Ongoing Creation?

Ongoing Creation?

Is creation over? Or was it just the beginning, as in:

”In the beginning, God created the heavens (plural) and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

It maybe a surprise to some that the creation described in Genesis is just as stated, “the beginning”. While there were humans created prior to “first Adam”, the human creation in Genesis was specific and established the genealogy of the “last Adam“/Jesus. The best creation is still ongoing and finality is yet to come. What is that “best creation“?

In much the same re-creation of the earth from perfect and beautiful when it was made but turned “tohu and bohu” in Genesis 1:2, humans that sinned and got “marred clay” will be re-created. But, how and in what way?

With a mind-set towards global terrorism, violence against innocent victims and polarity among people in regards to what is right and wrong, the mind/spirit of man, more than ever, has to be changed to be”one” with God the Father. While it is good to be “one with each other”, as we have many diversities, the dilemma becomes: which facts/truth should we be “one” with? So, it has to begin with “oneness with the Father” (as man-Jesus did), but how?

Unfortunately, human power is deficient (Mark 14:41; Matt. 26:41; Matt. 26:48-40) and needs “power from above”; it has to be given. As God said, in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.”

The good news(gospel) is, the “helper” for this “change of mind” is coming, and is being given, as in:

John 16:7,

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper(Advocate/Holy Spirit) will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”

WHO was and is the CREATOR?

To fully grasp this coming “new creation”, one has to know who the Creator was and is. All Christian believers understand that there was a Creator. That creation demands an “Intelligent Designer” is as logical as acknowledging a manufacturer or builder for any product.

But who the Creator was, what was created, why, when, where and how appear to be questions that still may need to be explored. For those steep in religion, one can only refer to the Holy Bible for guidance and to trace his identity. So, together, let us consider this source to delve into the answers to these challenging questions.

In Genesis 1:1, the English word God was translated from the original Hebrew generic word”Elohim”. As a generic word, it refers to any “powerful being” that includes angels (even Satan is called “the god of this world”; 2 Cor. 4:4) and humans in powerful positions or any human being superior or more powerful than animals or plants, etc. But, there is only one God to be worshipped(Deut. 6:4; Shema Doctrine); all others are “false gods”, false in the sense that they were forbidden to be worshipped, although called “god” nevertheless(1).

To differentiate from “false gods“, this particular Creator Elohim was specifically identified as the “Lord God/YAHWEH ELOHIM”, as in:

Gen. 2:8

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

The Creator was YAHWEH/YHVH and no one else. This name YAHWEH was the one known to Moses, but he was EL SHADDAI to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, i.e., Pre-Moses era, as in:

Exodus 6:3 (New International Version)

“I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty( translated from Hebrew as EL SHADDAI ), but by my name the LORD (YAHWEH/I AM) I did not make myself fully known to them”.

New Living Translation

“I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai–‘God Almighty’–but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh(I AM), to them.”

Exodus 6:2-3:

“And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the LORD.’I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh(I AM), to them.

Fast forward to apostle John and during the apostolic era, this YHVH was described in Greek as the “LOGOS“, in English as “Word“ as in:

John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

On the side, in the New Testament rendering, the word God refers specifically to the Father and the Word or Logos refers to Jesus(2).

Then John continued to describe that this Logos chose willingly to be incarnated as planned:

John1:14 “ And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth”

After incarnation, the same EL SHADDAI, YAHWEH, LOGOS, was described or was known as JEHUSHUAH(Yeshua in Hebrew, Iesous in Greek, Iesus in Latin or Jesus in English). This description was confirmed by John the Baptist but most importantly by the Father himself, as in:

John 1:15“John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. “

John 1:32:“Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.”

Matt. 3:17 “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Essentially, through different era, this Creator God was known to people in different descriptive names to express the reason for his name.That is, El Shaddai, meaning the God Almighty since no one known to be mightier than him, omniscient ; Yahweh Elohim meaning the Lord God; I AM, ever present, omniscient; LOGOS, meaning logic, rationale, reason, he says the word and it happens; Yeshuah, (Jesus) meaning to deliver, Savior. Jesus was also called and described as the “Passover” (I Cor. 5:7), the one who made it possible for our “eternal/second death” (read references 3 & 4) to be “passed over”.

Another New Beginning

Identifying who was the Creator of the “invisible and visible” (Col. 1:16) and knowing the descriptive meaning of the names, give us a clue on who is the only one builder, not anyone else, of this “new creation” and what it is to be.

Paul provided the link to this enigma when he described Jesus as, “archegos” and “prodromos”, aka pioneer, predecessor, trailblazer, captain, Author, founder, forerunner”…the start of this new creation (See Heb. 2:10-11;12:2; 6:19-20). Relevant to this, as a son of a carpenter Joseph, Jesus took on after him, a carpenter/tekton in Greek (Mark 6:3;Matthew 13:55). For him to build, he had to “destroy” the temple, i.e., his body would die, (Mk 13:2; John 2:19-22), be resurrected, receive the Holy Spirit from the Father for us, then start from a foundation (John 2:19-21) within humans, the mind.

On the night of His arrest, Jesus told His disciples of a future building project of His, “I go and prepare a place for you” (John 14:3), his church (Matthew 16:18) and preparing an eternal dwelling place for the “spirit of man”. This “dwelling place” is the new immortal body that our “spirit of man” will be “clothed” with (5). But, to build this “new spiritual clothing”, Jesus has to begin from a “spirit-component” of man.

As a builder, he is building or creating a “product” (to develop into the “Son of God”) through a mechanism that is the only “way, the truth and the life”. As the “author“, he knows the process, the schematic plan, the truth behind it towards immortal life.

New Creation starts From Template

Therefore, as man-Jesus (not any other Adam) is the beginner, forerunner, pioneer, then what happened to him will also happen to us. The man-Jesus was the first template where this new creation started.

Notice, that as a human, flesh-composed, he received the Holy Spirit of power from the Father at river Jordan. This empowered him to overcome Satan. Without this power, he could not have overcome a spirit-composed Lucifer/Satan. Humans are no match to powerful spirit-beings as angelic beings are higher than humans. There was no miracle that Jesus did prior to this empowerment. In fact, a commonly acknowledged “first miracle” that Jesus did was when he made water into wine at a marriage in Cana (John Chapter 2). Although, strictly speaking, the first miracle using this Holy Spirit of power was when he overcame a “spirit-being”, Satan.

After Jesus was baptized with the Holy Spirit that imbued him directly from the Father, he still struggled, as flesh-composed human, with and overcame temptations of pain and suffering at crucifixion. But, the most future-defining, self-shaking moment was that temptation on the night in the garden of Gethsemane. In Luke 22:42, he said,

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”(New International Version)

For emphasis, realizing how horrifying death was from crucifixion, man-Jesus’ own will was not to die as a Passover for mankind, as in “take this cup pass from me“. But, without Jesus “taking the cup” himself and die by crucifixion for mankind, he would not have been resurrected by the Father, nor subsequently gifted with the power of the Holy Spirit to us-ward.

The Holy Spirit baptized into him at river Jordan was specifically for him; he had to get that same power for us to be guided by the Father’s wisdom to decide what the better choice is. With the power of the Holy Spirit that guided Jesus, he subjugated his personal will, to the power of the Holy Spirit to guide him with wisdom, chose voluntarily to follow the will of the Father and said, “…not my will, but yours be done.” They are indeed, “one” with each other, as we should also be “one” with the Father.

History shows that subsequently, 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb, he was “manifested/declared as Son of God by resurrection from the dead”(Romans 1:4). Indeed, he was manifested, declared or called or named as actual “Son of God” only after resurrection and received the Holy Spirit directly from the Father to be given to us (John 16:7). As before, he was the prophesied Passover Lamb then became so at death by crucifixion. So was he the prophesied Son of God until this became a reality, as manifested “by resurrection” from the dead into an “immortal spirit-body” capable of showing himself to the disciples with nail-holes in his hands. And, on the day of Pentecost, this Holy Spirit was gifted with openness and grandeur to his disciples and others(Read Acts Chapter 2) with the purpose of creating “many sons and daughters of God” as in:

Hebrews 2:10 “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered”

(See Heb 2:6-10 for additional context.)

Jesus is still giving this Holy Spirit of power to those who were called at a particular dispensation (1st or 2nd harvest) to believe and trust in God. As the Holy Spirit empowered and guided man-Jesus towards truth, be sanctified, and become, after his resurrection, “Son of God” and our elder “brother” ( Hebrews 2:11), so will all others after him be called “sons and daughters of God”; hopefully, as it is with endurance, perseverance and freewill to follow the “will of God” to be “one” with him,.

Meanwhile, this Holy Spirit has to “dwell in the temple not made by hands”(Acts 17:24;Acts 7:48). It has to reside specifically in the “spirit-of-man”(mind), the only component of Man not coming from “ground” and not a product of or “made by hands” but directly breathed into flesh-composed man by a spirit-composed YAHWEH. This “spirit-of-man” is where the Holy Spirit will dwell and is equivalent to and a reflection of the “holy of holies” in the Jerusalem temple. This Holy Spirit has to in-dwell/reside in the “spirit-of-man” that is within us, as in :

Ephesians 3:16 “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,”

This Holy Spirit empowers us to be “one” with the Father, as Jesus is with him

Israel was given the law through Moses but was not able to follow because, on their own, they are weak as the apostles were “weak” being flesh-composed as evidenced in Matt. 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42. The Law was perfect and was not the problem; instead the problem is the weakness of the person himself/herself, without the in-dwelling empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The Law was “written in tables of stone” (Exodus 31:18; 2Cor 3:3) much like written on our hardened-blind-deaf heart. This time, the Holy Spirit will dwell in the “fleshly tables of our heart and mind” to write, remind, guide us to the right choice of good, not evil. This sanctification (1 Cor 1:30 ) by the Spirit ( 2 Thess 2:13 ; 1 Peter 1:2 ) and in the name of Christ ( 1 Cor 6:11 )by the Holy Spirit will take us to grow spiritually from a child drinking “milk” to an adult eating “solid food” (I Cor. 3:2), and to develop wisdom. Along the way, we will still face hardships and suffering, like, but not the same as Jesus went through. And , those who “endure/persevere/overcome through the end” (Matt. 24:13) will receive a “new cloth” of immortality (Rev. 2:7,Rev 2:10) after resurrection and be “children of the God-kingdom”, all spirit-composed.

Summary

What was created in Genesis 2:7 was a human template, the first Adam. This was a flesh-composed body directly coming from the “ground” (“made by hands“) and the “spirit of man” (directly from God Creator) that was breathed into him by a spirit-composed YAHWEH. Our mind(spirit-of-man) is the “temple” for the Holy Spirit of power to dwell into this template to build the God-Kingdom composed of spirit-beings. This “place to reside in” is reflected in the “holy of holies” of the Temple in Jerusalem. That place in our human body is specifically the “spirit of man” where the Holy Spirit of God will bind, fuse, “fertilize” to guide it towards wisdom. The spirit component of man will be where the Spirit of God will dwell to teach/guide, convert it from “tables of stone” to “fleshly tables” where “spiritual laws” will be written for guidance and sanctification. This is how the “mind/spirit of man” will be changed, i.e., will be re-created through the aegis of the Holy Spirit Power, much like the earth that became “tohu and bohu” was re-created by this power. Then, after resurrection as spirit-composed beings, we will be in Christ, as in:

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

But, it was not the first Adam where this new creation will start as he came from the “ground”below. Instead, it has to start with the “second/last/final Adam” (I Cor.15:45) who came from “above” as “Yahweh Incarnate”. This anthropos/man-Jesus is the precursor, trailblazer, pioneer, precursor, captain towards the attainment of this “new creation”. No other human can start being a “temple” for the Holy Spirit except the incarnated human-Jesus.

This was why the Creator Yahweh in Genesis forbade the first Adam to “eat the fruit wherein lies knowledge of good and evil”.” (Gen. 2:16-17;3:5).

It was not for him to start becoming “like God knowing good and evil” (Gen3:5), the wisdom to differentiate good from evil” which was reserved for the “last Adam” and subsequently to others. Moreover, it takes the indwelling into the “spirit-of-man” and empowerment of the Holy Spirit to bring this to fruition through sanctification, perseverance and a life of overcoming evil.

This is the good news, the gospel of the coming God-kingdom, that is predicated on YAHWEH incarnating into man-Jesus, in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit in him, a life of being “one” with the Father, dying as s Passover Lamb, resurrecting as “Son of God”, receiving directly the promised gift of the Holy Spirit(Comforter) from the Father, then giving the same power to those who are “called” in this dispensation for their individual sanctification.

Those who “endure and overcome” through the end will receive a “new cloth of immortality” towards life-eternal, all “sons and daughters” of God-kingdom, the “spirit-composed children of God“…the “body of Christ”. “Oneness” with the Father was the end-point and was started by human-Jesus on earth while in the flesh. This is the path that has been blazed by Jesus and the same mechanism all of us have to go through with the power gifted in us with the in-dwelling Holy Spirit.

May God bless us all.🙏🎂

References:

1. What is God? Retrieved 6/24/18 from https://fact-s.net/2014/06/29/what-is-god-2/

2. Father’s Day. Retrieved 6/24/18 from http://fact-s.net/2018/05/03/1208/

3. Salvation, Series 1. Retrieved 6/30/18 from http://fact-s.net/2015/10/04/salvation-series-1what/

4. Death, what is ? Retrieved 6/30/18 from https://fact-s.net/2017/05/09/death-what-is/

5.What does “naked” mean and why were Adam & Eve “afraid” and “ashamed”? Retrieved 6/30/18 from

https://fact-s.net/2018/04/11/what-does-naked-mean-and-why-were-adam-eve-afraid-and-ashamed/

Original post: June 30, 2018

Hyperlink version reposted; 8/18/19

Critique is welcome at foundationacts@yahoo.com

Change in Trading Dynamics: The Key to Successful Health System Reform

Jun9 by fact-s.net

Change in Trading Dynamics: The Key to Successful Health System Reform

After $6B spent on federal campaigns, the country has chosen its leaders. Yet, problems with our health system still linger and fester. Physicians, the last bulwark of patient advocacy, have a ubiquitous role in reforming the system and must pick up the cudgels.

Even after passage of PPACA (Obamacare), issues like access to care, quality of service, insurance coverage, malpractice, over-utilization of resources, etc. continue to be at the forefront of the debate. However, all of these segmentations boil down to 3 general categories, viz., waste, fraud and abuse in the system, mired by “moral hazard” of having health insurance. Hopefully, all the preceding contending interests will be addressed with civility.

In my humble opinion, shaped by years of experience in the system, the above general categories do not constitute the root or core problem facing the entire healthcare industry. Worse yet, the proposed measures for reform will arbitrarily limit provision of services cloaked behind “evidence-based medicine” and will make future payment based on outcome that is uncertain or performance that is unpredictable. Assuming, for the sake of argument that all these issues come close to an ideal solution, these will still default to where they started due to the structural nature of the problems that rest on human nature.

People take action based on rational choice and personal interest unique to each person. The strategy then for health system reform is to accept this reality of human nature and align it to an understanding about a key flaw in the financial underpinning related to payment methodology of our current health system. Human nature being what is, the only remaining recourse is to change the structure of trading dynamics that initiates payment.

Price and Payment

To start with, our current payment system, whether public or private, healthcare or otherwise, is oblivious to the opaque pricing mechanics and corresponding arbitrary payment. Global markets thrive in such a scenario. “Buyers” have needs, wants and expectations of quality and service that have to be filled by “sellers“. Only the “sellers” determine and set the price according to modifications in demand and supply. The buyer either pays that price, wait or haggle for discount or not buy altogether. When both “seller and buyer” agree with the price, payment is made and trade is completed. Unfortunately, the nature of this trading system favors more the seller than the buyer because of “asymmetric costing” information. To illustrate, a seller may price a product or service for $100 and may discount it down by 50%. As price went down to $50, the buyer sees a 50% discount as a good deal, and pays up. If the production cost of the product/service amounts to $10, but hidden from the buyer, then he just paid the seller a 5x profit mark up. This fog in “costing” and lack of transparency in “pricing determinant” favor the seller as he is the only one who knows the production cost and the spread/profit.

Extrapolating this to healthcare product/service, exorbitant medical inflation occurs as “suppliers” mark-up the price way above their costs. Their expectation is to be paid, at least, above “break-even point”. True, it is crucial for the viability of any business to have profit. But there can be overpricing, overcharging, some call “gouging” that affects the entire spectrum of the “supply chain” in the healthcare system. Supplier-to-end-user, each along the way, marks up the price to profit from the trade. Everyone is affected as all can be buyer or seller depending upon where each one is along the throughput of the trading system. No wonder, healthcare expenditures turned exponential since private insurance came into being and in 1965 when a federal insurance, i.e., Medicare, became an mandated program.

Mechanism of fraud?

Historically, payment is made, by and large, from decision of bureaucrats in the federal or private insurance based on the price charged by the provider of the product or service. They get that money from federal income taxes or private insurance premiums. As payment comes not from their own money but from others’, public and private insurance just “opened there wallet“. As their “skin not in the game”, little effort is expended to negotiate down the price and even when done through contracting, the “spread” may still be too high. When it became apparent that the upward trajectory of spending is unsustainable, cost control measures were instituted, akin to price control. Federal responses like RBRVS and SGR for physicians and DRG for hospitals came into being. Private insurance increased premiums, tweaked qualifying requirements through adverse “selection bias” and/or exclude pre-existing conditions. Other stakeholders like pharmaceuticals, device companies and different suppliers responded in a similar fashion to maintain profitability.

Lack of transparency in “true cost “

What is apparent in these arbitrary responses is a pervasive theme of a pricing structure sans openness as to production cost. Only when there is transparency in production cost in relation to price charged, can a more rational payment system develop through a change in trading dynamics. When the buyer knows the “spread” between actual cost and selling price, he is in a level-playing field with the seller and can better negotiate down the price much closer to “true cost“. This is the essence of a competitive market-based economy. Medical inflation will be replaced throughout the whole gamut of trading by deflation in prices to a more reasonable level, while profit will still be made, although lesser than before. The eventual agreed price will then be more affordable and the health system sustainable and durable. With “information symmetry” between buyer and seller, the trading dynamics will change. As in the preceding illustration when the seller priced a product or service at $100, but discounted it down to $50, now that the production cost is transparent and is actually $10, instead of the buyer happily paying $50 as before, he can now negotiate the price even lower, e.g. $11 or 10% profit from “true cost”. The ability of buyers to participate in the decision as to how much actual profit comes from the trade, brings parity to the parties involved in the trade. The seller can continue to present projected % profit for his product, but transparency gives buyer/payer additional parameter to make final decision to complete the trade.

Summary

Reform of the healthcare system is complex when all the “moving parts“, as important as they are, detract us from the core problem, which is a payment system that marginalized and ignored trading dynamics. The payers, public or private, must fulfill their fiduciary responsibility and obligation to taxpayers and premium payers by demanding information about production cost and selling price before paying up.

Knowledge of % Profit (spread) should be part of “buying drivers” for consumers to be in equal footing with the seller. The system should not limit “price determinants” to supply/demand, needs, wants, expectations and ability to pay. They should include price differential with production cost throughout the whole gamut of the supply-chain. Physicians are the only ones that have attempted costing-transparency with RBRVS which slowed down their contribution to the rate of medical inflation. Other larger components of healthcare expenditures, i.e, hospitals, allied personnel, pharmaceuticals and device companies continue to wrap themselves in mystery. Consequently, healthcare inflation continued unabated. Even when the political winds sway towards conservatism or progressivism, the moral imperative is to bridge this chiasm. The challenge to our present generation is whether to keep the same culture in “buying/selling” or develop a new one, to adopt parity vs. disparity, opacity vs. transparency in the trading system. Which world and global market do we want to create? Shall we think outside-the-box or not? Only by looking at the culture and foundation of “buying-and-selling” through the prism of impartiality and even-handedness, will the payment system in healthcare system and other markets be equitable and reformed. With more healthcare dollars saved, a new dawn is in the horizon when payment is equitable, services not curtailed and access to healthcare available to all, whether the economy is yawning or booming.

Original post: June 8, 2018

N.B.

June 2011: Condensed version of Master Thesis accepted at New England College, Master in Healthcare Administration

Pentecost, speaking in tongues a miracle?

Jun4 by fact-s.net

Pentecost, speaking in tongues a miracle?

When something happens that is impossible, unbelievable and never-happened before, we call that a “miracle”. It is understood as such, because it actually happened, still unbelievable though unexpectedly and is unexplainable. It loses it “miraculousness” the moment it becomes explainable.

A case in point is the “miracle” of telephone pioneered by Alexander Graham Bell. If someone in the 19th century sees a person speaking to another, miles apart from each other, that could have been impossible and unexplainable, a miracle. Now, we know how and do not classify that as a miracle. Bell’s patent covered “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound“(1). It was sound/vocal energy transmitted through electrical wires to be converted to sound by the hearer.

Another example is about moving vehicles that transport people from one place to another. Before this became a reality, at an era of horse-drawn carriage, for someone to see a bus, car or train, it must be amazing and miraculous. Yet now, this is so common place and explainable by switching one energy to another and conserving it(2).

Similarly, knowing and seeing how easy ships sail, planes fly, electronic gadgets respond, etc. somehow they lose their “wow-effect”. The “law of diminishing returns” also applies.

Miracle explained?

The preceding discoveries bring me to the issue of the so-called miracle of “speaking in other tongues “ at the time of Pentecost narrated in Acts Chapter 2. This event was indeed unbelievable, first-time occurrence and unexplainable as far as mechanism of how this happened. There is “ongoing debate as to whether the apostles spoke an angelic language and the miracle included the understanding of an angelic language by the crowd, or if the miracle was simply the apostles speaking in foreign languages that they themselves had never learned” (3), but was heard in the language of their foreign-birth origin by the Jewish crowd who were born and raised in different parts of the world.

But could this phenomenon be explained? Recent observations on auditory science led to social media craze on how different people hear audio recording of “yanni or laurel” (4,5). Personally, I heard “yanni” but others heard “laurel”. This difference appears to be reproducible by changes in pitch, whether low or high and depending upon prior experience of the person.

Additionally, when someone you know who is monolingual suddenly was heard bilingual, was there an infusion of the ability to speak another language? Did the apostles at Pentecost actually spoke different languages(infused in their brains as in Matrix movie phenomenon), or spoke their native tongue but the audience was enabled to hear their own respective birth languages? At that time, those who heard did not yet have “spirit-baptism” to have this capability, although afterwards some were baptized (Acts 2:38-41; Acts 10:46). Could the apostles have spoken (Acts 2:1–16) Galilean but heard/perceived differently by people in the languages of their birthplaces?

As narrated in Acts 2:5-14, there were Jews in Jerusalem for the Pentecost who came from different places where they were born and spoke also their birth-languages (bilingual). So, could the apostles have spoken actual Hebrew language but was perceived to be speaking other languages of those Jews in attendance. This appears to be so in:

Acts 2:7-8 King James Version (KJV)

“And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”

Notice that “every man”, meaning every apostle, was “heard” by people/foreigner Jews in the “tongue, wherein (they) were born”. If the apostles, whose language was Galilean-Hebrew, actually spoke different languages suddenly, then they were not only bilingual but multi-lingual and each speaking in multiple languages at the same time. For emphasis, those who heard them understood them to be speaking their native languages all at the same time making it sound “gibberish” or “drunk”(Acts 2:13,15).

Recent observations in speech science have acknowledged, thus,

“A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there’s been a debate as to how,” said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. “There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages — they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language.“(6).

So there was a plausible explanation that the apostles did speak their own Hebrew/Galilean language (not angelic) but was perceived by the hearers (foreigners-Jews) in their own birth-country, all at the same time. With or without in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, these people may have heard the apostles from an experiential physiologic mechanism of hearing. There is therefore a mechanism involved in this phenomenon of “speaking in tongues” but not in the way most people were taught for years in churches.

Summary

The mechanism of how “speaking in tongues” can plausibly be explained, understood and therefore may not be called now as a “miracle“. However, the why, when and where it happened can still be considered a “miraculous event”. An energizing power of the Holy Spirit came about and actually caused this to happen at that particular point in time as promised and prophesied. See also 1 Cor 12:10, 30; 13:1;14:5, 13, 26–27;Joel 2:28-32;John 7:39,16:7; Acts 1:8;19:6.