Welcome to another episode of apostolic life in the 21st century. As Pentecostals, we have

had several episodes in the past where we've covered the topic of speaking in tongues. We want to

look at it from a little different perspective today. So Dr. Bernard,, in the past you've talked about, and you've written extensively about speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of salvation.

We've got some past episodes on speaking in tongues as part of spiritual gifts that Paul mentioned.

But today we want to specifically, and we've talked, I should mention, we've talked

about speaking in tongues in the concept, or in the context of a worship service, but today I

want to specifically ask you about what Pentecostals and Charismatics would call their prayer

language. That is praying in tongues as part of our private devotions. I want to start by asking you, is there

biblical support for this practice? Because the reason why I ask is the Bible, the New Testament

would indicate that tongues are assigned to unbelievers. But if we're praying by ourselves,

there's no one around to hear us that can't be assigned

to unbelievers, obviously. What benefit then is there to speaking in tongues as part of our

private devotions? Well, first, let me say that speaking in tongues in our personal,

private devotions is certainly beneficial. And for a full discussion, I'll refer to my book, Spiritual Gifts. And in it,

I explained that in the New Testament, there are basically three uses of tongues. Tongues, meaning

a language we don't know, but we speak under the utterance or an anointing or inspiration

of the Holy Spirit. And it could be a known language

somewhere in the world, but we don't know it, or a dead language, or maybe even a spiritual

language. First Corinthians 13 talks about the tongues of men of angels. And I don't know,

angels are not physical beings, so I don't know how they communicate, but at least there's some

indication that tongues could be something that's not known in this world, but it's seen as

a language or a form of communication. So if we look at the Bible carefully, the book of Acts,

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