Wow, that makes a lot of sense. However I have always been reserved about this. Since it seems like just a lot of babbling with no edification. But what do I know. Since I don't have the gift. But if it is real, I could definitely use it in my prayer closet. To edify myself, since I am tormented with rejection. And need to find a new purpose for my life. And can't seem to find my way out of my rut. Please say a prayer for me. Thank you
I’ve heard from others that those who asked for this gift all received it, although we experienced different processes of sanctification. I pray that the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you start praying in tongues!🙏
I have no doubt that you have the holy spirit. But don't you think God put brothers and sisters that also have the holy Spirit to warn us of dangers that they see. And if you cannot even watch the video. It looks like pride to me. Pride is a great sin. It will hinder us and hold us back from so many great things that God wants to give us. All I'm asking is for you to watch the video and pray some more. Perhaps you really have the gift, but just need to receive another gift to accompany it. Called discernment of spirits.
I did watch it. But I discovered everyone who is "warning" against tongues don't speak in tongues. This channel is very knowledgeable, but I don't know who is running it and do they speak in tongues or not.
Hi Alice, that is actually not true; many Christians who are warning against 'that' had 'that' before. I don't want to put all of 'those' are wrong, but we should be careful that 'that sounds' are really the tongues that Bible is describing or not. If there is any little doubt of it which Bible is not specifically teaching, we need to choose to be conservative and careful to teach something unclear.
I know you are working with a good will. Thanks, Alice.
Okay fair enough, just remember woman is the weaker vessel, and sometimes needs the humble opinion of a man. Scripture talks about it being wise to listen to the council of many.
And also many have gone before you who have been very close to the lord. But have been LED astray. So don't put yourself up there too high, because the Lord will bring you low. Remember he opposes the proud, and draws an eye to the humble. I'm not saying it's not real, I'm just saying be watchful and vigilant. Keep your mind open. You said you have been longing after this gift for a long time and praying for it. It has been my experience that the devil always comes through before God does. We have to be discerning. And without the discerning spirit, because your heart lungs and desires for that gift. You received it without questioning. If I was you I would pursue the discerning of spirits next.
Hi Alice, thank you for sharing your beautiful experience. One thing, I believe, we should be careful is that prayers in bible are not majorly described in the state where we don't really logically understanding; in most cases, I think all cases though, the prayers in the bible are, as you said in your beautiful experience, from the heart with understandable language with Holy Ghost. I believe however, as Hannah was praying in God's temple, when we are in a certain emotional state, any sound could come out from our mouth, which might not be an exact vocabulary but sound, which can show our emotion. Thanks again Alice for your sharing. God bless you.
Alice, thanks for this posting. I appreciate you exhorting people to pray for this gift and that it might happen differently for them. Also, thank you for talking about how tongues should be used in the church/"saints-gathering-with-one-another" setting.
I do intercede for people but I have never spoken in tongues. When I became a Christian I had a strong urge to pray for the gift of the discernment of spirits -- which I have. Looking forward to reading more of your writings.
Thank you brother. I believe that as long as you pursue the gift of tongues, you will receive it. I understand the burden of being an intercessor because I am one myself. While others may slip, we cannot. We are vigilantly watching over our tribe. When the enemy can’t get to us because we are steadfast, he attacks people around us. We need prayers too!
Yeah I agree with you. I have always been leery about this strange tongue movement. If you can't understand what you're saying how can you be sure that it's from God. I wouldn't want to be babbling in church. I don't think that's biblical. But it would be useful in the closet if it truly is from God and it will edify me and others. However There are obviously many more beneficial gifts to be seeking after.
One question regarding the mind as the receptor, how do we make sense the vision to our cognition though? Will it be in the form of dreams? If we receive the communication from God while in the awake state, how do we differentiate it from, let's say, visual hallucination? Because we know there are certain subgroup of emotionally-heightened Christians who may have psychotic features due to underlying major depression or even perhaps schizophrenia.
Your diagram clearly helps a lot in simplifying the concept so I hope you continue doing it for these kind of complex topics. I think how you frame the mechanism of speaking in tongues is quite similar to some sort of positive feedback mechanism based on how endocrine organs work, where the more intense the prayer, the more it strengthens the communication signals from the Holy Spirit.
You ask another million-dollar question! And thank you for your encouraging feedback.
I need more time to practice this vision thing before I can write about it clearly. But here's what I found in scripture that might help you understand what vision is (how it feels like when you have it):
Numbers 24:4
"He hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:"
So it feels like a "trance," but not always.
In Acts 10:10, Peter also saw vision when he was in the temple fasting:
"And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance"
Thanks for the answer. Those bible passages are quite interesting explanations. It means that our mind jumps into some sort of subsconscious state to receive the vision from God, but it works in such mysterious way that for me personally it triggers more questions than answers because the brain is very complex organ and the spiritual correlation with glossolalia is very hard to comprehend. I hope you keep exploring deeper into this field of Christian practice and share it with us when you’ve gained full understanding of it. Keep up the good work.
Tongue prayer flows like from your mouth, like a freestyle prayer. You cannot have self-consciousness during tongue prayer, does that mean no make-up or lipstick 💄? I'd like for you to adhere to your "I have no self-consciousness" video. I was excitedly impressed of what it represented, a trillion dollar industry threatened by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you won't do it, I for sure will keep that Christianly No self-consciousness, no make-up trend fire alive 🔥 ✝
Throughout Acts, one form of tongues is the ability to speak intelligibly to those who don't know your language. There are documented modern examples of this form of tongues in the Athonite St. Paisios, who spoke of Christ to a Japanese Buddhist man without a translator.
Yet even St. Paul says he'd rather speak five words of understanding than ten thousand in tongues, rating many other gifts (prophecy, discernment, edification of our Brothers and Sisters) as above tongues.
In Orthodox Holy Tradition, it was noted very early in Church history that the "gift of tongues" had left the land. The Desert Fathers of the second Century rediscovered this gift in the form of the Jesus Prayer - "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" repeated many times in deep meditation.
It's difficult to believe that the wisdom of these very early Church Fathers should be cast aside in favor of the practice of 20th Century Pentecostals, many of whom roll around on the floor, bark like animals, and many other strange behavior that looks more like a demoniac than a Christian. Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose's "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" is a very good treatise on the fruits of the modern Charismatic movement.
There are demonic tongues (just as the devil wants to fake every good thing from God. But the difference is that demonic tongues (such as in Hindu, Buddhist chanting rites) control the person, whereas with Biblical tongues, you have free will to stop and start the tongue. Christians may oppose tongues because they are afraid of demonic tongues... but Matt 7:9-11 tells us God will not give us stone when we ask for bread, snake instead of fish!
I have many occasions when God gave me a burden of prayer for someone or some situation, only groaning and interceding in the spirit needs praying in tongues, not knowing in the carnal mind what I am interceding for... until after the breakthrough and verifying with the person or situation what exactly it was about that I interceded in tongues for.
Lastly, when Paul exhorted us in 1 Thess 5:17 that we "pray without ceasing", the only way I can do it without exhaustion and running out of English words, is to pray in tongues! Like I recently had to travel to Korea on a mission, and from the time I boarded the plane to returning back to Australia 2 weeks later...I prayed without ceasing in tongue for the blood of Jesus Christ to cover the mission. During the 2 weeks, I dozed off to sleep at night, praying in tongues, and I work up in the morning, with tongues on my lips. So practically, praying without ceasing is like desiring God's 24x7 presence... praying continuously for more than 30 minutes (even when "under the breadth" whilst eating, having conversations with someone, etc.) as the situation allows, and not having more than 30 mins break without prayer in tongues.
Thank God for His wisdom in equipping us with this spiritual gift!
So what's the difference between this and the Spirit praying in and with us by groans that cannot be understood (Rom 8)?
Should we not prioritize praying the Scripture, especially the Psalms and the prayers of Paul as our initial target? I can see how these would lead to groaning, tears, even the utterances you are writing about here...
The Psalms have given me great courage to pray for God's loving justice (Isa 2, Prov 10:25), even the destruction of the wicked (for their own good). Psalm 143 specifically tells us that God's unfailing love silences enemies and destroys foes. Matt 18:6 and Luke 16 show us this is actual for their good, just as God's wrath (fellowship of suffering) is good for us, His children (see Isa 26:9-10 and Deut 32). This gives proper meaning to "thy kingdom come, thy will be done."
"I just open my mouth and let God decide what to pray for." But then what happens to free will. How do you know that it is God the one deciding what to pray for and not some other entity?
You bring up a good question. So it depends on who is the one praying. I know for me it's God because I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and I am led by the Spirit. But for people who haven't received the Holy Spirit, or worse—living in sins and under demonic oppression/possession, it is hard to say.
"Diverse kinds of tongues" is the ability to speak many languages. "Interpretation of tongues" is the ability to understand different languages. They're two different gifts of the Spirit and some of the Apostolic Church had both of them.
St. Paul is not speaking of the modern jibberish "angel language" called tongues which has no historical precedent before the early 20th Century Pentecostals, who were financed in large part by Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.
Many gifts may have a fair bit of overlap. Writers, orators, language experts, singers, intuitives, spiritually sensitive types and the bi/multi-lingual each and all could already have a possible claim on the gift of tongues since each of these other gifts would have a profound impact, at least tangentially, on the compasity and top end of possibility- potential of what tongues could do. Thus, the 'real labguage' tongues and expressive form of tongues can be thought of as contiguous and even on a spectrum of talent/ability.
Acts 2:1-12 explicitly clarifies that tongues is the ability to speak in foreign languages shortly after Pentecost - a useful skill for Apostles being sent across the world. St. Thomas goes as far as India, where we still have record of the Churches he founded.
A Pentecostal may argue that "tongues" is a sort of prayer language in the Pauline Epistles, and perhaps that's true. But the Desert Fathers of the 2nd Century tell us clearly that insomuch as such a language was imparted at Pentecost, it had since been lost to the monastics of that age.
But the burden of proof does not lie on me, or even the Holy Canon of Scripture assembled by those who succeeded the Apostles - it lies on modern Pentecostals and Charismatics who believe they've rediscovered lost gifts of the Apostolic age 1,900 years later somewhere in Kansas. A bold claim that requires even bolder evidence.
Have you ever questioned why you're a Protestant, Alice? The Logos has clearly given you great discernment, and your heritage as a Chinese gives you a respect for history that most Americans lack. Christ's Church is 2,000 years old and has a lot of history before Martin Luther:
I'm not a Protestant. Yet every Catholic call me a Protestant. I have no denomination. I agree with you on Acts 2:1-12 I never said speaking in tongues is not speaking foreign languages. But it's not merely speaking foreign languages.
That may be true and as you note St. Paul's epistles do lend credence to this point. But the burden of proof is still on today's speakers of "tongues" to connect the modern practice of speaking jibberish with what is described by the First Century Church. Modern tongues was developed amidst a backdrop of occult mediumship in the early 1900s so it's an important question to grapple with as we follow the commandment to "test the spirits."
Presumably at least some of these modern Charismatic tongues-speakers would also have the ability to miraculously speak foreign languages but we don't see that as we do with modern Athonite monks.
I'm not Roman Catholic. Forgive me for trying to categorize your beliefs, it's just that when most Americans say they're "non-denominational" what they typically mean is that they're from the 1960s counterculture wave of Charismatic Evangelicals that started in California and eventually became organizations like Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Hillsong, et. al.
Perhaps it's not fair to call these groups Protestant in the strict sense of the word but they're unquestionably descendants of Protestantism.
Wow, that makes a lot of sense. However I have always been reserved about this. Since it seems like just a lot of babbling with no edification. But what do I know. Since I don't have the gift. But if it is real, I could definitely use it in my prayer closet. To edify myself, since I am tormented with rejection. And need to find a new purpose for my life. And can't seem to find my way out of my rut. Please say a prayer for me. Thank you
I’ve heard from others that those who asked for this gift all received it, although we experienced different processes of sanctification. I pray that the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you start praying in tongues!🙏
Thank you
I know you're excited about your new gift. But I'm concerned for you.
I have attached a video that expresses my concerns.
https://youtu.be/I95xEscuCyk?si=v5GD1bIQ7AW_CKmq
Thank you…but. this is not gonna happen. People overemphasize Satan’s power. I have the Holy Spirit and fear nothing but God.
I have no doubt that you have the holy spirit. But don't you think God put brothers and sisters that also have the holy Spirit to warn us of dangers that they see. And if you cannot even watch the video. It looks like pride to me. Pride is a great sin. It will hinder us and hold us back from so many great things that God wants to give us. All I'm asking is for you to watch the video and pray some more. Perhaps you really have the gift, but just need to receive another gift to accompany it. Called discernment of spirits.
Peace and blessings
I did watch it. But I discovered everyone who is "warning" against tongues don't speak in tongues. This channel is very knowledgeable, but I don't know who is running it and do they speak in tongues or not.
Hi Alice, that is actually not true; many Christians who are warning against 'that' had 'that' before. I don't want to put all of 'those' are wrong, but we should be careful that 'that sounds' are really the tongues that Bible is describing or not. If there is any little doubt of it which Bible is not specifically teaching, we need to choose to be conservative and careful to teach something unclear.
I know you are working with a good will. Thanks, Alice.
Okay fair enough, just remember woman is the weaker vessel, and sometimes needs the humble opinion of a man. Scripture talks about it being wise to listen to the council of many.
And also many have gone before you who have been very close to the lord. But have been LED astray. So don't put yourself up there too high, because the Lord will bring you low. Remember he opposes the proud, and draws an eye to the humble. I'm not saying it's not real, I'm just saying be watchful and vigilant. Keep your mind open. You said you have been longing after this gift for a long time and praying for it. It has been my experience that the devil always comes through before God does. We have to be discerning. And without the discerning spirit, because your heart lungs and desires for that gift. You received it without questioning. If I was you I would pursue the discerning of spirits next.
Peace and blessings
Hi Alice, thank you for sharing your beautiful experience. One thing, I believe, we should be careful is that prayers in bible are not majorly described in the state where we don't really logically understanding; in most cases, I think all cases though, the prayers in the bible are, as you said in your beautiful experience, from the heart with understandable language with Holy Ghost. I believe however, as Hannah was praying in God's temple, when we are in a certain emotional state, any sound could come out from our mouth, which might not be an exact vocabulary but sound, which can show our emotion. Thanks again Alice for your sharing. God bless you.
Alice, thanks for this posting. I appreciate you exhorting people to pray for this gift and that it might happen differently for them. Also, thank you for talking about how tongues should be used in the church/"saints-gathering-with-one-another" setting.
I do intercede for people but I have never spoken in tongues. When I became a Christian I had a strong urge to pray for the gift of the discernment of spirits -- which I have. Looking forward to reading more of your writings.
Thank you brother. I believe that as long as you pursue the gift of tongues, you will receive it. I understand the burden of being an intercessor because I am one myself. While others may slip, we cannot. We are vigilantly watching over our tribe. When the enemy can’t get to us because we are steadfast, he attacks people around us. We need prayers too!
Yeah I agree with you. I have always been leery about this strange tongue movement. If you can't understand what you're saying how can you be sure that it's from God. I wouldn't want to be babbling in church. I don't think that's biblical. But it would be useful in the closet if it truly is from God and it will edify me and others. However There are obviously many more beneficial gifts to be seeking after.
This is so thought-provoking and deep.
One question regarding the mind as the receptor, how do we make sense the vision to our cognition though? Will it be in the form of dreams? If we receive the communication from God while in the awake state, how do we differentiate it from, let's say, visual hallucination? Because we know there are certain subgroup of emotionally-heightened Christians who may have psychotic features due to underlying major depression or even perhaps schizophrenia.
Your diagram clearly helps a lot in simplifying the concept so I hope you continue doing it for these kind of complex topics. I think how you frame the mechanism of speaking in tongues is quite similar to some sort of positive feedback mechanism based on how endocrine organs work, where the more intense the prayer, the more it strengthens the communication signals from the Holy Spirit.
You ask another million-dollar question! And thank you for your encouraging feedback.
I need more time to practice this vision thing before I can write about it clearly. But here's what I found in scripture that might help you understand what vision is (how it feels like when you have it):
Numbers 24:4
"He hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open:"
So it feels like a "trance," but not always.
In Acts 10:10, Peter also saw vision when he was in the temple fasting:
"And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance"
Hope this help!
Thanks for the answer. Those bible passages are quite interesting explanations. It means that our mind jumps into some sort of subsconscious state to receive the vision from God, but it works in such mysterious way that for me personally it triggers more questions than answers because the brain is very complex organ and the spiritual correlation with glossolalia is very hard to comprehend. I hope you keep exploring deeper into this field of Christian practice and share it with us when you’ve gained full understanding of it. Keep up the good work.
Tongue prayer flows like from your mouth, like a freestyle prayer. You cannot have self-consciousness during tongue prayer, does that mean no make-up or lipstick 💄? I'd like for you to adhere to your "I have no self-consciousness" video. I was excitedly impressed of what it represented, a trillion dollar industry threatened by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you won't do it, I for sure will keep that Christianly No self-consciousness, no make-up trend fire alive 🔥 ✝
Throughout Acts, one form of tongues is the ability to speak intelligibly to those who don't know your language. There are documented modern examples of this form of tongues in the Athonite St. Paisios, who spoke of Christ to a Japanese Buddhist man without a translator.
Yet even St. Paul says he'd rather speak five words of understanding than ten thousand in tongues, rating many other gifts (prophecy, discernment, edification of our Brothers and Sisters) as above tongues.
In Orthodox Holy Tradition, it was noted very early in Church history that the "gift of tongues" had left the land. The Desert Fathers of the second Century rediscovered this gift in the form of the Jesus Prayer - "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" repeated many times in deep meditation.
It's difficult to believe that the wisdom of these very early Church Fathers should be cast aside in favor of the practice of 20th Century Pentecostals, many of whom roll around on the floor, bark like animals, and many other strange behavior that looks more like a demoniac than a Christian. Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose's "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" is a very good treatise on the fruits of the modern Charismatic movement.
Amen.
There are demonic tongues (just as the devil wants to fake every good thing from God. But the difference is that demonic tongues (such as in Hindu, Buddhist chanting rites) control the person, whereas with Biblical tongues, you have free will to stop and start the tongue. Christians may oppose tongues because they are afraid of demonic tongues... but Matt 7:9-11 tells us God will not give us stone when we ask for bread, snake instead of fish!
I have many occasions when God gave me a burden of prayer for someone or some situation, only groaning and interceding in the spirit needs praying in tongues, not knowing in the carnal mind what I am interceding for... until after the breakthrough and verifying with the person or situation what exactly it was about that I interceded in tongues for.
Lastly, when Paul exhorted us in 1 Thess 5:17 that we "pray without ceasing", the only way I can do it without exhaustion and running out of English words, is to pray in tongues! Like I recently had to travel to Korea on a mission, and from the time I boarded the plane to returning back to Australia 2 weeks later...I prayed without ceasing in tongue for the blood of Jesus Christ to cover the mission. During the 2 weeks, I dozed off to sleep at night, praying in tongues, and I work up in the morning, with tongues on my lips. So practically, praying without ceasing is like desiring God's 24x7 presence... praying continuously for more than 30 minutes (even when "under the breadth" whilst eating, having conversations with someone, etc.) as the situation allows, and not having more than 30 mins break without prayer in tongues.
Thank God for His wisdom in equipping us with this spiritual gift!
So what's the difference between this and the Spirit praying in and with us by groans that cannot be understood (Rom 8)?
Should we not prioritize praying the Scripture, especially the Psalms and the prayers of Paul as our initial target? I can see how these would lead to groaning, tears, even the utterances you are writing about here...
The Psalms have given me great courage to pray for God's loving justice (Isa 2, Prov 10:25), even the destruction of the wicked (for their own good). Psalm 143 specifically tells us that God's unfailing love silences enemies and destroys foes. Matt 18:6 and Luke 16 show us this is actual for their good, just as God's wrath (fellowship of suffering) is good for us, His children (see Isa 26:9-10 and Deut 32). This gives proper meaning to "thy kingdom come, thy will be done."
"I just open my mouth and let God decide what to pray for." But then what happens to free will. How do you know that it is God the one deciding what to pray for and not some other entity?
You bring up a good question. So it depends on who is the one praying. I know for me it's God because I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and I am led by the Spirit. But for people who haven't received the Holy Spirit, or worse—living in sins and under demonic oppression/possession, it is hard to say.
Hey, can you please show me where in scripture it says that the gift of translation is different from the gift of tongues? Thanks.
1 Corinthians 12:10
"Diverse kinds of tongues" is the ability to speak many languages. "Interpretation of tongues" is the ability to understand different languages. They're two different gifts of the Spirit and some of the Apostolic Church had both of them.
St. Paul is not speaking of the modern jibberish "angel language" called tongues which has no historical precedent before the early 20th Century Pentecostals, who were financed in large part by Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.
Many gifts may have a fair bit of overlap. Writers, orators, language experts, singers, intuitives, spiritually sensitive types and the bi/multi-lingual each and all could already have a possible claim on the gift of tongues since each of these other gifts would have a profound impact, at least tangentially, on the compasity and top end of possibility- potential of what tongues could do. Thus, the 'real labguage' tongues and expressive form of tongues can be thought of as contiguous and even on a spectrum of talent/ability.
That’s a unique perspective no one has yet brought up!
how did you know Paul wasn't speaking that? And where in the Bible clarifies that speaking in tongues means the ability to speaking multiple language?
Acts 2:1-12 explicitly clarifies that tongues is the ability to speak in foreign languages shortly after Pentecost - a useful skill for Apostles being sent across the world. St. Thomas goes as far as India, where we still have record of the Churches he founded.
A Pentecostal may argue that "tongues" is a sort of prayer language in the Pauline Epistles, and perhaps that's true. But the Desert Fathers of the 2nd Century tell us clearly that insomuch as such a language was imparted at Pentecost, it had since been lost to the monastics of that age.
But the burden of proof does not lie on me, or even the Holy Canon of Scripture assembled by those who succeeded the Apostles - it lies on modern Pentecostals and Charismatics who believe they've rediscovered lost gifts of the Apostolic age 1,900 years later somewhere in Kansas. A bold claim that requires even bolder evidence.
Have you ever questioned why you're a Protestant, Alice? The Logos has clearly given you great discernment, and your heritage as a Chinese gives you a respect for history that most Americans lack. Christ's Church is 2,000 years old and has a lot of history before Martin Luther:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piVdrtgo7Xw
May the Lord bless you, have mercy on you, and save you. Thank you for your content and for taking the time to respond!
I'm not a Protestant. Yet every Catholic call me a Protestant. I have no denomination. I agree with you on Acts 2:1-12 I never said speaking in tongues is not speaking foreign languages. But it's not merely speaking foreign languages.
> But it's not merely speaking foreign languages.
That may be true and as you note St. Paul's epistles do lend credence to this point. But the burden of proof is still on today's speakers of "tongues" to connect the modern practice of speaking jibberish with what is described by the First Century Church. Modern tongues was developed amidst a backdrop of occult mediumship in the early 1900s so it's an important question to grapple with as we follow the commandment to "test the spirits."
Presumably at least some of these modern Charismatic tongues-speakers would also have the ability to miraculously speak foreign languages but we don't see that as we do with modern Athonite monks.
I'm not Roman Catholic. Forgive me for trying to categorize your beliefs, it's just that when most Americans say they're "non-denominational" what they typically mean is that they're from the 1960s counterculture wave of Charismatic Evangelicals that started in California and eventually became organizations like Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Hillsong, et. al.
Perhaps it's not fair to call these groups Protestant in the strict sense of the word but they're unquestionably descendants of Protestantism.
Ha-ku-na-ma-ta-ta 😂😭🤣🥲🙏