Charismatic tongue-speaking did not originate with Christianity. In fact, historians tell us that the ancient Greeks would get \u05f4carried away in the spirit” and babble nonsensically as part of their worship of the gods.<\/p>\n
Jesus forbade his disciples to “babble like the pagans<\/em>” (Matthew 6:7 NIV), and they did not. The tongues on Pentecost were intelligible, spoken languages of the first century.\u00a0Paul warned that certain ones who were “carried away<\/em>” by some spirit other than God’s might engage in “unknown tongues,<\/em>” but it was a phenomenon little known among first-century Christians. One wonders what spirit leads men and women today to “speak in tongues.”<\/p>\n For more information, visit or write.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Floyd Chappalear via Sentry Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 31, 1987 Charismatic tongue-speaking did not originate with Christianity. In fact, historians tell us that the ancient Greeks would get \u05f4carried away in the spirit” and babble nonsensically as part of their worship of the gods. Jesus forbade his disciples to “babble like the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[142,141],"class_list":["post-84209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-speaking-in-tongues","tag-tongue-speaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":92199,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-charismatic-movement-in-the-first-century\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":0},"title":"The Charismatic Movement in the First Century","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Floyd Chappelear via\u00a0Sentry Magazine, Vol 18 No. 4, December 1992 One must be impressed with the miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit in the first-century church.. The apostles, for instance, were told they did not need to plan ahead with respect to what they were to speak, for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18563,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/speaking-in-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":1},"title":"Speaking in Tongues","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Text: Acts 2:1-11 \u00a0 I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I received several questions in recent days regarding speaking in tongues \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0People wanting to know what it was, what is the heavenly language, what is the unknown tongue \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0B.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But probably more than anything else, they want to know if you must have the gift of tongues\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sermon"","block_context":{"text":"Sermon","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/sermon\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21101,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/i-wish-you-could-experience-speaking-in-tongues-first-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":2},"title":"I wish you could experience speaking in tongues first-hand","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have been reading your sermons for years and using some of them in my own examples. I enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas on the Scriptures. The one thing that you are missing in the text about Speaking in Tongues is the experience of hearing it first hand\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1730,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/what-is-an-unknown-tongue\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":3},"title":"What is an unknown tongue?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Is unknown tongues a heavenly language or does it mean a language not known to people but for God? Answer: The phrase \"unknown tongue\" only appears in the King James Version in six places in I Corinthians 14. If you look carefully you will notice that in all six\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90710,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/speaking-in-tongues-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":4},"title":"Speaking in Tongues?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 24, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Ron Boatwright Many in the religious world today are obsessed with \"speaking in tongues.\" According to the Bible, one of the miracles of the first century was the ability to speak in understandable foreign languages, which the speaker had never learned. In Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":723,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/praying-in-a-heavenly-tongue\/","url_meta":{"origin":84209,"position":5},"title":"Praying in a heavenly tongue","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 11, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Would you discuss the idea of praying in a heavenly language where the person is edified even though others don't know what they are saying? Answer: The mention of the language of angels is only found in\u00a0I Corinthians 13:1\u00a0where Paul states that speaking in any language is without benefit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}