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John MacArthur Didn't like to speak in tongues.
John MacArthur was a cessationist he believed the gifts of the Holy Ghost including speaking in tongues, ceased with the apostles in the first century A.D.
But, that really isn't the reason why he didn't believe in tongues. He never had the Holy Ghost. He grew up in a dead dry as toast religion. Deader than fried chicken, dryer than a mummy's pocket. Sadly he never wept and prayed through to feel the power of the Holy Ghost. Ol' John Boy did write a book though, called Charismatic Chaos. A young man in our church family years ago handed me a copy. He said his Baptist mother gave him the book when she found out that he was attending church with us. He received the Holy Ghost with the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues as God gave the utterance. Right after he was baptized in Jesus name. He was so happy, and told his mother all about it. Previously he wasn't interested in attending church. Was bordering on agnostic heading towards atheism. He didn't want to go back to the Baptist church because all he ever got out of that was good nap. He would sit in on my Bible studies out in Fort Lauderdale. First he would sit a few tables down and listen. Then he grabbed a Bible and sat with us. Later he started to come to service, then the rest I have already testified.
Yet, after this young man was filled to overflowing. A changed behavior, and a changed spirit. His mother concerned purchased John MacArthur's book. The young man asked me, "elder, should I read it?" I told him since your mother gave it to you, I think you should. So, he did. He is still living for God to this day.
You see, what poor John MacArthur couldn't understand is that when someone gets the real Holy Ghost, and really speaks in a heavenly language. They get a change, a change that no one can talk them out of. A change that keeps them going. They pray different, and they stay different. No amount of books, or pamphlets written by some dusty old Reformed Baptist can change it or put a halt to it.
Thank you Jesus for the Holy Ghost speaking in tongues.
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"all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
~Declaration of Independence
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