Claiming Tongues are Satanic
Fundamentalists not only believe that the sign gifts of acts have ceased, they also believe that those who practice tongues, prophecy, and healing gifts in the modern church are actually empowered by dark forces of evil. To prove this point beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is a great illustration that has been floating around fundamentalist circles for about forty years now that goes something like this…
A missionary from some faraway dark place that is just lousy with demon activity comes back home from the field and goes to a church service where people are speaking in tongues. As he listens suddenly he turns white as a ghost and yells at everybody to stop because unbeknownst to them they have been blaspheming fluently in a foreign language!!!
The key here is that the language must be very obscure and known only to the missionary who tells the story. The devil is sneaky enough not to make people blaspheme in something so common as Spanish or Italian. It must be some strange dialect that is only known to a few natives in some place like Africa, China, or Boston.
But no matter how apocryphal the circumstances there’s no doubt in any fundamentalist mind that such a thing could happen and indeed probably did happen. Who knows? One supposes that if an infinite number of charismatics held and infinite number of services anything is possible.
Posted by Darrell
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The word ‘tongues’ in the title is spelled with an extra ‘u’.
And is it just me, or is it strange that this untraceable, unsupported anecdotal tale will penetrate a Fundie’s bullshit filter, but evidence the Earth is over 6000 years old gets the cold shoulder?
Their BS filters must be set on reverse or something.
Whoops! Fixed the typo. This was a bad week to stop sniffing glue.
The sad thing is that I lived most of my young adult and early career life thinking this way. I vehemently opposed a young Pentecostal on my first ship because he claimed to have a “prayer language”. To be fair, he thought I was going to hell too!
We learned to work together, however, and had a great ministry on the ship. We’re even still friends today! He’s still Pentecostal, and I’m still Baptist. It just works!
I remember being “taught” moreso told this about how speaking tongues is something dead now a couple years back. However, it never made sense. Not surprising, seeing everything they said made no sense, and everything they tried to say to “back it up” pretty much developed NO point at all. Go fundies
I’m not sure that some of the more extreme charismatic practices have much biblical basis, but saying a particular practice isn’t biblical is a far cry from saying it is demonic. But then, to many people anything that they don’t believe in is “of the devil.”
And that’s the point, Jamie. There are perfectly good arguments to be made for cessationism. But we can do it without the scare tactics and spurious arguments from unsourced anecdotes.
It’s just silly.
The church I work for chooses to respect congregants’ choices to practice tongues in their own private worship time. The explanation: the doctrines surrounding speaking in tongues is divisive to the Church, and we choose to maximize the things that unite (the Gospel, Jesus Christ, love, service, social justice, music, media, arts) and minimize the things that divide.
Check out what Dever said on unity: http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/07/dever-you-are-in-sin-if-you-lead-your.html
Which leads me to a rabbit trail. . . have you ever noticed how Fundies wave the flag of biblical separation as though it were the banner of God’s Kingdom itself?
or Boston, I love it!!!!!!!!Born Pentecostal convert to Catholicism…….Where we do believe in the sign gifts.
Greetings,
I heard of this happening on the UFM complex in Belem, Brazil. The person who told me about was a Wycliffe missionary who later became a Word of Life Missionary here in the Amazon. A woman was praying in her “prayer language” and a gardener (who was Japonese) understood the comments (Jesus Christ being cursed in Japonese) reported it to the leadership at the mission property. Sorry about the typos. I also know about a person who saw it happen in Thomas Road Baptist Church about 15 years ago.
For what it is worth.
So person A heard this, reported it to group B, where it was learned by person C and then reported on to you, person D?
That’s a lot of degrees of separation.
Actually in the second case, I and others in my church was C. The first case, probably the same. I wonder what letter Paul was in 1 cor. 1:11? You have an intersting website. I am trying to start Brazillian churches here in Brazil.
“I wonder what letter Paul was in 1 cor. 1:11?”
Stuff fundies like: non sequiturs.
“… we choose to maximize the things that unite (the Gospel, Jesus Christ, love, service, social justice, music, media, arts) and minimize the things that divide.”
What a beautiful statement. I’ve also heard it said as “having a shared view of heaven with people who disagree on earth.” It’s a wonderful, amazing, powerful thing when we can put aside our petty differences and go out and truly change the world and show God’s love!
Another thing that has always confused me about the IFBers. They are so against tongues, saying it is unbiblical. Yet the people who “speak in tongues” will say that it is biblical. But IFBers (at least the church I attended) strongly believed in healing through the annoiting of the sick with oil and praying. They so pick and choose what they like.