I'm curious, does anyone here on ATS speak in tongues, and if so, can you explain it or back it up scriptually?

For those of you who aren't Christians, how do you percieve the whole speaking in tongues idea? Do you think it's wacked out, crazy, or psychosomatic? Or, do you believe it is really a different language we speak?

Mods, please let this stick around in the religious conspiracy forum for a little bit. I'm going somewhere with it, I just want a foundation before I begin. If y'all doubt this, check out my other threads where the conspiracy was questioned

EDIT: Made the subject title case. Whoops!



[edit on 1-29-2005 by junglejake]

It could be that speaking in tounges could be a form of telepathy. Otherwise it is a gift from the holy spirit.

If I were to speak to you you would be thinking I was speaking your native language with a perfect accent, but the same would be true to an african bushman sitting next to you.

The same thing happen...with people who practice Voodoo, when they reach a certain High (mentally) during the ceremonies...!

I can give you a few scientific facts (take then for what you will)
A pschosis called Glossislalia [sic] is a temporary condition of "Mental uphoria" whereby the subject utters undistinguisable words and gutterals, that have no form or pattern, other than occassional repetition of certain phrases...
they occur in most religious rites of most religions upon the attainment of a spiritual fervor or highly mental Uphoric state.
And yes, it happens with almost the same "words" in almost all religions that involve deep prayer or meditation.
So my question is this?
if it is truly words from GOD, then is everyone that uses tongues in their worship ready to accept that theirs in not the only religion that hears GOD?
that would stump a few AOG's that i know... but the interesting thing is that My family church is AOG and everysince i brought this up with my father, the church no longer practices tongues... apparently someone did the research and was not ready to admit they weren't special among GODS religions...
I personally have a little different opinion of what tongues are, but will reserve it as it makes no difference... i don't speak them.


[edit on 29-1-2005 by LazarusTheLong]

The tongues issue is a tricky one in church circles, and Paul dealt with it in the first book to the Corinthians. I'll just give a few thoughts on it without actually getting in too deep.

I don't think tongues are very necessary today. In the time of the New Testament, people spoke in tongues frequently because it was necessary for them to spread the gospel to those of other languages, which they couldn't speak. As well, tongues was not mumbo-jumbo, but was rather the supernatural ability to speak other languages that one had never learned, contrary to the teachings of some of the "tongues" churches today, in which anybody can hop up and talk nonsense and be considered a saint.

On a more humorous note, I have a great aunt who told of a relative of hers who went to a church and someone started speaking in tongues. She declares that all the person did was say "cheese and crackers" over and over extremely fast.

thankyou for the spelling/definition madhatter...

I saw a woman fall down and start speaking in tongues once. I had attended a service with my (then) girlfriend at a Church of God. I was raised in the very white-bread world of the Baptist church. I had never experience anything like that before or after. Very...unsettling. I have no ideas about it except that if it is real (i.e. the spirit of the Lord moving through you) I would love to experience it personally.

Parts of my family have always attended church and from the age of 11 I went to church pretty much every time the doors were open. I attended a church where they firmly believed in speaking in tongues and have personally witnessed it many times throughout my life. I have seen both women and men speak in languages they did not know and could not speak unless they were 'in the spirit' as they call it. I have witnessed people speak in tongues and immediately after a silence would come over the entire church sometimes and then someone else would 'interpret' what was said in this unfamiliar language.

At the age of 14 I was 'possessed by the holy spirit' and spoke in tongues. It was a very real experience and just speaking of it...even now...makes my heart race and my palms sweaty. I was at church and after the sermon they had what they call alter call. At the time I had really become quite active in the church and believed very strongly in the ways and teachings of the church. Anyways...alter call happens and this feeling came over me like I needed prayer. It was a very strong feeling, deep inside my soul, a feeling so strong that I instantly started to cry even before I made it to the alter. So I approach the preacher and he asks me what it is I need prayer for....I could not answer him...I was consumed with this feeling and all I could do was cry. The moment he laid his hand on my head I was taken over by a feeling of euphoria. It was almost like a black out...but I was very aware of it. It paralyzed me I guess you could say. So after a few minutes of this praying and with a few other church members joining in by this time all praying together....my tounge and my mouth felt as if it were not mine...as if I was not in control of myself...At this point I began to speak in 'tongues'....To this day I have no idea what I said and it was not interpreted by anyone.

At the time and for a few years after I firmly believed that I had experienced the holy spirit and had been possessed by it and given what was explained to me as a gift....

I'm going to make a long story short here....I've been up all night and wish I had seen this thread earlier....maybe my reply would make more sense if I had...lol

Anyways...I will note that I am agnostic.....Today I do not believe that I was 'in the spirit'....I have come to believe over the course of my life that what happened to me and what happens to others in those situations is a collective energy thing....I don't know how to explain it...and maybe after some sleep I will come back and try to explain it better but I think that it is some type of effect caused by the collective believing it....A sort of projection of energy I guess.......Every time I seen these things occur it has been in a church setting with many people. (when I personally experienced it there were over 100 people in the church)

Now I am not saying it isn't real...because what happens to people is very real. Whether it is 'God's' words actually coming through an individual...that is up for debate in my head. Where this language comes from? That is another mystery to me. I often think of that experience but the more I separated myself from the church and its indoctrination of people (age 17 was the last time I stepped foot in a church) the more I felt it was what I said earlier....some type of collective thought. Why it comes out as some incomprehensible language that only a few can decipher I do not know....is it really deciphered by those that say they feel 'the spirit' and interpret it? This I do not know either.....

But I can say I have personally experienced this type of thing and seen many others experience it as well. After I learned of it happening in other religions and not just Christianity...that is when I began to question whether it was 'God's' true words just collective thought. I still have many questions about this type of thing..

I will add that I'm sorry to say that for me personally....it does not make me a believer in 'God' per say....it does make me believe there are many things around me that I do not understand and it makes me realize the power of thought. Thoughts really do have powers far beyond our current understanding and I think this is a prime example of that.

The language spoken? Maybe it is some primordial language we all have hidden deep in our subconscious and that collective energy allows us to tap into that...?...I don't know....just a thought

Woah, it has been five years!


What was the conspiracy, Jake?

I was raised attending 'The Church of God', a very close church family no matter which one my family attended. I witnesses speaking in tongues weekly. There were some members who would get in this state almost instantly, and they were, to me as a child, very loud and scary. I would hide behind my mother or my aunt and watch though. I saw folks fall into the floor, roll around, while this was happening to them. One sunday my mother, who was always reserved during these events, stood up and while holding my hand and my sister's hand she began to talk in tongues, one thing I remember is that they would all 'say' the same things over and over. My mother, during this time she spoke in tongues, was holding our hands and sqeezing to the point that it hurt, her eyes were like a zombie or something, she was jerking at the end of 'sentences' , the whole thing scared us, afterward, she hit the floor and passed out. She remebered talking in tongues, she said she could hear herself and knew exactly what the words meant, and it was all homeage to God, praise to God, but she said she couldn't exlpain how she knew what it meant.

To this day, not 15 miles from where I sit, there are snake handlers and arson drinkers, and there are still a lot of Church of God locations here, I do not attend church myself.

I believe that my mother and aunt sincerly think they either were talking to God or God was speaking through them, it was called being in the spirit, as though God is in you.

Corinthians 14:27-28
If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be two or at most three, and each in turn, and one should interpret. But if there is no interpreter, the person should keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.

Makes sense.

Originally posted by Unregistered

Corinthians 14:27-28
If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be two or at most three, and each in turn, and one should interpret. But if there is no interpreter, the person should keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.

Makes sense.

In my church, this is the guideline we follow. The original speaking in tongues meant people spoke a language they did not know, AND listeners heard the message in their langauge, so they could understand. It requires there be an understanding of the language by one or the other.
To some, the gift comes as a knack for learning languages. For myself, I can easily understand English spoken with a heavy "foreign" accent, several times when all other people involved could not even identify that English was being spoken. For some, it comes when needed.
An example I've read about (sorry I cannot cite, it's been a long time since reading this), is a woman was having a house tour of a large estate, with live in servants. The visitor only knew English, the maid, only Spanish. As they were approaching the pool, the visitor heard the maid calling for help because she could not swim and a small child had fallen in the pool. She ran to the pool, the child was pointed out at the bottom, and the visitor jumped in and retrieved the child, who was successfully saved. The other people heard only the visitor speaking English, and the maid speaking only Spanish. After the child was saved, the need was no longer there and they once again could not understand each other.
Standing in church and "speaking in tongues" does not involve understanding. My husband knew a man who spoke a Slavic language, stood in a church and in that language said the Lord's Prayer. Others jumped at the chance to interpret, but no one who did correctly.
So they were not speaking in tongues. They were not caught up in the Spirit. They were being deceived and deceiving only.

Interesting thread.. I don't know much about speaking in tongues, I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual.
I have had nights where I've woken my then girlfriend up by speaking gibberish, like I was talking to someone.

I don't know what to make of it, or if it's even common/possible to speak in tongues while sleeping.. it could very well just have been some crazy dream but then again some people say that we sometimes communicate with entities while asleep.

Interesting nonetheless..

OK. So I was raised AOG and ended up going to an Apostilic church as an adult. I do not attend church now for my own personal reasons. I was only 8 years old when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. So, explain to me how an 8 year old is going to fake it??? I still speak in tongues to this day. It is not gibberish. It is an actual language that over the years, I have heard others speaking the same language. And the gifts of the Holy Spirit have not stopped operating. I am a walking, talking, breathing miracle. Literally, I had a team of doctors from the CDC look me in my eyes and tell me that because of me they now believe that God is real. They couldn't cure me, but God did. One man and my mother prayed for me openly in front of the nurses and doctors in the ICU. I had died for 7 minutes and then was in a coma for a month and a half. Almost a 4 month stay in the hospital. There will always be doubters and skeptics. And usually the gifts are received by the "laying on of hands", but no-one touched me when i received tongues. I also have the gift of interpretation. And it hasn't even been a year since I openly gave interpretation in a church. So, God is still operating. He promised to never leave us or forsake us.

Originally posted by Unregistered

Corinthians 14:27-28
If anyone speaks in a tongue, let it be two or at most three, and each in turn, and one should interpret. But if there is no interpreter, the person should keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.

Makes sense.

Let me start by saying that this is just my observation from personal experience. It is in no way intended as a generalization about people whose various faiths support speaking in tongues.
That being said - some friends and I visited a church of god a couple of times after being asked to come by a mutual friend whose fiance was the youth pastor. None of us had ever experienced the speaking in tongues phenomena b/c we grew up in churches where the above scripture was considered correct.
What we all felt after leaving, was not that we had witnessed a deep spiritual event - but something more like 40 or so people hollering unintelligible nonsense, rolling on the floor, and generally trying to "outdo" one another in this spectacle. As a result, we were unable to take anything from the sermon. I cannot vouch as to whether this one-upmanship is common in these churches, but it was very distracting. I couldn't and still can't help but feel that these people were making a mockery of their own faith. Just my 2cents.