Hello,
I was recently asked to listen to a precher at a particular church. I am SeventhDay Adventist and I thought I would listen to get an idea of what kind of message these non-denominational churches preach, and as I was on their website I noticed a link called Tenet of Faith and some things seemed biblical I will post all of their tenets and higlight one that immediately struck me as not being biblically based. I am very happy to know that our SDA denomination clearly backs everyone of our 27 fundamental beliefs with biblical verses and speak the truth according to the Word of God.

quote:

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We believe... that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
We believe... in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, and in His bodily resurrection.

We believe... the Bible to be the inspired and infallible Word of God.

We believe... in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe... in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as a subsequent gift to salvation.

We believe... in the provision of bodily healing in the atoning work of Jesus our Savior.

We believe... in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, the saved unto eternal life, living eternally in the presence of God, and the lost unto eternal damnation without further opportunity of repentance.

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If I understand this correctly this seems as if you need to speak in tongues as a criteria for salvation? Am I misinterpreting this?

God Bless,
Will

Will:

The key word in that statement of faith is "subsequent", and what it means.

It implies an ordinal relation to the word "salvation" in that statement. By defination, it comes after salvation, even though it comes first in the sentences. I.e. A strict understanding of the statment is that salvation is recieved first, and after that (whenever the time) the gift of speaking in tongues comes. Therefore, strictly speaking one has salvation before one speaks in tougues.

However, this simple answer is not enough. The generic pentacostals, as I call them, do take differing positions. Most of the larger groups will activelly teach that there are wsaved people who do not speak in tongues. Some of the other groups in actual practice reject this in practice if not in theory.

So, where is the group from which your quoted a Stataement of Faith? I do not know.

Hi Gregory,
Thank you for breaking down the application in which this belief is used. I got this from a website http://www.cottonwood.org I had a bible study yesterday regarding this because I know that speaking in toungues is in the bible , but it is used to preach the word of God to other peoples in different languages,and if you speak in tongues in your mind with God you should be able to understand what it is you are saying and if out in the open and in public it should be translated or clearly understood by others. This whole situation came about when I approached my long time best friend about 2 books I purchased written by Pastor Dennis Smith titled The Baptism of the Holy Spirit & Spirit Baptism and Evangelism He got excited and must have assumed I was talking about toungues when in fact I was talking about having an indwelling of the Holy Spirit so I can witness to others about the plan of salvation which is in Jesus Christ. The main emphasis of these books is that the result of Baptism of the Holy Spirit was and is evangelism and preaching the Word of God, and bringing people to Christ. Anyways I am straying off the topic but wanted to give you some background info and where I found these beliefs.
God Bless,
Will