To Reexamine The Gift of Tongue

Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 Posted: 12:31:11PM HKT

When God made Adam and Eve, He put in the whole software of a language in their brain to let them be able to communicate with each other and to express their feelings and hearts. God even let Adam name all the animals brought to him. I believe Adam gradually also named all the vegetations and insects etc. and was able to remember them. But the descendents much learn the language from birth. This continued till Noah’s time which is about two thousand years. After the blood, God blessed the descendants of Noah and ordered them to spread throughout the earth, but they preferred to stay in one place and even build the tower of Babel to make a name for themselves.

God came down to confuse their language

It works this way. He must have put different language softwares in different families so that they could understand each other and at the same time forgot the old mother tongue. The Bible says that God confused their tongue. They were speaking the mother language but God changed it into different foreign languages. And this is a permanent gift of tongues that is, of many different languages.

On the Day of Pentecost

On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured down from heaven upon the hundred and twenty people who prayed 10 days in Mark’s house after the ascension of Christ. He came in the form of tongues of fire. And they began to speak in foreign tongues as the Spirit gave them the utterance which they could not understand. But the visitors from other provinces of the Roman Empire could understand because the Holy Spirit gave them the native languages spoken by them. This is a temporary gift given by the Holy Spirit.

The above two gifts are given by the Holy Spirit. Though both are gifts of tongue, but the first one in Genesis is a permanent one. The people forgot totally the mother tongue whereas the latter is a temporary gift which the speakers could not understand. But they still remembered their mother tongues. The purposes of God are different in the two events. The former one is to disperse them, whereas the latter one is to convince the unbelievers that this is the work of the Holy Spirit (1Cor. 14:22). So this is only temporary which the Holy Spirit still gives like the other eight supernatural gifts. They cannot be permanent because the Holy Spirit doesn’t want people to work independently. We have to earnestly seek but He distributes different gifts to different people as He will (1 Cor.12:11).

Can we pray that the Holy Spirit will give us the gift of tongue permanently?

No, we cannot pray against His will. He is the Lord of the gifts. We cannot take over His position to be the boss of the gift so that we can speak in tongue anytime we like. Yet there are believers who want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit to speak by faith anytime they like. They have a pretext from the Bible (taken out of context) to back up for their action. It is taken from 1Cor. 14:15, “”So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit (in tongue) and I will pray with my mind and I will sing with my spirit and I will sing with my mind.” They say “It is clear, I have to do the praying and singing. I can do it independent of the Holy Spirit.” And they further explain that the tongue is a heavenly language and a holy language. They can use it to edify themselves, to cast out the devil, heal the sick and intercede for people.

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Goh Ewe Kheng
CP Guest Columnist