“I don’t speak in tongues. Therefore nobody does.”

I have an acquaintance, whom I’ll call Themistocles, who describes himself as a “soft cessationist.” That’s a term which means a lot of different things to the various people who use it.

For some of them it means regular ol’ cessationism—they believe God turned off the miracles in bible times, and he’s not turning ’em back on till the End Times. Why they call it “soft” is because they’re not deists—they don’t believe God created the universe to run (and run down) on its own, without his involvement or presence; that he’s left to pursue other interests. They accept there’s a God in the universe who hears their prayers… and sometimes even answers them. But he doesn’t do miracle-miracles. Doesn’t raise the dead, doesn’t let us Christians feed 5,000 people with only one person’s lunch, doesn’t cure cancer unless it’s through natural processes. He’ll empower “miraculous” fortunate coincidences, like having a ministry sent a check at just the time the bill came due, and for the precise amount of the bill. Or someone will offer us a job just as we’re praying for one, or we’ll bump into a friend whom we can help just as they’re asking God for help. Stuff like that, which you’ll have a difficult time convincing skeptics are literal act-of-God miracles.

For others, they believe sometimes God does actual, just-like-in-the-bible miracles. Yep, even though it’s not the End Times yet. The sick cured, the dead raised, multiplied resources, rain despite a drought, water turned to gasoline, crazy-large crops and crop yields, prophetic dreams, and so forth. They believe this stuff because they recognize it’s foolish to say “God doesn’t and won’t” when the scriptures not only say no such thing, but bluntly instruct us Christians about how to deal with such things when they happen. But what makes ’em still call themselves cessationist instead of continuationist is they believe these legit miracles are rare. Profoundly rare. Almost never happen. And most miracle stories are exaggerations, fraud, or fiction.

In Themistocles’s case, he’s “soft cessationist” because he’s cessationist… but knows cessationism has no valid biblical basis, and doesn’t wanna believe in it. It’s just that cessationism is what he grew up with; it’s what his church still teaches; he’s still surrounded by cessationists; he’s pretty sure he’s never seen a miracle. He’d sure like to see one. Till he does, he’s gonna fall back on the belief he grew up with: Cessationism. It’s “soft” in that it’s the comfortable cushion he’s currently resting on, till a real live miracle brings him to his feet.

Themistocles would likewise like to believe in speaking in tongues. But he’s got his doubts about the people who currently do it. Plus it’s never happened to him. And he’s asked God for the power to do it! But thus far, he’s pretty sure God hasn’t empowered him to do it, and he’s been praying for it for years. So the longer time goes on, the less and less he believes God even empowers it anymore.

Of course the way he first expressed this to me was by saying, “Well I’ve never spoken in tongues. I’m not even sure it’s a gift for today.”

“Speaking in tongues must be in an actual tongue. Bible says so.”

I heard this saying again recently. It’d been a few months. I hear it from time to time, but I haven’t given the subject its own article, so here y’go.

It’s a claim some cessationists make as part of their overall argument that speaking in tongues stopped in bible times, doesn’t happen anymore, and every continuationist church which still does tongues is either wrong, delusional, deceived, or devilish.

(And yes, because the Holy Spirit empowers tongues, claiming it's devilish means they're actually blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I know; some folks claim attributing the Spirit’s works to the devil somehow isn’t blasphemous. Okay then; how would they like it if every time they did a good deed, we said, “No they didn’t do it out of goodness; it’s all part of a satanic scheme to lead people astray; don’t trust them!” You know, kinda like they do with politicians from the other political party. Betcha it’d outrage them, or at the very least annoy them a bunch. Betcha they’d call it slanderous. And since blasphemy means slander, they’re blaspheming the Spirit. Whoops. Better repent! Okay, digression over.)

So in their churches, they forbid tongues. Yeah, I know there’s a bible verse telling us not to do that, 1Co 14.39 but they do it anyway. And how they justify it is with the saying in the title: “Speaking in tongues must be in an actual tongue. Bible says so. You are not speaking an actual tongue. You’re speaking gibberish. That’s not biblical. That’s devilish. And we oughta forbid devilry.”

That’s right: In every place in the bible where we read about tongues, and speaking in tongues, these folks insist the ancient Christians were speaking other human languages. Because weren’t they doing just that on the first Christian Pentecost?

Acts 2.4-11 ESV

4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

If the first instance of speaking in tongues consisted of foreign languages, they figure every instance of speaking in tongues must be that. Forget “various kinds of tongues;” 1Co 12.10 ESV they insist there’s only one kind: Foreign languages. Nothing else.

To a cessationist the Spirit doesn’t do tongues anymore anyway; the whole argument is moot. But let’s say he did: Then all tongues would be in foreign languages. And if our tongues aren’t, they’re not really from the Holy Spirit. Whether we’re faking it or the devil’s empowering it, they won’t always say. Sometimes because they’re not absolutely sure they’re right, and don’t wanna unintentionally blaspheme the Spirit. But some of the bolder cessationists have no trouble with saying it’s the devil, and blaspheme away.

Here’s the funny thing: In the United States, a large number of these cessationists who say tongues must be foreign languages, don’t know any foreign languages. Most Americans only speak English! (And not well.) So if they ever overheard me praying in tongues, and the Spirit decided for whatever reason that my prayers would be in Urdu, they wouldn’t know a lick of Urdu, and continue to presume I’m doing it wrong, and am probably demonized. They haven’t the discernment necessary to judge me properly. And I’m not even talking about supernatural discernment… which they wouldn’t practice anyway, ’cause cessationism.

Nope; all they know is they hear “argle-bargle-dirka-dirka” and it makes ’em angry. Same as one of my former bosses, who was a huge racist and didn’t want us employees talking about him behind his back: “This is America! Speak English!” Largely this is just the cessationist variant.

You, collectively, are the Holy Spirit’s temple.

1 Corinthians 3.10-17.

From time to time Christians talk about how you, singular, individually, are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

’Cause the Spirit is sealed to every individual Christian. Ep 1.13 He lives in the heart of every single believer. And whatever God lives in is, properly, his temple. If he lives in you, it makes you his temple. If he lives in another Christian, it makes that person a temple. Dozens of Christians are dozens of temples. Billions of Christians are billions of temples. Get it?

But this isn’t accurate. God has only one temple.

As was kinda emphasized in the bible. Moses built the portable temple at Sinai, which English-speaking Christians call “the tabernacle,” and that was the temple for 4 centuries till Solomon ben David built a permanent one of gold-plated cedar in Jerusalem. The Babylonians burnt that down; Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel built another of stone; Herod 1 and his successors renovated it; the Romans eventually destroyed it.

But regardless of the structure, the scriptures emphasized there was one place, and only one place, where the LORD intended to meet people and receive worship and sacrifice. It was the one and only place they kept his ark, representing his relationship with Israel. It was the one and only place his name dwelt Dt 12.11 —his name, not the LORD himself, ’cause obviously the Almighty can’t be contained by a mere building.

Now it’s not that other people didn’t try to build temples for the LORD. Jeroboam ben Nabat, king of Samaria, feared losing subjects to the king of Jerusalem, so he built two more temples. They didn’t have arks, but Jeroboam put gold calf idols in them, figuring that’d do… and since there’s an entire command against idolatry in the 10 Commandments, God and his prophets condemned Jeroboam’s temples ever after. After the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, Egyptian Jews in exile constructed a temple to the LORD in Alexandria, and Samaritans constructed a temple to the LORD at Mt. Gerazim. But neither of these temples were commanded nor authorized by God. He had his own plans. Always had.

And once his temple’s veil ripped open, top to bottom, Mt 27.51 it signifies God wasn’t interested in being worshiped from Herod’s stone building any longer. He was gonna build a temple from entirely different stones: Living people. Living stones. Christians. Every Christian.

The Holy Spirit dwells in me, but I’m not the Holy Spirit’s temple. I’m only one of the stones of his temple. As are you. As is every Christian. We’re parts of his temple. Because the temple us us—collectively. The Spirit doesn’t have billions of temples; he only has the one. Same as always.

I know; you thought each individual Christian makes up an individual temple of the Spirit, right? ’Cause that’s the way it gets taught in our individualistic, individualism-valuing culture. Nope. We, collectively, are the Spirit’s temple.

Simoniac blogs.

If you remember what simony means—and if you don’t, it means people who are trying to make money from the sort of religious stuff which ought to be free—then you can kinda tell what today’s rant is gonna be about. But first, backstory.

I’ve been blogging for more than 20 years now. Back in 2002 I created an Angelfire website for myself, just ’cause I could. And I added a few extra pages to the site, in which I opined about this subject or that. It had been a few years since I last had a newspaper column, so I had a bunch of rants in my system to turn loose. I migrated it to GeoCities. Later, when I went to grad school and found a lot of my classmates had Xanga blogs, I started one too… then ported all that to Blogger, and I’ve been on that platform ever since. They host The Christ Almighty Blog, a.k.a. TXAB.

True, TXAB has only been around since 2015. But my first Blogger blog was a personal blog I started in 2004. Then I created a second blog for my bible studies, Towards a Fuller Understanding of God; then a third for my old comic strips, then a fourth for articles Smith Wigglesworth had published, then a fifth for fiction. Since I wanted to talk about more than just bible studies, I created a Christianity blog, More Christ, in 2010; but after a few years I ditched all the other blogs and consolidated everything into one blog, this one.

I had to look up all those dates ’cause I don’t keep track of anniversaries. For some people, celebrating how old their thing is, seems to take precedence over whether it’s still relevant, or any good. But I digress.

When I started blogging, of course I also started reading other people’s blogs. There weren’t a lot of them in 2002. Xanga got me reading all my friends’ blogs… most of whom had nothing to say, and now they have Facebook and can say even less. Xanga also got me reading other blogs in my “community”—other people who shared my views about Christ and politics, so I read what they had to say too.

But when I left Xanga for Blogger, of course I found other bloggers. Good ones.

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

Our English word blasphemy comes from the Greek word βλασφημία/vlasfimía, and largely means the same thing: It’s irreverence towards, and slander against, people and things we oughta reverence. We Christians tend to only use it to describe irreverence towards God (and bibliolaters to describe irreverence towards the bible), but the ancients applied it to all sorts of things. Like irreverence towards the temple, Moses, the prophets, and the scriptures. Even kings and emperors; yes you could blaspheme a king. Especially when they were one of those kings who claimed godhood. Some politicians still kinda get that way.

Some blasphemy is totally unintentional, like when we claim stuff about God that’s not so. Like when we claim, “God’s gonna send you to hell for that!” and no he won’t. Or when we claim God’s secret will is for evil to happen, and no it’s not.

Other times it’s totally intentional, ’cause we’re pissed at God over something he did or didn’t do, so we yell at him a bit, or otherwise throw a tantrum and say some evil things. God is fully aware we’re just acting up. And once we snap out of it, he forgives us. He’s gracious like that.

But then Jesus said this:

Mark 3.28-30 NASB

28“Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons and daughters of men, and whatever blasphemies they commit; 29but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”

Said much the same thing in two other gospels. In context, it’s part of the story where Jerusalem scribes visiting the Galilee gave their expert opinion, and declared Jesus did his exorcisms by the power of Beelzebub (in Aramaic Baal Zevúl, a local pagan god; their euphemism for Satan). Not the Holy Spirit. Jesus pointed out their reasoning was stupid: Satan’s not gonna fight itself, and if it is, it’s falling apart. And this is where he said blaspheming the Holy Spirit means you committed an αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος/eoníu amartímatos, “sin of the age,” or “eternal sin.” Mt 12.31-32, Lk 12.10

Historically, Christians have taught this means a sin which disqualifies you from Kingdom Come. Your friends and family are gonna join Jesus at his second coming—and you are gonna sit on the bench. Or stay dead till Judgment Day. Then go into the lake of sulfur and fire.

Yikes.

Hence some Christians are terrified of committing it. Afraid they might accidentally, unintentionally commit it. So afraid, they’re afraid of critiquing any miracle or prophet—even though we’re supposed to double-check these things, and make sure they’re really God. But they refuse to, lest they say “It’s devilish” when it’s really the Spirit, and stumble into blaspheming the Spirit. And that’s why so many Christians let so many phonies get away with so much evil.

On the other extreme, some Christians claim blasphemy of the Spirit never, ever happens. Not anymore. ’Cause cessationism! As soon as “that which is perfect has come,” 1Co 13.10 which cessationists insist refers to the bible, God switched off the miracles: He doesn’t need ’em to confirm his message anymore, ’cause now the bible does that. The conditions under which blasphemy of the Spirit could happen, no longer does. So whenever you see a “miracle,” or hear a “prophecy,” feel free to say it’s from Satan. The blind and deaf and paralyzed aren’t cured anymore; that’s Satan. Jesus doesn’t appear to people anymore; that’s Satan. And when those people respond by repenting, transforming their lives, producing good fruit, likewise praying for people and curing ’em: Yep, more Satan—hoo boy is that devil tricky, acting exactly like the Holy Spirit does in the bible, just to confuse people.

And on yet another axis you have those Christians who are quick to point to other scriptures which state God forgives every sin. 1Jn 1.7, 9 Every single possible potential sin; no exceptions. If you’re worried about the scriptures’ warnings against blaspheming the Spirit, relax! God forgives all.

Lastly we have the Christians who try their darnedest to redefine blaspheming the Spirit so it’s not what Jesus warned the scribes against doing. It’s some other thing. It’s apostasy. Or it’s numbing your conscience so much, you can’t tell the difference between good and evil anymore; confounding the Spirit with Satan is just a symptom of the real problem.

I think instead of convenient little answers which make us calm down and stop worrying about committing this sin, we oughta figure out for real what it is, whether we do it, and whether we can still get into God’s kingdom even if we did it.

Are Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian?

Years ago; different job. One of my clients needed to get his life straight—which didn’t require him to go to church, but it definitely doesn’t hurt! And since he grew up Jehovah’s Witness, and since the JW church was right down the street from where he lived, that’s where he went. Very quickly he became a cage-stage JW, and tried to tell me how wrong I was… and I told him, “Come back and talk Jesus to me when you can demonstrate more fruit of the Spirit; maybe then somebody will want to listen to you.”

That’s pretty consistently been my experience with the JWs: They’re right, I’m wrong, and any time I ask ’em questions about their beliefs, they presume I’m just trying to sow doubt. Which—I’ll be honest, and I’ll upfront tell them this too—I totally am. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a heretic church, and the reason they proclaim so many heresies is because of their one core problem: Pride. Pride in being right. Pride in being the only church that’s right, while the rest of us are wrong and going to hell. And because they figure we’re wrong, their founders looked at every orthodox thing Christians believe, and deliberately experimented with the very heresies we rejected. And kept a bunch.

And the JW’s really attract prideful people—because hey, you wanna be right about God, don’t you? I’ve no doubt there are exceptions; there are actual humble Jehovah’s Witnesses in existence. It’s just I’ve never met any of them. Ever. Maybe you have; that’d be nice. I simply haven’t.

Still not ready for solid food.

1 Corinthians 3.1-9.

The Christians of ancient Corinth had divided themselves into factions which, it appears, weren’t getting along. There was the Apollos faction, emphasizing the teachings of the apostle who evangelized them; there was the Paul faction, emphasizing the teachings of the apostle who’d evangelized them. There was also a Simon Peter faction, and a Christ faction (or, likely, a “Christ only” faction; phooey on his apostles!). 1Co 1.12

This behavior, Paul and Sosthenes rebuked in 1 Corinthians. If these apostles are legitimately following Jesus—and from what we know, Apollos, Paul, and Peter certainly did—their teachings should harmonize. We might see minor discrepancies, ’cause the apostles weren’t infallible; only Jesus is. But these discrepancies should be irrelevant, ’cause all these guys are pointing beyond themselves, at Christ Jesus and his kingdom.

I’ve said more than once Paul isn’t infallible, and I’m fully aware there are gonna be Christians who balk at this idea. I mean yeah, they’re gonna acknowledge Paul’s various screw-ups which Luke recorded in the Acts of the Apostles; they’re right there in the bible; we can’t deny ’em. But they’re also gonna emphasize Paul wrote scripture, and his New Testament letters are fully trustworthy doctrine which Christians have followed for millennia. Arguably every Christian, with the exception of a few heretics, puts ourselves in the Paul faction. Apollos doesn’t have any letters in the New Testament… unless he’s the unknown author of Hebrews, and likely he’s not.

Still, Christians breaking ourselves into sects and flinging around the word “heresy” as if anything we don’t like qualifies as heresy: Yep, it started happening in the ancient church. Still happens. And shouldn’t. We need to overcome our differences and work together, and stop giving ammunition to antichrists who’d rather see all of us gone, and are as happy in a pig in poo whenever we fight one another.

In today’s passage, the apostles emphasize how Apollos and Paul are on the same team. Same Jesus. Same Holy Spirit empowering both of ’em.

1 Corinthians 3.1-9 KWL

1Fellow Christians, I can’t speak to you as Spiritual people,

but as fleshly people,

as “infants in Christ.”

2I give you milk, not solid food,

for you’re not ready.

You’re not able to feed yourselves even now,

3for you’re still fleshly people.

Why is there zeal and strife among you?

Aren’t you fleshly people?

Do you walk like pagan humans?

4For when someone might say, “I’m of Paul,”

and another, “I’m of Apollos,”

aren’t you pagan humans?

5So who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Servants!

You believe because of them,

however the Master gives faith to each person.

6I plant and Apollos waters,

but God is making you grow,

7so neither the planter nor waterer is someone vital,

but God is the grower.

8And the planter and waterer are one!

Each of us receives our own paycheck

for our own labor.

9For God is our coworker;

it’s God’s farm, God’s building.