Expert: John Fields - 1/6/2010

Question
Does Church of Christ believe and practise worship in song and speaking in tongues?

Answer
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking but I'll answer what I think you are asking.

We practice singing using the heart as the instrument because we believe God has given us a clear example in this present day that His preference is that we sing with no other instruments except the heart. All kinds of instruments were commanded to be used in the singing in Old Testament times. In addition to these we know that He commanded MANY other things as well which are no longer around. These are some of the other things He commanded: the perpetual burning of incense, the high priest, the sacrificial system, and the temple as well as MANY MANY others.

So why did He command them at one point and do away with them at another? They were in place to point to other things which were superior and to teach some things about the things which would come later.

The perpetual burning of incense was alluded to in Revelation 5:8 where it referred to incense as the prayers of the saints. We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. Put together we see that the never ending burning of incense represented the never ending prayers of Christians (the saints).

The high priesthood of Levi pointed to our current High Priest Jesus, who is of the order of Melchizedek;

the final sacrifice of Jesus was pointed to and taught about in the sacrifices from those times;

the temple pointed to a better and more pleasing temple for God to reside in. WE are now the temple of the Holy Spirit according to 1 Corinthians 3:16 (Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?)

Instrumental music was commanded for God's temple in 2 Chronicles 29:25 (He stationed the Levites in the temple of the LORD with cymbals, harps and lyres in the way prescribed by David and Gad the king's seer and Nathan the prophet; this was commanded by the LORD through his prophets.) So if the other things which had been commanded in the Old Testament, pointed to and taught about other later things,and were then discontinued, what was instrumental music pointing to when it was discontinued?

Literally, under the old command, strings were being plucked in the temple of God. Contrast that with our singing today. In Ephesians 5:19 it says "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord," Literally translated it means sing and pluck the strings of your heart. So we today pluck the REAL instrument that God has interest in, the heart, in the REAL temple, us.

As to speaking in tongues, we believe that they were discontinued.

Written by the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 speaks of a time when the perfect would come and the partial would be done away. We believe the perfect in the context spoken of is the perfect Word of God, the Bible. The Bible was not yet complete or put together at the time Paul wrote. Later, when it was complete, the perfect would have come. The Holy Spirit supplied supernaturally for them at that time what they could not have had otherwise until the Bible was written.

Those who speak in tongues today do not practice it as it was commanded in Paul's time anyway. Look what Paul instructed in 1 Corinthians 14:27-28 (27) If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.

One can go into MANY MANY different groups who practice this and witness it being done by practically the whole group with NO interpreter. So what about Paul's command of two or three and ONLY if interpretation is provided? It is being disregarded. If the whole group is speaking in tongues and nobody is interpreting, how is that allowed for in scripture? It isn't. It has been done away.