 |  |
"And these signs shall follow them that believe; in My name shall they cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover."
Here the Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to the disciples. How would they have
understood the sign of speaking in new tongues? That they were to behave as the pagans
did in their temples, by making ecstatic utterances!? This surely cannot be correct. Such
behaviour would not have been a sign of God's workings. To them it would have been a
sign of Satanic activity for the practices of the pagan temples were strongly forbidden in
the Old Testament.
The Lord, here, was speaking to Jews who were brought up on the Scriptures. What
did "speak with new tongues" mean to them? How did they understand it? Were they
perplexed? Did they know what to look for? We may never know the answers to such
questions but if there was any uncertainty in their minds it must have vanished on the day
of Pentecost when, in Acts 2: 4, this phrase occurs. In this passage, we get the most
detailed description of this phenomenon:
"And they . . . . . began to speak with other tongues (glossa) . . . . . and . . . . . devout
men . . . . . heard them speak in his own language (dialektos) . . . . . `How hear we every
man in our own tongue (dialektos) . . . . . and we do hear them speak in our own tongues
(glossa)" (Acts 2: 4, 6, 8, 11).
Here there can be no doubt it, tongues (glossa) were foreign languages (dialektos).
This was truly a remarkable sign to the Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem from every
nation (Acts 2: 5). They heard them speak in their own language and "they were all
amazed" (Acts 2: 12). If the disciples had been performing the ecstatic utterances of
pagan temple-worship it would have been no sign to the Jews visiting Jerusalem. To
them such a display would have been abhorrent.
The next occurrence of the phrase is in Acts 10: 45, 46, "and they of the circumcision
which believed were astonished . . . . . for they heard them speak with tongues, and
magnify God". Now the Jews who observed this would not have been astonished if the
Gentiles had merely indulged in ecstatic speech for that was common place in Greek
religion. It would have been no sign to the Jews. If those Gentiles had made the
ecstatic utterances as heard in pagan temples, Peter would not have baptized them, he
would have rejected them. It is clear that here tongues (glossa) are languages (dialektos)
just as they were in Acts 2:, and this is what is implied in Peter's report of the incident
in Acts 11: 15, 16. Also the result was similar on both occasions. Here they magnified
God (Acts 10: 46), with their tongues and earlier "we do hear them speak in our own
tongues the wonderful works of God" (Acts 2: 11). Again, if these tongues were not in
languages known to Peter and company, then how did they know that they magnified
God? No interpreter is mentioned.
The third and final reference in Acts is in 19: 6 where "they spake with tongues, and
prophesied". This would not have signified anything to Paul, and to the other Jews