Does the Holy Spirit still give the gift of tongues — or did Charismatics manufacture a miracle the New Testament says would cease?

• R

  Reese1mo ago

  I was a cessationist for fifteen years. I wrote papers on it in seminary. Then I watched my sister — skeptical, analytical, the last person in our family you'd expect — spontaneously speak in what a visiting Nigerian pastor immediately identified as Yoruba, a language she has never studied or heard. I don't have a clean theological system anymore. I just have a testimony I can't explain away.

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• TT

  Taylor T.1mo ago

  Here's what I know: my grandmother prayed in tongues every morning of her life for 60 years. She was the most Christlike person I have ever personally known. Patient, selfless, radically generous. Whatever was happening in those prayers was producing something real and visible in her character. I don't have a theological system that fully accounts for that, and I've stopped pretending I do.

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  I spoke in tongues for the first time at 22 years old, alone in my apartment, not in a church service, not under any emotional pressure. I wasn't seeking it, wasn't even sure I believed it was still real. Nobody taught me a syllable. If that was manufactured, I genuinely do not know what to do with that experience. It changed the trajectory of my entire faith life.

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  grew up in a tiny rural Pentecostal church in east Tennessee. no production value. no lights. no hype man. old women who could barely walk speaking in tongues with tears running down their faces and nobody performing for anyone. thats the real thing. dont confuse the instagram version with what the spirit actually does.

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• M

  Maya1mo ago

  I grew up Assemblies of God. Spent years trying to 'get' tongues because I was told it was the initial evidence of Spirit baptism and if I didn't have it I was somehow a second-tier Christian. That theology did real damage to me. Real. Damage. I'm not saying the gift isn't real. I'm saying making it a litmus test for spiritual status is unbiblical and cruel.

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• SR

  Sam R.1mo ago

  I've been in Pentecostal churches for 40 years. I love the people. I love the passion. But I have also watched pastors tell grieving parents that their child died because mom didn't speak in tongues enough, which means she wasn't Spirit-filled, which means her faith wasn't real. The abuse that grows in that soil is the thing we should be talking about, not the gift itself.

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• R

  Riley1mo ago

  I'm a linguist. I've studied glossolalia academically. The phonological patterns in most charismatic tongue-speaking closely mirror the speaker's native language phoneme inventory. It is not a random spiritual language. It is the brain doing something interesting under emotional arousal. That doesn't mean God isn't present in the room — but it is NOT the miraculous xenolalia of Pentecost. I say this as a Christian who loves the Charismatic tradition.

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• ER

  Elena R.1mo ago

  My whole reformed tradition says tongues ceased. My whole personal prayer life says otherwise. I live in that tension quietly because I don't want to lose my church. Make of that what you will.

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• KR

  Kofi R.1mo ago

  I'm genuinely undecided on cessationism. But I am very decided that the charismatic circus — the falling, the gold dust, the feathers falling from the ceiling, the 'fire tunnels' — has zero connection to anything in the actual Bible and someone needs to say it louder.

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• R2

  Ravi 211mo ago

  Cessationism is just a theological excuse invented by people whose churches never produced any miracles. If you build a doctrine around the absence of the supernatural, of course you're going to find Bible verses that seem to support it. Confirmation bias dressed up in Greek.

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• KS

  Kofi S.1mo ago

  I teach New Testament at a small Christian university. The honest academic answer is: the evidence for cessationism from the text is genuinely thin. The 'when the perfect comes' argument requires enormous exegetical assumptions Paul never signals. At the same time, the hermeneutical leap from 'this happened in Acts' to 'this should be normative for all churches always' is also not self-evidently correct. Both positions are being held more tightly than the text actually warrants.

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• A

  Alex1mo ago

  the real question nobody wants to answer: if tongues are still happening, why does virtually no one in charismatic services ever speak in an actual human language that somebody else in the room recognizes? Acts 2 was xenolalia — real languages, real hearers. what most people do in church today is glossolalia — sounds. those are not the same gift. not even close.

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• M

  Morgan1mo ago

  1 Corinthians 14 is genuinely the most specific chapter in the entire New Testament about how a spiritual gift is supposed to operate. Two or three at most. Take turns. Someone interpret. If no interpreter, stay silent. How many charismatic services have you been in that actually follow those rules? If the gift is real, why don't we follow the instructions?

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  The entire debate might be happening on the wrong terrain. Paul's whole point in 1 Corinthians 12-14 is that spiritual gifts are given for the building up of the body, not for personal validation. Whether tongues ceased or not, the church obsession with HAVING the gift rather than using it to serve others is exactly the Corinthian problem Paul was correcting. We're re-enacting the argument he was trying to end.

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• MM

  Marco M.1mo ago

  If you disagree that tongues are still active today, explain to me why you're comfortable telling the Global South church — where tongues, prophecy, and healing are reported constantly and the church is EXPLODING in growth — that their entire experience of the Spirit is a mistake. Go ahead. I'll wait.

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• R

  Reese1mo ago

  1 Corinthians 13:10 says tongues cease when 'the perfect comes.' Cessationists say that means the completed canon. Charismatics say it means the second coming. Neither side can PROVE their interpretation from the text alone. So why are both sides acting like the other is obviously illiterate?

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• N

  Noah1mo ago

  Cessationism has exactly zero positive biblical support. None. It is entirely an argument from silence and from one heavily contested phrase in one passage. 'The perfect has come' CANNOT refer to the canon because the canon wasn't even settled for centuries after Paul wrote that letter. Paul didn't know he was writing the Bible. He was writing to Corinth.

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• HM

  Hana M.1mo ago

  I asked my pastor about this once and he told me to stop reading so much and just trust the Spirit. That's when I knew I needed a different church.

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• CR

  Casey R.1mo ago

  Honest question for cessationists: do you believe God CAN give the gift of tongues today if He wanted to, or do you believe He is UNABLE to? Because if He's able but simply chose not to, that's one theological claim. But I've met cessationists who talk like God has literally lost the ability. Those are very different positions.

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• R

  Riley1mo ago

  Acts 2 happened. Acts 10 happened. Acts 19 happened. Three separate outpourings, tongues every single time. If God did it three times in Acts alone, what exactly is the exegetical argument that He just stopped? Give me chapter and verse that says 'the apostolic era has ended, please update your theology accordingly.'

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• DK

  Diego K.1mo ago

  THIS. This is the point I've been trying to make for years and nobody in my church wants to hear it. Tongues might be real and we might still be doing it completely wrong.

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• I

  Iris1mo ago

  Paul literally says in 1 Corinthians 14 that he speaks in tongues MORE than all of them. More. Than all of them. This is the apostle Paul. The cessationist answer to that is... what exactly? He spoke in tongues constantly and God waited until his death to flip the off switch?

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• E

  Elena1mo ago

  Oh so now we need a linguist's permission to receive a gift from the Holy Spirit? Cool cool cool. Peter didn't run a phonological analysis before he opened his mouth on the day of Pentecost.

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• DL

  Drew L.1mo ago

  We absolutely build theology on testimony. The entire New Testament IS testimony. What do you think the Gospels are?

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• C

  Casey1mo ago

  You're right technically. But I'd gently push back: if something has been woven into someone's prayer life for sixty years and the fruit is unambiguously beautiful, maybe the burden of proof that something is wrong needs to be higher than 'I have a doctrinal framework that doesn't make room for it.'

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• M

  Marco1mo ago

  Church growth doesn't validate doctrine. Islam is growing too. Mormonism grew fast. Growth is not the criterion.

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• Q

  Quinn1mo ago

  The comment above about linguists actually raises a point worth engaging rather than mocking. If it's a genuine miracle, it should be able to withstand scrutiny. The resurrection withstands scrutiny. Why is it offensive to ask tongues to do the same?

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• F

  Feli1mo ago

  The above commenter comparing Spirit-filled Christians to Islam and Mormonism to score a debate point is exactly the kind of thing that makes online theology discussions exhausting.

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• YK

  Yuki K.1mo ago

  Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness... not tongues. Good character doesn't prove the gift. It proves she walked with God. Those are separable claims.

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  Testimonies aren't exegesis. I believe your sister had an experience. I do not accept that one anecdote overrides the interpretive framework for an entire doctrine. We don't build theology on what happened to your sister. We build it on the text.

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• LS

  Liam S.1mo ago

  Obviously God can do whatever He wants. He's God. Cessationism is about what He has PROMISED to do normatively, not about placing limits on His power. That's a strawman and you know it.

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• I

  Iris1mo ago

  That's pastoral malpractice and it's horrifying. But bad theology applied cruelly doesn't disprove the underlying gift. Abusive doctors exist. That doesn't mean medicine is fake.

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• JS

  Jamie S.1mo ago

  Epistemic humility is not cowardice. Holding a complex question with open hands is not the same as refusing to think.

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• IS

  Iris S.1mo ago

  Is it a strawman? Because I've sat through sermons where the implication was very clearly that anyone claiming the gift today is either deceived or lying. That's functionally treating the gift as impossible, not just non-normative.

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• O

  Omar1mo ago

  That's a beautiful description and I don't doubt those women had something real. I still think there's a difference between a genuine expression of devotion and the actual gift described in Acts 2. Hearts can be moved by God in ways that aren't every specific gift listed in 1 Corinthians. Those two things aren't in conflict.

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• R

  Reese1mo ago

  Nope. Hard disagree with the whole cessationist framework. The Spirit is not on a timer.

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• N

  Nina1mo ago

  Finally. Someone willing to say both sides are overclaiming.

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• RT

  Riley T.1mo ago

  both sides in this debate have an embarrassing tendency to assume everyone who disagrees is either spiritually deficient or intellectually dishonest. charismatics think cessationists are dry religious dead people. cessationists think charismatics are emotional self-deceivers. maybe some of both camps are right about themselves?

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• NL

  Noah L.1mo ago

  That is genuinely one of the most important comments in this whole thread and I'm sure it'll get fewer likes than the hot takes. Bookmarking this.

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• TL

  Theo L.1mo ago

  They made a valid logical point though. Popularity ≠ truth. That's not a smear, that's just reasoning.

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  I'm so tired of 'both sides' answers. At some point you have to take a position. Either God is still giving this gift or He isn't. Sitting in the middle is its own kind of cowardice.

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