Dear Fellow Christian:

Your recent posting on today’s social media concerning people who ‘speak in tongues’ was highly distressing to me. It is a pretty lofty position when someone claims to have a superior Bible knowledge, and by that knowledge adjudge an extremely high portion of the current Evangelical Christian Community as, (and I use the terms you used,) “a carnal and satanic show of the flesh,” “an evil and adulterous generation,” “apostate,” and “devoted to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,”

In your postings you use I Corinthians 13:8 as a ‘proof text’ for your claim that ‘tongues would cease.’ The same verse also states that knowledge would “pass away.” When I called you out on that, you claimed that the “knowledge” was in fact “prophetic knowledge” and that, yes, it also was gone. This seems as an extreme oversight on the part of God; especially in this evil world that seems so sorely lacking in spiritual knowledge.

An exegetical look at I Corinthians 13 has clearly established that faith, hope, prophecy, knowledge, and tongues are all five closely linked together in this chapter, and would indeed pass away; pass away when “that which is perfect” comes. Unhooking three of the five and making them pass away before the other two is an old trick that some of God’s ministers came up with a long time ago. Unfortunately, those ministers somehow missed getting the word back upstairs to headquarters. In the meantime the Holy Spirit pays no attention and keeps right on giving unction to the church by using the same faith building tools that have worked for the last 2,000 years. Signs, wonders, and spiritual gifts are still dealt out severally as HE chooses. They still operate through humble people, and are still effective in illuminating the written word of God and getting kingdom results. The letter still kills and the Spirit still brings life.

Not knowing you personally, I at first thought to dismiss your posting as just another thoughtless rant. But then I stopped: What is the possibility that you are perhaps sincere and that your outcry as actually (and unwittingly,) a call for help. Should I hide my candle under a bushel at a time like this? I should at least say what I can. I should at least pray for you.

But then how should I pray?

Knowing your aversion to Spirit anointed utterances and your claimed esteem for the “written word;” here, straight from the apostle Paul and his writings to the “first-love-lost” church; here is my prayer for you.

…remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…. Amen