Xenolalia or Glossalalia or gibberish????
Is the speaking in tongues as done in Pentecostal circles, really devilish counterfeits for the real? Are tongues really gibberish, or are they languages of communication from our spirit to God in prayer language, and of God through the Holy Spirit to the church, for interpretation and blessing for the church?
When Charles Parham and some of the first to receive this gift of tongues, first received it, there was a bit of understandable confusion, of what it was, how was it to be used. This was totally new to Parham, and his study was not the best, and he understood tongues to be languages that God supernaturally put into those filled so they could go and evangelize those who spoke those languages. Parham thought they were to be used in evangelism.
We all remember that the gift of the Holy Spirit for the Gentiles first came when Peter went to the home of Cornelius. There the Holy Spirit came upon them, as at the upper room on the day of Pentecost. No one is reading the excerpts of the book of Cornelius. No, he was saved, filled, spoke in tongues, but there was no one of other tongues to hear them evangelize inside his home where this occurred.
Parham misunderstood the gift, and he was not a Bible nor doctrine expert. Parham had a lot of growth to go, a lot of knowledge to learn. He believed in the separation of blacks from whites, he had some other issues that needed the Lord to work on. His ideas on what tongues were for, how they were to be used, needed some growth and training. He sent some to be missionaries to foreign lands, promising them that their tongues language would be understood by the natives, there was no need to learn their language. That proved disastrous for the victims of his wrong ideas.
That is not normally the case that tongues are used to evangelize. On a few occasions, God has used tongues to enable a minister to speak to a people that normally he could not. That is a rare gift called xenolalia, and A.G. Ward (father of C.M. Ward, long time radio pastor for the Assemblies of God) had this gift one time when going to a tribe of Indians in northern Canada. The translator suddenly was unavailable, and A.G. Ward stood before some native Americans that spoke no English, and he spoke not their language. At the direction of the Lord, A.G. Ward began to speak in tongues, and the tribe understood every word, and many came to salvation that day. That is a rare use of God for the tongues. A.G. Ward prayed often in the prayer language, and gave messages in tongues, and interpretations, and understood the more normal reason for the unknown languages. Yet, on a rare occasion, one time, God used the tongues to help him in a situation in which he had not foolishly assumed God would do that. God knows that missionaries need the language of the people for more than just evangelizing, and so God expects us to study and learn the language of the people to whom we minister. We need to know it when we go to the market to order a pound of ground meat. God has a purpose for tongues, and it is clearly delineated in the Written Word of God.
William Seymour, pastor of the Azusa St revival saw tongues, as a gift for a church service, for God to gently take time to send a message in the unknown language (not gibberish), and an interpreter would then interpret the comfort, exhortation, and edification message of the tongues. The church was blessed, and these kind of things still occur in our time, and have occurred in all the ages since the day of Pentecost. Tongues are also a prayer language, where the Holy Spirit prays through us for things we may not know we need, for events soon to come that it is best if we not know of them yet, for intercession of problems yet to be revealed. This prayer language was how tongues work in Pentecostal circles. When Parham visited the church of William Seymour at Azusa St, the church needed to correct a number of problems that Parham had, and finally ask him to leave. Even then, the misuse of gifts, the assumption of knowledge, was a problem in the church.
Some critics today still look at the first concept of Parham, and take that to be what tongues are. It rarely has been that. To use the day of Pentecost as an example, is a bit of a stretch. The people watching the tongue speaking disciples emerging from the upper room noted they were speaking languages and not gibberish, but they did not need the language, for these were Hebrew people from around the world who knew the languages of the land from which they came, but also knew Hebrew, and therefore, no foreign language was needed to convert them. The languages, unknown to the disciples, were known and recognized as real languages, and they heard in these languages praises and worship of the disciples. This is consistent with the understanding of William Seymour, and not illustrative of the misconception of Parham.
Xenolalia is not what the Biblical gift of tongues truly is. It is very wrong to assume that this rare blessing of xenolalia is the normal use of the gift of tongues. Xenolalia, the giving of a real language without study, to speak to people of that language, is not what the gift of tongues is, and only rarely occurs, as needed for the spreading of the gospel.
The true gift of tongues, glossolalia, is not gibberish, though there is some gibberish imitation, strange fire, out there. The devils counterfeits do not negate the blessing of the real gift of tongues. There are more than 6000 languages in this world. Some are well known, and recognize-able. Some are complicated, with many sounds, inflections, and over 100,000 words. Most have 10,000 words or less. Some are made up of several sounds, repeated over and with different inflections. Some would sound like gibberish to all but the ones understanding that language.
The tongues of the Bible also include tongues of angels, and that is the heavenly language, that none of us know from learning and study, and is comprehendible only to beings of heaven. Some may be languages of long past on this earth, as the ancient Egyptian language, the language of the Mayans, the language of ancient people now no longer existent. Glossolalia has often been recognized by some who know the language that the one praising God in that language does not know.
Those who speak in tongues lack the readily comprehension of the language. Some few times, another there may recognize or understand, but normally, it takes a gift of interpretation, whereas the unknown tongue is supernaturally given meaning.
Tertullian, in 207 A.D., speaks of the interpretation of the unknown tongues as still occurring in worship services in which he was in attendance.
Justin Martyr, in 150 A.D., said the prophetic gifts remain with us.
Irenaeus said in 180 A.D., we do hear many brethren... who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages and bring to light... mysteries of God.
In the 17th century, the Camisards (French Spirit filled people) sometimes spoke in unknown languages. The utterances were interpreted, and sometimes by the same person that was speaking the unknown language.
Edward Burrough, a Quaker of the 17th century, said:
We spoke with new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, and His Spirit led us.
Montanists of the second century were Spirt filled, tongues speaking, Christians. John Wesley and many others considered them Christian, while the Catholic church and some others want to brand them heretics. They did have some problems, as we are experiencing today. With the prophetic messages, there came a tendency to allow the human, or demonic element to speak out, and they did not test all the messages, as commanded by Paul, and were led astray by false prophetic words.
Today, many of the so called prophetic words, whether they be in English or in tongues with interpretation, are engendered by greed and avarice, and are not harmonious with the Bible. The fake in the early days of the church, shamed those deceived then, and the ones duped today should also be ashamed. Paul and John both warned us to test all things, and that is vital whether it be a sermon from pulpit, or a prophetic word from a Pentecostal voice. All are to be tested.
The Irvingites was another tongue speaking, Spirit filled group. In 1792, a deposed Presbyterian minister began a church, that they like to call the Catholic Apostolic Church which they intended to model after the early church of the apostles. They felt God was calling 12 to be new apostles. The last of these died in 1901, and the church then had 80 churches. It has grown smaller and smaller to almost extinction now. They had tongues, interpretations, prophetic words, healings, and preached much on the second coming of Jesus.
So, it was not just a gift of the first century, and it did not simply re-arrive at Azusa St. There have always been peoples who have received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, and one of those gifts of the Holy Spirit, is and has been, the speaking in tongues.
The Mormons claim to speak in tongues. Yet, their idea of tongues is the education of their young men to the foreign language they will speak in the country they spend their year of missionary work. That is not tongues as we see it in the Bible.
There are satanic counterfeits of tongues in paganism, in Shamanism, in the voodoo of Haiti, amongst the Hindu gurus and Fakirs of India. These are not from God. They are gibberish or satanic imitations.
We call these xenoglossia, or pseudo-glossia. The devil has satanic rock groups give altar calls to the devil. That counterfeit does not make us throw out the altar calls to the Lord. The antichrist and false prophet will do signs and wonders, but we do not call the miracles of the two witnesses, Enoch and Elijah, to be counterfeit because the devil has imitations of Gods miracles.
So, yes, there is gibberish today. There is still the real, still the genuine tongues, that the Holy Spirit inspires, blesses, and uses in our ministries.
__________________