Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

Christ's Continuing Voice in the Church

heed God's clear directions to them in their own language, He sent Assyr ian invaders in judgment who spoke a strange, foreign tongue.His pur pose: that Israel grasp the reason for her mistreatment and humiliation and still respond to the original message.(The Assyrian tongue was even a sign to the unbelieving invaders that Israel was under judgment because the Assyrians could "boss them around" in their own tongue.) Alas, Israel neither listened to the clear words of the Hebrew prophets nor recognized God's hand of judgment in the confusing tongues of the Assyrian invaders. He was actually speaking through both the Hebrew and the Assyrian lan guages, but His people were deaf to the meaning of each. Verse 22. A sign. Now, Paul says, the church has a problem: Unintel ligible tongues are replacing clearly understood prophecies in the church. These strange, uninterpreted languages become a sign of confusion to all who do not understand what is going on in the church, especially the unbelievers.Grudem comments, "When God speaks to people in a lan guage they cannot understand, it is a form of punishment for unbelief," and, correspondingly, "Prophecy is an indication of God's approval and blessing on the congregation because it shows that God is actively pres ent...." 37 Paul's focus is the confusion that results, either in Israel or the church, when strange, uninterpreted language is used.To the Israelites the Assyrian tongue represented judgment; to the church uninterpreted glossolalia is a sign of confusion. This verse poses the greatest single problem in interpreting 1 Cor inthians 14.Speculation occurs because of what appears to be a glaring contradiction between two sets of Paulinestatements.Paul is using a two thread analogy that can easily be misunderstood, so we must take the sec tion as a whole and seek the total sense, rather than attempt to manu facture a single interpretation based on one word. Paul says that uninterpreted tongues are a sign for unbelievers, while in the next verse he says that if we speak in tongues in our meetings, those same unbelievers will react negatively! Similarly he says that prophecy is a sign for believers; then he encourages prophecy when unbelievers are present. Here is where I believe the resolution lies.The word sign (semeion) can be used in a dual sense: "an indication of God's approval and blessing" or "an indication of God's disapproval and a warning of judgment." 38 Thus, "the term 'sign' ...[is] used explicitly in one sense in v.21, and then ...in another sense in v.22b." 39 The purpose of Isaiah 28 was to show God's disapproval and to bring warning, so the "other tongues" of the Assyrians were a negative sign to Israel.Paul uses that thought to show that speaking out messages in tongues in church without interpretation is a sign to the unbelievers present-again, a negative sign-that some- • 224