Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 2 of 7
This is the question I get more than any other. Sometimes from genuine curiosity. Sometimes, from someone with arms crossed, waiting for me to fumble.
“Show me where in the Bible it says tongues are for today.”
Fair question. The kind that deserves a real answer.
The answer isn’t hiding in one obscure verse. It’s woven across the New Testament Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters — and goes back into the Old Testament prophets. You have to work harder to explain it away than to accept it.
So if you’ve been told tongues were “just for the apostles” or that the Bible is “unclear” on this, stay with me. We’re walking through what the text actually says. Not what a pastor said. Not what a YouTube guy said. The text itself.
It says more than most people realize.
A Promise With No Expiration Date
Before we get to the New Testament, start where Peter started. A prophecy already 800 years old when he quoted it.
Joel 2:28–29:
“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”
All people. Sons. Daughters. Old. Young. Servants. No asterisk. No “valid for first-generation believers only.”
The story of tongues begins here. Not in a tent revival. In an ancient Hebrew prophecy about what God planned to do for all His people. And notice the nature of the gift prophecy, dreams, and visions. The Spirit comes, and people speak.
When Pentecost arrived and tongues of fire landed on 120 people in an upper room, Peter stood up and told the crowd what was happening. This is that. This is Joel (Acts 2:16–21).
Then he said the line that carries the weight of this whole debate:
“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:39)
For you. Your children. Everyone God will ever call. That’s not an expiration date. It’s an open invitation.
And here’s something wild. Moses said the same thing thousands of years earlier. The Spirit fell on seventy elders, and two guys who weren’t even in the right place started prophesying. Joshua got nervous and told Moses to shut them down. Moses’ response: “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).
What Moses wished for, Joel prophesied. Pentecost delivered.
Jesus Said to Ask
Before Pentecost ever happened, Jesus told His disciples to pray for the Spirit.
Luke 11:13:
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Robert Menzies, a New Testament scholar who has spent decades on Luke-Acts, caught something here. Jesus is talking to His disciples. People who already follow Him. So this can’t be about conversion. It’s about something more a gift the Father wants to give to people who are already His.
And the verbs? Present imperative. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. The grammar is relentless. Like a kid on Christmas morning who won’t stop asking for the one thing he wants.
Menzies also points to the snake-and-scorpion imagery in this passage. Luke includes Jesus reassuring His disciples that the Father won’t hand them something harmful when they ask for the Spirit. Why would Jesus need to say that?
Because when the Spirit shows up with power and prophetic speech and tongues, it can be loud. Unfamiliar. It can make people nervous.
Jesus says: Don’t be afraid. The Father gives good gifts.
Five Times in Acts, One Pattern
This is where it gets hard to argue with the text.
Luke records five moments where people receive the Holy Spirit. Different groups in different cities with different backgrounds. And a pattern emerges you can’t unsee.
1. Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). 120 disciples in the upper room. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Tongues are explicitly mentioned.
2. The Samaritans (Acts 8:14–19). Philip preaches, people believe, Peter and John come and lay hands on them. Something happens something so visible that a local sorcerer named Simon offers money to get the power to do the same. Tongues aren’t named here. But Menzies puts it well: “Something visible happened that made Simon the sorcerer want to buy the ability to confer it. That’s not a coincidence, that’s a pattern.”
3. Paul (Acts 9:17–18). Ananias lays hands on Saul: “so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Tongues not mentioned in this passage. But Paul later writes, “I speak in tongues more than all of you” (1 Corinthians 14:18). He got it somewhere.
4. Cornelius’s Household (Acts 10:44–46). The first Gentile converts. The Spirit falls while Peter is still talking. “For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.” Tongues, explicitly mentioned. Peter himself calls it a repeat of Pentecost (Acts 11:15–17).
5. The Ephesians (Acts 19:1–7). About twelve disciples of John the Baptist were already believers. Paul lays hands on them and “the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.” Tongues are explicitly mentioned.
Three out of five explicitly mention tongues. The fourth strongly implies observable evidence. The fifth involves the man who becomes the most prolific tongue-speaker in the New Testament.
That’s not an anomaly. That’s a pattern.
And notice the spread. Jews in Jerusalem. Half-Jews in Samaria. A Pharisee on the Damascus road. Gentiles in Caesarea. Disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus. Every barrier the ancient world could build, the Spirit blew straight through.
Every time, the evidence looked the same.
Luke wasn’t writing random history. He was building a case.
What Paul Actually Said
Most arguments against tongues come from 1 Corinthians 12–14. I get it. Pulling verses out of context and parts of them sound restrictive. Read the whole thing in context, and the picture flips.
Start with the context. Corinth was a mess. Paul was writing to a church that had real problems people using tongues to show off, interrupting services, creating chaos. The gifts needed regulation, not elimination.
Gordon Fee, a world-class New Testament scholar at Regent College, makes this point precisely. Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 assume the continuation of tongues and prophecy. He regulates them. He doesn’t abolish them. There’s a massive difference between “do it in order” and “stop doing it.”
What did Paul actually say? In his own words:
“I would like every one of you to speak in tongues.” (1 Corinthians 14:5)
Everyone of you. Not some. He goes on to say he’d rather they prophesy in corporate worship, because prophecy builds the whole room without needing interpretation. But his starting position is plain. He wants everyone to have this gift.
“I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” (1 Corinthians 14:18)
Sit with that one for a second.
Paul. The man who wrote Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. Arguably, the greatest theologian of the early church. He prayed in tongues more than the entire Corinthian church combined. This wasn’t a fringe practice he tolerated. It was central to his prayer life.
And he isn’t embarrassed. He’s thankful. “I thank God.”
When Paul describes what happens when he prays in tongues, he says “my spirit prays” (1 Corinthians 14:14). His spirit, connected to God’s Spirit, praying mysteries his conscious mind can’t articulate. He prayed with his spirit and with his understanding. He sang with his spirit and with his understanding (1 Corinthians 14:15). Both, not either.
“Do not forbid speaking in tongues.” (1 Corinthians 14:39)
That’s not a suggestion. It’s a direct apostolic command. Menzies notes it’s the one clear command Paul gives in the entire chapter. Three chapters of careful instruction about order and love and building each other up, and Paul’s final word on tongues is: don’t you dare forbid it.
But What About the Restrictions?
Fair question. I want to be honest about this.
Yes, Paul puts guardrails on tongues in corporate worship. Two or three speakers at most. One at a time. An interpreter must be present. If there’s no interpreter, keep it between you and God (1 Corinthians 14:26–28). Those are real instructions.
But notice what Paul is regulating the public exercise of tongues as a message to the congregation. A person stands up and delivers a message in tongues, and someone else interprets it for the church. That specific practice has rules.
It’s different from personal prayer in tongues, what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14:2: “Anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God.” And it’s different from corporate worship where the whole church is praying and praising together in the Spirit.
Menzies draws this distinction carefully. There’s the congregational gift of tongues (a message given to the church, requiring interpretation) and private prayer tongues (the personal devotional practice Paul himself engaged in “more than all of you”). Same gift, two settings.
Paul’s corrective letter to Corinth isn’t an argument against tongues. It’s an argument for doing them well. In love. In order.
Paul wrote another corrective letter about the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. People were getting drunk at communion. Getting greedy. Humiliating the poor. Did his response mean we should stop taking communion? Of course not. He corrected the abuse without eliminating the practice. Same move with tongues.
The fact that he spent three chapters regulating the gifts is itself strong evidence that they were active, expected, and valued. You don’t write traffic laws for a road nobody drives on.
The Verse That Ties It All Together
Joel’s prophecy. Jesus’ promise. The pattern through Acts. Paul’s personal testimony and his direct command.
The verse that ties it all together is the one Peter spoke on the very first day:
“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:39)
For you.
The prophecy didn’t expire. The promise didn’t shrink. And the apostle who wrote more New Testament letters than anyone else prayed in tongues more than a whole church combined and told them not to forbid it.
So when someone asks, “Show me where in the Bible it says tongues are for today,” the honest answer is: show me where it says they stopped.
No text in the Bible explicitly says they did.
If you’ve been told tongues aren’t for you, that they were just for the early church, or just for the apostles, do one thing. Read the passages yourself. Joel 2. Luke 11. Acts 2, 8, 9, 10, 19. First Corinthians 12–14. Slowly. In context.
Then ask yourself: Does this sound like something that was supposed to stop? Or like a promise that was meant to keep going?
The promise is for you.
Sources
- Robert Menzies, Empowered for Witness (T&T Clark, 2004)
- Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence (Hendrickson, 1994)
- Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Eerdmans, 1987; rev. 2014)
Full citations with page numbers are in the free research guide.
This post is part of the “Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence” series. For the full overview and the free research guide PDF, visit the overview post.
Next: The Passage Everyone Argues About: “When the Perfect Comes.”
