Quote Originally Posted by MichaellS View Post
TD, You don’t strike me as one who is easily overwhelmed from challenge. But what you just selectively responded to tells me you are not seeing the whole council and fulfilling what the Apostle said he most certainly would not do, “shun” to declare anything of God’s will. By selectively responding to only the important points, you have missed the point to be had. As he said; V19 ”however, in the church”, knowing which scriptures are to be applied to public tongues for prophesy, and which are to be used for oneself. You are still blurring the two when you ask "how does your practice edify others"? I have explained this at length.

Can I try a little something? Take for instance the following:

13Therefore let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15What is [the outcome] then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.

Two things come to mind here for me concerning your position.

1. Because it says “my mind is unfruitful” I’m pretty confident you are all eager to ***ume this is bad, evil or isn’t of God. That this is something He doesn’t want for His people.

2. If so, you then intersect to override “unfruitful” with “mind” so you don’t have meddle with “unfruitful” any longer. Is that what you have done?
I understand the part about "in the church." And no, you are wrong about your confidence of what I ***ume. The point I was trying to make was that Pentecostals (i.e. in my observation of 20 yrs of fellowshipping with them) often and regularly practice what Paul rebuked the Corinthians for in ch. 12-14. The point I was making is that Pentecostals major on minors and minor on majors. The minor point being the incidental thing that Paul said about self-edification, and the major point being about how, when, and where it should be practiced. It seems that P's want to disregard the major theme of what Paul wrote about, and then want to focus in on the minor and incidental things - which shows that they just want to use scripture as a proving ground for their subjective experience. This is the point I was trying to make here. It has nothing to do with whether or not I accept that authentic tongues really does edify.

If you can see so clearly, why can’t you see why I can’t see? Quite plainly, it is not supported in contextual remarks surrounding it for any such notion.
This was a rhetorical question. I do see why you can't see it, because you simply refuse to look, and like I said above you are focusing on the wrong thing.

Or consider this one:

18I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all; 19however, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind so that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue.

For obvious reasons, I can see your point here if I were directed that way being overly simple, or early on. That is not a criticism, I am working towards a point here. “However” in V19 does not alleviate V18. Yes, and I will restate, it is preferred and better to edify the Church by the Spirit. But where do you find ample justification to cancel verse 18? Or with what do you set orderliness to refuse God’s will for self-edification from the scriptures? I think you might be willing to put prophesy at 100% of being God’s will to edify the Church with. And if you tried real hard, might put pre-messaging tongues at maybe 1 or 2%. Well, since it is by the Spirit also, maybe we could bump it up to 99.99%.

When you state Paul is not encouraging self-edification, why would he confuse us with V18? Because the confusion is not with V18, but with that same hidden corner we just can’t say yes to.

Yes:

“I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also” V15.

Not: I will stop with the spirit so I can pray fully with the mind. Or he would have said so.

While it is said to “desire” Spiritual gifts, I no longer want to insult His presence with it not being something we can just approach non-aggressively. Repent! I just did.
Again here also, you make presumptions based on your bias, which causes you to read the scripture with prejudice. Are you ***uming Paul speaks tongues in private? Him saying "however in the church" does NOT automatically mean his previous statement means "in private." The contrast is NOT about LOCATION, it is about PURPOSE.

Nevertheless, I'll go with you in your ***umption that it means "in private" (:18). It still does not prove that your tongues is authentic. Some similarities to what is described in the scripture doesn't make it authentic.

Actually, I'll consider you repentant when you start acknowledging and addressing the real issues of how modern tongues is not like the original.
TD