Category: Tongue Speaking

Some people today believe that they have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues and to prophecy, to perform miracles, to heal the sick and cast out demons. Regardless of the sincerity of these individuals, these claims do not harmonize with the Bible’s teaching regarding the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. The miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit were real. They were given to believers through the laying on of the hands of an apostle. These gifts were the means of equipping the church and confirming the word to unbelievers. When the last apostle died, these gifts were no longer available to mankind.

Tongues are languages. In the New Testament, those who spoke in tongues, were miraculously enabled to speak languages, or tongues, they had never studied and never learned. In Acts 2, men from many nations heard the apostles speak in their tongues, their languages, and they understood them (Acts 2:4-11). It is one of those “things that are not debatable.” It is not being done today by the Pentecostals, nor by anyone else. And, that is “not debatable,” either!

Those who speak in tongues that are not understood produce confusion. They do not produce learning, edification, comfort, and peace. Hence, they are not to speak to others if there is no interpreter — “If any man speak in an unknown tongue (remember, an unknown tongue is simply a language not understood by the audience), let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God” (vv. 27, 28). Pentecostal churches violate these words of the Spirit every time they engage in what they call “tongues speaking.”