At the beginning of the 19th century, a movement began to rise. This movement, known as the Charismatic movement, grew quickly and brought with it these “strange” new gifts that were supposedly given from God. I have covered a lot of this in my numerous posts on cessationism. So I suggest you read those. In this article, however, I won’t be proving that Tongues or any of the other spiritual gifts have ceased but instead show that the charismatic tongues being presented aren’t biblical tongues. Speaking in Tongues isnt some “Gibberish” that you often hear in Pentecostal and other Charismatic Churches. Instead, they are real languages. There’s eleven reasons why you should believe this and reject the charismatic version of tongues:

 

1. The term “tongue” is often used in the New Testament to describe real languages (Revelation 5:9; 7:9; 10:11).

 

2. The adjective “new” in Mark 16:17 is most appropriate for describing real languages. Tongues were the God-given ability to speak in a language that was totally new to the speaker (i.e., a foreign language).

 

3. Speaking in tongues was a supernatural, God-given ability (Mark 16:17; Acts 2:4) which is reasonable only if Tongues were real languages. If Tongues are ecstatic utterances, they could be duplicated fraudulently.

 

4. The adjective “other” is most appropriate for describing real languages (Acts 2:4; 1 Corinthians 14:21). There are languages other than and different from a persons native tongue (i.e. foreign languages). In what sense could gibberish be considered “different”?

 

5. The tongues of Acts 2:4, 11 are clearly identified in Acts 2:6, 8 as real languages (dialects).

 

6. The tongues in the book of Acts were not meaningless utterances, but they were means of conveying a meaningful message (Acts 2.21; 10:46). Like-wise the tongues in 1 Corinthians communicated meaningful content.

 

7. The expression “kinds of tongues” is understandable only if tongues were real languages (1 Corinthians 12:20, 28; cf. 1 Corinthians 14:10). There are three thousand languages in the world and they are grouped into many classes or kinds. How could it be said that there are kinds of ecstatic utterances?

 

8. The fact that tongues could be interpreted demands that tongues be real languages (1 Corinthians 12:10, 30; 14:5, 13, 27-28). Interpretation necessitates meaning. Meaningless utterances cannot be interpreted.

 

9. 1 Corinthians 14:10-11 depicts tongues as being real languages.

 

10. Tongues-speaking is said to consists of words, which would be possible only if tongues were real languages (1 Corinthians 14:9, 19).

 

11. The Tongues mention in Isaiah 28:11 were real languages. (Paul cites this passage in 1 Corinthians 14:21).