Michael Brown – Why I speak in tongues and John MacArthur doesn’t get charismatics

the church where I came to know Jesus was Pentecostal and my friends would come back not just talk about prophecy but tongues and talking about angels and demons and these different things they were hearing so it fascinated us and then not long after being born again I began to speak in tongues myself and then found that to be wonderful for intimate prayer with God as something continues to this day oh yes sir yeah absolutely and for those who aren't familiar with that who perhaps that's never been an experience they've had can you in any way encapsulate what's happens when you speak in tongues yeah sure so Paul describes it in first Corinthians 14 as our Spirit is praying that we're speaking mysteries to God that no one understands that that we ratifying ourself and this way edify ourselves we can now go and minister to others and help others so initially there was a sense of some just kind of rising up on the inside that was coming to my lips so a first January 24th 72 okay what do I do with this well I began to speak words anyone could make words up like a bla bla bla bla anyone can make words up right but I began to feel okay something's actually so the more I just began to speak I realized my mind can be thinking of meditating on this verse my mind can be thinking about our others hearing me this is a little prayer meeting while these words are coming out so it was something you can control in terms of stop or start but you were not manufacturing the words so what happens now as I can say okay just like I'm speaking in English or I can say okay I'm going to speak in Hebrew I can say I'm going to begin to speak in tongues but then something will well up it's not words that I'm manufacturing in my mind I could be in my mind counting 1 2 3 4 and praying in tongues but as I do it especially over a period of time I begin to feel as a sense of depth of communion with God I begin to feel a certain richness of the spirits presence and then often out of that my prayer gets very deep I make it tremendously burdened and begin to groan and weep for a particular subject or situation or that I may now feel very specifically led to pray in English with my understanding so it's it's a spiritual thing that then affects the mind but in a sense transcends the mine so it's not it's because I think a lot of people have the the idea that when someone speaks in tongues somehow they're no longer in control God's sort of taken over them and they're speaking words and they've got no but actually that's not the experience of when people who on a very natural basis in a daily basis speaking tongues exactly is something that they're in control of but it's nonetheless it's can a connection with God that's that's very yeah in Paul's words in 1st Corinthians 14 the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets which would apply here as well now I know people that one pastor was telling about his mother were part of a Baptist prayer meeting in the 70s 60s or 70s they never heard of tongues they were the Baptist prayer me together and suddenly they began speaking in tongues like what's this and and then realize it's in the Bible right but what's interesting though is that in the late 70s early 80s I had left that church I found it to be a little bit too narrow for me and not broadly theological enough I was pursuing my doctoral studies late 70s early 80s exposed to wider ranges of Christianity and found my Pentecostal heritage to be embarrassing the tongues slain in the spirit praying for the sick hallelujah hallelujah and yeah and I wanted I wanted a more intellectually acceptable faith and so I bought books against the charismatic movement I bought books against tongues I bought books on counterfeit miracles and and these various things and I began to read them and study them and it had an appeal to me because I could be more accepted now is it as a scholar and a professor if I wasn't so fundamentalist in these things the problem was I found they contradicted Scripture Here I am trying to get away from this but I just found it too clear and okay you don't forbid speaking in tongues seek prophecy praying for the sick healing these should be expected norms I didn't see any reason why that would suddenly stop with the closure of Scripture no no in fact I find quite the opposite that the scripture is presupposed and these things continue and because I'm a Sola scriptura guy because I base everything on Scripture if I don't find an explicit command in scripture to override it then I don't I don't believe in the Book of Mormon an outside book or exterior revelation a Catholic tradition it was not in the book though I then D differs so much from someone like a drum Kathir for instance who is also obviously sola scriptura and would say is very doctrinally and biblically based but who is us what we would call cessationist doesn't believe that the miracles and those manifestations of the spirit are for today in fact he wrote a book called strange fire critic he critiquing what he sees as as he might call them Cara's mania and and you actually wrote a book I think responding to - to that book so what I mean you can understand why there's a certain sort of skepticism around the the more extreme end at least yeah of the charismatic well first thing even though my experience confirms my faith my faith is not experience based so in the late 70s early 80s I would find when I would really communing with God that it was natural to pray in tongues and I found that intimacy but that was secondary to me to Scripture so even if there were 10,000 people I prayed for today and none were healed I would still believe God's the healer Chris scripture says some even if I saw some crazy TV preacher raising money and speaking tongues and giving false prophecies I'd still believe tongues and prophecy were real the the false wouldn't stop me so I have the utmost respect for pastor MacArthur in the midst of our differences he wrote strange fire I wrote authentic fire in fact I wrote three hundred pages in three weeks I was so moved on to respond but that being said I would say that on the one hand he is allowing the negative experiences to color his reading of Scripture now he find probably the opposite for me I'm coloring mine with positive experiences but perhaps his definition of the gifts based on his understanding of scripture is such that he just doesn't see it happening in his mind the Apostles could heal anyone at will that was the gift of healing that's not how I understand that gift operating so because he would not see that operating today he would say it doesn't exist because in his mind tongues had to be articulate languages that were spoken as opposed to a so called heavenly language he hears this as it's just gibberish but I welcome the debate I've had very few people willing to debate me just based on what scripture says and honestly my own conviction is that before the debates started its won already because square if you just using the Bible you like yourself alone in the room for ten years anything else you just read the Bible you're gonna come out expecting these things here for today I mean that but it does bring us to the question of kind of what what is and what isn't sort of of God in in some allegiances now I know that you were quite involved in the Brownsville revival in Pensacola and and that very much was tied into what happened in Toronto and the the outpouring there and so on and and that all of that stuff obviously has influenced lots of people and and is quite mainstream in many ways but at the same time there have always been those people who have said but look people writhing around on the floor and barking like dogs and and it's it's all unseemly and it's not it's not appropriate and and so this stuff can't be from God so how do you answer those kinds of criticisms of what people would see is the sort of the extreme end of yeah so I'd answered on three levels first ninety percent of what people reject you the Browns will never happen okay like parking like dogs for example yeah were those kinds of things never saw it never dream of seeing it they didn't relate to anything within the sphere of what we did ever never and I was in thousands between services and teaching and all that endless numbers of meetings so but that's typical of revival movements that the great great majority of the Opposition is based on misinformation the the second thing is and what do we base our views Jonathan Edwards had to deal with these issues in the Great Awakening because there were all kinds of unusual things his own wife would get into trances lay faint for days at a time hours even days at the time and Jonathan Edwards said that God did not give us a book of say physical Anatomy to say when the spirit moves that the you know the pulse will go like this and tears will show you a sweat or no rather to look at lives being changed so you're gonna have extremes I used to tell people during the service the person sitting next to you maybe they're shaking maybe they're cold the air conditioning is on too high maybe they have a fever they're uncomfortable maybe they see someone else shaking so they think they're supposed to do it maybe they're under demonic bondage maybe the Holy Spirit's convicting them maybe they're weird you don't know if the thing didn't disrupt the service itself vine but we get to the third point how do we judge and Jonathan Edwards looked at basic things is the Jesus of the Bible the virgin born eternal son of God being exalted are people coming under the authority of the word of God and coming to love the Word of God as their repentance from sin and holiness as their love being walked out so you look at the fruit as their burden for a lost and dying world if you see these things consistently over a period of time and this is the the norm not the exception so the exception is the weirdo the exception is the weird manifestation the norm as people's lives being changed then it's the Holy Spirit who did it so this revival birthda worldwide missions movement that's ablaze to this day it's birthed other ministry schools it spurts church planting movement since its birth the extraordinary things that continue to grow all around the world because the work was from God and we used to tell people we don't care if you fall in shake the question is how do you how do you walk when you leave this place and Steve Hill always used to say the late evangelist Steve Hill who was the spark plug in the midst of this he always used to say the true test of an evangelist ministry is 5 or 10 years down the line so wait we're Pentecostal the Holy Spirit move during water baptisms the CNN and and and in 60 minutes and all the major media New York Times they came and covered it and they would come on Friday nights in particular to film the water baptism because people are being baptized they break down weeping they collapse in the water they'd have to drag them out of the water and that's what we get all the film yeah but are there are things like our thing was Mother person's life is changed they were a crack addict for 20 years got set free here six months ago and now they're making restitution back in their community that's what we look for you

Channel: Premier On Demand

Views: 398,164

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Keywords: Premier, Premier Christian Radio, Christianity, Michael Brown, Messianic Jew, Brownsville Revival, John MacArthur, Charismania, speak in tongues, Justin Brierley

Id: bl5B87Ip7bA

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019