glossolalia, also called speaking in tongues, (from Greek glōssa, “tongue,” and lalia, “talking”), utterances approximating words and speech, usually produced during states of intense religious experience.
The gift of tongues is the miraculous ability to speak in a foreign language. According to Acts 10, the household of Cornelius spoke in tongues when the Holy Spirit came upon them. The Jews heard these Gentiles “speak with tongues” (verse 46).
He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.
Speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit. God has given us this wonderful spiritual gift to bless us, edify us, and refresh us throughout our lives on this earth. Let's remember what God has provided and enjoy the benefits of speaking in tongues.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
According to the New Testament, glossolalia first occurred among the followers of Jesus at Pentecost, when “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts of the Apostles 2:4).
Some have said that may be the “tongues of angels” Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13:1. Others suggest our Heavenly language will be music, which is understood in any language; or perhaps it will be the language of love – God's love returned to him and others.
For most of Christian America, this is not an age of baptism. Among Southern Baptists, the country's largest evangelical Protestant denomination, the ritual has been in steady and steep decline.
First, Southern Baptists cannot permit its missionaries to pray in tongues because what the latter claim is the biblical gift is not. The biblical gift of tongues was always “a legitimate language of some people group,” so the policy declares.
They distinguish between (private) speech in tongues when receiving the gift of the Spirit, and (public) speech in tongues for the benefit of the church.
You're just flowing. You're in a realm of peace and comfort, and it's a fantastic feeling.” Contrary to what may be a common perception, studies suggest that people who speak in tongues rarely suffer from mental problems.
While the small Assemblies of God congregation goes through all the traditional trappings of a Pentecostal service, there is one notable absence: speaking in tongues, a defining trait of the faith.
Glossolalia is very common in Pentecostal Christian worship services, but it has also occurred in other sects of Christianity, as well as in other religions (and cults), such as paganism, shamanism and Japan's God Light Association.
The primary if not sole purpose of tongues, therefore, is to signify God's judgment against Israel for rejecting the Messiah and thereby shock them into repentance and faith. Tongues, so goes the argument, are a “sign” to unbelievers of God's judgment.
There is much controversy over speaking in tongues. Some suggest that those who do it, usually during prayer or in religious services, are in a trance induced by religious excitement. Others say the utterances are caused by epileptic seizures, neurosis or psychosis.
The Bible specifically teaches that not everyone is given the gift of tongues (I Corinthians 12:29-30). That is why it's dangerous to teach that tongues are the only signifying proof of the work of God's Spirit in a person's life.
If God requires every believer to speak in tongues and if this experience is an evidence of having the ministry of the Holy Spirit at work in your life, then speaking in tongues becomes necessary for every professing believer, regardless of whether he or she has been baptized by immersion in water (Matt 28:18-20).
Hebrew, which is from the same linguistic family as Aramaic, was also in common use in Jesus' day. Similar to Latin today, Hebrew was the chosen language for religious scholars and the holy scriptures, including the Bible (although some of the Old Testament was written in Aramaic).
Hebrew and Arabic are both sacred languages since both are in a sense the language of God Himself.
Hebrew. The core of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, referred to by some Jews as Lashon Hakodesh (לשון הקודש, "Language of Holiness").
Agnes Ozman (1870–1937) was a student at Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas. Ozman was considered as the first to speak in tongues in the pentecostal revival when she was 30 years old in 1901 (Cook 2008).
Among Christians, speaking in tongues is most often associated with Pentecostals and Pentecostalism. Pentecostals take their name from the day of Pentecost, a day during which the Bible says that the apostles and followers of Jesus Christ were filled with the Holy Spirit and gifted the ability to speak in tongues.
Paul had said that tongues-speech in the public gathering of the church is prohibited without an interpretation. Since the purpose of church meetings is the edification of other believers, Paul preferred to speak in a language all could understand. Consequently, he rarely spoke in tongues in a public setting.