Tongues (Part 1)

The Gospel-Centered Mission of No Compromise Radio

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Why Tongues Must Be Tested by Scripture

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. This is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host today. Today is Wednesday, October 14th, I believe. Nice sunny day, a little cold, snow's on its way, but that doesn't stop us from being spicy and hot and picante here in the radio studio.

Today, we're going to look at speaking in tongues. And you say, well, I thought it's book review today, book burning day, book promoting day. Well, next week, we'll have two authors live on No Compromise Radio, both Michael Horton and Ted Kluck.

Ted has written the book, Why We're Not Emergent with Kevin DeYoung. So this week, we're not going to have book issues. We'll have those next week. So I want to talk about speaking in tongues today. And so it's going to be an interesting topic.

It's going to be probably a controversial topic. I don't know why it will be controversial because we want to just go back and examine what does the Bible say? I have never met anyone today that has said they've spoken in tongues and had them speak a real language that they have not learned.

And so as far as I'm concerned, everyone who tells me, and even someone two weeks ago said, but I have the gift of speaking in tongues. God gave me that gift for a special prayer language. Friends, that person was kind, that person was sweet, but that person was ignorant of the Bible and not biblically mature, theologically accurate.

We're going to learn today what speaking in tongues really was and why that people who say they speak in tongues today may be doing a lot of different things, but they're not exercising what the Bible describes as the gift of languages.

And so today we'll prove like every other kind of no compromise day that we need to stand up for truth. And I would say not necessarily those who speak in tongues, but those who speak in tongues to the extreme degree and say this is a sign of Christian spirituality are really presenting quite a danger to the Christian church.

Listen to Princeton theologian, B .B. Warfield, as he commented back in the old days, matter of fact, long enough ago that Princeton was good in those days. And here's what B .B. Warfield said. The chief dangers to Christianity do not come from the anti-Christian systems.

Muhammadism has never made inroads upon Christianity save by the sword. Nobody fears that Christianity will be swallowed up by Buddhism. It is corrupt forms of Christianity itself which menace from time to time the life of Christianity.

Did you see what Warfield said? Did you hear what Warfield said? It's not necessarily Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or New Ageism that will crush Christianity, that will give it some kind of major death blow.

We know that the Lord will save us from the ultimate death blow. But he goes on to say, why make much of minor points of difference between those who serve the one Christ? Why be picky about all these details?

Is speaking in tongues for today? Is it not? Why critique it? Well, here's what B .B. Warfield said, quote, because a pure gospel is worth preserving. The pure gospel is worth preserving. And so that's what we want to do.

We want to ask the question, what is speaking in tongues? What does the Bible say about speaking in tongues? What do people do today who say they speak in tongues? And is there a difference between the biblical view and their view?

And if so, it's not spirituality. It's not sanctification. It's not Holy Spirit driven. We'll see that over history, the majority of people who have said they have spoken in tongues and match up to what people say today is tongues is strictly paganism.

The pagans would do that. But what about the Bible? What does the Bible say about speaking in tongues? And friends, early on, I have to remind you, you cannot tell me you speak in tongues, therefore it exists.

You cannot tell me on some kind of island in Madagascar there are people who have learned to speak a language that they've never studied, therefore it exists. You can't use that kind of anecdotal ad hoc evidence.

We want to say, what does the Bible say about it? That's the issue. Roger Williams said that the Bible is the square rule that determines all knowledge of God and ourselves. That's excellent information from Roger Williams, the original Baptist here in New England.

What did John Broadus say of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary over a century ago? What authority has the Bible for us? The Bible is our only and all-sufficient rule of faith and practice. So if you tell me from the get-go, you speak in tongues, therefore it's true, I don't care what that old book says, then we've already defeated the purpose.

We have the Bible. Our primary authority is not experience. It is not subjectivism. It is not pragmatism. It is nothing except the Bible, biblical authority. That's what we have. We have a historical Christianity, and that historical Christianity has always held firm to the belief that truth, God's truth, biblical truth, is objective, it is propositional, and it is found outside of us.

It is the Word of God. And with the modern charismatic movement, of course I have many friends that are charismatic, this is not an issue of their salvation, at least at the moment. I'm sure there are some people that don't believe in speaking in tongues that aren't going to heaven, and there are some people who do believe in speaking in tongues who aren't going to heaven, and vice versa, and verse visa.

But here is the issue. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to affirm truth. That's what we have. Jack Taylor said, the Bible is the Word of God. Only when the Holy Spirit who inspires it enlivens it, only then does it have life and power.

Until then is a document, documents is a letter, the letter kills. That is just crazy. That's just whacked out. Friends, today this is No Compromise Radio Ministry, 760 AM WVNE here in Worcester, Massachusetts.

And we're talking about speaking in tongues today. Lots of, probably have to do that tomorrow as well. Lots of things we could say. I think probably on the get-go, on the funny side, there's lots of funny stories about speaking in tongues.

Of course, you know that some teach the way you should speak in tongues is you just start saying something over and over and over. It's like you're trying to turn over a motorcycle and you're trying to jumpstart it.

You've got a Kawasaki 250 and you just got to stand up and kick your foot with all its power. And so you just say, I should have bought a Honda, but you say it really fast and you say it over and over and over.

I should have bought a Honda. I should have bought a Honda. I should have bought a Honda. I know other people who have been, like my wife was told to say, shaman, a shaman, a pop, pop, pop over and over and over.

Jack MacArthur, John MacArthur's father was grabbed by the arm of a charismatic pastor and was told to repeat Chickamauga Hilo over and over and over. By the way, Jack MacArthur said, number one, don't touch me.

And I thought that was quite fascinating, quite interesting. I know one particular man here at our church was told to get the gift. You need to just start repeating some consonants. Just have some kind of sound come out of your mouth.

And this particular man at the time was blown out on drugs and didn't understand what consonants were. So the only thing he could think of to say for some sound to get the Holy Spirit to jumpstart him for speaking in tongues when told say some consonants, this particular gentleman said A-E-I-O-U, A-E-I-O-U, A-E-I-O-U.

And so it wasn't consonants, it was vowels. For me, when I wanted to try to get the gift, and by the way, all this having people trying to get the gift, it shows that we don't really understand 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where spiritual gifts are given by the Sovereign Spirit.

The same Lord gives a variety of gifts and these gifts are given for other people. They're not for ourselves. Don't tell me you speak in tongues as a private prayer language because then you won't understand 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

At salvation, the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts. And I think he did give the gift of tongues back in the New Testament era. We'll talk about why we don't need those gifts today, but right now, just to start, I want you to remember that if you say you have to try to get to speak in tongues and you try to have to help people, it's some kind of special language that you need to jumpstart them with, then you don't understand the Sovereign Spirit as he gives a variety of gifts to people in the local church when they get saved.

Because it's not something you can come up with. It's not something you can do. It's not somehow a thing that you can capture. How can you do that if it's the Sovereign Spirit giving the spiritual gifts?

Just like you can't come up with your own teaching skills. If God didn't give you the gift of teaching at salvation, then you don't have the gift of teaching. Well, you might be able to teach certain things, but not in the way the Spirit of God has allowed other people to do that.

So what we want to make sure is that we are not ignorant of spiritual things. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, "'Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, "'I do not want you to be unaware.'". I don't want you to be ignorant.

And frankly, that's probably the largest growing denomination in all of Christianity, ignorant Christians, unaware Christians. That's an old Warren Wiersbe line. I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren.

That's the new kind of brethren that are sweeping the nation, the ignorant brethren. And so we want to make sure we understand that it's the Bible first, it is experience second. Wayne Robertson of Oral Roberts Evangelistics Association, who was a tongue speaker, wrote a book called, I Once Spoken Tongues.

And he said in that book, "'In the past few years, "'I have become more and more convinced that the test, "'not only of tongues, but of any religious experience "'cannot be limited to the logic "'and truthfulness supporting it.'".

Did you get that? Forget truth, forget logic, forget any of these things. We need to experience. We need to just experience God. And if we do, therefore it's true. We cannot do that as biblical Christians.

Historical Christianity will not allow that. If you want to call yourself a Christian, you can, it's a free country. But no, you're deviating from the paths of Scripture. You're not talking about what the Bible says.

And that's what we want. What does the Bible say? I'm willing to make this jab here right now. This is uppercut. Are you willing, listener out there, are you willing in your car or at home or the podcast to say, whatever I believe that's according to the Bible, I will continue to believe and I will adhere to.

But if I believe something that's not in the Bible and can be convinced, I will jettison that theology. That's a sign of maturity. That's a sign of spiritual maturity. Maturity is not, do you have the gift or not of tongues?

Maturity says, I'll go by what the Bible says. Now, all of us want to be more spiritual. All of us would like to act less fleshly. All of us would like to say no to our own carnality. And so the desire to somehow get a zap or to get the gift of speaking in tongues, I understand the desire because many times it stems from a godly desire.

It's gone biblically askew, but it's a godly desire. I want to be more like Christ. I'd like to be more like mature Christians. I want to say no to sin more often. And so I don't think that's a bad thing.

But then once we get into this area where we try to get the gifts ourselves, that was a problem with the Corinthian church. 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, they exalted speaking in tongues. And Paul has to say right from the very get-go, some people get tongues and some people don't in the apostolic era.

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit. And it goes through the whole issue, some tongues, some interpretation. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He, the Spirit, wills.

Did you get that? 1 Corinthians 12, 11. You can't come up with the speaking in tongues, A, because it's a language that you don't learn for the sake of the edification of the body, and B, it's the sovereign Spirit.

Don't say you've got some kind of Chickamauga Hilo, shamana, shamana, pop, pop, pop, Shodobada Honda kind of language that someone taught you, A, E, I, O, U, and tell me it's speaking in tongues. It isn't, it's paganism.

Paganism influencing you and your Christianity. I'm not calling you a pagan if you say you speak in tongues. I'm saying it's paganism slipped in the back door of Christianity. Thomas Oden said, although I concede that there are other tasks more important than the exposure of heresy, I warn, if there is no immune system to resist heresy, there will soon be nothing but the teeming infestation of heresy, end quote.

Now, I won't go so far as to say it's heretical to say you speak in tongues as a Christian, but I will say it's an aberration and it's a costly one, and it will affect your immune system if you're a Christian.

Friends, I love you enough to tell you the truth. I'm not mad at you, I'm not angry, I'm not a crotchety old man. I may be old, but I don't think I'm that crotchety. I probably am blunt, I probably want to tell you the truth, but I think Paul would do the same, James, Jesus, Jeremiah, Isaiah, certainly John the Baptist.

If you say you speak in tongues today, what language do you speak that you did not learn? In the Bible, in the Bible, tongues is the Greek word glossa, that's the root word, and it means speech or language.

It is a known language. Is it a known language that was not learned? And so what kind of gift would it be if it was just A-E-I-O-U but people would be taken aback in a good way to say, this person speaks Farsi and has never learned Farsi.

Now that is a sovereign gift. What did Christosanem say when he was writing on 1 Corinthians and the gift of tongues? The whole place is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by the cessation, being such as then used to occur, but now no longer.

Christosanem means golden mouth. He was one of the great preachers right in our 1 Corinthians. When was he writing that? A .D. 347 to 407, right towards the end of the 300s. He said, we know what tongues is, it's a language, but it's not around anymore.

What happened to all the speaking in tongues between the apostolic era and now? It's a good question. I'll tell you some of the folks that have spoken tongues, alleged tongues since the apostolic age, Motinus and Tertullian, they were reportedly speaking in tongues.

How about Gores has listed some of the hermits by name who try to speak in another language. Clarinius in 1300, St. Dominic, St. Vincent Ferrier in 1347, Francis Xavier, 1506. They said they had the ability to speak other languages, but could not be proven.

The Sevenols, they said they had the gift of a static utterance in persecuted areas of Protestant France in 1685. It was interesting, they believed that their little children who knew only the local dialect were able to speak in perfect French in a trance.

And so I find that interesting, at least it's getting warmer to biblical speaking in tongues. The Jansenists around 1731 were Roman Catholics and they were trying to reform the local Roman Catholic church.

And they would hold weekly meetings at night at their leader's tomb and they would supposedly speak in a static languages. The Shakers, followers of Mother Anne Lee here in New England, 1736 to 1784, they said they smoke in tongues.

I think maybe some people smoke other things, some kind of hemp to think that they speak in tongues today, but that's another issue. I will do an issue on a Holly Selassie and the Rastafarians maybe another time.

There were some English Quakers, these Shakers, shaking Quakers, they said they did. It was interesting, they had all kinds of weird thoughts. But anyway, who else spoke in tongues? I don't know, let me tell you the story about me when I try to speak in tongues.

I was told Romans chapter eight, making some kind of groaning that cannot be uttered, that somehow I could utter that groaning. Friends, that passage is talking about the spirit of God and how he is the speaker.

He is not speaking through us, we are not speaking. It is he himself who is speaking. And so I was told in Romans chapter eight, verse 26, in the same way the spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself, emphatically, spirit himself, and you see himself in the text, the spirit emphatically himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

That does not mean we groan, you don't groan, we ought not to groan. We say to ourself, we're weak, we don't know how to pray. Which is harder and which is more biblical? The harder thing is not to go in your closet and just groan.

What is more biblical is to know that we're still to pray anyway, and that the spirit of God, similar to Hebrews seven, as Jesus is in heaven interceding for us, the spirit of God is interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.

It's not you, it's the spirit of God. So if you're groaning and you're doing the intercession, that's not Romans chapter eight, verse 26 and 27. I was told to groan and I wanted the gift. I was a brand new Christian.

Kim was working, my wife was working, I was at home with the dog. I began to read Romans chapter eight and I was told to just groan. And so I was laying there on the bed and I just began to groan, oh, oh, oh.

And I would begin to groan and my dog thought something was matter with me because I was groaning and she was right. I was trying to be some kind of Mother Ann Lee Shaker Quaker and she thought I probably was smoking something.

So she came up, oh, oh, and what happened? Well, she thought I was hurt. She started to lick my face. I thought Satan somehow was in my dog, somehow possessing, somehow making my dog stop me from getting this gift, this gift that I needed.

And Satan was in my dog and my dog was named Marley at the time. And so I said to Marley, this was before Marley name was popular, but this was after Bob Marley. And so said to Marley, Marley, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I rebuke you.

And she went down to the edge of the bed and just laid there with her tail between her legs. And I thought, forget speaking in tongues, I can cast demons out of dogs. Man, this is amazing. I've got a better gift than that.

I'm an exorcist. This is an amazing thing. Peter Blatty has nothing on me. And I just thought my hands are full of fire. Well, of course, she just went down to the edge of the bed because she heard my tone.

She couldn't hear anything about demons and exorcisms and Jesus and all that. And so I began to start up again. Oh, oh, oh. And she was up licking my face again. I tried to rebuke her, it didn't work.

And I thought, this is dumb. The text says, friends, the text says, Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. The text says in 1 Corinthians 12, it is the sovereign spirit who gives these gifts.

He distributes them as he wills. Why would we want to run around and somehow then say we've got our own language? Why would we do that? Well, if the reason is because we'd like to be more godly and we want to say no to sin more often and yes to Christ Jesus, I get that.

But friends, it still isn't right. You have a good desire, but it's placed in the wrong corner. You can't do that. You can't say to yourself, well, I don't care what the Bible says. My pastor said such and such.

Friends, I don't really care what your pastor says. I don't care what Creflo Dollar says. I don't care what Robert Tilton says. I don't care what Ted Haggard says. I don't care what your local pastor in Worcester says.

What does the Bible say? 1 Corinthians 12 says in no uncertain terms, gifts of the Spirit, including tongues back in those days, a language that you didn't learn, but now you know. This gift was given at salvation by the Spirit of God.

And it says that the Spirit of God Himself intercedes for us in Romans 8. So only looking at those two verses, what do we need to do? We need to be very careful or we fall into, like I said earlier, shakers.

Quote, everyone acts for himself. This is a shaker's meeting. And almost everyone different from the other. One will stand with his arms extended, acting over odd postures, which they call signs. Another will be dancing and sometimes hopping on one leg about the floor.

Another will fall to turning around, so swift that if it be a woman, her clothes will be so filled with the wind as though they were kept out by a hoop. Another will be prostrate on the floor, some groaning most dismally, some trembling extremely.

Others acting as though all their nerves were convulsed. Others swinging their arms with all vigor as though they were turning a wheel, end quote. Show me one of those worship services and I'll show you worship in parentheses, worship in quotation marks, and I'll show you a place where there's no preaching.

There's hardly any preaching. Show me a church that is emphasizing the gift of tongues, alleged tongues, which is just some kind of babble, some kind of repeated thing. And I'll show you a church that minimizes the Word of God.

That's just the way it goes. Shakers would get these weird revelations, by the way, sexual intimacy is corrupt, even in marriage. The list goes on and on and on. Once you open the can of worms that says, what I experience is therefore true, then you're in trouble.

We have an external objective truth called the Bible. The objective revealed truth that was existent before you were alive called the Scriptures and will be there after you die, has said clearly in Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 that speaking in tongues is a language given by God at salvation for the good of other people.

How can it be for the good of other people when you're groaning and just using it as your private prayer language? Where are the verses on private prayer language? You can't find it in Romans 8. So today at No Compromise Radio, we've just touched the tip of the iceberg of the issue called tongues.

The Need to Keep Studying the Tongues Question

And so today we just looked at two passages and tomorrow I think we'll have to pick the same topic up to deal with this issue, speaking in tongues. It is an important issue. Even the charismatic Wayne Grudem said, this is a large and interesting area of discussion, one of immense importance in the church today.

And if it's important, then we need to talk about it. So we'll talk more about it tomorrow. My email address is info at nocompromiseradio .com. Info at nocompromiseradio .com. And we are going to be on the air tomorrow live.

I don't know if it'll be live or not, but on the air tomorrow talking about tongues as well. Nocompromiseradio .com or bbcchurch .org. God bless you. No Compromise Radio.

Study your Bibles. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.