Page 138 - God's Church through the Ages - Student Textbook

23.5 Let’s Personalize this Lesson…

Activity: As we have studied church history, notice that the “gift of tongues” has not been mentioned
over the almost 2000 years of church history since the 1 century. Suddenly it reappears in 1906 with
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the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, California, USA. I Corinthians 13:8 says that tongues will
“cease.” The Greek literally means, will “cease of itself” or “fade away.” That’s exactly what we have
seen in church history. It ceased with the Apostles. Yet almost 1900 years later, it reappeared as
gibberish. The original tongues were definite foreign languages (see Acts 2:8-11) that people could understand.
Today’s tongues are considered “angelic languages” but a true analysis is that what people experience today as
tongues is not a language at all, but gibberish or repetitive sounds. Today’s “tongues” are not the Bible tongues
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of the 1 century!

The charismatics have made these experiences equal with God’s revelation. Can you see how this is nothing
more than Neo-orthodoxy infiltrating the church? When my experience or my revelation becomes God’s words,
then we have entered a very slippery path into doctrinal heresy.

What’s your view or what do you think (as the Neo-orthodox would ask)?

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