Tongues May Be Satanic or Demonic

How are we to explain the charismatic experience? Countless charismatics testify that speaking in tongues has enriched their lives. For example:

"What's the use of speaking in tongues?" The only way I can answer that is to say, "What's the use of a bluebird? What is the use of a sunset?" Just sheer unmitigated uplift, just joy unspeakable and with it health and peace and rest and release from burdens and tensions.

And this

When I started praying in tongues, I felt, and people told me I looked, twenty years younger...I am built up, am given joy, courage, peace, the sense of God's presence; and I happened to be a weak personality who needs this.

Those testimonies make a powerful sales pitch for speaking in tongues. If tongues can give health and happiness and make you look younger, the potential market is unlimited.

On the other hand, the evidence to support such claims is dubious. Would anyone seriously argue that today's tongues-speakers live holier, more consistent lives for Christ than believers who do not speak in tongues? What about all the charismatic leaders in recent years whose lives have proved to be morally and spiritually bankrupt and does the evidence show that charismatic churches are, on the whole, spiritually stronger and more solid than Bible-believing churches that do not advocate the gifts? The truth is, one must look long and diligently to find a charismatic fellowship where spiritual growth and biblical understanding are genuinely the focus. If the movement does not produce more spiritual Christians or believers who are better informed theologically, what fruit is it producing after all? And what of the many former tongues-speakers who testify that they did not experience genuine peace, satisfaction, power, and joy until they came out of the tongues movement. Why does the charismatic experience so often culminate in disillusion as the emotional high from initiatory ecstatic experiences becomes harder and harder to duplicate?

Without question, many people who speak in tongues say they find the experience beneficial to one degree or another. But normally -- as in the testimonies cited above -- they are speaking of how it makes them feel or look, not how it helps them be better Christians. Yet improved looks and feelings were never results of the New Testament gift.

It is significant to note that Pentecostals and charismatics cannot substantiate their claim that what they are doing is the biblical gift of tongues. We know of no authentic proven cases where any Pentecostal or charismatic has actually spoken in an identifiable translatable language. The linguist William Samarain wrote, "It is extremely doubtful that the alleged cases of xenoglossia [real languages] among charismatics are real. Any time one attempts to verify them, he finds that the stories have been greatly distorted or that the 'witnesses' turn out to be incompetent or unreliable from a linguistic point of view.' "Charismatic proponents have given no evidence, other than their assumption, that these are the same phenomenon" as the New Testament gift.

So how can the phenomenon be explained?
A number of possibilities arise. First, tongues may be satanic or demonic. Some critics of the movement want to write off all supposed tongues as the work of the devil. While I am not ready to do that, I am convinced that Satan is often the force behind phenomena that pass as gifts of the Spirit. After all, he is behind every false religion (1 Corinthians 10:20), and he specializes in counterfeiting truth (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Many in the church these days are susceptible to his lies: "The Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons" (1 Timothy 4:1).

Former tongues-speaker Ben Byrd believes some of his extra-ordinary abilities were "psychic and possibly satanic powers":

Many, many times I have walked down ministry lines praying for people with my eyes closed while I prayed with tongues. I was able to function as if my eyes were open. I was aware of everything happening around me, BUT MY EYES WERE CLOSED. I felt as though I were in a strange, but very vivid dream state...almost asleep in my body, but very aware and alert in my mind. Functioning through another realm IS POSSIBLE. But PLEASE REMEMBER THAT ALL GIFTS ARE NOT FROM GOD.

Ecstatic speech is common in false religions. Current editions of Encyclopedia Britannica contain helpful articles on glossolalia among pagans in their worship rites. Reports have come from east Africa telling of persons possessed by demons who speak fluently in Swahili or English, although under normal circumstances they would not understand either language. Among the Thonga people of Africa when a demon is exorcised a song is usually sung in Zulu even though the Thonga people do not know Zulu. The one doing the exorcising is supposedly able to speak Zulu by a "miracle of tongues".

Today, ecstatic speech is found among Muslims, Eskimos, and Tibetian monks. A parapsychological laboratory at the University of Virginia Medical School reports incidents of tongues-speaking among those practicing the occult.

Those are only a few examples of the centuries-old tradition of glossolalia that continues today among pagans, heretics and worshipers of the occult. The possibility of satanic influence is a serious issue and one which charismatics ought not brush aside without somber reflection.

(from Charismatic Chaos by John F. MacArthur, Jr.)