Author:
Robert Wilson
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Date Posted: Tue, Sep 24 2002, 21:37:20
I equate baptism in the Holy Spirit with baptism by water. The early church, Tertullian being a good example, believed that when we are baptized in water, we receive the Holy Spirit. There's lots of documentation for the association of the 2 things (receiving the Spirit and being water baptized) in the early church, most notably the practice of charismation at baptism. So when it says, "So-and-so was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues and prophesied," I take it to mean, "So-and-so was water baptized, which we all know means he received the Holy Spirit, and he -continually- (look at the verb tenses here) spoke in other tongues and prophesied/preached, meaning he continually proclaimed the gospel in his own native tongue or dialect as he lived his life after baptism."
Note that on the issue of "speaking in tongues," the only problems arise in Corinth. At Corinth, where lots of people who spoke different dialects of Aramaic, Latin, and other languages came together to trade, they evidently had trouble with people using various dialects in church worship without taking regard for their translation into the lingua franca of the day (Greek, thanks to Alexander the Great) so that everyone could understand what was going on. Incidentally, the earliest liturgies of the church are all in Greek! Looks like somebody listened to Paul! But we read that stuff today and think, "Oh, I need to speak in some unknown tongue if I'm really baptized in the Spirit." But is that what the Bible says? When the writer of Acts says of a convert, "he spoke in OTHER tongues," why do we ASSUME he means that the convert spoke in a tongue "other" than the CONVERT'S own? Isn't it more likely that the writer is saying that the convert spoke a tongue "other" than that of the WRITER? Take care, all ye Pentecostals! LOL. There is plenty of room for ecstatic utterances in the New Testament, as well as the Old, though. If anybody's curious I'll tell you where I think they fit.
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