What is the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues? - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 30

So welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, I have with me Jeff and Kevin, our regulars.

Jeff is the administrator of BibleRef .com and Kevin is our managing editor. Today, we're going to be discussing the gift of tongues is something that's been a common question for our entire history.

It's in the top 20 for sure and lots of related questions. We're going to try to cover some of the biggies. So just so you know, our tongue of choice today will be

English. So I hope that's helpful for you. So the gift of speaking in tongues, a lot of controversy about it.

Essentially, if you look in Acts chapter two, it's the first occurrence of the gift of tongues, where the apostles on the day of Pentecost were seeking to present the gospel of Christ to the audience that had gathered there for the feast of Pentecost.

And all of a sudden, people from all the different countries in the surrounding area who were there heard the apostles speaking in their language.

And Acts two even gives a list of the languages they heard them speaking. So according to Acts two, the gift of tongues is the miraculous ability empowered by the

Holy Spirit to speak a language you do not know in order to minister to someone who does speak that language.

The other main passage of the New Testament about the gift of tongues is in first Corinthians chapters 12 to 14, where Paul kind of includes it in a list with other spiritual gifts and the

Corinthians were experiencing it. It makes sense. Corinth was a very multicultural city, lots of people from different areas who spoke different languages, so the gift of tongues would have been a worthwhile gift there.

But most of what Paul is talking about in first Corinthians 12 to 14 in relationship to tongues is correcting the

Corinthian abuses of it, their misuses of it, their use of it, for example, as a private prayer language, where Paul says, he who prophesies edifies the church, he who prays in a tongue edifies himself.

Some people will take that as, see, the gift of tongues is for self -edification. No, that is the exact opposite of what the entire passage is talking about.

All the spiritual gifts is for the mutual edification of the body. So again, first Corinthians 12 to 14 is

Paul correcting the Corinthian use or misuse of the gift of tongues.

So before we dive in any further, I just want to make it clear that while we have some strong disagreements with how the gift of tongues is typically practiced in churches today, in no sense are we questioning the faith or the commitment to Christ of our brothers and sisters in Christ who believe in the gift of tongues or even practice it.

This is definitely a non -essential of the faith that's an important issue, and we're going to address some of the reasons why.

But to our charismatic brothers and sisters out there, in no sense are we doubting the sincerity of your faith and love for Christ.

So please hear that first off. So the gift of tongues, controversial, important, but not something that Christians should be hostile towards each other about.

So Kevin, why don't you jump in and talk to us a little bit more, go a little bit more in depth on the first Corinthians passage.

Okay. Yeah. And then I just echo what you said about Acts 2. I mean, that's the foundational passage for the gift of tongues.

And we see there that these were known languages that were actually spoken and actually understood by people around the world.

And the apostles who had never learned those languages, never done any training to learn those or to speak those, had the ability to speak those languages perfectly to communicate

God's message on the day of Pentecost. And then Peter had been, was questioned about it.

And he brings in Joel chapter 2, says, this is the fulfillment of what

Joel said. Joel said that, you know, in the latter days, God would pour out His spirit on His children.

There would be dreams and prophecies, and there would be these signs. And Joel passage goes on to talk about the signs in the heavens and the sun turning to blood and all of that.

The context of Joel is one of judgment. And Peter, using that passage and quoting extensively from it in Acts 2, also brings in this aspect of judgment.

The Joel passage was a warning to Israel. And I think that we see that again repeated in first Corinthians 14, where Paul says in first Corinthians 14, verse 22, that tongues is a sign to unbelievers.

It was a sign to unbelieving Israel that the Messiah had come. And of course, unbelieving

Israel rejected their Messiah. And so there was this warning, this sign that they needed to get things right.

They needed to be listening to the apostles' message. They needed to accept Christ as their Messiah.

Jesus was their Savior, and they needed to stop rejecting that. This was the sign that God gave to unbelieving

Israel. So Shea, as you mentioned, tongues and really none of the spiritual gifts were ever meant to be of personal edification.

They were given to edify the church, and then the gift of tongues, specifically a sign to unbelievers.

And so Paul deals with some of the abuses that the Corinthian church was practicing as they practiced the gift of tongues.

As we read through that passage of first Corinthians 12 through 14, we get the idea that the

Corinth church was chaotic. There were people that were popping up during the services, and some had a prophecy here, and some people had a tongue over here, and they weren't waiting for one another.

They were just blurting out whatever it is that they needed to say, and there was no interpretation if they were speaking in a known language.

And so, like somebody was standing up in a church service today, if we could apply this to a modern setting, somebody would like to speak in tongues today.

They would stand up, and they would speak in Swahili, or they would speak in Scottish Gaelic, or some language they never learned, and they would present a message from God for the congregation.

Well, Paul's point is, if nobody in the church actually speaks Swahili or Scottish Gaelic, then they don't know what you just said.

So why even say it? It's unprofitable, unless there's an interpreter.

So that's one of the things that Paul says, that there needs to be an interpreter, somebody who can actually edify the whole church with what's being said, and so it needs to be translated.

Also, Paul specifies you need to go one at a time. Not everybody's speaking at once.

It's not a cacophony. God is not the author of confusion.

He's the author of peace, as in all the churches. And then Paul says you need to limit the number of people who are speaking in tongues, and two at the most, three per service.

And so everything is done decently and in order in this way. And so we have these limitations put on it.

Also, I think it's good to point out that the book of 1 Corinthians was written very early in biblical history, very early in the history of the church.

And after 1 Corinthians, you go through the rest of the epistles, tongues is not mentioned anymore.

And there are different opinions about why that is. Our personal opinion is that tongues was fading out.

The use of tongues was no longer needed, especially after Israel was judged by God in AD 70 with the loss of their temple, the destruction of Jerusalem.

The sign to the unbelievers was no longer necessary. The judgment had already fallen. So great points,

Kevin. I mean, the judgment aspect from Joel chapter 2 is a very important aspect of the gift of tongues because Paul specifically points to it as here's what—or

I'm sorry, Peter points to it in Acts 2 of here's what's happening. And 1 Corinthians 14, I think is really interesting.

I think it brings up an important point in that 1 Corinthians 14 is primarily a comparison of prophecy and tongues.

And Paul's argument is that, okay, if you speak in tongues and no one interprets, there's a separate gift of interpreting tongues to explain what if someone spoke in Swahili, to use your example, the person with the gift of interpretation of tongues would then understand that even though he didn't speak that language and could then explain it to the congregation.

Well, so Paul's argument is that prophecy doesn't have that weakness. Prophecy is speaking in the language that people understand, but essentially prophecy and the gift in tongues that's interpreted are serving the same function.

And that part of that function is to deliver new revelation from God. In the time of the early part of the church, they didn't have the complete

New Testament. Most of them had not received very much teaching from the apostles. So new revelation was crucially important.

It's different now that we have the New Testament canon complete. We have the entirety of God's word.

New revelation is not happening in the sense of scripture. There are some who will take a strict viewpoint that God absolutely never speaks or reveals anything to anyone anymore.

Well, we don't take that view, but we definitely believe in terms of scriptural revelation, in terms of doctrine.

Everything that is revealed is in the New Testament. So in that sense, there's another reason to look at the gift of tongues and even the gift of prophecy that in terms of being new revelation from God on the level of scripture, that's not what it is.

Could God still give someone the gift of prophecy, the gift of tongues today? I got questions. We don't take a hard cessation approach and say absolutely no, never.

The Holy Spirit would never do that. At the same time, there's a lot of reason to look at if it does happen in the church today, it would seem to be an extreme rarity.

And I think we're going to talk a little bit more. What we're observing in churches and around the world with missionaries doesn't match what the

New Testament describes. So there's a lot of good reasons to be very wary of accepting instances of tongues and even prophecy.

Well, that's probably a different episode rather than just blindly accepting, oh, that's the gift of tongues.

Well, is it really the gift of tongues if it doesn't match anything the New Testament says about the gift of tongues?

In my experience, I think a big problem that we run into is the difference between just calling something tongues and it actually having correlation to the biblical model.

Kevin was explaining how there does seem to be some sort of process or some sort of order to what's supposed to happen.

And again, our purpose here is not to bash anybody necessarily or to make fun of anybody.

But we also have to be honest about what we typically see when we experience churches or congregations who claim that they're doing speaking in tongues.

And very often what you're seeing is many, many people at the same time who are murmuring or babbling or speaking in a way that almost nobody around them can comprehend at all.

And there's some stereotype behind that. I understand that in some churches, that's not how they attempt to do it.

However, that is very often what we see happening. There's also the practical side of it.

I take a very practical view of scripture because that's what God has led me to see in there.

He says things like, test the spirits, 1 John 4, 1. Not everything you see and hear is from God.

He even tells us to test ourselves in 2 Corinthians 13 .5. So you put those together with something like Acts 17 .11.

They heard Paul, who said he spoke in tongues, who was a great missionary. And it said that people were considered noble because they heard what he said and went back and compared it to the word.

It's okay for us to look at these things and be at least a little bit skeptical. It's difficult for me, and obviously my difficulty in understanding something is not proof of anything, but it means something.

It's hard for me to believe that God's intent for tongues is for a group of people in an

American suburb to make noise around each other that nobody can understand.

And that's what he wants it to be used for. And yet in my church, when we're routinely speaking with missionaries in foreign fields, they still have to go to language school and they don't have the ability to use the gift of tongues.

And the way to explain around that or get around that, I find, is extremely difficult.

Because I think if you actually were using tongues in some sort of God -ordained way, then you would expect that it would be used in that particular mode.

And at least in my experience, I just don't ever see it that way. Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just send missionaries out into the field and skip the language school.

They just go straight there, can speak the language of that particular country perfectly, and communicate the gospel straight to the people right away.

But as you say, Jeff, that's not what we see. That's never been what we've seen since the time of the apostles.

I mean, that's what the apostle Paul was doing. That's what the other apostles were doing. When they went into Galatia to a new place and they found some kind of new dialect that they had never heard before,

Holy Spirit gave them the ability to speak that dialect and preach to the Galatians and give the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it was a that they needed to listen, that this was a true message from God.

That's not what we see today. Charles Parham, who is considered today to be the father of modern

Pentecostalism, he started several things in the

Pentecostal movement, one of which was the idea that speaking in tongues was always proof of the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. When you're baptized with the Spirit, you're going to be showing that evidence of speaking in tongues.

But another thing that he really emphasized in his school that he had established in Kansas was that we should be able to go to a foreign country and speak those languages.

And so Parham believed that the gift of tongues was an actual known language that you had never learned.

And so I believe he was right about that. That's exactly what the gift of tongues was and should be today.

So he and his students actually went to the field, they went different places, but they filled in their mission to communicate the gospel.

As it turned out, they could not speak in those languages that they had expected to speak in.

I've read over 3 ,000 translations of the Bible into different languages, 3 ,000 different Bible versions out there, translations.

And as far as I know, no translation was ever made by someone who had never studied the original languages or the target language and was able to just write it all out with the gift of the

Holy Spirit. As far as I know, every one of those 3 ,000 plus Bible translations were done the hard way by a lot of language study and a lot of good hard work.

Yeah. And I do think that it's important for us to keep that in mind. You made a point also that was brought up about people using speaking in tongues as evidence of the

Holy Spirit. And it's one thing I suppose to say, if a person spoke in tongues, that's evidence of the

Holy Spirit. We do see some churches who essentially try to say that speaking in tongues is a necessary step in order for a person to legitimately claim that they've been a believer.

Now, again, we respect that there's people who are going to have differences of opinion on speaking in tongues, but that particular side of things,

I have a problem with. 1 Corinthians 12 .30 makes it very clear that even in the early church, not everybody possessed all of these miraculous sign gifts.

Not everybody could prophesy. Not everybody could speak in tongues. Not everybody could heal and so on and so forth.

So I think that strikes to the question that a lot of what we see that's difficult about the issue of speaking in tongues is the extremes.

It is definitely not a good idea for us to say tongues cannot happen.

Nobody will ever speak in tongues. This just cannot be something God would ever do any more than we would say the same thing about healing or anything else.

If God wants to give somebody that ability, he's more than capable of giving them that ability. But we also have to be careful not to turn this into something that is well beyond what

God has ever actually given in the word. Yeah. Just on a personal note, my wife of 30 years was saved as a young person, and she was in charismatic circles.

She was in some churches that taught the gift of tongues, and she was actually saved in that type of a church.

And I praise the Lord for the gospel that she heard, the fact that she responded to the gospel and was born again in that environment.

But after she was saved, she felt all kinds of pressure to speak in tongues because they believed that until you spoke in tongues, you did not have the evidence of the

Holy Spirit. You were not filled with the Holy Spirit, not baptized yet. And so she tried.

She tried to fake it. She tried different things, you know, tried to practice and all this kind of stuff.

And it just, she never did. My wife is born again, sanctified and on her way to heaven.

She is a valuable person in the ministry. She is the sweetest person you would ever want to know.

But she's never spoken in tongues. And this is anecdotal, of course, but there's evidence right there.

You don't have to speak in tongues to be filled with the Spirit. My wife is, and she's never spoken in tongues. Oh, Kevin, I didn't know that about Angela.

That's very similar to part of my testimony, and that my uncle who led me to faith in Christ was a flaming charismatic.

And by flaming, I mean he on fire for the Lord. And after I received

Christ, he laid hands on me to receive the gift of speaking in tongues. And I didn't speak in tongues.

And my mom was from a charismatic background as well. I went to charismatic revivals and had other people laying hands on me to receive the gift of tongues.

And it got to the point that I was like, I was almost wondering, okay, what's wrong with me? And that's the very wrong attitude you can have when you don't read 1

Corinthians 12 -14, where multiple times it says the Holy Spirit distributes the gifts as he wills.

And not everyone has the gift of prophecy or the gift of tongues or any gift. That there's a diversity of gifts within the body.

If everyone was an I, where would the sense of hearing be? So no, everyone having the gift of speaking in tongues is completely foreign to scripture.

And so the pressure in some charismatic groups for everyone to speak in tongues is completely unbiblical.

So if you're a Christian from that background, who has struggled with this, you are not a second -class citizen if you'd never spoken in tongues.

My Bible has a significant amount of teaching on the spiritual gifts and how, again, the diversity in the body.

So God gives every believer a spiritual gift or gifts, and that is not always going to be the gift of tongues.

And as we talked earlier, we have serious doubts as to whether the gift of tongues is even functioning in the church today.

So for those of you who've struggled, as I did previously, and Kevin's wife, with the pressure to speak in tongues, just search the scriptures.

Study Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12 -14 for yourself, and you will see the gift of tongues is not something that God desires or intends for every

Christian to experience or to use as a gift. I think you've also brought up a point that is,

I'm sure it's sensitive, but it also needs to be brought up, which is the idea that error has a tendency to collect more air.

It's almost like dust bunnies. Little bits kind of collect and then they start to pile up.

Another thing that we typically see is when some church or some congregation or some group has some sort of doctrinal mistake, even if the mistake is just in how much they choose to emphasize or de -emphasize something, if that starts to become extremely important to their approach, you have a tendency to see other doctrinal or procedural problems that come together.

Again, speaking from experience, there's a lot of cases where what we see in the speaking in tongues environment is correlated with other practices that have some level of biblical reality, but they're being used in some sort of extreme form.

It's not uncommon to see a group or a congregation that's participating in that kind of speaking in tongues to also be involved in being slain in the spirit where dozens of people are falling all over the place or faith healing where people claim that they're curing these injuries and these conditions instantly from there.

And those things don't all come together. And the other side of it is important to be careful of as well.

Both of you had backgrounds that involve some level of charismatic. In my faith background, charismatic was somebody whose hands came above their waist during a worship service.

It was that level of you don't show any sort of emotion. And that's its own level of extreme too.

And that's not what we're promoting here, but we do need to remember that there's a difference between truth and error.

And sometimes you can see multiplied errors that are associated with these things. One thing

I want to make sure that we point out too is that there's another gift that Paul deals with in that passage of 1

Corinthians 12 to 14. It's right there in chapter 13, the love chapter, where he says, the gift of love is the greatest one of all.

That's the one that we should be pursuing. Of all the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives, let's not neglect the gift of love.

Excellent point. I mean, 1 Corinthians 13, we could do a whole nother episode on debating and what does it mean that tongues will cease, but even that's not even the main point of 13.

It's no matter what spiritual gift you're exercising, it is to be done in love.

Any of the spiritual gifts robbed of love are ineffectually clanging gong, so to speak.

Tongues, again, controversial, important issue, lots of things. Some of the other questions we get is, what about praying in tongues?

Gifts as a prayer language, 1 Corinthians, I believe it's 12, where he says, if I speak in the tongues of angels, as if some people think, oh, that's saying that the gift of tongues is speaking in an angelic language.

No, Paul's using hyperbole to say that even if I were to speak in the language of the angels, if there's no love, it's useless.

It's a rusty gate making a squeaking noise, so to speak. So many different issues in this, but again, the point of it all that we want you to come away from this discussion is that the gift of tongues, according to Acts 2, was the miraculous ability to speak a language you don't know in order to share the gospel, to teach truth to someone who does speak that language, and then the gift of interpreting tongues was for all the other people who may be present who don't know what you're saying, because they don't know that language, to then interpret that language, essentially to translate it so that everyone could understand the messages being given.

Whether this gift is still functioning today, I think the fact that you don't see missionaries being given this gift when it would be imminently useful for them to have this gift,

I think that's a strong argument, and there are other scriptural arguments, both with the tongues being a sign of judgment and then the canon being closed.

I think there's a lot of things that really speak to a good argument for the gift of tongues ceasing entirely, but with that said, in no sense do

I claim that God has absolutely prevented from giving someone the gift of tongues today, but if He were to do so, it would function as the

Bible describes, and again, one of our main points here today is that that's not what we see occurring.

Another thing that I think is worth bringing up, at least so that it's on the table, is that for those of us who have more of a cessationist viewpoint or who have a skepticism about these things, it's not an unreasonable skepticism.

It's an optimistic skepticism. In my case,

I have no reason to think that something like speaking in tongues is contrary entirely to what

Scripture says. Like most believers, I would like to experience something in that sort of realm.

That would be something to actually be present for and to see happen. However, desire to see it or to experience it is not the same thing as the truth of it and the reality of it, and we have to take the

Berean approach. We have to take the testing the spirits approach, and at least insofar as I can tell, in a very broad sense, the gift of tongues does not operate on a regular basis.

Would I like it to? Maybe. That would certainly be interesting, but desire and interest and passion and faith don't change what

God really does or doesn't do. So that's just where it is and what it is. So again, to our charismatic brothers and sisters in Christ, please don't hear any condemnation coming from us, any questioning of your faith or commitment to Christ or to His Word.

This is just, if anything, we want you to study the Scriptures. Study Acts 2. Study 1

Corinthians 12 -14 and what is happening in your churches. Does it match what Scripture describes?

That's all we want to accomplish with this. For those who maybe never heard of the gift of tongues or have heard about it but didn't know what it was, hope this conversation has been informative in that sense as well.

So again, hope this conversation has been encouraging to you. This is the Got Questions podcast.