This is a problem for many who cannot decide who is directing their lives. Watching a Pentecostal service in which the pastor called people to the front to receive the Spirit he had to constantly reinforce the message. While they were drawn by faith to the notion that they could receive the Spirit and through it hear God speak to them their doubts against the idea were also obvious.
Watching the crowd that descended on that platform it came to me that how would they know when God is speaking to them? These people have never had the experience of tongues, the language of the Spirit. They have never heard the messages that follow and the insight that the connection brings to them.
In many ways its like a learning curve. First one experiences the infilling of Spirit and that comes in with great power and not, as this pastor suggested, with the speaking in tongues alone. It is called the ‘Pentecostal Experience’ because of the reference to it in the New Testament when the tongues of fire were experienced and they all spoke in tongues.
This is something that is puzzling as the contents of that part of the bible was compiled by Jerome, the doctor of the Catholic Church, after it was established by Constantine. It was scribed some 300 plus years after the so-called event and there would not have been a surviving record of anything of that nature as Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD.
It is also in contradiction to reincarnation and the fact that everyone is back who has lived before (Jog 5:19-21). Yet it is in perfect harmony with the promise in the Old Testament.
“For with stammering lips and another tongue will God speak to this people” Isaiah 28:11
There is no denying that God does speak to us and that is through tongues and interpretation, and that is the bit that is left off the New Testament prophecy. Because the tongues are not manufactured by us but is an uncontrollable outpouring of words in a foreign language, which we cannot decipher, there has to be an interpreter.
In my experience this works well when two people who are both filled with the power pray together. The power build and one speaks in tongues and the other gets the interpretation.
The message is always correct and is never frivolous. That means that it has some important function and direction for those present. It also means that one person alone rarely gets both the tongues and a message, so that the one on its own can be dubious.
It’s rue, therefore, that people can be filled with the Spirit by presenting themselves and then speaking in tongues but to hear God one has to have an interpretation. That is how we know that God has spoken. Along with the message comes a great feeling of power inside and that can be strong enough for a miracle to take place. Only those filled with the Spirit are used in this way and can deliver it.
