Expert: Mr. McClellan - 1/25/2009

Question
QUESTION: I would like read your opinion/understanding of what is the truth about "praying in the spirit" that many congregations today are succumbing to believing. How would you better explain to someone who believes in it or not what the actually meaning is to pray in the Holy Spirit.
Thank you for your time and input.

ANSWER: Hello truthseeker,
The phrase "in the spirit" is best understood in current times to mean "with a godly attitude of surrender to the will of God befitting someone who sincerely desires to do the will of God." It's an attitude that reflects the Holy Spirit (the different spirit that is opposite to that of the world) that Christians are to posess. To do anything "in the spirit," including praying, is to do it in willing and sincere loving service to God because it's the way God would have it. Only those who love God and keep his commandments because of that love will receive eternal life. See the letters of John for example.
I hope this helps
Mr McClellan

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for taking time to sure your thoughts.
I am often hearing people today talk about praying in the spirit is accompanied with "praying in tongues". And although the scripture in 1 Corinthians 14 Paul mentions the tongues of angels, why are so many congregations preaching that to pray in the spirit is to pray in an unknown tongue? When Jesus never taught to pray in anything but to pray asking all things in his name.

Which comes to the other question...
Would it be the same when baptizing in the name of Jesus (like the examples in Acts) or the the Father, Son and Holy spirit (Matthew 28). Would one through faith got baptized in either name, would that person have received the Holy Spirit and the salvation?

Answer
Hello Truthseeker,
First, to do anything "in the name of..." means "to do it by the authority of..." If you do something by the authority of God, like being baptized for example, you are obeying a commandment of God. That is, you are obeying one of his commandments if he commanded it and if you did it for the reason it was commanded. For example, if you allowed yourself to be immersed in water (baptized) in order to wash the sweat off on a hot day, then you were not baptized for the right reason and it would not be of any benefit in obtaining the gift of having your sins forgiven.

Congregations such as you speak of where people are being taught that praying in the spirit is to pray in an unknown tongue are teaching a doctrine that is not from the Biblical God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. This false doctrine is gotten by twisting the scriptures to mean something that the Bible clearly and absolutely does not teach. First of all, in Acts 2, all those people listening to the apostles preaching the gospel heard them speaking in the languages and dialects that the listeners were native speakers of. The apostles were instantaniously given the ability to speak those languages that, up until that moment, had been unknown to them. They had not had to study them and they spoke them as fluently as native speakers of those languages. This was an amazing and very convincing miracle, wouldn't you say? The people there that day seemed to think so. It certainly was the kind of thing that would cause people to realize that God was speaking to them through the apostles, especially with those flames above their heads! Now, lets say you had been given the miraculous ability to speak fluent Spanish and you were in a congregation of people, none of which spoke Spanish and you started explaining something to them in Spanish. Who would be able to understand you other than you and the angels? Nobody, that's who, at least not unless there was someone there that could translate for you. Miraculous gifts were given for the purpose of edifying the members of the church as well as for providing proof to unbelievers that a person had a message from God. If there was no one in the congregation who could make sense of what you were saying, you were to keep quiet. Speaking Spanish to show off would be a sin. So, the glossalalia gibberish spoken in modern churches is a hoax intended to impress the ignorant and make them think that the speaker is a very faithful and holy Christian. It's done to draw a following for a false teacher. Then, under pressure to not appear less spiritual, some people feel compelled to copy the activity knowing that they are faking it and don't have the courage to admit it.
Real miracles ceased to be given by the Holy Spirit in the early second half of the first century because they had served their purpose which was to serve as proof, or confirmation, that what the apostles and their faithful miracle working students said was from God until God had realed to them all the truth just as Jesus had promised the Holy Spirit would do after Jesus had gone back to take his place with God. It was by this time that they could say that the scriptures were complete and able to furnish them and those who heard them unto EVERY GOOD WORK. Nothing had been left out, nothing remained for God to say to mankind and miracles were no longer needed to confirm his word. Read the book of Hebrews as well as the last chapters of 1Cor.
I'd also strongly recommend that you pay very careful attention to the things people are calling miracles today. If you do, and if you know how to recognize a real miracle, then you'll know that real miracles do not take place anymore, including miraculously and instantly being able to speak a foreign languge, much less like a native born speaker. When was the last time you saw someone raise a person back to perfect health known to have been dead and imbalmed for several days, or instantly heal someone known to have been blind or lame from birth, or instantly calm a bad storm just by commanding it to stop, or walk on water without an artificial aid of some kind, or feed a large number of very hungry people from a small bag of groceries and have several times more left than they had before they began passing out the food? I'd venture to say with all the confidence in the world that you've never personally witnessed one of those things or anything like them and neither has anyone else alive today. Such things as that would be sure to make world news headlines on every major network of even the liberal media. That's about as absolute proof as you will ever have that miracles, real ones, are not being done anymore. They served their purpose and ceased to be given. Now what remains is faith, hope, and love, these three and that's it. Those people you spoke of? They're preaching a false Christ and a different God than the Bible describes.
Dispite what Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, and so much of the rest of the world ignorantly believes, secular and religious pluralism necessarily denies Jesus and the Biblical God calling them and the apostles liars, or at least deluded. No knowledgeble Christian, or any honest person that had carefully read the Bible, could say with a straight face that there are many paths leading to friendship with God, not the God described in the Bible anyway. That rediculous argument is simply a way to justify everyone believing whatever they want to believe as if God has to accept it and surrender to the will of humans. Why on earth would God have even, seemingly, attempted to communicate his will to humans if everyone is right in their own way? Where would all the false teachers be that the apostles warned about? With all due respect, that is such an absurdly stupid idea that it is very difficult to describe how truly rediculous it is. How people who are supposed to be educated can believe or dream up such stuff is truly remarkable and very sad.
Well, I hope I've helped you at least a little.
Sincerely,
Mr. McClellan