Jesus Camp Quotes

About “speaking in tongues”?

I just read up on when this is mentioned in the bible and it seems pretty obvious that it just means speaking in different languages. E.g. Jesus gave the apostles the ability to speak in tongues so that they could convert more followers during their travels.

However, I also just watched the documentary “Jesus Camp” and was really confused when the camp attendees started speaking gibberish. So my question is:

Why is the language of fanatics (what I called gibberish) referred to as “speaking in tongues” in the movie?

It would be great if people could cite on this because, sadly, often when I ask questions in this section I get a lot of “refer to the bible, it has all the answers” without even quoting the bible. Or, I get “LOL god is fake man” which is equally unhelpful.

Thanks in advance!

Great question…

The answers are in the Bible. But you have to *study* it, with concordance and in its context. You are right–it was languages (learn that from the concordance)–and the gibberish could people “learning” to do it, which is pretty easy, or it can be demonic influence.

Tongues speakers often use misquoted scriptures which are taken out of context, i.e., “if I speak in the tongues of angels,” which actually means speaking very eloquently. After all, when angels appeared to people in the Bible, how did they communicate with them? In gibberish?

“Praying in the Holy Spirit” is actually praying WITH the Holy Spirit, or in the power of, which means YIELDING to Him. God never intends for us to give up all self control–there are scriptures for this too (“come let us reason together saith the Lord…”)

Tongues were needed at that time (the New Testament revelation was not yet completed, as we have today) to authenticate the scriptures, as well as a witness to the unbelieving Jew.

There is so much more on this. This is just the very tip of the iceberg. You are on the right track though.

Oh, another question, if all of these tongues are supposedly messages directly from the Throne of God, then why isn’t someone writing them all down and compiling them in another Bible.

Good book to read is “Charismatic Chaos” by John MacArthur. It will answer a lot of your questions.

My Jesus Camp