How can you tell if a person is really speaking in tongues (gift of the Holy Spirit) or he is just babbling?
To tell you the truth (and many of you are not going to like this)
● I have heard during my life a lot of babbling, and never ever there was something, that remotely looked like the speaking in tongues we read of In Acts 2.
● I have seen churches where they gave lessons in how to speak in tongues.
The pastor would babble something which the assembly had to repeat.
(Where is the “as the Spirit was giving them utterance”?)
If it is from the Spirit, why would I need lessons from an other human being?
● I have heard people say: he doesn’t speak in tongues very well
• for he speaks too slow
• for he speaks too fast
• for he speaks with only one vowel, etc. etc.
Really, is this possible, if it is from the Holy Spirit?
I heard it a lot, but never I heard, that somebody spoke something and that people who spoke completely different languages at the same time, heard him speak in their own language.
Well, that was exactly what was happening in Acts 2.
Acts 2:4-12
⁴And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues (Greek: γλωσσα, glossa, pronounced as gloce-sah’, meaning: the tongue; by implication, a language or a tongue), as the Spirit was giving them utterance (not a learned language).
⁵Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. ⁶And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. (Greek: διαλεκτος, dialektos, pronounced as dee-al’-ek-tos, meaning dialect, language, or tongue).
⁷They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we each hear them in our own language (Greek: διαλεκτος, dialektos, pronounced as dee-al’-ek-tos, meaning dialect, language, or tongue) to which we were born?
⁹Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs – we hear them in our own tongues (Greek: γλωσσα, glossa, pronounced as gloce-sah’, meaning: the tongue; by implication, a language or a tongue) speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”
¹²And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
In those days they needed it to reach all those different (The Bible names 16) languages, but today most speak 2 or more languages (or if you like: speak in 2 or more tongues), so to be understood it is not important.
Putting it this way, I’m using most of the day a strange tongue (foreign language) to make myself understood with you.
In the Netherlands the word “tong” (tongue) was before commonly used for language.
Over the years it was replaced with “taal” (language). In the churches they today speak of “tongen-taal” (language-language – as if you speak of a separate language, like English language, or German language)
Maybe the idea you can learn it, comes from this misconception?
Internet: harryschoemaker.nl
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