The Knowing 4 - "Tongues and Angels"

...Why do we not love God like the bride in Song of Solomon?...

Praying in tongues and meeting angels

Two weeks after we joined the Pentecostal church, I had to deal with the issue of speaking in tongues. Looking back, I find it so hard to understand why speaking in tongues is such a contentious issue in the modern church...

My husband and I had up to that point, not yet been to a service where we had had to deal with the issue of speaking in tongues, because we had only been attending the morning teaching services and not the more “flowing in the Holy Spirit” evening services.

The church had a tradition of having one “half night of prayer” every quarter of the year. The whole church would come on a Friday evening around 8’O clock and would pray and worship until 12 that night. The pastor would announce a topic of prayer, at times he would give scripture and then people would, walk, sit, and kneel, whatever position made them comfortable, and they would pray.

Then I heard it for the first time... hundreds of people all speaking in tongues. I closed my eyes and I listened. At first it sounded like a beehive buzzing, then it started to sound like a choir. Random sounds falling into unplanned rhythms and a supernatural peace came upon me as I marvelled at the beauty of hearing these new sounds. I knelt down, with my eyes closed and prayed in my own words. I spoke to God and told Him that I don’t yet know how to speak in this new language, but that I will speak to Him the way I do know, and that He is welcome to speak to me in pictures (visions), the way He did on the day of my salvation.

Just as I prayed this, the pastor took the microphone and announced that everybody should find two people that they don’t know, and go and pray together with them, for unity in our multi-cultural nation.

It is so funny, I later found out that the two people I “randomly” picked where in fact pastors serving in that church. The 2 pastors fervently prayed in tongues, while I had to pray in words. All three of us where “praying up a storm”, when Ps. Francis brought a screeching halt to the procession. We opened our eyes and listened to what he had to say... “God just told me that we should stop speaking in tongues and that I should rather share a picture He gave me”. My jaw dropped! “WHO IS THIS GOD I AM SERVING!?” - was all I could think. First He gives me a supernatural vision to get me on a path of new experiences, then I have an intimate conversation with Him about my inability to speak in tongues and the fact that visions where as far as my supernatural in-counters have reached, and then “bam!” He gives a vision to another person, so as to reach me in a way that is comfortable to me.

My God speaks to me.... what a mind-blowing realisation...

I must have looked like I saw a proverbial “ghost”.  I dragged myself back to my seat, closed my eyes and thanked God for making me feel so special. As I finished thanking Him, I opened my eyes to see one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen...

About one-meter above me and every other member in the church hovered gigantic angels. All of them had their hands up in the air praising God. My eyes where only opened to see into the spirit realm for what could not have been more than a second, but what I saw will stay with me for a lifetime!

To be continued...

* The more I read my Bible, the more I realize, that speaking in tongues was the most normal thing during the early church. In fact it served as evidence that people where filled with the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 14:2 (AMP)

2 For one who speaks in an [unknown] tongue speaks not to men but to God, for no one understands or catches his meaning, because in the [Holy] Spirit he utters secret truths and hidden things [not obvious to the understanding].

Why would God say that you speak “truths” if in fact the devil (who is the “father of all lies”, according to the Bible) makes people speak this way?

I find it to be one of the strangest phenomena I have ever come across, that so many conservative, denominational Christians think that the devil has anything to do with tongues? What possible truth can possibly come from him?

Acts 2:4

4 And they were all filled (diffused throughout their souls) with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other (different, foreign) languages (tongues), as the Spirit kept giving them clear and loud expression [in each tongue in appropriate words].

* (If you want to know more on speaking in tongues I suggest reading “Tongues”- By Kenneth E. Hagin)