waysider

Your target audience would be limited to those who have a willingness to connect the dots

I think it would have to be a coloring book. (only black and white crayons allowed)

Food for thought: The Way taught that TIP is God talking to you. Along comes a splinter and teaches that, no, it's you talking to God. At the very least, one one them must be wrong. So, here's my question. If you are one of the people who did it both ways, did you ever sense at some point that you might be faking it? Because, logic dictates you must have been.

It's a learned behavior. (Not necessarily the actual words or sounds, but, the behavior itself.) If the example group does it in a frenzied, chaotic sort of fashion, that's the behavior you'll adapt. If the example group does it in an orderly, regimented fashion, that's the behavior you'll adapt.

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” ........Friedrich Nietzsche

Much obliged, Miss JJ.

The question is a bit obtuse. It confuses intent with result. It would first need to be established that speaking in tongues is, in fact, a form of perfect prayer.

Take it from an old theatre hack, it's always good to know what your audience expects.

"The missing link there is that glossolalia may very reasonably be looked at as a gibberish counterfeit for tongues" If glossolalia is the counterfeit, where shall we find evidence of the genuine? Furthermore, if glossolalia is the counterfeit, there must have been an awful lot of counterfeit going on in The Way because there was an abundance of glossolalia.

Sure, that's why so many people are convinced it's real. But, when it's put to the test, it proves to be lacking in cohesive structure. HERE is an interesting study of this particular facet of the discussion. Sherrill (1964) played over forty recordings of glossolalia to six linguists from graduate institutions in New York City. No one of them professed to hear a language that could be identified. Interestingly enough, however, they easily spotted two recordings of “made up gibberish” that Sherrill had slipped into the presentation and one linguist reported that a given recording had the structure of a poem, a structure that he understood, even though the actual meaning of the words eluded him. (Malony and Lovekin 28)

It's never okay to cough up a lung.

O.K But, is it documented (or substantiated) in scripture that what we witness today being represented as speaking in tongues is the same thing found in Acts 2? People understood them in that account. They spoke a language(s). Today's version of speaking in tongues is not a language(s). If it is, it should be provable, using standards of linguistic identification.

Chock It's a flawed analogy...apples and oranges, if you will. No one is asking God to prove anything or for anyone to prove God. What's under scrutiny here is the veracity of speaking in tongues.

You're missing the point, John. I'm not asking you to identify the specific language you're speaking. I'm asking you to prove that what you're speaking is, in fact, a language....any language. Pig Latin is technically a language because it meets the required criteria...it has definable structure. Speaking in tongues has no recognizable structure. It's not a language. If the people referenced in Acts 2 had been doing what we now call speaking in tongues, no one would have understood them. Yet, the record states that there were people who heard them speak their own language. How do you explain this?

This is a false conclusion because it's based on a flawed premise. You said,"SIT is a manifestation of the spirit of God". Yet, you have done nothing to corroborate that assumption. You're just repeating what you heard in PFAL, without actually considering its veracity.

Isolation is a funny thing. You can be in the midst of a crowd and still be isolated. In FellowLaborers, our day started at 5:30 and ended at midnight. We lived together, went to morning fellowship together, ran "to the big tree and back" together, ate breakfast together, ate dinner together, worked the garden together, went to nightly fellowships together and so on. But, during the day, we were required to hold down a full time secular job, out in the world, as the saying goes. The sole purpose of going to that job, aside from the financial aspect, was to witness to coworkers, sign people up for PFAL and do whatever else we could to further the cause. If the job wasn't presenting enough opportunities to do that, we were supposed to find another one that would. Sometimes in our nightly twigs, we were called upon to elaborate on what we were doing in our worldly jobs to advance our goal. If we had leads, we turned them over to our twig leaders who in turn forwarded them to local twigs for followup. No dating outside the group. No fraternizing outside the group unless it was Way related. You weren't really even supposed to leave "the compound' without expressed permission. So, we weren't always physically isolated like the Corps but, psychologically, we were a closed corporation.

Well, you could always hitch your wagon to lil Vic's parade. He's got WOW, he's got LEAD, he's got a Corps (FellowLaborers), and, best of all, he's got a farm.... Yee Haw! (I wouldn't recommend it, though.)

It reminds me of the discussion we had some time ago that posed the question, "Would you still live a lifestyle based on Christian values if eternal life was not part of the package?" I think there is a connection here. Speaking in tongues is seen by some as being a claim ticket to the package. At least, that's what VPW led us to believe.

And there you have it....Speaking in tongues is considered by some to be the cornerstone of their belief system. Without it, we were just another silly cult amidst the millions of others.

Similar experience here, as well. If anything, I think it actually helped me to quit. (I still use it in a meditative, non-spiritual sense.) It freed up my mind to think instead of whatever it is that SIT does. And, hey, didn't people pray with plain old fashioned words before they ever "discovered" tongues? If you are of the persuasion that prayer works, why should it make a difference?

Every language has a structure. Whether or not the language is recognizable to anyone is really a moot point. To qualify as a legitimate language, what needs to be identifiable is the presence of a structure. One of the main characteristics of glossolalia is that it does not have an identifiable structure. It's random sounds, vowels, consonants strung together without the type of structure that would define it as a language. Therefore, assuming it might be an ancient language or an angelic language or a language from some remote area of the world only serves to obscure the heart of the issue....It's not a "language" at all, by definition.

That's a good point. It would be interesting to see that comparison.

Yes, that one was used in session #12 to "prove" that speaking in tongues is a sign to unbelievers. Later (intermediate?) it was used to suggest that if no unbelievers were present, prophesy should trump TIP. How any of this was supposed to improve anyone's quality of life is still a mystery to me. Ironic, don't you think, in a class that promotes itself as being able to deliver power for abundant living.

Choc I don't think anyone is trying to prove or disprove God or question anyone's belief in God. What's been called into question here specifically is the "utterance manifestations". The Great Principle?? Wierwille copied that thing lock, stock and barrel from another source. I documented the original usage of it a couple of years ago but have no idea what thread it was on.