A Few Big Things I Learned Taking PFAL

[T-Bone]

What difference does it make?

I like to know that when I pray, I know who I'm praying to.

I like to know that if I receive communication in return, who exactly it is who is communicating with me.

How do you know all that with your speaking in tongues?

I'm beginning to think that this "personal communing and relationship with Jesus" thing may be nothing more than spiritual gobbledygook.

If you can't at least explain it, or explain how that would differ from a relationship or prayer to God, then you shouldn't condemn or disparage folks who might not participate in it.

It's possible your speaking in tongues is gobbledygook too.

Edited August 30, 2007 by T-Bone

[doojable]

How do you know all that with your speaking in tongues?

It's possible your speaking in tongues is gobbledygook too.

Exactly!

[oldiesman]

So now your disparaging speaking in tongues too?

Did Jesus tell you it was gobbledygook?

[waysider]

I'm not usually a Bible quoting kind of guy but here goes:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

St. John 14:6

Jesus said unto him(Thomas), I am the way, the truth, and the life:

No man comes to the Father except by me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Doesn't exactly invite you to cut him out of the picture, now, does it?

But, Wait!!! What about "the administration" and "to whom" and all that other stuff in PFAL?

:wacko:

[oldiesman]

Wow. So then prayer and the giving of thanks to God in the name of Jesus Christ doesn't work? Folks must pray to Jesus first who will then convey the message to God?

You know, I can't believe former twi folks actually believe this.

Edited August 30, 2007 by oldiesman

[T-Bone]

So now your disparaging speaking in tongues too?

Did Jesus tell you it was gobbledygook?

No - language experts did !

The following quote is from Oakspear's thread Speaking in Tongues, how come? in Doctrinal, it's my post # 128:

T-Bone post #47 June 26 2006 9:19 PM:

...In Systematic Theology: Volume Four, Church, Last Things by Norman Geisler, Appendix Two, Were Tongues A Real Language?, Geisler makes the point that the speaking in tongues mentioned in the Bible was a real language because I Corinthians 14:10-19 states it must be interpreted for the church – thus logic demands it is a meaningful, translatable language. Concerning "tongues of angels" I Corinthians 13:1, Geisler says, "is probably a figure of speech meaning 'to speak most eloquently.' Even if this is to be taken literally, every time angels spoke in the Bible they did so in actual language that people could understand."

In the previous appendix [Appendix One Only the Apostles Spoke in Tongues At Pentecost, page 663] Geisler concludes, "If tongues were only a sign gift to apostles and only apostles had the gift or could give it to others, this would be confirmation of its temporary nature in laying the foundation of Christ's apostles. Thus, once this basis was established, it would be natural that the gift of tongues would cease – there being no more need for it. Indeed, this seems implied in the phrase "whether there are tongues, they will cease" , since it is in the middle voice and can be translated "They will cease of their own accord."

Getting back to Appendix Two Were Tongues a Real Language?, Geisler doubts [as do GeorgeAar, Oakspear and myself] if today's "tongues" are real languages; Geisler quotes extensively from a book by Samarin – any page references to Samarin's book I will put Samarin's text in bold with the page reference as the following [TMA, page X]: "William Samarin, professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Toronto, wrote the first comprehensive book-length study of speaking in tongues [Tongues of Men and Angels, New York: Macmillan, 1972]. In this work he takes Christian charismatic glossolalia – the common contemporary practice of speaking in unknown and unintelligible speech, which Samarin distinguishes from what he calls xenoglossia [the miraculous gift of tongues in which the speaker communicates in an unlearned human language] – and the "tongues" of other religions [including healers, occultists, and shamans] and compares them with known human languages. He concludes from his linguistic analysis that "glossolalia is a perfectly human, perfectly normal [albeit anomalous] phenomenon" [TMA, page 235]. If this is the case, then "speaking in tongues" as commonly practiced today is a creation of the human mind and not the miraculous, divine activity recorded in Scripture…

When Samarin and other linguists attempted to transcribe recorded glossolalia, they found that they continually came up with different results due to the difficulty of finding thoroughly distinct words in the utterances: "On analysis these transcriptions will always expose the linguistically deviant nature of a glossolaic discourse…notwithstanding a charismatist's claim that glossolalia is neither repetitious nor meaningless banality, no "jabber-babble or twattle-twaddle," but clear, distinct, precise, and uncluttered speech." [TMA, page 78]

Samarin concludes from his analysis: "The illusion of word-structure is destroyed when one tries to dissect all the breath-groups of a text…So it is not surprising that a linguistically trained respondent was no more successful in "breaking down" her [the subject's] speech than I was." [TMA, page 81]

This is not the case with a real language, and these results were not limited to the investigators. In a similar experiment with another "tongues-speaker," Samarin noted: "When his [the subject's] own prayer was played back several hours later, he was unable to fulfill the function of the normal speaker of language. In other words, he could not, listening to his own speech, repeat for me what he had just said." [TMA, page 81]

The reason for this linguistic defect is that "there is no grammar for glossolalia, because it is a phenomenon, like a human language in general, and not like a specific language" [TMA, page 73]. Thus, when it comes to these supposed tongues, "nobody can learn a set of rules that would enable him to speak a 'language' that is the same as someone else's. Even what one speaks on different occasions is not the same in the linguistic sense" [TMA, page 73].

Native Speech Patterns

Even in light of these apparently random "word salads," we discover an interesting trend, When glossolaic verbal patterns are analyzed regarding the use of consonants, vowels, and other features, they are revealed as strikingly close to the speaker's native language. "The explanation for this similarity, to put it simply, is that [the subject] is "doing what comes naturally!" In other words, he and every other creator of extemporaneous pseudo language tends to use what is common in his native language…What makes a person's glossa different from his native language is how he uses its sounds" [TMA, page 83,87].

This is to be expected if tongues are the product of an intentional speaker. Because the speaker is making some form of syllabic selection, "Glossolalia, even though it is lexically meaningless, is not a randomized collection of sounds and sound sequences. It is a derivative phenomenon. Its basic features depend on the linguistic competence and knowledge of each speaker. This will surprise no one who came to this study already convinced that glossolalia was some kind of gibberish. However, now he knows that it is not simply that…It is on looking closely at glossas that their artificiality becomes apparent. This is as true of their construction as it is of their function" [TMA, page 127,121].

Artificial Function and Construction

As to function, "Glossas and natural languages are responsive to the world outside the speaker in different ways. In normal speech it is content, and not merely manner of delivery, that changes constantly in response to topics, person, setting, time and so forth…In construction as well as in function glossas are fundamentally different from languages…If glossas do not have grammatical structure, we might nevertheless expect them to be like languages phonologically, because they sound so much like languages. Even here we are deceived. The total number of different sounds appears to be smaller than one finds in most languages. Glossas are strikingly unlike natural languages in the rank frequency curves of the sounds…This cannot happen in normal language, because the occurrence of sounds is determined by the words in which they occur" [TMA, page 122-126].

"When the full apparatus of linguistic science comes to bear on glossolalia, this turns out to be only a facade of language – although at times a very good one indeed. For when we comprehend what language is, we must conclude that no glossa, no matter how well constructed, is a specimen of human language, because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives" [TMA, page 127,128].

"[Linguists] know enough to declare what is and what is not a language. We know as much as a mathematician, who can tell the difference between a real formula and a pseudo-formula – one that looks like mathematical language but does not say anything…The glossolalist must grant this, because one of his proofs for the existence of God is orderliness in creation. A hodge-podge of DNA produces biological nonsense just as much as a hodge-podge of syllables produces linguistic nonsense" [TMA, page 234].

To argue [as some do] that these are coded forms of language fails; codes have meaningful linguistic patterns and can be broken, while tongues do not and cannot. Any other so-called code-without-pattern places a tongue out of the realm of the intelligible and into the unverifiable domain of the mystical."

The following is from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker [Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT], pages 168,169:

"An inventory of phonemes is one of the things that gives a language its characteristic sound pattern. For example, Japanese is famous for not distinguishing r from l. When I arrived in Japan on November 4, 1992, the linguist Masaaki Yamanashi greeted me with a twinkle and said, "In Japan, we have been very interested in Clinton's erection."

We can recognize a language's sound pattern even in a speech stream that contains no real words, as with the Swedish chef on The Muppets or John Belushi's samurai dry cleaner. The linguist Sarah G. Thomason has found that people who claim to be channeling back to past lives or speaking in tongues are really producing gibberish that conforms to a sound pattern vaguely reminiscent of the claimed language. For example, one hypnotized channeler, who claimed to be a nineteenth-century Bulgarian talking to her mother about soldiers laying waste to the countryside, produced generic pseudo-Slavic gobbledygook like this:

Ovishta reshta rovishta. Vishna beretishti? Ushna barishta dashto. Na darishnoshto. Koraphnosha.... darishtoy. Aobashni bedetpa.

And of course, when the words in one language are pronounced with the sound pattern of another, we call it a foreign accent, as in the following excerpt from a fractured fairy tale by Bob Belviso:

GIACCHE ENNE BINNESTAUCCHE

Uans appona taim disse boi. Neimmese Giacche. Naise boi. Live uite ise mamma. Mainde da cao. Uane dei, di spaghetti ise olle ronne aute…"

In my 12 years of being with TWI - I have never witnessed an unbeliever [or anyone for that matter] exclaiming "wow - that person speaking in tongues just spoke in my native tongue or a language I also know." And the more I think about some of the accounts given in Acts of speaking in tongues - the fact that some indication is noted of the language being understood by others present leads me to think it was a way for them to verify it was genuine...Perhaps, some charismatic group would record their speaking in tongues and interpretation and submit the tape to a panel of linguistic experts - I figure if it's from God the test results will blow the minds of the language experts.

For that matter - In my opinion, anything God does can stand up to the most stringent scrutiny. I figure doctors could have examined the blind man healed by Jesus and said "yup, this guy's got 20/20 vision."

Edited August 30, 2007 by T-Bone

[oldiesman]

No - language experts did !

Language experts told you that speaking in tongues was gobbledygook but Jesus didn't!

Interesting. :)

Edited August 30, 2007 by oldiesman

[T-Bone]

Language experts told you that speaking in tongues was gobbledygook but Jesus didn't!

Interesting. :)

Yes isn't it...Some things Jesus lets US figure out - all by ourselves...oh, the wonders of the human mind . I edited out the first part of my post # 128 from that thread - maybe I should have left it in - so here it is below...Even without consulting language experts some of us suspected it was gobbledygook! Interesting indeed !

T-Bone post #47 June 26 2006 9:19 PM:

"…I wonder how much of what I saw was self-directed instead of coming from God? I remember my twig leader's wife always saying the same five or six words in a tongue but the interpretation was at least two or three sentences long. I never gave this linguistic oddity much thought until I brought my friend Steve to Twig – and he pointed that out to me. Every week, the same five or six words – with a different interpretation each time. Maybe each word had multiple meanings and functions – a diagram of the sentence would probably look like a complicated map of the NY Subway System."

GeorgeAar post# 65 June 27 2006 11:29 PM:

"…in fact, I never heard a "tongue" that really sounded like a language at all.

In 15 years of doing the nonsense, it never happened. I heard quite a few that sounded incredibly similar, though."

Oakspear post #67 June 28 2006 2:53 AM:

"I can go along with that. While allowing for the possibility that there might have been a structure or linguistic pattern in a "tongue" that I didn't perceive, most, if not all, tongues that I have heard in TWI and in churches, were just a string of the same sounds repeated over and over."

In Systematic Theology: Volume Four, Church, Last Things by Norman Geisler, Appendix Two, Were Tongues A Real Language?, Geisler makes the point that the speaking in tongues mentioned in the Bible was a real language because I Corinthians 14:10-19 states it must be interpreted for the church – thus logic demands it is a meaningful, translatable language. Concerning "tongues of angels" I Corinthians 13:1, Geisler says, "is probably a figure of speech meaning 'to speak most eloquently.' Even if this is to be taken literally, every time angels spoke in the Bible they did so in actual language that people could understand."...

"

Edited August 30, 2007 by T-Bone

[waysider]

Language experts told you that speaking in tongues was gobbledygook but Jesus didn't!

Interesting. :)

You are correct; Jesus did not tell me it was gobbledygook.

He also didn't tell me it was a '48 Packard or a new way to do the boogaloo.

Come to think of it, I don't think he really has a whole lot to say on the subject, one way or another.

Look, Oldies, if you don't want Jesus (or a knowledge of his importance to modern Christianity) to be a part of your personal walk, it's really none of my business. That's between you and God.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe God is saying to himself.

"Criminy, why don't these wayfers just tell me what the heck they want instead of going through this ritual of jibberish?"

Do you think He wouldn't understand you if you came to him and expressed your heart in your native language?

Give it a try. How can it hurt you?

[oldiesman]

Look, Oldies, if you don't want Jesus (or a knowledge of his importance to modern Christianity) to be a part of your personal walk, ...

Golly, all the knowledge of his importance to modern Christianity I can read from the bible, it's revelation already given.

As far as wanting Jesus to be a part of my personal walk, if it's available it sounds great but you still haven't explained what exactly you're talking about.

I don't get "the personal walk with Jesus" thingy. It should be explainable, no?

Does Jesus , the man Christ Jesus talk to you? What does he say?

[doojable]

Oldies - I wasn't saying that speaking in tongues was gobbletygook. BUT how do you know that you are speaking a real language?

It's a valid question.

The point is that not everything that we believe(d) and were taught is spelled out in Scripture. If you want to play the "how do you know" game then be prepared to catch that ball when it thrown back at you.

[oldiesman]

I don't even know why SIT should be mentioned here. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

Assuming you don't want to speak in tongues, no problem. It is a spiritual manifestion but if some feel its not a language or not worth doing, then that's their belief. I believe different, but folks are entitled to believe what they will.

But an assertion has been made of a "personal relationship and communing with Jesus" and that twi was wrong and/or deficient with this part of Christianity.

I'd like to explore that and see if the assertion is true, and can be explained because at this point its all gobbledygook to me.

I think you should try to explain it in detail from the scripture, otherwise you shouldn't expect folks who respect the scriptures to follow or believe what you say, and you certainly shouldn't condemn or disparage twi and others for not doing something you can't really explain.

Edited August 30, 2007 by oldiesman

[WordWolf]

I don't even know why SIT should be mentioned here. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

Says the guy who kept saying "stick strictly to the topic of the thread.

Well, SIT is something we learned taking pfal, and you still believe it.

It's about as on-topic as anything anyone's brought up.

[oldiesman]

I still believe it, but I'm not stressing anyone else's beliefs about it or condemning or disparaging anyone if they don't do it.

In contrast, an assertion has been made of a "personal relationship and communing with Jesus" and that PFAL and twi was wrong and/or deficient with this part of Christianity.

I think that assertion should be thoroughly explained because I think its a bum rap otherwise.

[Bumpy]

I still believe it, but I'm not stressing anyone else's beliefs about it or condemning or disparaging anyone if they don't do it.

In contrast, an assertion has been made of a "personal relationship and communing with Jesus" and that PFAL and twi was wrong and/or deficient with this part of Christianity.

I think that assertion should be thoroughly explained because I think its a bum rap otherwise.

Oldiesman, man, you know man, what the reggae guys say about love and music and being a kind of lovin’ kind of guy, and not jerkin’ the chain of the people...like you know man all this discourse is not so profitalbe like to the benefit of people who are just trying to help out and all...So maybe you might just like to reflect on that and sew some happy seeds in a field of good soil with all the word you learned...

[oldiesman]

You are funny Bumpy.

Have a nice evening. :)

[T-Bone]

Golly, all the knowledge of his importance to modern Christianity I can read from the bible, it's revelation already given.

As far as wanting Jesus to be a part of my personal walk, if it's available it sounds great but you still haven't explained what exactly you're talking about.

I don't get "the personal walk with Jesus" thingy. It should be explainable, no?

Does Jesus , the man Christ Jesus talk to you? What does he say?

[shrug] okay – I'll continue to play along – I wonder why you're making it so difficult – it's plainly stated in the gospels - in this passage below it kinda ties it all together…the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit working together…

John 14: 15-27 NIV

15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, "But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?"

23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

25 "All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

The "personal walk with Jesus" has something to do with loving obedience to His teaching – don't yah think?

Does any of the above passage answer some of your questions? Are you even interested in the type of relationship mentioned in the above passage?

Edited August 30, 2007 by T-Bone

[anotherDan]

I don't get "the personal walk with Jesus" thingy. It should be explainable, no?

Oldies, Tbone has done some groundbreaking for me. Those were good verses he quoted, and worth reviewing, IMO. The issue here lies with the concept of Jesus being Lord. "Why do you call me 'lord, lord,' and not do the things that I say?" There are those who call him "lord" as you know, that he will then say to, "depart from me, you that work inequity; I never knew you." Jesus said that the obedient were those to whom he would reveal the Father, and himself, and they would make their abode with these. That's the personal walk. If Jesus is Lord, we ought to be doing the things he said.

We do ourselves a lot of harm hanging on to the dispensationalism paradigm. We exclude the teachings of Jesus in favor of Paul. We separate ourselves from his teachings, declaring that they are "not addressed" to us. This is another very catchy theory that the good Doctor set forth as a mathematically accurate right-dividing of the Word. Strange, don't you think, that the Gospels were written after the Pauline corpus. These are those which preserve his teachings. Paul, however, was the groundbreaker, and his inspired writings are essential to the whole picture. But Jesus' teachings are hard to obey. It is a narrow path that leads to life, and few there be that find it. Yes, it's "whosoever," the invitation is open to all, but to take up one's cross and follow Jesus is ridiculed by the sons-of-God-with-all-power gallery. I wouldn't want to go to church with YOU!

Fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ is not optional. Except you abide in him, you wither away. Without him, you can do nothing. Lordship is a very "personal walk with Jesus thingy." That's a very short version of the explaination you're asking for. Would you like to know more?

Edited August 30, 2007 by anotherDan

[T-Bone]

You know Oldies, I am sorry I opened my heart up to you.

I never expected such a brutal response.

It will never happen again.

Sunesis, earlier Tonto said how much she appreciates what you bring to Grease Spot. I also wanted to add that you are one of our favorite posters – we've even talked about some of your posts off-line [i dunno – is that talking behind your back? ]. I've been enjoying Barnhouse's Revelation commentary that you recommended to me in a pm......the spiritual intensity and love for Christ in your posts makes you one of my favorite "commentaries" as well…good stuff!!!!!!!!!

Edited August 31, 2007 by T-Bone

[WordWolf]

Sunesis, earlier Tonto said how much she appreciates what you bring to Grease Spot. I also wanted to add that you are one of our favorite posters – we've even talked about some of your posts off-line [i dunno – is that talking behind your back? ]. I've been enjoying Barnhouse's Revelation commentary that you recommended to me in a pm......the spiritual intensity and love for Christ in your posts makes you one of my favorite "commentaries" as well…good stuff!!!!!!!!!

Right- wisdom is justified of her children.

Edited August 31, 2007 by WordWolf

[Sunesis]

Aw shucks T-bone, Tonto and Wordwolf Thank you for your kind words.

Dan, it amazes me too, the ridicule of a relationship and communion with our Lord, Jesus Christ, by the Sons-of-God-with-all-Power folks. I really never thought I'd see born again believers call a relationship with Christ evil, by saying that such a relationship is communing with the devil.

They should be on their knees asking Christ's forgiveness for their hardness of heart and hubris for having the audacity to call Christ's relationship and communion with his children evil and devilish. Accusing, other Christians whom they do not know, of having a relationship with the devil and not Christ.

That is evil - truly. It is hateful and hurtful.

May God have mercy on their souls.

Edited August 31, 2007 by Sunesis

[WhiteDove]

Wow. So then prayer and the giving of thanks to God in the name of Jesus Christ doesn't work? Folks must pray to Jesus first who will then convey the message to God?

You know, I can't believe former twi folks actually believe this.

Me either Oldies .... But there it sits :huh: :blink:

[doojable]

Me either Oldies .... But there it sits :huh: :blink:

...Like a duck.

[dmiller]

Thanks Johniam.

I think that's a legitimate question but actually that wasn't what I was thinking; what I thought was, "how do you know you're not communing with the Holy Spirit, or God; instead of Jesus?? How do you distinguish between them when communing? Is there a difference in how or what they each communicate?

Another question; isn't God big enough to reveal his heart to you Himself? Since we now have holy spirit... why would God require Jesus to explain his Father's heart to you when the Father Himself can explain it directly to you via the Holy Spirit?

Hmmmmm. I've gotten as far as that page (the quote above) ------

so this comment might be answered in the coupla pages I see I haven't read, BUT:

Oldies -- Did (or did not) the Pharoah give orders to the Isrealites and Egypt,

when Joseph was second in command over all???

No -- He didn't. He left it up to his second in command (Joseph).

I know you MUST have heard about types, and anti-types in the Word.

How one fore-shadows the other as an example of what is to come.

Pharoah and Joseph were the type, and God and Jesus were the anti-type.

Aaron (as High priest) was the type, Jesus (as High priest) was the anti-type.

Noah (DEAD for three days and nights in the belly of the *whale*) was the type,

Jesus (DEAD for three days and three nights in the belly of the earth), was the anti-type.

BOTH saw resurrection from the dead.

So my question to you (and all others with your mindset is ----)

WHY would God relegate responsibility, if He could do it Himself???

In some cases -- Yes -- it was up to Him. In others -- Not on your life.

And --- THAT, (IMO) IS WHERE TWI MISSED THE BOAT.

Sure -- Pray to God, renew your mind to His word, and all will be well.

Where's the praying to Jesus, who was delegated the authority to *Heal All Hurts*????

Is He LESS significant than Joseph was in the times of the Pharoah??

I don't think so, do you?

So --What's wrong with praying to (or expecting answers from) Jesus??

God gave him a job to do. Ya wanna see Him in the *unemployment* line???

Edited August 31, 2007 by dmiller

[Larry N Moore]

Aw shucks T-bone, Tonto and Wordwolf Thank you for your kind words.

Dan, it amazes me too, the ridicule of a relationship and communion with our Lord, Jesus Christ, by the Sons-of-God-with-all-Power folks. I really never thought I'd see born again believers call a relationship with Christ evil, by saying that such a relationship is communing with the devil.

They should be on their knees asking Christ's forgiveness for their hardness of heart and hubris for having the audacity to call Christ's relationship and communion with his children evil and devilish. Accusing, other Christians whom they do not know, of having a relationship with the devil and not Christ.

That is evil - truly. It is hateful and hurtful.

May God have mercy on their souls.

Sunesis, don't you realize that in your previous post you essentially stated that Oldies DOESN'T have a relationship with Jesus?