Responding to Remnant Radio on Speaking in Tongues (Part 3 of 3)

The following is a transcript of a response I gave to Remnant Radio on the WWUTT podcast, Episode 2380, after they twisted my comments about speaking in tongues. This is part 2 of 3 which aired on April 4, 2025. You can listen to part 1 by clicking here and part 2 by clicking here. 

Kenneth from Mississippi asked: How do we understand speaking in the tongues of men but also speaking in the tongues of angels, according to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:1? Well, Paul is actually speaking hyperbolically there: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal."

It's not that we can speak in all the tongues of men or of angels. But if I could—if I were so endowed with the Spirit that I could speak in all the known languages of men and even unknown languages only the angels speak—but if I don't have love, I'm just making a bunch of noise.

This is being said in the context of the instructions Paul has been giving about spiritual gifts in chapters 12 and 14. Chapter 13 sits right in the middle to show the Corinthians a more excellent way, and that's the way of love. No matter how spectacular the spiritual gift might be, it's nothing if you're not exercising it out of love for God and for the edification of your brothers and sisters in the Lord, in His church. That's the purpose of the spiritual gifts.

Do the angels speak in another language? I'm actually not sure. Every time in Scripture someone witnesses angels speaking, they're always able to understand the language. So whether that means they're speaking known human languages like we speak, or we're just able to understand them in a heavenly realm—because perhaps we're hearing it in spirit and not with our physical ears—I suppose we'll find that out when we get to the other side.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about having a vision of heaven, and he says in verse 4 that "he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter." Does that mean he heard things in other languages that men who are still in flesh do not know? Or was he just speaking of the fact that he heard things that he wasn't permitted to repeat. I have my own theories about that, but I won't delve into that now.

But on the subject of the gift of speaking in tongues, let's come back once again to responding to this video from Remnant Radio, in which they critiqued the comments that I made in the documentary "Cessationist," which came out in the fall of 2023. This is Part 3 of this response. You can listen to parts 1 and 2 in episodes 2375 and 2380 respectively.

When Remnant Radio defines the gift of speaking in tongues, they begin with 1 Corinthians 14:2, which says, "For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries of the spirit." And the way they interpret that verse is saying, "See? No one understands him, he utters mysteries in the Spirit, so he must be praying in a private prayer language no one can understand, which we call speaking in tongues." That would be their definition of the gift: in can be either real human languages or indecipherable utterances.

But as I've argued, you cannot begin in 1 Corinthians 14:2 and work out from there as Remnant Radio does. You have to begin in Acts 2 where the gift is originally given and clearly described for us in the narrative. Jews from all over the Roman empire were gathered for Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and they began testifying of God in all of the languages which were spoken by the people present.

In Acts 2:11, they said, "We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." That is the gift of speaking in tongues. It's not a private prayer language. As I've argued, if you think that's what it is, you impose that on the text—you do not draw them from the text. Imposing onto the text we call eisegesis, and drawing out from the text its true meaning we call exegesis.

Now I find it necessary to say again that no true cessationist believes the miraculous works of God have ceased. We still believe God does miracles. I still pray for healing all the time. In fact, Beki and I prayed for a friend who is on death's doorstep, hanging on to life by a thread, before I started recording this. If it is God's will to heal and restore him, He will. And I've seen God do amazing things such as that in my years as a pastor.

What I do not believe is that there are modern day apostles. Paul was the last apostle appointed—even he said so in 1 Corinthians 15:8. And the age of apostleship ended when John, the last living apostle, died at the end of the first century. There's no new revelation. And we do not see miracles performed to the degree and with the regularity that they were performed in Acts. History and Scripture are very much on my side with that statement.

In 2 Corinthians 12:12, Paul told the Corinthians that the signs of apostleship were clearly performed among them. These more miraculous gifts were signs of apostleship—not exclusively performed by only the apostles, but certainly in confirmation to apostolic ministry in the first century. Hebrwes 2:4 says that God affirmed the preaching the gospel during the time of the apostles "by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will."

Continuists or charismatics believe that those gifts are still happening the way they see them in Acts. But as I've presented in previous responses, continuists often have to change or diminish the meaning or the interpretation of a spiritual gift in order to make that argument qualify. This is especially the case with speaking in tongues.

Many if not all charismatics argue for what they might sometimes call a private prayer language, though this is how they define what Scripture calls speaking in tongues. Yes, speaking in tongues is the speaking of other real human languages in Acts 2, but it can also be this private prayer languages which they will argue is described in 1 Corinthians 14. If you haven't heard anyone do this before, this kind of speaking in tongues sounds like this.

I have argued that is not speaking in tongues. That's just babbling or praying in gibberish, which Scripture neither describes nor instructs nor I believe permits. There is no description or allowing of a private babbling prayer language that's just between you and God.

In fact, I have made the argument that based on what Jesus says in Matthew 6:7, He has discouraged praying that way. And if you rightly exposit 1 Corinthians 14, you have to conclude that there is no value to praying this way. If you exposit 1 Corinthians 12-14 in light of Acts 2, then you have to acknowledge the babbling prayers are not speaking in tongues anyway.

I made the argument from Matthew 6:7 in the documentary Cessationist, but the Remnant Radio guys completely misrepresented my argument. I demonstrated this in Part 1 of my response, but we finally come to that portion this time, when I'll give a lengthier reply. The first thing you'll hear is my voice from the documentary, and then Joshua Lewis will chime in with his response. We'll also get to arguments from Michael Miller and Michael Rountree, his co-hosts. Here we go:

HUGHES
"'But I read in Romans chapter 8 that the Spirit speaks with groanings that are too deep for words.' Maybe that verse is what is meant by this, 'I feel this overwhelming urge from the Spirit to utter something and that's what comes out.' 

"There is no given permission in Scripture to speak some gibberish nonsense that no one is going to understand. Think about what Jesus said when He taught us how to pray. In Matthew 6:7, He said, 'Don't heap up empty phrases like the pagans do.' And then He says, 'Pray then like this:' and Jesus taught us to pray clear prayers. 

"He was never praying anything that was some otherly language. And if there was anyone who was going to pray in such a language, it would certainly be the one who was sent down from heaven—Christ Himself."

LEWIS
"Interesting. Is Matthew 6 telling us not to speak in tongues. Is the fact that Jesus never spoke in tongues evidence that we shouldn't speak in tongues. These seem like bad arguments. There is no record that Jesus spoke in tongues and yet there's a record that Peter spoke in tongues. His argument is, 'Well if anyone was going to do it, it better be the Son of God.' That doesn't even work with your understanding of the gift of tongues. Like, why is that even an argument that's being stated? It's self-contradictory."

Now, if this were a round table discussion and I were sitting with these guys, this would be my honest response to what Lewis just said: "Do you just no understand the argument that I'm making, or do you understand it and you're deliberately misrepresenting what I said."

I played this for about a half-dozen different people, including both of my fellow elders. Not all of those who saw this clip were cessationists, by the way. And they all had the same reaction to it: "It's like he wasn't even listening to what you were saying." And this has been my chief criticism to all of Remnant Radio's criticisms of the Cessationist documentary. It's like they're responding to an argument that isn't even being made.

In listening to these Remnant Radio guys, there are occasions when they're probably on to a good argument. Like, a claim in the Cessationist documentary probably isn't a good argument—perfect opportunity for Remnant Radio to expose the weakness of the argument, point to what the Scriptures say, and make a defense for continuism. But almost every time, it's like they turn the gun around and shoot themselves in the face by completely misrepresenting the argument. Even as they play it in real time, and they still don't get it.

I wish I could say their hearers are on to it and calling them out on it. Unfortunately, when I look down in the comments under the video, they just eat up what Remnant Radio is feeding them as an honest representation of cessationism. One gal in the comments named Rachel said of my clip: "Ouch. This 'exegesis' is painful."

So what is Remnant Radio getting wrong? I said this in part one of this response—I was not talking about speaking in tongues in that clip. I didn't even use the phrase "speaking in tongues." I don't believe the private prayer language practice of charismatics is "speaking in tongues." And by the way, I remind you that I'm speaking as a former charismatic—as someone who was in these churches for a decade, and in that mindset for longer than that.

All I'm addressing here is the concept of having a personal, private prayer language between the person praying and God. And by the way, the Remnant Radio guys use exactly that term earlier in the response. Before they even played my clip, they addressed the concept of a "private prayer language"—so they believe in the practice and they call it the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, and impose that on me even though I didn't call it that.

By this point in the documentary, it's already been established what speaking in tongues is. So that when it gets to the part of addressing the concept of a private prayer language, it's presented that this is not the gift of speaking in tongues as we observe it in Scripture.

Nonetheless, the Remnant Radio guys are going to go on arguing with me as if that is what I'm talking about. We're on completely different wave-lengths here. None of these arguments they will make actually work against what I just said. But I'll address them anyway. Here we go. This is Michael Miller:

MILLER
"Yeah, he's totally failing to recognize the polemical aspect of tongues as it was in Acts chapter 2. This is a reversal of Babel. So the Tower of Babel event hadn't been reversed because the New Covenant hadn't been made available for all flesh. So the idea that other nations would be coming in, that hadn't happened yet—not until after Jesus died on a cross, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and poured out the Spirit, and thereby giving the baptism of the Spirit to unite all flesh, right? For by one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body, as 1 Corinthians 12:13 says. 

"So it's like he's just completely throwing away the polemic nature of why tongues was given in Acts chapter 2, as opposed to, uh, I mean, I don't know. It makes no sense to say that he's just chopping in whatever verse of Scripture he can get to fit his argument."

LEWIS
"Well also, he's making the argument that Jesus should have been—if you can do this, if Michael Miller is able to speak in tongues, then Jesus should have been able to speak in tongues. The problem with this argument is Peter spoke in tongues, and Jesus didn't speak in tongues. Like even if you want to take the category of like real tongues and fake tongues—'Well, your tongues is fake, and Jesus didn't do that, therefore what you're doing is not real'—do it with the real one. It doesn't work that way."

They're delighting in what they think of as smashing my nonsense argument, when they don't even realize that they just defeated their own argument. What was going on at Pentecost in Acts 2? Not prayer. It was very clearly not prayer. So when Miller said that I'm ignoring the polemical aspect of tongues as it was in Acts 2, the reality is that's what they're doing. They are actually ignoring the purpose of tongues in Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14, which I'll get to, because speaking in tongues is not a private prayer language.

The point that I was simply making is that Jesus clearly taught His disciples and us how to pray. And in those instructions on prayer, He said, "Don't heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do," or "as the pagans do." What is it when you pray meaningless gibberish? They're empty phrases. And as I've said in a previous response, pagans all over the world do that. There is nothing specific to the Holy Spirit in praying in a gibberish, nonsense prayer language. It's what the pagans do.

Where in Jesus's teaching on prayer is there any kind of hint that we will be able to pray in some heavenly language. If there was anyone who was going to demonstrate that there is some language of heaven that is different than any language we speak on earth, and that we would be endowed with such tongues to pray words that angels speak, it would be Jesus, who came from heaven. And He gave no such teaching and no such example. Period. That was my argument.

There is not a private prayer language in the Bible. And if the Remnant Radio guys stopped for a moment and listened to their own arguments, they might understand that as well. These next comments are from Michael Rountree:

ROUNTREE
"Well, in fact, even the way the book of Acts portrays it, we see Jesus in Acts 1:9-11 ascending into heaven, and then in Acts 2 they hear a loud sound coming down, a mighty rushing wind coming down out of Heaven. Luke is using geography to say that the pouring out of the Holy Spirit actually comes from Jesus, which is precisely what Peter will explain in his sermon in Acts 2:29-36, that because Jesus has ascended into heaven at the right hand of God, He has now poured out this which you see and hear. He literally explains that the gift of tongues is here in Acts 2 because of Jesus. He gives Jesus the credit, who—by virtue of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension—pours out the Holy Spirit upon the church. 

"So to say like Jesus didn't do it, therefore you shouldn't do it—well but Jesus gave the gift of tongues! See, Jesus gave tongues. So maybe you should do it. I mean, hey, I'm not one of those who thinks every Christian can speak in tongues. I look at 1 Corinthians 12—are all apostles, are all prophets, do all speak in tongues is one of the questions he asks, and the implied answer is no. But you shouldn't for forbid speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 14), especially on a terrible argument like this."

LEWIS
"Also, Matthew 6. Come on, dude."

ROUNTREE
"Yeah, Matthew 6. Yes, He's teaching the Lord's Prayer. I mean, this is just a very different thing. Yes, the Lord's Prayer says to pray in this way. Is that the only way we pray? Are we limited to the words that Jesus gave us in the Lord's Prayer? Is that what you're trying to communicate?"

Is that what I'm trying to communicate? They seem so certain of everything that I said. Why don't they tell me. Where did I say this is the only way we are to pray? Just pray the words of the Lord's prayer? What did Lewis say: "Come on, dude." My point was simply that Jesus taught us how to pray. And every example of prayer we have in the Bible is prayer in real, understandable human languages.

ROUNTREE
"We're not limited to the words nor are we limited to the language of the Lord's prayer. The Lord's Prayer is a model of how we should typically pray. But Paul also says I'm glad I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in the church I'd rather speak five intelligible words. Well, if he's glad he'd speak in tongues but not in a public place, well what is that? It's prayer!"

It's eisegesis! They're reading the ability to pray in a nonsense, gibberish prayer language into the text. They're looking for a place to insert it, even though no instruction on it has been given anywhere else in the Bible. Not one demonstration of it being practiced. I can point to Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6, and we can read that we should not be praying in empty, meaningless, gibberish. What are you pointing to in Scripture to say, "Uh, yeah. We can"? The best you've got is to read that into 1 Corinthians 14.

Let me start here in verse 13. I'll read it, since he won't. This is 1 Corinthians 14 beginning in verse 13: "Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray," what? What should he pray? "That he may interpret." So if you're going to speak in a tongue, pray that you may be able to interpret it for everyone else. Verse 14: "For if I pray in a tongue." If! "My spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful."

That's not a good thing. So how does Paul resolve this? Verse 15: "What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also." In other words, I will pray words that even I can understand. This is not acting out of the excstasy of my spirit. This is sound, reasoned, meditative practice in the Holy Spirit to pray in both mind and spirit, that you may understand what you are saying.

Still verse 15: "I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also." In the charismatic churches I attended, they also sang in gibberish. Paul is saying here, pray and sing words that everyone can understand, even you can understand.

Verse 16: "Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say 'Amen' to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?" So addressing again that it's actually the Remnant Radio guys who don't understand the purpose of the gift of speaking in tongues, the spiritual gifts are for edifying and building up the church. Speaking in tongues in the corporate gathering doesn't accomplish that.

Verse 17: "For you may be giving thanks well enough." Like in your spirit, you are thankful to God, even if you don't understand the words you're saying. "But the other person is not being built up." Again, because the purpose of the gifts is for building up the church.

Verse 18: "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." What kind of tongues, Paul? Still the same kinds of tongues we see in Acts 2. The definition hasn't change. No where has the meaning of this spiritual gift transitioned to mean something else. Acts 2:11 again, "We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." Paul had been blessed by the Spirit to speak other languages over the course of his missionary journies.

Verse 19: "Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue." That's the context. Is Paul talking about prayer there? No, he is not. Michael Rountree misquoted the verse. He conveniently left out that Paul said, "I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue." The point is teaching, not a private prayer language. Going on.

ROUNTREE:
"This why we call it, this is why like informally we might say it's a prayer language, because he says, 'He who speaks in a tongue speaks between himself and to God,' not in a public assembly. He speaks speaks in tongues more than everybody else. So the Apostle Paul prayed in tongues."

He said, "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful." That was not encouragement to pray in tongues. This was a rebuke because the Corinthians were misusing the spiritual gifts, especially the gift of speaking in tongues. This was the gift that they could look the most impressive with. They may not be able to heal anyone. You'd be able to pick up real fast that someone is not actually miraculously healing anybody. And what's with "the ability to distinguish between spirits" in 1 Corinthians 12:10? That one's just not showy enough.

But if they could fake speaking another foreign language, they could make it at least look like they had the gift of speaking in tongues. The only problem is that no one in the church has a clue of what you're talking about. So Paul rebuked them for abusing the spiritual gifts to benefit themselves rather than the church, and 1 Corinthians 12-14 do not contain instructions on praying in tongues. Again, Rountree is imposing that onto the text. He's not drawing that from the text. He's practicing eisegesis, not exegesis. They actually do very little reading of the Scriptures here.

ROUNTREE
"So, well I'm going to go with Paul. If Paul did it, it's probably a good thing to do. Paul says follow me as I follow Christ, so maybe, uh, maybe you should speak in tongues. You know, I will say this on Romans 8. I agree with him that's not about the gift of tongues, wherever it talks about groanings that are too deep for words. But that's not like every charismatic believes that's about tongues. I think it's an overreach and a grasp to suggest that is about tongues."

But that's what I heard in charismatic churches for years. So these guys should not dismiss that as a common argument among charismatics. It is a very common argument. I heard just like a month or two ago. I don't think a year of my life has gone by where I've not heard someone using that passage as an argument for having a private prayer language. So respectfully to these guys, they should recognize that and address it. It is way more common in their circles than to say Romans 8 is not about having a private prayer language.

ROUNTREE
"So I can say that I agree with him there. But on the other stuff, it's just it's really bad argumentation, and it's actually discouraging that sort of argument actually made it into a documentary. Like, it says something about like the person who made this documentary and thought this was a good enough argument to air. Like, I can imagine like you got the camera rolling, you're filming some guy, and he makes like just a really bad argument. You're like, 'These charismatics are going to tear this one up; let's not put that one in.' But you went ahead and threw that argument in. I'm kind of like man."

LEWIS
"Well Michael, he brought up Matthew 6 to say that when you stand in the marketplace, right, you're not to lift up like repetitious and big lofty prayers so that you may be seen. He uses that verse to say, well, this is clearly saying that God wants us to not pray these big long-winded prayers of tongues, right? But to pray in such a way that's intelligible. That's not what Matthew 6 is about. It's not about intelligibility and unintelligibility. In fact, it's the intelligible words that are like highly lofty, that are there to impress others."

He's just straight up misrepresenting me there. I was absolutely not saying that Matthew 6:5-6 was about speaking in tongues or a private prayer language. I used Matthew 6:7, where Jesus specifically addressed the way the Gentiles prayed. Matthew 6:5-6 is about how the hypocrites prayed.

There Jesus said, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." I did not say that has anything to do with a private prayer language.

Now I don't think Lewis is deliberately trying to lie about me, but it's still not charitable that he so carelessly handles my argument in this way, and attributes to me saying things I never said. Fortunately, one of the Remnant Radio guys is going to come to my defense here in a moment, but it still doesn't change the fact that this entire shpiel has been a misrepresentation of my initial argument.

LEWIS
"Whereas the gift of tongues, if it's to be practiced biblically, is probably one that is done personally, privately, unless accompanied by interpretation—which again, I think that we're broad brushing here when we're talking about the charismatic movement. He'll play, you know, Sam storms and he'll play John Piper, and then they'll say, 'And then we go into these large rooms and everyone speaks in tongues.' None of them do that.

"The charismatics that they highlight in this documentary, and they say that, 'Well, you know, they're all basically the same,' it's so absurd. In fact, the Pentecostal charismatic movement, there
are there are certainly groups amongst them who will say, 'Hey, everyone let's build ourselves up in our Most Holy Faith, let's all pray right now in tongues,' and there is babbling that takes place, and unbelievers are present going, 'What's going on here?' We don't see the whole fruitfulness of that. We would condemn that. We would as a community say, 'Hey, that's wrong. You shouldn't doing that. If there is a gift of tongues, there ought to be an interpretation that goes along and accompanies along with it.'"

So as I said, I attended several charismatic churches over the course of 10 years, and I was still charismatic in my beliefs for another 8 years after that. I haven't been a cessationist for even a decade yet. By the way, a lot of the guys who were interviewed in the cessationist documentary were former charismatics—even raised in Pentecostalism. So many of us spoke out of not only what we knew but what we had experienced.

And I heard many times what Joshua Lewis just said. If anyone is going to speak in a tongue, there must be an interpreter, or else he must be quiet. I heard that all the time. But I never saw it implemented. Not one time. I attended charismatic churches that didn't get all barrel of monkies crazy in the middle of worship. But even though they would say you shouldn't speak in tongues unless there's an interpreter, they all did it.

I had a chat with a deacon at one of the largest and most cult-like Pentecostal churches in our community. This was in Kansas. And he told me this. He said, "We don't let anyone speak in tongues unless there's someone who can interpret. And there must be only two or at the most three. No more than that." He told me that. We were actually sitting in the middle of McDonnald's having that conversation.

But then I had the chance to visit his church, and their worship services were absolutely nuts. So he said that. And the funny thing is, he said that knowing what 1 Corinthians 14 says about this, but also knowing full well his church didn't practice it.

So again, that's all to say I heard this a lot, but I never saw it implemented. I heard a lot of tongues speaking that never had an intrepreter. In fact, I can't remember there ever being an interpreter. But I digress.

LEWIS
"But to make the argument that Matthew 6 is somehow pointing us to tongues is a horrible misuse of the text of Scripture. That has to do with Pharisees wanting to be puffed up by their intellect and to be puffed up and to be seen in the Public Square. If tongues is is practiced appropriately, it's the exact opposite of that."

MILLER
"The verse he's quoting is actually not the one you're referring to, although that's in the exact same passage. He's talking about how the Gentiles pray with repetition, and he's saying that basically that's what tongues is—it's just a bunch of guys uttering a bunch of stuff that's in repetition, which Jesus told us not to do in Matthew 6, like the Gentiles. So I don't think he's referring necessarily to the Pharisees.

"But in either case, the argument doesn't work. People speaking in tongues, they're not offering up a bunch of repetitious things for no reason. People who pray in tongues are doing so because they want to pray, and they often don't know how to. And God Himself sees the state of mankind and our inability to pray as we should, and though He gave us the Lord's Prayer, He's also now given the gift of tongues so that people can pray so they don't feel like they're being repetitious."

But that is exactly what it is. It's repetitious nonsense. It's uttering the same syllabic nonsensical phrases over and over again. Listen, I've been in dozens and dozens of prayer circles where this was going on, and I heard with my own ears constant, repeating, nonsense, babbling that didn't mean anything. If you honed in on one person, you heard them repeating the same patterns over and over and over again. 

The example clips I've played you—I just played you a small part because the whole thing is just the same repititious babbling repeated over and over again, for minutes upon minutes on end. This is not the practice of prayer that God gave us. We have a whole book of prayers called the Psalms. As Beki and I said, they're songs, and they're also prayers.

MILLER
"He actually is undercutting the whole purpose of giving the gift of tongues, yeah, which I don't even think he understands why God gave that gift all."

I don't think these guys understand why God gave that gift at all. Their entire paradigm has been operating out of a verse like 1 Corinthians 14:2 and not Acts 2:11. And then Paul actually says in 1 Corinthians 14 what the gift of tongues is for, and it's not prayer. And I'll give you that passage in a moment here. None of these guys actually care to take their listeners to the text and walk them through it. This is eisegesis, imposing their meaning onto the text.

Now even though Miller corrected Lewis misrepresenting my argument, Lewis is going to come back and say no, that is what I was saying. It's just so unbelievably uncharitable. But what can I do. That's the next part here.

LEWIS
"I don't mean to correct you, but I think they're all the same text—the Matthew 6, because it is the same context.

MILLER
"It is the same text. But when he says repetition, he's not referring to Pharisees, he's referring to the Gentiles. This is not about being seen, it's about repetition. Does that make sense? It's in the same text.

ROUNTREE
"Either way, like, we have to even understand, like, what is Jesus's issue with repetition? Because praying the same thing over and over again, there's nothing sinful about that. I mean, have you read the psalms? There are some of them that'll be like, "Praise the Lord with symbols, praise the Lord with tambourines, praise the Lord, blah blah blah, praise the Lord, praise the Lord." It just goes back and forth, back and forth, saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. So there's nothing wrong, and this is what He's putting into the mouths of His people to pray and to sing. So there's nothing wrong with repetition."

I suppose he's talking about Psalm 150, which is the very end of the Psalms, and there's a reason why it is the closing song of the psalter. It's only 6 verses long, so it's not the same thing over and over and over and over again, the way he characterized it. The song uses the expression "Praise Him" eleven times in six verses, and it's really not as repetitious as he just made it sound.

The most repeitious Psalm is without question Psalm 136. It's 26 verses, and the phrase "for His steadfast love endures forever" comes up 26 times. It's used in all 26 verses. After those two Psalms—and again, I don't think Psalm 150 is even all that repetitive, it's also thematically the conclusion of the psalms—the psalms are really not all that repetitive.

However, I never said there was anything wrong with repetition, did I? Go back and listen to my original answer. I didn't say anything about repetition. I didn't even use the word. And neither did Jesus in Matthew 6:7. I used the wording He used: "Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles" or the pagans do.

I mean, this just futher elaborates on their uncharitable line of argumentation. They are so into their own arguments here, they don't even remember what I said. I never said anything about repetition. So this is just a silly argument so these guys can listen to themselves talk, I guess.

ROUNTREE
"What He's going after is the Gentiles who don't know they have a heavenly Father. They think that they have to twist the arm of the gods, so to speak, through this like repetition, and He's going after their non-relational approach to God where they're trying to earn through their devotion to repeating things in prayer to get their way. And He says no, that's that's not what this is about. This is about a relationship with your heavenly Father. So anyway, it's non sequitor. What he says is it does not follow that therefore tongues doesn't work because Matthew 6. 

"Like if we want to interpret scripture in context, we should understand that this verse had absolutely nothing to do with tongues, and that's really the point that all of us made on our point from Matthew 6. And it was kind of hard to discern what point he was trying to make from Matthew 6. That's. probably why the confusion."

I agree that Matthew 6:7 has absolutely nothing to do with speaking in tongues. Once again, having a private prayer language is not speaking in tongues. Jesus discouraged speaking in empty phrases. So stop praying in empty phrases. It's not a heavenly language. It's not anything at all. Pray how Jesus taught us to pray. Pray how the apostles and the prophets prayed. Pray how the Scriptures teach us to pray. And it's not in meaningless babbling. Period.

Now because this is already gone rather long, I'm going to end there. I do think there's one more line of argumentation in here that's worth addressing, and if this comes up at another time, maybe I'll pick it up again. But if I never come back to this video again, I'm content to leave it there.

Remember the words of the Apostle Paul closing 1 Thessalonians: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances in Christ Jesus to you." It's of no benefit to you or anyone else around you, bearing no fruit, if you can't understand the message.