Episode Synopsis:

My first exposure to tongue-speaking did not go well. In an “afterglow” service which followed a mid-week Bible study at an Orange County megachurch, a large number of the faithful remained after the study to “experience” the gifts of the Spirit, including the “gift of tongues.” A young pastor took over from the Bible teacher and explained how to begin speaking in tongues. He read several passages from Acts 2 and from 1 Corinthians 12-14 and told us that these verses were proof that the gift is “biblical,” “for today,” and enabled you to by-pass the clutter of the mind to commune with God “in the Spirit.” He then told us, if you’d like to speak in tongues here’s what you do. You start by saying “kitty, kitty, kitty,” until the Spirit took over and gave you your prayer language. The room was suddenly filled with people speaking gibberish, swaying, acting as though under the influence, crying, and making contorted faces as they spoke. I wasn’t having it, and quietly slipped out.

Years later, after my biblical knowledge increased, I realized that the “afterglow” I witnessed that night was very much like what Paul was instructing the Corinthians not to do in the last half of 1 Corinthians 14. There was no interpretation of any of these tongues, though several attendees did offer exhortations of their own utterances, but which very much sounded like Christianese made up on the fly. Everyone spoke at once, and the whole room was filled with tongue-speakers, not merely two or three in order. I was a Christian and still thought these people were crazy. I can only imagine what an unbeliever would think.

Once TBN graced the airwaves (emanating from Orange County) tongue-speaking was now televised. This time, tongue-speaking was not done in a worship service but was part of the regular programming and often conflated with predictive prophesy– “the Lord will do this or that, and heal this one or that one.” The interpretation was almost always supplied by the tongue-speaker. The low point came during a televised “anointing service” held at Oral Roberts University in which three older Word-Faith evangelists (Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin Sr. and T. L. Osbourn) anointed three younger Word-Faith evangelists (Kenneth Hagin Jr, Kenneth Copeland, and Richard Roberts). Once anointed, the men acted as though in a drunken stupor, spoke in tongues (one of which sounded like the Cab Calloway’s riff from the Blues Brothers–scubity-do, scubity-do--scubity-do). Not a known language. A VHS recording of this made the rounds and to no one’s surprise, the universal assessment was “these people are crazy.”

This is why a study of Paul’s instructions to the churches on 1 Corinthians 14:20-40 about the proper use of prophesy and tongue-speaking is about as practical a matter as one can find. Paul would have none of this. Neither should we.

For show notes and other recommended materials located at the Riddleblog as mentioned during the Blessed Hope Podcast, click here: https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/

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