A Question That Divides the Churches
Few subjects have stirred more confusion in the last hundred years than speaking in tongues. Pentecostal and charismatic churches, now numbering in the hundreds of millions, teach that the gift of tongues is still given today, and many make it the sign that a believer has received the Holy Spirit. Roman Catholic charismatics speak in tongues too. The practice has spread into Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, and Anglican congregations. Millions of sincere people believe that the sounds they utter in prayer meetings are the same gift the apostles received on the day of Pentecost.
The only way to settle the question is to go to the Word of God. What was the gift of tongues? What was it for? And does the Bible tell us whether it would continue? The Scriptures give clear answers to all three questions.
What Happened at Pentecost
Fifty days after the Passover at which Christ was crucified, the disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem. The city was crowded with Jews and proselytes who had come from every corner of the Roman world for the feast.
Luke then names the hearers: “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:9–11). At least fifteen nations and regions are listed. Every man heard the apostles in “his own language,” the very dialect “wherein we were born.”
Notice what amazed them: “are not all these which speak Galilaeans?” The apostles were ordinary men from Galilee, “unlearned and ignorant men” in the eyes of the Jewish rulers (Acts 4:13). They had never studied Persian, Egyptian, Arabic, or Latin. Yet they spoke these languages fluently, and the hearers understood every word. That was the miracle.
Tongues Were Real Languages
The Bible never describes the gift of tongues as anything other than human language. The Greek word translated “tongue,” glōssa, is the ordinary word for a language, and in Acts 2:6 and 8 Luke uses dialektos, “language” or “dialect.” The same gift appears again when the Gentiles at Cornelius’s house received the Holy Ghost: Peter recognized that God “gave them the like gift as he did unto us” (Acts 11:17; see Acts 10:46). It was the same gift, not a different kind.
Even in Corinth, where the gift was being abused, it was still real language. That is why an interpreter was required: someone who could translate what was spoken into the language of the congregation. Paul writes, “Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification” (1 Corinthians 14:9–10). Languages have meaning; they signify something. Readers of the King James Bible should also notice that in 1 Corinthians 14 the word “unknown” in the phrase “an unknown tongue” is printed in italics. It was supplied by the translators to show that the language was unknown to the hearers. It is not in the Greek, and it was never meant to describe a heavenly speech unknown to all mankind.
The tongues-speaking practiced today does not match this gift. It consists of repeated syllables that no listener from any nation recognizes as his own language. The linguist William Samarin, who recorded and studied it on several continents, concluded in Tongues of Men and Angels (1972) that “no glossa, no matter how well constructed, is a specimen of human language, because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives.” The modern movement even tested its own claim. When Pentecostalism began in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, its leader Charles Parham taught that tongues would allow missionaries to preach abroad without learning foreign languages. Missionaries who went overseas on that promise found that no one in the mission field could understand them.
What Tongues Were For
A sign to unbelieving Israel. Paul explains the purpose of the gift by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord. Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not” (1 Corinthians 14:21–22; Isaiah 28:11–12). Isaiah had warned Israel that because they would not hear God speaking plainly in their own language, He would speak to them through foreigners. Tongues announced that God’s message was now going out to the Gentiles, a warning of judgment on unbelieving Israel and a sign of blessing to all nations. That is why tongues appear at the turning points in Acts: at Pentecost among the Jews (Acts 2), at the house of the Gentile Cornelius (Acts 10), and among the disciples of John at Ephesus (Acts 19).
A confirmation of the apostles’ message. The miracles of the apostolic age authenticated the men through whom God was giving His new revelation. “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds” (2 Corinthians 12:12). The writer of Hebrews describes the gospel as “at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will” (Hebrews 2:3–4). Notice the past tense: the message was confirmed, and God bore witness. Already, by the time Hebrews was written, the confirming signs were spoken of as belonging to the first generation.
For the edification of the church, not of self. Like every spiritual gift, tongues was given “to profit withal” (1 Corinthians 12:7), to build up the body. That is why Paul required interpretation: “If any man speak in an unknown tongue, 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” (1 Corinthians 14:27–28). He added, “Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:19). Nothing in Scripture describes tongues as a private prayer language for personal spiritual enjoyment.
Not given to every believer. “Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?” (1 Corinthians 12:29–30). The form of the question in Greek expects the answer “No.” The doctrine that every Spirit-filled believer will speak in tongues contradicts the plain words of the apostle.
“Tongues Shall Cease”
In the middle of his great chapter on love, Paul tells us plainly that tongues were not permanent:
Love will never fail. But prophecy, tongues, and the gift of knowledge were temporary. Paul uses a different verb for tongues than for prophecy and knowledge. Prophecy and knowledge “shall fail” and “vanish away” (from katargeō, to be done away, rendered inoperative). Tongues “shall cease” (pauō), and he puts it in the middle voice, which many Greek scholars understand to mean that tongues would stop of themselves, coming to an end and not resuming.
“That Which Is Perfect” Is the Completed Word of God
What is “that which is perfect” whose coming would end the partial gifts? The word translated “perfect,” teleios, means complete, finished, mature, brought to its end. Paul sets it in direct contrast with “that which is in part.” And what was “in part”? Prophecy and knowledge: “we know in part, and we prophesy in part.” These were gifts of revelation. While the New Testament was still being written, God revealed His will piece by piece, through apostles and prophets, a little here and a little there. The churches had parts of the truth, but not yet the whole.
“That which is perfect,” then, is the complete revelation of God, set in contrast with the partial revelation that came through the gifts. When the last book of the New Testament was written, the revelation was finished. There was no more need for prophets to supply the missing parts, or for signs to confirm a message still being given. The partial gave way to the complete.
Scripture itself uses this same language of its own completeness. James calls the Word “the perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25), using the same word, teleios. Paul says that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The Scriptures make the believer complete and thoroughly furnished, so he needs no new revelation beyond them. Jude speaks of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3), delivered once for all, never to be added to.
Paul’s illustration fits this exactly. “When I was a child, I spake as a child… but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The church in its infancy needed the sign gifts, as a child needs help in learning to walk. When the church came to maturity with the completed Word of God in its hands, it put away the things that belonged to its childhood. Some understand “that which is perfect” to mean the return of Christ and the eternal state. But even on that reading, Paul says tongues would “cease” of themselves, and Hebrews already speaks of the confirming signs in the past tense. Every line of the evidence points the same way: the gift of tongues belonged to the apostolic age and ended with it.
God’s Word Is Finished
This is the heart of the matter. If the gifts of tongues and prophecy continued today, God would still be giving new revelation, and the Bible would not be complete. Many charismatics claim exactly this: that God speaks to them through tongues, interpretations, prophecies, words of knowledge, and visions, often in words they treat as messages from God Himself. But the Word of God is not expanding. The Bible closes with a solemn warning:
The same warning was given from the beginning: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it” (Deuteronomy 4:2). “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:5–6). God has spoken His final word in His Son: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). That word is recorded completely in the Scriptures. We do not need a new message from heaven; we need to believe and obey the one we have been given.
This is why the question of tongues is not a small matter. A believer who thinks God still speaks through tongues and prophecies will, sooner or later, set those supposed messages alongside Scripture, or above it. The Bible will no longer be his final authority. But “we have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed” (2 Peter 1:19). The written Word is more sure than any voice, vision, or experience.
The Silence of Scripture and the Witness of History
The New Testament itself shows the gift fading. Tongues are mentioned only in Acts and in 1 Corinthians, one of Paul’s earlier letters. Paul wrote many epistles after 1 Corinthians, including Romans and Ephesians, both of which list spiritual gifts, and never mentions tongues again. Peter, James, John, and Jude never mention it at all. The last miracles recorded in the New Testament are the healings on the island of Melita (Acts 28:8–9). By the time Paul wrote his final letters, he left Trophimus “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20) and counselled Timothy to take a little wine for his frequent illnesses (1 Timothy 5:23), rather than healing either one.
The early church confirms that the gift had ceased. John Chrysostom, preaching on 1 Corinthians in the late fourth century, said the passage was obscure to his hearers because the things it described “used to occur but now no longer take place.” Augustine wrote that the tongues of the apostolic age were “signs adapted to the time,” given for a season and then passed away. For centuries afterward, claims of tongues came almost only from groups the churches recognized as heretical or fanatical: the Montanists in the second century, whose leader claimed to be the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit; the Shakers of the 1700s, whose founder Ann Lee was regarded by her followers as the female appearing of Christ; and the Irvingites of the 1830s, whose prophecies failed and whose church ended in an elaborate ritual of vestments, incense, and altars much like Rome’s. The modern tongues movement began only in 1901, and it has spread since then chiefly through experience, not through the exposition of Scripture.
What Then Is Happening Today?
If the gift ceased, what are millions of people doing when they speak in tongues? The sounds are not the languages of Acts 2. They are not interpreted according to the rules of 1 Corinthians 14. They are not confined to two or three speakers. They are practiced by Pentecostals and by Roman Catholics who believe in salvation by works, and similar ecstatic speech is found in religions that do not name Christ at all. The Spirit of truth (John 16:13) cannot be the author of all of these. At best, modern tongues are learned human behavior, encouraged by eager teachers and a hunger for experience. At worst, they open the door to deception: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
Many sincere believers have been taught that speaking in tongues is the mark of a deeper spiritual life. But the true evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work is not a sound from the lips. It is a new heart that hates sin and loves Christ, and a life that bears “the fruit of the Spirit”: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23). It is no accident that Paul’s answer to the Corinthians’ obsession with tongues was the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Sufficient in Christ and His Word
The believer does not need a new gift of tongues. He has something far better: the completed Word of God, which is able to make him “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15), and the indwelling Spirit who opens his understanding to that Word. The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost to glorify Christ: “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:14). He still does that work today, not through new revelations, but through the Scriptures He has already given.
Let every reader take his stand on the sufficiency of Scripture. Test every teaching, every experience, and every supposed message from God by the written Word. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). And above all, look to Christ. Salvation does not come through any gift or experience, but through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for sinners and rose again, and that faith itself is “the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
Sources: the King James Bible; Grace Community Church, “The Gift of Tongues” (adapted from John MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos, 1992); William J. Samarin, Tongues of Men and Angels (1972); John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians; Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John.