I actually have seen Pentecostal services and speaking in tongues many many times in person. Back in the late 1980s when I was living and working in rural Guatemala my house backed up against a small Pentecostal church. In the subtropics, churches are often not much more than open air pavilions with no walls and so no more than 50 feet away from my back door was an open-air Pentecostal church separated only by a loose corn stalk and madre de cacao fence. So every Sunday afternoon and often on weekday evenings I could hear them going to town with the "hellfire and brimstone" sermons, the speaking in tongues, the singing, and everything else, completely unfiltered. Sometimes for hours on end.Neto wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 4:58 pmI agree, however I didn't have success in that search. After I was not allowed to return to the anti-tongues Bible Institute where I attended my first year, I transferred to a C&MA Bible College, where it was allowed. A couple of friends from the Bible Institute also ended up at the same school, also not allowed to return to the first school. (Neither of us knew where the other was going to go. In fact, I went back to the Bible Institute for registration, and asked if I could return. The conditions they gave made it impossible, so my folks drove me on up north to the C&MA school, and they accepted me. Well, actually, I wasn't officially accepted in that school until after the second semester started. I hadn't applied before I showed up there for the Fall semester, because I thought I could get back in the first school by making some concessions. My pastor was on a Summer mission trip to the Old Colony folks in Mexico, so I hadn't been able to consult with him again before I headed off to college. Later he told me that it would not have been right to make the concessions I had in mind.)
But as to finding a congregation that openly uses tongues publicly in their services, I didn't find one that followed Scripture, and this other couple got tired of asking me to come with them, because on the drive back to the school I *always" pointed out something where they had not followed Scripture. Usually it was either one person interrupting another who was already speaking, or even interrupting the pastor during the sermon, or giving utterance when there was no interpretation.) So what I found is that the best course (as it seemed to me) was to find a congregation where it was neither misused, nor spoken against, as being "of the devil". The one I enjoyed the most was one called "The New Testament Church". When you walked in, there were not groups here and there talking about the weather, their jobs, or how busy they were, etc. There were instead little groups of people praying together, or jumping up and down, as a dance before the Lord. But there were other areas where I thought they went too far, like waiting for a prophetic utterance before they could decide on the color of carpet to have installed. The worst was a prayer group back home in Tulsa, where there was just this strong creepiness that I noticed immediately when I walked in. I never went back, although another member of our MB congregation encouraged me to go with him again.
To sum this up, what I found was that there tended to be an "exclusiveness" about the congregations that put an emphasis on this gift, and that those that were simply open to it, especially in private or corporate prayer times - those settings were more 'joyful', in some deeper sense. (And, there was no pressure to "make it or fake it" in those settings. If you had that gift, you used it, if you had a different one, you used that one.)
Do I think it was jibberish? Yes. Although Spanish and Cakchiquel-accented jibberish rather than the English-accented kind that we get here.
Do I think they were faking it? No. Maybe some but not most. I think humans are highly suggestable and if you are desperately seeking to experience something you might well convince yourself that you are. There are all kinds of psychological terms for that. People of every religion can work themselves into a frenzy. Muslims, Hindus, Bahai, Buddhists, Navaho, etc. Do I think that is all fakery? No. I expect many people feel those experiences are real. I don't, however think it is actually Biblical and a sign that the Holy Spirit is actually speaking through someone in tongues.
Maybe if we actually had some Guatemalan peasant, or Pentecostal from backwoods Kentucky who was seen and recorded speaking God's message and words in fluent ancient Aramaic or Hittite or Babylonian or some other ancient language. Or even a modern language that they didn't already know. Then I might be more convinced. But as far as I know, that has never happened.