tk111 said:
The goalposts on tongues have moved so many times in the last 100 years. No one (outside of some very fringe folks here and there) believed the gift of tongues persisted past the apostolic age until 1900. Then the early Pentecostals said the miraculous gifts had re-emerged because the end times were imminent. They (at least some of them) initially genuinely believed they were speaking actual existing languages (in accordance with how they were described in the Bible), and even sent folks to China to quickly find out that they weren't. Lots and lots of 2nd coming predictions came and went.
Someone came up with the bright idea that 1 Cor 13:1 implies some kind of heavenly language that people can become endowed with, and then you had churches populated with 100% English-speakers getting their reason to babble again. Decades of predatory "preachers" looking to make a buck lead the expansion of pentacostalism through this and claims of the gift of healing (John Alexander Dowie, Amy Semple McPhearson, Kathryn Kuhlman, Charles Parham, Seymor, Wigglesworth, etc). Their legacy are the folks like Benny Hinn, Ken Copeland, Jesse Duplantis...
The modern charismatic church loves to quote Rom 8:26-27 as some kind proof for incoherent "prayer language" type tongues, but like many other things, just reading the passage in its context shows how much eisegesis is required to believe that. The big push in the last few decades is due mostly to the post-modern urge for emotional mystic spiritualism - something people find very appealing as they look for a tangible "experience."
Well, if you have never experienced it you probably do not have the totality of knowledge to be able to judge it. Tell it to charismatic Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and all those nondenominational and Pentecostals around the world who could benefit from your words.
Again, if you don't understand it, Romans 14:4 is our best guide here.
It is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness- Sir Terence Pratchett
“ III stooges si viveret et nos omnes ad quos etiam probabile est mittent custard pies”