Acts 2:4,7,8; Acts 2:11; 1 Corinthians 14:13-15,28
They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance…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?
We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.
Let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also…But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): Some time ago, when I officiated at a funeral, I was told that the dear lady who had passed away had a number of friends given to the use of a gift they called “speaking in tongues,” though it certainly was not that which the Bible refers to as the gift of tongues. They had a habit of going into a semi-trance condition and uttering strange sounds.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): On the Day of Pentecost, the disciples “began to speak with other tongues,” Acts 2:4―not in the absurd and unintelligible jargon of cunning impostors or deluded fanatics.
H. A. IRONSIDE: The gift of “divers kinds of tongues” was the ability bestowed on some to preach the gospel in languages they had never learned—a person with this gift was able to stand up and preach in the power of the Spirit in a foreign tongue, Acts 2:7-11. God gave those gifts in the beginning, but I have not heard evidence of their being in the world today.
JOHN OWEN (1616-1683): That dispensation of the Spirit has long since ceased, and where it is pretended unto by any, it may justly be suspected as enthusiastic delusion.
THE EDITOR: The spiritual gift of tongues is not babbling incomprehensible gibberish, but a miraculous ability to speak an actual foreign language. Some claim their gibberish is an ancient dead language, or an “unknown” tongue of “angels,” citing individual words from 1 Corinthians 13:1 and Chapter 14. But “angels” can also be translated properly as “messengers;” and the word “unknown” is not in the original Greek. I believe that the true spiritual gift of tongues has not been seen in the church since the Canon of Scripture was completed; everything that God has to say to men is now in His written Word.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Edward Irving, founder of the “Catholic Apostolic Church” in 1831, propounded the theory that the supernatural gifts which existed in the early Church had been lost through the unbelief and carnality of its members, and that if there was a return to primitive order and purity, they would again be available. Accordingly, he appointed “apostles,” and “prophets” and “evangelists.” They claimed to speak in tongues, prophesy, interpret, and work miracles. There is little doubt in our mind that this movement was inspired by Satan, and probably a certain amount of abnormal phenomena attended it, though much of it was explainable as issuing from a state of high nervous tension and hysteria. Irving’s theory, with some modifications, and some additions, has been popularized and promulgated by the more recent so-called “Pentecostal movement,” where a species of unintelligible jabbering and auto-suggestion is styled “speaking in tongues.”
A. W. TOZER (1897-1963): The Pentecostal tongues movement has magnified one single gift above all others and that one gift, as Paul said, was the least. Now, that does not cause me to have great confidence in the movement that would do that. Then there is an unscriptural exhibition of that gift, which, incidentally, began in the United States about 1904.
PHILIP MAURO (1859-1952): Regarding the strange modern idea that speaking in tongues is the “Bible-sign” of having received the Holy Spirit, we would point out that faith does not seek after a sign, but rests upon the simple Word of God…Appeal is frequently made to the words of Mark 16:17,18, as if they contained the promise that all that believe should be endowed with the gift of tongues. They declare that certain signs, of which speaking with new tongues was one, should follow them that believe. But the Lord no more promised that all believers should speak with tongues than He promised that all should cast out devils, take up serpents, and drink poison without hurt.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): The gift of tongues is not meant for all. The Apostle asks, “Do all speak with tongues?” And the answer is, “No, all do not speak in tongues, all do not have the gifts of healing, all do not interpret,” and so on, 1 Corinthians 12:30.
PHILIP MAURO: Indeed the questions are asked for the very purpose of enforcing the argument that, as in the human body there are many members, each with its own special function, to be exercised for the benefit of all, so in the church—there are different gifts assigned to the several members, 1 Corinthians Chapter 12.
THE EDITOR: The “gift of tongues” was only intended to be used publicly in the church to the edification of all, and only when an interpreter was present; otherwise, there was no edification, 1 Corinthians 14.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Paul is at great pains to say that everything must be done “decently and in order,” for God is not the author of confusion, 1 Corinthians 14:27-33,40. So if you meet people who say they speak in tongues, or if you have been at a meeting where this is claimed, and if there was disorder and confusion, then you are entitled to say, in terms of the scriptural teaching, that whatever else it may have been, it was not the gift of tongues as described in the church at Corinth.
THE EDITOR: Furthermore, when anyone is alone, and praying to God, there is not a shred of Biblical precedent to support praying in any “tongue” but their own language. How could speaking in a strange “tongue” which they do not understand, possibly make their prayer more “spiritual,” or more acceptable to God?
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We need not judge those who pray unintelligible prayers in a “foreign” tongue which they do not understand. We know that the prayer which is not understood cannot be a prayer in the Spirit, for even the man’s own spirit does not enter into it—how then can the Spirit of God be there?
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): There seems something monstrous in this determination to hold converse with God in sounds which fall without meaning from the tongue. Even if God did not declare His displeasure, nature herself, without a monitor, rejects it. Besides, it is easy to infer from the whole tenor of Scripture how deeply God abominates such an invention. As to the public prayers of the church, the words of Paul are clear―the unlearned cannot say Amen if the benediction is pronounced in an “unknown” tongue, 1 Corinthians 14:16. And this makes it the more strange, that those who first introduced this perverse practice ultimately had the effrontery to maintain that the very thing which Paul regards as ineffably absurd was conducive to the majesty of prayer.
THE EDITOR: Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
PHILIP MAURO: We believe the modern error regarding tongues, as made prominent by those who call themselves “Pentecostals,” is one of the most dangerous of these last days. Many true, earnest, and zealous children of God have been deluded by it. The appeal it makes is very attractive to saints who groan and sigh for something different from the dead formalities of religious Christendom. Its phenomena—ecstasies, transports, prostrations, yielding to “the power,” displaced personality—are the very same that we have seen with hypnotism, spiritism, and other psychic and occult phenomena. We know by personal observation some of the terrible havoc—moral and spiritual—it has wrought. Most earnestly, therefore, do we warn the beloved people of God against it.
