Speaking in tongues
At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to speak many different languages (see Acts 2:1-6). From that time on, says Ellen White, their language “was pure, simple, and accurate, whether they spoke in their native tongue or in a foreign language” (AA 40).GP 32.1
Linguists have studied modern instances in which people claimed they spoke supernaturally in other tongues—a phenomenon called glossolalia— to find out whether they were speaking an actual language or not. The results have been rather one-sided. Tongues-speakers today do not speak languages; instead, they speak gibberish.GP 32.2
After investigating glossolalia, Professor William Welmes, professor of African languages at UCLA, wrote, “I must report without reservation that my sample does not sound like a language structurally. There can be no more than two contrasting vowel sounds, and a most peculiarly restricted set of consonant sounds; these combine into a very few syllable clusters which recur many times in various orders. The consonants and vowels do not all sound like English [the speaker’s native language], but the intonation patterns are so completely American English that the total effect is a bit ludicrous.” GP 32.3
Similarly, William J. Samarin, professor of linguistics at Toronto University, studied glossolalia extensively for five years. He assessed glossolalia to be “meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead.” GP 32.4
The gift of tongues is viewed today as a wholly mystical ability that somehow operates in a person’s spirit but bypasses the mind. For many years Charles and Francis Hunter held seminars, attended by as many as fifty thousand people at a time, in which they taught people how to receive the gift of tongues. Charles Hunter told the people,GP 32.5
When you pray with your spirit, you do not think of the sounds of the language. Just trust God, but make the sounds when I tell you to.GP 32.6
In just a moment when I tell you to, begin loving and praising God by speaking forth a lot of different syllable sounds. At first make the sounds rapidly so you won’t try to think as you do in speaking your natural language. . . . Make the sounds loudly at first so you can easily hear what you are saying. GP 33.1
Hunter continually reminded his audience that they weren’t supposed to be thinking. ” ‘The reason some of you don’t speak fluently,’ ” he said, ” ‘is that you tried to think of the sounds. So when we pray this prayer and you start speaking in your heavenly language, don’t try to think. . . . [You] don’t have to think in order to pray in the Spirit.’ “ GP 33.2
This desire to switch off the mind and disconnect from all that is rational is one of the primary characteristics of pagan mystery religions. Yet about 20 percent of all Christians today belong to some tongue-speaking Pentecostal or charismatic church, and if one counts only committed Christians, the percentage is even higher.GP 33.3
Ellen G. White calls the modern tongues “gibberish.” In 1864 she wrote, “Some of them have exercises which they call gifts, and say that the Lord has placed them in the church. They have an unmeaning gibberish which they call the unknown tongue, which is unknown not only by man, but by the Lord and all Heaven. Such gifts are manufactured by men and women, aided by the great Deceiver. Fanaticism, false excitement, false talking in tongues, and noisy exercises have been considered gifts which God has placed in the church. Some have been deceived here. The fruits of all this have not been good” (4bSG 153). Nowhere does the Bible teach that the gift of tongues is anything other than human languages.GP 33.4