Praying In Tongues?

[Various audio clips of individuals praying in tongues...]

What you're hearing is commonly referred to as speaking in tongues. But it's not. It's just gibberish. No where in the Bible are we told to pray like this. In fact, there's not one verse in the Bible that encourages prayer in tongues.

What about the book of Acts? Well, the gift of tongues was given to share the gospel, so everyone could hear it in their own language.

What about in 1 Corinthians 14? Well it's there Paul says, "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also." That's not encouraging prayer in tongues, it's discouraging the practice.

But verse 39 says don't forbid speaking in tongues! Right, and the context is to prophesy, not private prayer. What is the gift of tongues for? It is "a sign not for believers but for unbelievers," to hear the gospel spoken in their own language. Read every passage on tongues with that understanding. It's not a prayer language, and it's especially not incoherent babbling.

Jesus said, "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the pagans do. Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Jesus prayed clear prayers, and so should we, when we understand the text.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Said an Unborn Child Is a Person?

Hillary Clinton: "The unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights."

Bernie Sanders: "I do agree with the Secretary. I don't believe there's any constitutional protection for the unborn."

For decades we have been arguing: Is a child in the womb a person or not? Those who are pro-abortion have justified killing babies by denying they're babies at all. They call them "fetuses" and "tissue," avoiding any words that might attribute personhood.

But that's over now. It's out in the open, in print and on TV. A child in the womb is a person who deserves no rights. They claim their cause is noble, defending women's rights or health care, while denying rights and murdering those they acknowledge are people. How is this not an oppressive, murderous holocaust?

The Bible warns that in the last days, people will be lovers of self, proud, arrogant, abusive, unholy, heartless, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

Among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning -- even understanding these children are people! -- yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Proverbs 31:8 "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute." The unborn are people, and even their enemies know it. Speak loud on their behalf. Call for repentance and preach the gospel of Christ, our only salvation from our murderous sins, when we understand the text.

Being Salt and Light?

"The Holy Spirit gave us the power to be witnesses, not to do witnessing. And so we need a generation of Christians that understand it's not about standing on a street corner to do witnessing, but to be witnesses on the earth. To bring salt and light in the midst of our darkness. That's what God has called us to do." ~Christine Caine via Lifechurch.tv

So according to Christine Caine, we're not to go preach the gospel, we're to just exist as Christians in the world. And not to judge or call out sin, rather we need to just bring salt and light.

I guess Peter and the rest of the apostles did it wrong when they were filled with the Holy Spirit and went into Jerusalem during a festival preaching the gospel, telling the people to repent of their sins, save themselves from this crooked generation, and to be baptized and to follow Jesus.

And Paul did it wrong when he went to the Areopagus and told the Greeks not to be ignorant but to repent of their sins because Jesus would soon return to judge the world. Then he went to Corinth and tried to preach to the Jews but they wouldn't listen to him, so he shook his garments of them and said, "Your blood is on your own heads."

And Jesus did it wrong when, in the same public sermon he preached about being salt and light, he said, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." And "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. They will say, 'Didn't we do mighty things in your name?' And I will say, 'Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

Or maybe Christine Caine is wrong, and we should wage the good warfare lest by rejecting it we make a shipwreck of our faith. Being witnesses means that we speak truth and expose lies. Being salt and light means that we hold out the word of God and expose sin. Don't listen to anyone who tells you to just be and not do. They're liars when we understand the text.

Eternal Security?

In John 10, the Jews pressed Jesus to speak plainly if he was the Christ. Jesus answered, "I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep."

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

It is God who gives us eternal life, and it is God who keeps us there. In Jude 24, we are told it is by the his power that we are kept from stumbling and presented blameless before him. In Ephesians 4:30, Paul writes that in Christ we are "sealed for the day of redemption." And in John 3:16, those who believe in Christ are given eternal life.

If it was possible to lose that gift of eternal life, then it wasn't eternal. If you could lose salvation, then you haven't been saved. It is by no work of our own that we are saved, and it is by no work of our own that we stay saved. It is from beginning to end the gracious work of God.

If a person confesses to being a follower of Jesus for a time, but then falls away, then they were never rooted in Christ to begin with, which Jesus explained in the parable of the sower.

But for those of us who have been called out of darkness and into his marvelous light, take heart, Christian. For nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord when we understand the text.

Do We Have to Prove God Exists?

Carl Sagan once said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." You know what? We agree! Though not in the way an atheist might think -- if it could be said that an atheist thinks. The burden of proof is more on an atheist to show there is no creator than it is on a Christian to prove that there is. Why? Because all human beings inherently understand design.

This is referred to as Empirical Adequacy. Pick any object and you inherently know it was created. But no atheist will ever be able to refer to anything coming into existence without cause or creator. Even if he were to cook up some example of random processes, he runs into the Implied Creator Paradox, because he had had to create an example of non-creation.

The statement made earlier about how atheists don't think? We aren't trying to be derogatory. We're simply following their logic. If we're nothing but the result of accidental process, than human beings are just walking sacks of chemicals. And chemicals cannot reason. They only react.

And that's a pretty good description of some atheists.

Romans 1:19-21, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

There's no reason to have to prove God's existence because everyone inherently knows God is real and His word is true. All of the evidence is already there when we understand the text.