�?nbsp; (John 14:16-17)

“With�?and “in�?were not semantics with Jesus, either. He made it clear that He was initiating an experiential change in the way the Disciples would relate to Him. It was also an operational change in the way by which they would function with His power and authority in the future.

The second purpose behind speaking in tongues is one which I have already covered in a recent Coffee Break: the ability to pray and intercede according to the will of God without your mind and logical reasoning interfering with the enacting of that will. I quoted from Romans 8:26-27:

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.�?/STRONG>

When we pray in tongues, we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to pray and intercede through us. The Holy Spirit is One with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. He never does anything contrary to the desired will of the Father or the Son. That said, He knows what the will of God is in any given situation, and allowing Him to use our voices and our tongues to pray through us permits us to be an integral part of implementing the will of God in those situations for which we intercede.

It also provides a path of communication using “the tongues of angels�?�?languages unknown to men �?that Satan cannot understand, contaminate, or interfere with in any way. The apostle Paul makes a somewhat glancing reference to this aspect of speaking in tongues in I Corinthians 13:1 when he begins his discourse on agape love.

Paul opens his discourse by saying, “Although I have the ability to speak in the tongues of men and even of angels, but have not love, I have become like the clanking of coins in an empty brass vessel, or a tinkling or clanging cymbal.�?nbsp; (My translation)

I won’t take today’s discussion down that path other than to say that the ability to speak in both the different languages understandable by man, and the languages spoken by angels is an integral part of that gift of the Holy Spirit that comes as the evidence of His infilling.

A single illustration is perhaps worth mentioning in this regard.

I’ve heard the babblings throughout the years of the doctrines of unbelief when it comes to this whole area of speaking in tongues. There are those who �?in their efforts to rationalize and come to grips with a supernatural experience they’ve never personally had �?explain “tongues�?away as a gifted ability from the Lord to speak only in the languages understood by men. If they hear something that doesn’t seem to have any connection to a human language, why then it must not be of God; and it is therefore evil or demonic.

I was just thinking back to an event that happened when I was a teenager. We were in a church service where my mother was praying, and she burst out speaking in a really strange tongue. It sounded more like clicks and pops than actual verbiage being articulated. Because of her lifelong teaching, she feared that this was not real �?that somehow, her flesh had gotten in the way and she was just babbling some kind of nonsense.

We were fortunate enough �?really, it was ordered of the Lord �?to have a guest in our service that day who happened to be from the Fiji Islands. After the service, he came up to my mother and said, “It has been many years since I’ve heard that language spoken. It’s not a language used much any more, but I grew up hearing it spoken in the south Pacific islands. You’ve just uttered some of the most glorious praise to the Lord I’ve ever heard in my life, and you’ve used an almost extinct language.�?/FONT>

It set Mom’s mind at rest, and thereafter she never questioned the validity of any tongue or language that came out of her mouth. She realized that the Holy Spirit �?though not speaking with the language of angels at that moment �?was using her freely-given-over voice and tongue to magnify the Lord in a way she could never have imagined.

I’ve no doubt that there are many times when the language that comes out of my mouth is most likely the “tongues of angels,�?but it doesn’t really matter. I’m not there to analyze and critique what the Holy Spirit does through me. Whether He uses the tongues of men or of angels is quite irrelevant from a reasoning point of view. The fact is that He has the right and privilege to use my voice and tongue any way He sees fit �?whether I understand it or not. For me to arrogantly try to figure out what He is doing is roughly analogous to the clay trying to analyze the potter.

There simply is no scriptural or historical evidence to suggest that speaking in tongues is only speaking in the tongues of men. To argue that is to only get into meaningless debate �?debate that produces no life whatever �?and debate that is inconsequential to what the Spirit of God is doing in the earth today.

Finally, there is a third aspect to speaking in tongues. This is the prophetic part of tongues and is differentiated from the “normal�?speaking in tongues in that whereas the previous purposes were to (1) provide praise and glory to the Lord, and (2) to intercede in prayer with a direct hotline that cannot be contaminated by your understanding, this purpose is to minister directly to either individuals or a gathering of people with a direct word from the Lord in such a way that it clearly denotes its authorship.

The apostle Paul described it this way to the Corinthians, “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.�?/FONT> I Corinthians 12:4-11)

In this instance, Paul refers to this use of tongues as a “gift.�?nbsp; Seven of the nine “gifts�?described here are prophetic in nature. I won’t try to deal with them today �?perhaps we can tackle that next week �?but I wanted to point out that the use of tongues in this instance has a specific, intended purpose. The “divers kinds of tongues�?/FONT> could well be just known languages of men �?although I Corinthians 14:2 tends to argue against that �?while the “interpretation of tongues�?/FONT> is intended to demonstrate to and speak to the unbeliever present.

Paul explains it like this: “Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.�?/FONT>

He goes on to say, “In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord. Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not: but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe.�?nbsp; (I Corinthians 14:1-5, 21-22)

He couldn’t be clearer, therefore. These kinds of tongues �?uttered in a public gathering �?when combined with the interpretation of the tongues, serve to build up, to edify, to encourage and inspire those who have not believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. It becomes a sign to the unbeliever that the Lord is real, that He is working in the midst of those believers who are gathered together.

For me to go any farther today on this topic would mean getting really long-winded so I think I’ll wrap it up for now. We’ll get back to this topic again next week.

Hmmmm�?.I just realized that we dived right in and didn’t even get our coffee poured. Hope you didn’t wait for me. Enjoy the rest of your day, and your weekend!

Reason questions and argues with God. Faith just obeys Him, and acts on His Word!

Blessings on you!

Regner A. Capener
R & DC MINISTRIES
Ekklesia House
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355

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ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK: TONGUES II

Howdy, Howdy, Howdy!

Yesterday, I said that there were three purposes incorporated into speaking in tongues. Let me spell those out for you.

That isn’t some kind of semantical difference. That is a difference with a life-changing purpose.

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