•(Acts 2:1-13; 10:46; 19:6)
•(2 Corinthians 12:1; 2 Corinthians 14:1) ... III. The promise of a new power coming from the
divine Spirit, giving not only comfort and insight into truth, but fresh powers of utterance of some
kind, appears once and again in our Lord’s teaching. The disciples are to take no thought what
they shall speak, for the spirit of their Father shall speak in them. (Matthew 10:19,20; Mark 13:11)
The lips of Galilean peasants are to speak freely and boldly before kings. The promise of our Lord
to his disciples, “They shall speak with new tongues,” (Mark 16:17) was fulfilled on the day of
Pentecost, when cloven tongues like fire sat upon the disciples, and “every man heard them speak
in his own language.” (Acts 2:1-12) IV. The wonder of the day of Pentecost is, in its broad features,
familiar enough to us. What views have men actually taken of a phenomenon so marvellous and
exceptional? The prevalent belief of the Church has been that in the Pentecostal gift the disciples
received a supernatural knowledge of all such languages as they needed for their work as
evangelists. The knowledge was permanent. Widely diffused as this belief has been it must be
remembered that it goes beyond the data with which the New Testament supplies us. Such instance
of the gift recorded in the Acts connects it not with the work of teaching, but with that of praise
and adoration; not with the normal order of men’s lives but with exceptional epochs in them. The
speech of St. Peter which follows, like meet other speeches addressed to a Jerusalem audience,
was spoken apparently in Aramaic. When St. Paul, who “spake with tongues more than all,” was
at Lystra, there is no mention made of his using the language of Lycaonia. It is almost implied
that he did not understand it. (Acts 14:11) Not one word in the discussion of spiritual gifts in 1Cor
12-14 implies that the gift was of this nature, or given for this purpose. Nor, it may be added,
within the limits assigned the providence of God to the working of the apostolic Church,was such
a gift necessary. Aramaic, Greek, Latin, the three languages of the inscription on the cross were
media, of intercourse throughout the empire. Some interpreters have seen their way to another
solution of the difficulty by changing the character of the miracle. It lay not in any new character
bestowed on the speakers, but in the impression produced on the hearers. Words which the Galilean
disciples uttered in their own tongue were heard as in their native speech by those who listened.
There are, it is believed, weighty reasons against both the earlier and later forms of this hypothesis.
•It is at variance with the distinct statement of (Acts 2:4) “They began to speak with other tongues.”
•It at once multiplies the miracle and degrades its character. Not the 120 disciples, but the whole
multitude of many thousands, are in this case the subjects of it.
•It involves an element of falsehood. The miracle, on this view, was wrought to make men believe
what was not actually the fact.
•It is altogether inapplicable to the phenomena of (1 Corinthians 14:1) ... Critics of a negative
school have, as might be expected, adopted the easier course of rejecting the narrative either
altogether or in part. What then, are, the facts actually brought before us? What inferences may
be legitimately drawn from them? (a) The utterance of words by the disciples, in other languages
than their own Galilean Aramaic, is distinctly asserted. (b) The words spoken appear to have been
determined, not by the will of the speakers, but by the Spirit which “gave them utterance.” (c) The
word used, apoftheggesthai, has in the LXX. a special association with the oracular speech of true
or false prophets, and appears to imply a peculiar, perhaps physical, solemn intonation. Comp. ( 1
Chronicles 25:1; Ezekiel 13:9) (d) The “tongues” were used as an instrument not of teaching, but
of praise. (e) Those who spoke them seemed to others to be under the influence of some strong
excitement, “full of new wine.” (f) Questions as to the mode of operation of a power above the
frankie
(Frankie)
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