Expert: Tom Smith - 1/29/2006

Question
How does the Pentecostal church Biblically justify speaking in tongues, considering #1- the rules laid down by Paul in 1 Corinthians concering the exercise of the gift of tongues, which every single Pentecostal church I know of violates. 2. The fact that the manifestation of tongues in Acts is a quite different phenomenon than the nonsensical babbling that is practiced today?

Answer
Good question. First, I would not say that all Pentecostal churches are in violation but certainly the violations of what scripture says in this regard are widespread and probably found in the majority of Pentecostal churches. Indeed, there are other issues with the approach taken by many Penteocstal and other charismatic churches with respect to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

How do they justify it? For many churches, they believe that scripture teaches that each and every person who is saved only has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (or some differentiate between the indwelling and the Baptism of the Hoply Spirit - the so-called doctrine of the second blessing) when they demonstrate the initial evidence of speaking in tongues.

They justify this because there are cases where we find speaking in tongues after salvation, but tongues is not a requirement for salvation, nor an evidence of it in scripture, nor do we find that each person in scripture speaks in tongues after salvation. Indeed, what we do find is that all spiritual gifts are empowerment for ministry and in most cases after the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was recdeived in scripture, we find the person emboldened to share their faith and witness the truth of the gospel, not speaking in tongues.

Within the Pentecostal environment, at least in most churches, not to speak in tongues is seen as making the person a second class Christian, even if that is not taught that way in any specific church - certainly the culture pushes people to speak in tongues. And as a result, many people feel forced to speak in tongues through peer pressure. There are even tapes (I have a set here) where a Pentecostal leader or evangelist encourages the persons to simply bable whatever noises come to mind in order to start speaking in tongues. This is not found in scripture, but the pressure is there to perform in many or most Pentecostal and other charismatic churches.

The belief is that if you have not demonstrated supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit, that you do not yet have the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for ministry, and yet as you point out, Pauls says something much different, and downgrades tongues (1 Cor 14:5) and even states that not everyone speaks in tongues in 1 Cor 12:30. The way that Penteocstal churches get around this is to come up with something not found in scripture and that is to state that there is a ift of tongues, and separate from the gift which not all persons have, is a requirement that all Christians speak in tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Thus they says that though all must speak in tongues, the initial evidence is not the gift of tongues. Again, this is not scriptural.

I also agree that what is practioced today would not in the vast majority of cases stand the test. I am not sure that I have personally ever heard the true gift of tongues as described in scripture.