Babbling like Pagans

by Floyd Chappalear
via Sentry Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 31, 1987

Charismatic tongue-speaking did not originate with Christianity. In fact, historians tell us that the ancient Greeks would get ״carried away in the spirit” and babble nonsensically as part of their worship of the gods.

Jesus forbade his disciples to "babble like the pagans" (Matthew 6:7 NIV), and they did not. The tongues on Pentecost were intelligible, spoken languages of the first century. Paul warned that certain ones who were "carried away" by some spirit other than God's might engage in "unknown tongues," but it was a phenomenon little known among first-century Christians. One wonders what spirit leads men and women today to "speak in tongues."

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