Some events described in the Bible are miracles and may remain as mysteries until the day we step into eternity when our questions about the Bible are finally answered. God does not discourage us from probing as deeply as we can into His Word, but He approves of our inquisitiveness. King Solomon wrote, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” (Proverbs 25:2 KJV)
The subject of speaking in tongues is one of those that would benefit the body of believers if haply the tension between those who believe in it and those who oppose it is removed. In this essay, allow me to venture into a plausible explanation of what it was and what it still is; perchance a little imagination can eliminate the antagonism.
“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, 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? 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. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?” (Act 2:1-12)
There, unfortunately, lies a great divide between Pentecostals and cessationists (both “full” and “classic”) which I believe is unnecessary and could be bridged if both sides looked at Scripture from another angle – the irenic one and not the polemic position. This is because I believe Scripture was not given by God to believers to divide but to unite. (It, however, separates the sincere seeker from the insincere and this is the very reason why Jesus would provoke His hearers to use their intelligence with His “He that has ears to hear, let him hear!”) The key to harmonizing two seemingly-opposing truths is finding the truth that resolves the variance. We see this in nature. Between night and day is either dusk or dawn. Inside our bodies, we have muscles that are different from bones, but these are attached with the tendons, a material harder than muscle but softer than bone.
In the Body of Christ, some believe speaking in tongues should still be the norm in the Church. Cessationists believe this has ceased with the apostolic age.
Most cessationists also believe the disciples and apostles spoke in foreign languages, specially for the purpose of evangelizing the crowd of three thousand men. I propose that when the some-two hundred believers who were in that upper room and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost did not suddenly individually speak those foreign natural languages and dialects mentioned, but that they spoke the “standard” glossolalia that we experience today – what we hear as gibberish and completely unintelligible speech.
Today, among charismatics there are those who speak in tongues in just a few syllables and repeat them over and over again. There are some that can speak in tongues quite “fluently” as if they were speaking some foreign language. There are also others who are in between who speak in halting, limited, and repetitive “vocabulary”.
But we can liken this variance to how humans develop their ability to speak. Babies who have just started to produce sounds with their tongue can manage only repeating syllables, and yet the parents are overjoyed at that. Toddlers can speak a few more syllables but are very limited in what they can utter and sometimes we can make out what they are trying to say. Older children can communicate well already, albeit with a limited vocabulary. Adults are expected to be able to fully express their minds and also understand what other adults, older children, and some toddlers are saying. This isn’t to imply spiritual immaturity or maturity, but spiritual-language development, because I believe tongues can be developed if the believer asks that from God.
The reason why I propose that those tongues were not foreign natural languages is that the believers were in a room, speaking together, loudly! Imagine yourself as one of those in the upper room. As you were all praying, a loud like a rushing wind fills the room. All of you opened your eyes to see what that noise was, and you see tongues of fire hovering over each one of your heads. Yet, none of you felt terrified at all that. Instead, peace flooded your souls and as you opened your mouth to praise God again, the words that came out were different! And you all realize that this was what Joel the prophet had spoken about, the Gift of the Holy Ghost! Would that not fill your heart with so much awe? Wouldn’t all of you just soak in God’s presence and continue to speak in that heavenly language? Wouldn’t you unknowingly raise your voice ecstatically?
That’s why I’m sure they spoke loudly because the neighbors and passers-by heard them and stopped wondering at all that auditory commotion. They remembered what Jesus said in John 7:38 that “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” which refers to the Spirit (John 7:39), and of what He would do, that He would endue all of you with “power from on high” (Luke 24:49)? Was this not indeed the Gift of the Holy Ghost affirmed by Peter (Acts 2:38; 10:45)?
Let’s go back to the crowd of witnesses.
Even if one of the disciples was speaking in say, Arabic, and he happened to be in the middle of a group of 120 men, wouldn’t his voice be drowned out by the others? It becomes hardly possible for him to be heard for example, by an Arab in the audience who might be standing a few meters from him.
When we speak in tongues today, we normally do not scream to be heard because we are speaking to God, not to men. It was the same with those believers. Loud voices, yes, but certainly not screaming. This is the reason why Paul commanded observance of proper decorum in the Church (1Corinthians 14:13, 27) to avoid disorder/confusion in the Church (1Corinthians 14:33). Speaking in tongues during worship gatherings was, and should be normal as long as probity is maintained and not done as if one is no longer in control of himself, because “the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets (1Corinthians 14:32).
The effect of this outpouring of the Holy Ghost was that God recreated a new spiritual Babel situation. The difference between the two is that the first natural Babel resulted in a separation and dispersion; this second and new spiritual Babel resulted in the edification and spiritual unification of believers who received this baptism in the Holy Ghost!
In that first Babel, nobody understood each other immediately until each person found the language group they belonged in, grouped and broke apart from the other “foreigners”. In this second Babel, nobody understood each other but their unbelieving audience were able to catch words spoken in their language THROUGH THE CACOPHONY and were also attracted to them as a whole to eventually form the new Church!
What if what happened was that each of those believers spoke in full-blown, mature spiritual tongue languages that resembled unknown languages and not just monosyllabic utterances which are very common today? What if they spoke in phrases, sentences, paragraphs with accents and intonation like a natural speech? What if when those a hundred and twenty tongues spoke together, they “accidentally” produced distinctive articulations, glottal, pharyngeal, guttural, etc., out of those unknown-language utterances? That somehow from those seemingly-random sounds, the Lord allowed the ears of the audience to pick out of that mixture of voices and utterances coherent WORDS in their own language that were wonderfully expressing the praises of God (Acts 2:11)? This would be like how a kaleidoscope produces seemingly intricate but symmetrical designs out of random irregular pieces!
In my humble opinion (and imagination), this is what happened that day. This phenomenon is similar to how God spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus but his companions heard only thunder (noise). Same as what happened at Jesus’ baptism when a voice from heaven said, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But this was probably heard only by John and Jesus Himself. Same as the rest of us when we meditate on the Word by a quiet beach and the sound of the waves lapping on the stones would seem to utter words, or the rustling of the leaves on a windy day as if clapping their hands and praising God.
The other reason why I’m inclined to this idea is that up to the time of Paul, the disciples were not worried or doubted the authenticity of speaking in tongues. They did not hear a foreign language at, for example, the house of Cornelius. Paul even speaks at length regarding this subject of speaking in tongues in 1Corinthians 14 and specifies the implementation of order and decorum during their worship gatherings, speaking specifically about one speaking in tongues and INTERPRETATION of tongues.
With this exposition, we can conclude that the tongues in Acts 2 are the same kinds of tongues that we still hear today among Pentecostals and born-again Charismatics. To imagine and expect those as natural languages is the reason of the confusion between Pentecostals and cessationists today.
Musings of Anax Jos 