TONGUES AT PENTECOST
• were miracles,
• were actual languages,
• reversed the Tower of Babel [Humanity was divided by language at Babel]
• united humanity into One Church,
• their purpose was the birth of the Church,
• were unique and never happened again.
CHARISM OF TONGUES
• cannot be learned,
• do not develop,
• are not miracles,
• are not given routinely,
• are not given when asked for,
• are NEVER given for personal use,
• are gifts to a FEW,
• for the benefit of the WHOLE Church
St Paul lays down strict instructions how to use it: If SEVERAL people speak in tongues at the same time it is NOT from the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Spirit is a spirit of peace and harmony, not a spirit of chaos and discord.)
• If there is NO interpreter present, then Speaking in Tongues is NOT from the Holy Spirit, furthermore useless: "I'd rather say five words that mean something than ten thousand words of gibberish!" (1 Cor 14:19).
PRIVATE SPEAKING IN TONGUES (Rom 8:26)
• are not tongues,
• are not miracles,
• are not charisms,
Private speaking in tongues are "groanings in the Spirit" in deep PRIVATE prayer. St Paul urged --> pray for understanding, because ineffable things as these do not translate into words.
HARVARD STUDY
There was a Harvard linguistic study a few years back that included over 10,000 incidents of tongues speaking. It concluded that modern tongues are not actual languages for the following reasons:
• a high incidence of repetition of the same sounds and phrases,
• a similarity to the speaker's language background,
• an excessive use of one and two vowels,
• an absence of language structure,
• interpretations are longer than the actual tongue utterances,
• inconsistency in interpretation of the exact same phrase,
• "King James style" interpretations
The study concluded; modern tongue speaking is not real languages or the “gift of tongues” found in the Bible.
THEREFORE...
TONGUES AT CHARISMATIC GATHERINGS
• are not gifts of the Holy Spirit,
• are a return to the Tower of Babel,
• at best human gibberish,
• at worst demonic. Period.
