These two gifts together are the beginning of the new creation experience of the New Covenant (Excluding prophecy from our discussion). It forms the basis on which the rest of the new creation experiences the prophetic or spiritual realms of God in God’s dealing with man in this era. This can be seen in the fact that it is this very manifestation that accompanied the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) which, with the resurrection and ascension of Christ, speaks of the confirmation from God’s side of the New Covenant. (The gift, because of its origin can be seen as a confirmation from God’s side of Christ’s work (Christ’s Session), but should not be used in practice as a confirmation from man’s side of his personal salvation. This would override the position that Scripture assigns to grace and faith.)
The evidence points to the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues operating in unison and hence the comment from Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:12-13. And so we should handle them in that way in theory as well.
Although many questions may be brought up by the opposition of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in general, we will not handle these here. This text is intended to answer the questions of believers in -and practitioners of the gifts. By reading this text I hope to bring them to an understanding of how these specific gifts function, should be regulated from the human and organizational position and the purposes of the gifts. The idea is not to limit the gift, but to introduce the reader to the wider scope of these two gifts that are many times neglected for the popular teachings doing the rounds. My hope is that these gifts would be used more effectively and wider to do the work of the Lord.
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