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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley, Tim Hebbert and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau
The question that we're going to try to address today came in from one of our listeners. And the question goes this way, she said, "I have always wanted to know about speaking in tongues and the meaning of it. I've never really understood it and the meaning of it." She said, "my mother had a friend years ago that spoke in tongues, and is this practice still used?" So Gary, I'll let you have some thoughts on that if you'll start us out.

Gary Hashley
Well, I guess I'd like to begin by saying, it's good to be back. This question about speaking in tongues, I will have to admit that this is one of the subjects, that in my 40 years as a pastor, it's a subject that has caused great confusion. It has caused great consternation with people when someone sees it in a different light than they do. We acknowledge, Brad and I both, that there are churches that really focus on this spiritual gift of speaking in tongues. And there are churches that don't see it as something necessarily that God is using today. So we're just gonna try and explain it biblically, and share a little bit from our hearts. We're not here to pick on anybody, and we are for sure not here to put anybody down. We're just here to try and answer the question. And I guess the beginning of the answer needs to be in scripture, where this all comes from. To start with, Acts 2 says, "when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven, a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, developed men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished saying, 'Are not all these who are speaking, Galilean? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in his own native language?" And then the author of Acts goes on, "Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians---we hear them telling in our own tongues, the mighty works of God.' And all we're amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'what does this mean?' But others, mocking said, 'they're filled with new wine." One thing we see here when, 'tongues,' pops in on the scene, Brad, is that it was a known language. It was a language that people understood. It was their native language. They may have understood Greek, the trade language, but when they were hearing it, it was in their own native, or heart language we would call it today. And it was something God did so that all those people there could hear about Jesus. I mean, by the time Peter's done, 3,000 people excepted Jesus as savior. And they were from a variety of places, because it was Pentecost they were coming from all over for the feast for the festival. And so it was languages. I mean, the Greek word has to do with dialects. And when we think of a dialect, we think of a language that a people group speak. So, is this practice still used? Evidently, not in the line in which it was used here. Because in fact, let me just share: I had a dear friend who was from a charismatic church. He was a pastor, and he was a very good friend of mine. We knew we didn't agree on this subject of spiritual gifts. And they were visiting one day, and I wasn't being unkind, I was really curious. I asked him, I said, "so you guys send missionaries around the world?" He says, "oh, yes we do." And I asked him, "well, do your missionaries go to language school?" And he says, "oh, of course," and I asked him why. He said, "what you mean 'why?" I said, "well, if you have the gift of tongues in Acts 2, God used that gift of tongues and wouldn't it be great if missionaries could parachute out of an airplane in the midst of people group they've never met? And the spirit let them immediately communicate with those people and share the good news of Jesus with them?" He said, "but Gary, that's just not how it works. So to answer that part of the question, "is this practice still being used?" Not in this way, it's not being used. Brad?

Brad Kilthau
Yeah, you know, it amazes me too. And it shouldn't, because we find a lot of these things in the church today. But there are two basic descriptions of what speaking in tongues is identified as that you were getting to, Gary, as I guess at least the definition of it. And there's the two groups, is of course, first of all, there's a group in the church that believe that the gift enables them to express one's inner feelings or praises to God by a unique, sometimes non-rational utterance. And they say that the gift is not speaking in a foreign language, as we often claim. They say, "yes, it may be unknown to the speaker, but it also could be, as they say, 'known to God' and it's the Holy Spirit sometimes giving up praise back to himself by using us as a vessel to do that." Another thing that's part of that camp is, sometimes it's shared that speaking in tongues is proof of salvation for that person. And they use examples out of the book of Acts and also in 1 Corinthians. And then of course there's the other camp, as we believe, and as you were just reading about Gary in Acts 2. That the gift was used in the early church, and even somewhat after that, as being able to speak in a foreign language that the person had never learned, had never had any ability to do. And all of a sudden, they can speak the wonderful things of God to people in that foreign language as we know it today of Pentecost. And of course this group, and I would have to say I'm part of that group, we say it's no evidence that a person is in a sense filled by the Holy Spirit by being able to speak in a foreign language like that. The sealing of the Holy Spirit comes at the moment when we immediately put our faith and trust in the Lord. I had a dear friend too, some years ago, and we got into the conversation about speaking in tongues. And it troubled me, because the young man told me, "I put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, I'm going to heaven." But he said, "I'm still waiting to be filled by the Holy Spirit." And I said, "really?" He said, "yeah." And he looked at me puzzled, cause I was puzzled with that statement. And basically what he was waiting for was the gift of speaking in tongues to prove that he is filled with the Holy Spirit. And of course, I went on to share with him, I believe that a person at the moment they put their faith in the Lord, they're filled with the Spirit. They're sealed by the Holy Spirit and they're on their way to heaven. And so we ran into some roadblocks there. And of course we had to agree to disagree, and walk away from each other. But speaking in tongues, I don't think was ever meant to be an exclusive determination that somebody is a believer and in dwelt by the Holy Spirit. In my studies, as I look at the Bible, there's only about three occasions in the book of Acts where speaking in tongues is actually accompanied by the salvation of the people; Acts 2:10, 19, but only those three occasions. When you get into all the rest of the accounts, you find that thousands of people were putting their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there was no mention at all of speaking in tongues. There was no confirmation that they were believers because they were speaking in tongues and so forth. And so I don't think the New Testament teaches at all that speaking in tongues is the evidence, and the only evidence that a person has received the Holy Spirit; speaking in tongues. It's a gift that obviously God used, again as we look at the Bible, it's to get the message out to the ends of the earth. Recently I've been doing a study through the book of Daniel, and we've come into the part of where we're talking about the Greek empire and Alexander the Great, and how he was able to hellanize the entire civilized world and make the common language, the Greek language and so forth. And of course he even built roads between all the cities and whatnot. Which when the first century Christians came along, missionaries, they had roads, they had one common language, they had the septuagint to use and all of that. But yet as the Lord used, as you were saying, Gary, they could have used the Greek language, but they used the native language of the people to basically show that something miraculous has happened in the lives of these people. It was a signed gift to show that something miraculous had happened in their lives. And it was to wake up and to get the movement that Jesus promised would happen, of getting the gospel out to the ends of the world. And then another thought I have, when it comes to speaking in tongues is, sometimes it can be the thing that is dwelled upon; it can actually become the center part of someone's, "Faith" or "Christianity," of when it shouldn't be. I mean, we should never base our walk with the Lord upon spiritual ecstasy or excitement or things of that sort. Our walk should always be based upon the truth of the scriptures. And there is some times, when I'll be studying a passage of scripture and God reveals a new truth to me, and I gotta admit, there's an exciting, enthusiastic feeling that just kinda runs through me and I can't wait to tell somebody else about it or whatnot. But I think that's the excitement that we get. We don't get fired up and excited about doing things because we have this spiritual signed gift. We get excited because we learn a new truth. When we learn a new truth from the word of God, that's what gives us our excitement. The excitement doesn't come from the ability to have a spiritual signed gift.

Gary Hashley
I remember years and years ago when I was listening to Chuck Swindoll on the radio in the car, and he was in 1 Corinthians, and he's teaching about tongues. And he explained that, you know, he doesn't see tongues as, you know, as big a thing today as maybe other groups do. But he did make an interesting statement. He said, "if you're going to practice speaking in tongues," he said, "I would just ask that you look at scripture and make sure you do it biblically." Because Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, he says, "if any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three at each turn and let someone interpret. But if there's no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God." So he basically said, "okay, if you believe this is really for today, then you should also believe that the instructions Paul gave and that this isn't a free for all, two at the most." Three, there must be an interpreter, and if there's not an interpreter, then you shouldn't be in a church service speaking in tongues. But it's interesting, because in that same section, he talks about that as directions for speaking in tongues. Then he talks about prophesying or preaching the word, sharing the truth of the word of God. So he talks about speaking tongues, speaking prophetically, but then he says the women should keep silent. So it's like, "okay, in the church, as Paul was instructing them, never more than two or three speaking tongues in a service ever. If there's not an interpreter, prophecy is even better. But the women aren't to be the ones speaking." So you would have to ask yourself, how is it going in our church? Are we following those instructions? In fact, Paul himself said, "I'd rather speak a handful of words that people can understand than thousands of words people can't."