In today's class, we were informed that some AG churches no longer hold to the entire AG statement of faith, one of them being the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit (HS). I followed with interest this matter for couple of years now and personally begin to question it myself. From my experience in Pentecostal church, I've seen many questionable occurrences of speaking in other tongue. One of it is that, when people were being prayed for to receive the Baptism of HS, they were asked to "desire it," to simply "speak it forth," sometimes with insistence from the minister. Worst, I've seen people were asked to "imitate" the other tongue speaker and even being whispered tongue-speaking into their ears. I'm certainly not a theologian or scholar or even have enough skill to do exegesis on Act 2, 8, 10 and 19 but apparently from my surface-value reading, I found in no condition that the first recipients of the baptism of HS were "thought" or even make any significant effort to speak in tongues. In Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19 it just happened spontaneously. Especially in Acts 10, the Gentiles and Peter himself were not even expecting anything to happen.Very interestingly, the NT records of baptism of HS occurred to particular groups of people, almost in logical sequence of redemptive history, starting with Jewish believers, Samaritan converts (half-Jewish), Gentiles converts and the "disciples" (of John the Baptist?) which seems to be "half-Christians" (was baptized for repentance but haven't heard of the HS...i.e, non-apostolic believers?). Should we take this as the sign of God's acceptance of particular groups into his Kingdom or as a normative pattern of experience for all individual believers?
From 1 Cor 12, when Paul speaks about the spiritual gifts, he told the Corinthians that God's Spirit distributed each (or should we say "different?") gifts to different people for the benefit of the body, in which different members function differently. In the end of that chapter he throws a rhetorical question: "Are all apostle? Do all work miracles? Do all speak in tongues?" The answer is obviously NO. Not all are apostles and not all speak in tongues. Moreover, in chapter 14 he goes on to talk about how the gifts, particularly prophecy and tongues, should be properly used in public worship. Paul said he was speaking in tongues more than others in Corinth but in the church he rather not speak something unintelligible like tongue that does not edify others but oneself.
I've heard some pastors trying to distinguish between "personal tongues" and "the gift of tongues" but I find no warrant in NT to make such categories. Perhaps they are drawing conclusion from the biblical account of Acts where all attendees were speaking in tongues when the Spirit falls on them thus making it "personal" tongues while in 1 Cor 12-14, Paul clearly speaking about the gifts of the HS which not all had. But precisely what biblical principle must be used to warrant such hermeneutics? Moreover, in any case, should tongue-speaking believers keep speaking in tongues in public prayer or worship meeting while clearly the speaking in tongue would not benefit others but individual speakers? Doesn't that violate the principle that Paul had laid in 1 Cor 14? Doesn't that appear to be "individualistic" corporate worship as opposed to the principle of mutual edification in 1 Cor 14 and also that is so cardinal in other Pauline letters?
