[COLLEEN TINKER]
We received a simple, one-sentence email this week. The writer has an Adventist background but is seeking biblical truth. I realized, as I read it, that many former Adventists who discover the gospel and realize the complexity of Adventism’s deception, look at the various kinds of churches and practices within the larger Christian community. Many formers become attracted to the charismatic movements and the corresponding pursuits of contemplative practices and of the commanding of spiritual forces.
It’s not surprising that spiritual manifestations become attractive to people leaving Adventism and moving into Christianity. Adventists are not only taught that they must avoid all spiritual manifestations and any hint of tongues, but they are also taught that they themselves have no immaterial spirits.
This false definition of humanity and of the scriptural teaching of spiritual gifts can lead people into a new spiral of emotion-driven efforts to experience more and more of what they think is “the Spirit”.
Because this question about tongues—and the logical progression to seeking greater and greater spiritual manifestations—is so common among people leaving Adventism, I am sharing my response to this poignant email.
Start with Pentecost
Speaking in tongues was the manifestation the apostles received on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) which undid the curse of Babel: the apostles were able to speak in the languages of all the countries around Judea so that all those Jews from gentile territories who were in Jerusalem for Passover and Pentecost were able to hear the gospel in their own languages (see Acts 2:8–11). Babel had been God’s judgment against the disobedient post-flood world that was attempting to make a name for themselves by congregating at Babel instead of filling the earth and subduing it.
God confounded their languages so that they could no longer collaborate and accomplish their evil ideas as easily, and this judgment against them also resulted in the accomplishment of His post-flood command to fill the earth. They had to leave Babel and form societies around their languages. (See Genesis 11.)
On the Day of Pentecost, God manifested His presence and the reversal of Babel’s curse for those who are in Christ.
When Jesus had completed His propitiation for sin and His atonement, had broken the curse of death, and had ascended to the Father, God sent the promised Holy Spirit to fill and seal all who believe (Eph. 1:13,14). This is a new covenant blessing that Israel did not have. The never-departing Holy Spirit, the seal of God, is His promise and gift to everyone who believes. On the Day of Pentecost, God manifested His presence and the reversal of Babel’s curse for those who are in Christ. Where the confounding of languages had been His curse against the disobedient arrogance of unrepentant mankind, the gift of tongues reversed that curse so that the truth of the Lord Jesus could be heard and understood everywhere.
In Acts 8 we see the church in Jerusalem sending Peter to the Samaritans when Phillip sent word that they, too believed. Peter asked them if they had received the Holy Spirit, and when he heard they had not, he placed hands on them, and they also received the Holy Spirit. Acts 8 doesn’t specify that they spoke in tongues, but they may have. They did demonstrate that they had received the Spirit.
Then we see the first group of gentiles who received the Holy Spirit also speaking in tongues in Acts 10—the same sign that the first born-again Jews received in Acts 2 in Jerusalem. This miracle confirmed to Peter that even the gentiles who did not have the law were accepted as equal in God’s sight when they trusted Jesus. They didn’t have to become Jews nor put themselves under the law in order to be born again in Christ. (This is the central argument in Galatians as well.)
So, in these three accounts, we see that the gospel went, just as Jesus has commanded before His ascension, first to Jerusalem, then to Judea, then to Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth (the gentile world) (see Acts 1). These three groups of people received the Holy Spirit in the order Jesus commanded the apostles to preach the gospel, and Peter was present at all three events as the apostolic eyewitness to verify that they all—without being Jews or adopting Judaism—were sealed by the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way on the basis of grace from God by faith in the Lord Jesus alone.
If Peter hadn’t been present to verify that work of God, the church would have been split from the beginning. It took a lot of time for the church in Jerusalem to understand that in the new covenant, gentiles and Samaritans were on equal footing in Christ. The wall of separation between Jews and gentiles was destroyed in Christ (Ephesians 2)—and all believers received the gift of God that reversed the curse of Babel. He gives His own born-again children His Spirit so that we can hear, understand, and share the gospel of the Lord Jesus!
Tongues Are Not for Everyone
The accounts in Acts as well as in the epistles do not demonstrate—nor does Paul teach—that everyone who believes speaks in tongues. Rather, the gift of tongues is named in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 as one of the gifts of the Spirit. Significantly, in 1 Corinthians 12:4–13, Paul lists many of the gifts and then says (v. 11), “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.” In other words, not all people receive the same gifts. When we look at 1 Corinthians 14, we see that the gift of tongues must be accompanied by an interpreter so that the “church may receive edifying” (14:5).
The question of a “prayer language” is simply not discussed in any detail in the New Testament.
The question of a “prayer language” is simply not discussed in any detail in the New Testament. The gift of tongues is clearly one of the Spirit’s gifts, but, as Paul says, the gifts are for the edifying of the brethren. They are about building up the body, serving and encouraging, and they are His equipping for sharing the truth of Jesus. The primary purpose of the gifts of the Spirit is not for personal edification or experience or personal power; it is for the purpose of loving and building up the body of Christ and of making disciples. This is not to say God never ministers to people personally through whatever means He chooses to use to encourage us, but He will not do things “to us” that go against the biblical model.
The closest thing we have to a suggestion of personal private “tongues” is Paul’s saying in 1 Cor. 14:14–18 that he thanks God he speak in tongues more than all of them, but if he prays in a tongue, his spirit praise but his mind is unfruitful. This is the only passage that might suggest a private experience of tongues. Yet this passage is not PRESCRIPTIVE; it is DESCRIPTIVE. The PRESCRIPTIVE part of this passage is found in the surrounding verses that admonishes them to alway have an interpreter so that the body may be edified.
In other words, the New Testament simply does not teach that believers are to seek the gift of “tongues”, nor does it teach that private prayer language is the mark of a believer. Rather, tongues are taught as a gift for the benefit of the church so that God’s will can be shared and known.
Time, Place, and God’s Will
There are many spiritual gifts that are not always demonstrated in the church today in places where God’s word is present. At the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, there were not widely-available copies of the Old Testament let alone of the New Testament. Believers were taught by the apostles, by Paul’s letters, and by the Holy Spirit. Today is similar, but we do not have the apostles with us anymore. What we do have is widely-available printed Scripture containing the apostles’ teaching, and the Holy Spirit teaches us how to apply God’s truth to our lives.
Yet what the Bible says about the gifts of the Spirit remains true. God can and does bestow His gifts “as He wills” to whomever He chooses, and He bestows these gifts according to His own knowledge of the needs of His body in any given place. When a gift is needed, He gives it. At the same time, when God’s word is available and contains the living, eternal word of God, He asks us to submit to it. He does not give individual personal revelations to individuals apart from the knowledge of His word. He doesn’t give special gifts and special messages to people who do not submit their minds and hearts to Him and to His own revelation in His word. We are never commanded to listen to “gifted people” for direction; we are always directed to the word of God and to trusting our Lord.
The point of tongues—as of ALL spiritual gifts—is to glorify the Lord Jesus and to build up the body of Christ. It is to build His church and teach the truth about His finished work.
The point of tongues—as of ALL spiritual gifts—is to glorify the Lord Jesus and to build up the body of Christ. It is to build His church and teach the truth about His finished work.
As for the Pentecostal churches that focus on tongues and experiences, those churches almost never have as their central focus the gospel of the Lord Jesus and His centrality to our eternal life. They seek experiences rather than knowing a person. They place the Holy Spirit at the center of their experience instead of the Lord Jesus. Yet the Holy Spirit’s role in the new covenant is to teach the truth about the Lord Jesus, not to give us experiences for our own subjective response. Jesus said in John 16:5–15 that the Spirit would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, that He would guide God’s people into all truth, speaking NOT on His own initiative but disclosing “to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
The New Testament reveals the gift of tongues as only one of the gifts of the Spirit (and Paul even categorizes it as NOT one of the “greater gifts”). There is no indication that everyone who is born again speaks in tongues, but God gives all His gifts as He wills to whomever He desires. He equips His body so that believers can grow in truth and in the knowledge of God (see Eph 4), and tongues are merely one of the gifts God uses when needed for the purpose of revealing Himself and His gospel. †
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