Thanks for the discription. Please forgive my doubts but I was wondering if you could describe if you ever recieved confirmations of the half dozen times you saw interpretations. How did you test the Spirits?
The first time I witnessed this, I believe it was on a Wed nite praise service. I was fairly new to the UPC, and hadn’t yet received the “baptism of the Holy Ghost.” These meetings can get pretty raucous. We had a big choir, complete with all kinds of noisemakers… cymbals, drums, bells, etc. After a song, there would follow a few minutes (and I mean literally a few long minutes) shouting, crying, banging on noisemakers, etc, punctuated by the occasional sound of someone speaking in tongues, just barely audible through the cacophony. At some point, things just kind of quieted down until there was almost no noise at all. Understand that no one was orchestrating this… most people had their eyes closed, many were weeping. As it got just about dead silent, I heard a beautiful woman’s voice singing in a language I’d never heard. I am familiar with the sounds of most languages, as I’ve traveled a lot, but I could not identify this, except to say that it was lovely. The utterance was a type of singing, but there was no identifiable melody. It continued for maybe a half-minute, and then it was silent again. Another half-minute passed, and then another woman, on the other side of the room, uttered in English what was said to be the interpretation of the tongues. There was nothing earth shattering about it. Something along the lines of, know that I am God, I am with you, have no worries, be faithful, obey me… words like that.
After this, the praise service continued as before. No one took a heckuva lot of notice of this event, as if it was a natural thing to have happen, but I was really floored by it. The other times it happened that I witnessed, I can remember a lot less clearly, as I came to not consider these events all that significant. I never doubted that they were genuine. These people I got to know well enough to know that they were of deepheart integrity and would not lie or stage such a thing. But it is important to note that nothing prophetic was ever “interpreted” out of these. They were all along the lines of words of encouragement. Very general things.
As for “testing the spirits” I’m not sure I ever thought about that. I believe that tongues is a very Biblical idea, that it has happened throughout Christian history, and probably is a feature of other religious experiences as well. Obviously we know from Scripture that it is a controversial subject, and needs to be carefully handled. When people are of a same mind and are open to possibilities, then things are more likely to happen. To tell the truth, though, I never felt completely comfortable in this type of worship. Those people are completely given over to worship. They worship with their entire beings, body, soul, mind. It isn’t uncommon for them to just dance and dance to the Lord, or roll on the floor, which I guess is the source of the term Holy Roller, LOL. Me, I don’t even like to dance in public at all. I’m very self-conscious… typical white guy. This church was more than half african american, and a lot of hispanics also. I was way uptight. It took a long time for me to finally speak in tongues, and when it happened it wasn’t in public, but rather while I was reading the Bible one night when I was alone. It was a very wonderful moment of awareness of God, but I have to declare that we don’t need tongues to have this awareness of God, and so that is an area I disagree strongly with the UPC types who say that tongues is an essential requirement for salvation.
Isn’t it a fact that a Pope or 2 has prayed in their private language of tongues?
I don’t think it is superstition. I have not asked my Catholic friends if do you? It the speaking should not in itself be glorified, as you say but I consider it a private prayer.