Tongues Will Cease

In 1 Corinthians 13:8 Paul made an interesting, almost startling, statement: "Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophesy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away." In the expression "love never fails," the Greek word translated "fails" means "to decay" or "to be abolished." Paul was not saying that love is invincible or that it cannot be rejected. He was saying that love is eternal -- that will be applicable forever and will never be passe.

Tongues, however, "will cease." The Greek verb used in 1 Corinthians 13:8 (pauo) means "to cease permanently." It implies that when tongues ceased they would never start up again.

Here is the problem this passage poses for the contemporary charismatic movement: if tongues were supposed to cease, has that already happened, or is it yet future? Charismatic brothers in Christ insist that none of the gifts have ceased yet, so the cessation of tongues is yet future. Most non-charismatics insist that tongues have already ceased, passing away with the apostolic age.

Who is right?

I am convinced by history, theology, and the Bible that tongues ceased in the apostolic age and when it happened, they terminated altogether. The contemporary charismatic movement does not represent a revival of biblical tongues. It is an aberration similar to the practice of counterfeit tongues at Corinth.

What evidence is there that tongues have ceased? First, tongues was a miraculous, revelatory gift, and as we have noted repeatedly, the age of miracles and revelation ended with the apostles. The last recorded miracles in the New Testament occurred around A.D. 58, with the healings on the island of Malta (Acts 28:7-10). From A.D. 58-96, when John finished the book of Revelation, no miracle is recorded. Miracle gifts like tongues and healing are mentioned only in 1 Corinthians, an early epistle. Two later epistles, Ephesians and Romans, both discuss gifts of the spirit at length -- but no mention is made of the miraculous gifts. By that time, miracles were already looked on as something in the past (Hebrews 2:3-4). Apostolic authority and the apostolic message needed no further confirmation. Before the first century ended, all the New Testament had been written and was circulating through the churches. The revelatory gifts had ceased to serve any purpose and when the apostolic age ended with the death of the Apostle John, the signs that identified the apostles had already become moot (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:12).

Second, as we noted tongues were intended as a sign to unbelieving Israel. They signified that God had begun a new work that encompassed the Gentiles. The Lord would now speak to all nations in all languages. The barriers were down and so the gift of languages symbolized not only the curse of God on a disobedient nation, but also the blessing of God on the whole world.

Tongues were therefore a sign of transition between the Old and New Covenants. With the establishment of the church, a new day had dawned for the people of God. God would speak in all languages. But once the period of transition was passed, the sign was no longer necessary. O. Palmer Robertson aptly articulated the consequence of that:

Tongues served well to show that Christianity, though begun in the cradle of Judaism, was not to be distinctively Jewish...Now that the transition [between Old and New Covenants] has been made, the sign of transition has no abiding value in the life of the church.
Today there is no need for a sign to show that God is moving from the single nation of Israel to all the nations. That movement has become an accomplished fact. As in the case of the founding office of apostle, so the particularly transitional gift of tongues has fulfilled its function as covenantal sign for the Old and New Covenant people of God. Once having fulfilled that role, it has no further function among the people of God.

Moreover the gift of tongues was inferior to other gifts. It was given primarily as a sign (1 Corinthians 14:22) and cannot edify the church in a proper way. It is also easily misused to edify self (14:4). The church meets for the edification of the body, not self-gratification or personal experience-seeking. Therefore, tongues had limited usefulness in the church, and so it was never intended to be a permanent gift.

History records that tongues did cease. Again, it is significant that tongues are mentioned only in the earliest books of the New Testament. Paul wrote at least twelve epistles after 1 Corinthians and never mentioned tongues again. Peter never mentioned tongues; James never mentioned tongues; John never mentioned tongues; neither did Jude. Tongues appeared only briefly in Acts and 1 Corinthians as the new message of the gospel was being spread but once the church was established, tongues were gone. They stopped. The later books of the New Testament do not mention tongues again. Nor did anyone in the post-apostolic age. Cleon Rogers wrote, "It is significant that the gift of tongues is nowhere alluded to, hinted at or even found in the Apostolic Fathers."

Chrysostom and Augustine -- the greatest theologians of the eastern and western churches -- considered tongues obsolete. Chrysostom stated categorically that tongues had ceased by his time. Writing in the fourth century he described tongues as an obscure practice, admitting that he was not even certain about the characteristics of the gift. "The obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place," he wrote.

Augustine wrote of tongues as a sign that was adapted to the apostolic age:

In the earliest times, "the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues," which they had not learned, "as the Spirit gave them utterance." These were signs adapted to the times. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. In the laying on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Ghost, do we look that they should speak with tongues? [To this rhetorical question Augustine obviously anticipated a negative reply.]...If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Ghost be not now given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know that he has received the Holy Ghost? Let him question his own heart. If he love his brother, the Spirit of God dwelleth in him.

Augustine also wrote,

How then, brethren, because he that is baptised in Christ, and believes on Him, does not now speak in the tongues of all nations, are we not to believe that he has received the Holy Ghost? God forbid that our heart should be tempted by this faithlessness...Why is it that no man speaks in the tongues of all nations? Because the Church itself now speaks in the tongues of all nations. Before the Church was in one nation, where it spoke in the tongues of all. By speaking then in the tongues of all it signified what was to come to pass; that by growing among the nations, it would speak in the tongues of all.

During the first five hundred years of the church, the only people who claimed to have spoken in tongues were followers of Montanus, who was branded a heretic.

The next time any significant tongue-speaking movement arose within Christianity was in the late seventeenth century. A group of militant Protestants in the Cevennes region of southern France began to prophesy, experience visions and speak in tongues. The group, sometimes called the Cevennol prophets are remembered for their political and military activities, not their spiritual legacy. Most of their prophesies went unfulfilled. They were rabidly anti-Catholic, and advocated the use of armed force against the Catholic church. Many of them were consequently persecuted and killed by Rome.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Jansenists, a group of Roman Catholic loyalists who opposed the Reformers' teaching on justification by faith, also claimed to be able to speak in tongues in the 1700s.

Another group that practiced a form of tongues was the Shakers, an American sect with Quaker roots that flourished in the mid-1700s. Mother Ann Lee, founder of the sect, regarded herself as the female equivalent of Jesus Christ. She claimed to be able to speak in seventy-two languages. The Shakers believed that sexual intercourse was sinful, even within marriage. They spoke in tongues while dancing and singing in a trancelike state.

Then in the early nineteenth century, Scottish Presbyterian pastor Edward Irving and members of his congregation practiced speaking in tongues and prophesying. Irvingite prophets often contradicted each other. Their prophesies failed to come to pass, and their meetings were characterized by wild excesses. The movement was further discredited when some of their prophets admitted to falsifying prophesies and others even attributed their "giftedness" to evil spirits. This group eventually became the Catholic Apostolic Church, which taught many false doctrines, embracing several Roman Catholic doctrines and creating twelve apostolic offices.

All of those supposed manifestations of tongues were identified with groups that were heretical, fanatical, or otherwise unorthodox. The judgment of biblically orthodox believers who were their contemporaries was that all those groups were aberrations. Surely that should also be the assessment of any Christian who is concerned with truth. Thus we conclude that from the end of the apostolic era to the beginning of the twentieth century there were no genuine occurrences of the New Testament gift of tongues. They had ceased, as the Holy Spirit said they would (1 Corinthians 13:8).

New Testament scholar, Thomas R. Edgar, makes this observation:

Since these gifts and signs did cease, the burden of proof is entirely on the charismatics to prove their validity. Too long Christians have assumed that the noncharismatic must produce incontestable biblical evidence that the miraculous sign gift did cease. However, noncharismatics have no burden to prove this since it has already been proved by history. It is an irrefutable fact admitted by many Pentecostals. Therefore the charismatics must prove biblically that the sign gifts will start up again during the Church Age and that today's phenomena are this reoccurrence. In other words, they must prove that their experiences are the reoccurrence of gifts that have not occurred for almost 1900 years.

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