Well, we'll turn to Acts chapter two, Acts chapter two, and we'll read some verses from the opening of the chapter here, Acts chapter two, and beginning our reading at verse number one. We will conclude this series on the Holy Spirit in a number of weeks' time as the Lord will lead and guide us. It has been almost a year since we've preached and began preaching on This great person within the Godhead, God the Holy Spirit, trust that it has been a help and that we've come to understand his work and his office and what he does for us and continues to do in us and what he will do for us even in the future. And so Acts chapter two, verse number one, the word of God says, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them clothed in tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? I hear we every man in her own tongue wherein we were born, Peruvians and Medes. and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea and Cappadocia, and Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Panthylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya, about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Greeks and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues wonderful works of God, They were all amazed and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them, Ye men of Judea, and all that dwell in Jerusalem, Be this known unto you, and hearken to my words, for these men are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, or nine a.m. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And all my servants and all my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned, into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Amen. And we'll end just there at the verse number 21. I pray the Bible before us open, and let's call on the name of the Lord. Our Father and our God, we come before the open word of God. We thank you for giving it to us, a complete canon of scripture, a more sure word of prophecy, even more sure than the prophetic utterances of those in the Old Testament era. Here we have it, O God before us written down, preserved down through generations. We bless thee, O God, that we need no extra revelation from men. We have, O God, that which is needed for life and for godliness. Contained, O God, in this book, help us to love it, help us to learn it, and help us to live it out in our lives from day to day, lest we be like those who are gaze into the mirror, and yet turn away with no change. Oh, may the Spirit be our teacher today, instruct us in this matter, O God, that has come to light in recent decades, in recent years, and give us a biblical understanding on the matters that we will speak of this very day. For I offer prayer in and through the Savior's name, praying for the help of thy spirit we asked oh god these are petitions in christ's worthy name amen and amen this lord's day i want to address you on one of the sign gifts that was given to the early New Testament church by the Holy Spirit. It is a gift that the cessationist believes has ceased, but the continuous believes that it's still operational today. The gift I'm referring to is the gift of tongue speaking, the gift of tongue speaking. At the commencement of the message, I want to state that this matter has given rise to much dispute and much debate within the body of Jesus Christ. Because it has does not mean that we are then to avoid looking at it, but rather we are to come to a biblical understanding of what the gift of tongue speaking really is, what it was, and then ask the question, is tongue speaking still in operation today within the church of Jesus Christ? Now those who claim to speak in tongues, they point to their own experience for doing so in order to validate the claim that tongue speaking is still operational today. I speak in tongues and therefore it is valid. However, personal experience is never to be the ultimate test of whether something is true or not, whether something is genuine or not. The Apostle John warns that not everything that people claim is of the Spirit actually is. 1 John 4 verse 1, John writes, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God. because many false prophets are gone out into the world. So then what is the ultimate test? What is the ultimate test as to whether tongue speaking is still operational today and whether it is to be continued by believers today? Well, it will come as no surprise to you that it is the Word of God. The Word of God is the ultimate test on this matter and any other matter that you care to think of, because God's Word reigns supreme over any person's personal experience. It reigns supreme over any person's sincerity, and it reigns supreme over any person's subjective feelings. So we need to understand what the Scriptures say about tongue speaking. And we want to think about it from a biblical not an experimental, but from a biblical viewpoint in order to understand what the gift was and whether it is still to be employed today. In the first instance, then, I want to consider with you together the commencement of the gift of tongues, the commencement of the gift of tongues. There can be no denying that there was such a gift given to the New Testament church at its commencement on the day of Pentecost. That gift given to authenticate the validity of the message that the apostles were soon to preach was bestowed initially upon the nucleus of believers that were found in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God was poured upon that grouping and those followers of Jesus Christ. Acts chapter 2 verse 4 informs us that when the clothes and tongues of fire set upon each of them, we read that they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, verse number six informs us of the response of the ungodly with this new phenomenon. It says that they were, verse six, confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. Now their amusement is heightened by the fact that the people that are speaking these tongues are Galileans. Galileans were not known for their educational prowess. Fishing and farming were more suited to their skill sets than linguistics or language skills. The hearers expressed to their amazement what they were hearing in verse number 8 by asking a question, how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born? Now what we need to remember is what's happening here in Acts chapter 2 is a fulfillment of Christ's promise. Christ's promise that such would happen after he returned to heaven if you turn to mark chapter 16 you'll find the promise of the savior given there in the verse 17 and 18 look mark chapter number 16 verses 17 and 18 and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name shall they cast out devils they shall speak with new tongues they shall take up servants serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. These are the gifts of the Spirit. Christ is speaking here. And it says in verse 17 that they shall speak in new tongues. And so really what we're having here in the book of Acts, just some 40 days, some days after Christ's ascension to heaven, we find the fulfillment of this promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ told them that they would speak in new tongues. These tongues were not new in the sense that they had never been heard before, that they were some kind of angelic language that no human being had ever heard, or language that they were unaccustomed to speak of, but rather these were languages that were different from the languages that they used, Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic. These would be new languages in that sense. And so, what we have happening in Acts chapter 2. And it's made very clear by those who are listening to these new tongues, who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ, is that they were the supernatural, this gift was a supernatural ability to speak in known human languages. Languages that were not known to them as native to the speaker. Verse 6, they speak, every man heard them speak in his own language. Verse 8, I hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born. What happened on the day of Pentecost was that as Peter and the other apostles preached with such a conglomeration of nations gathered in that city to celebrate, obviously, the Feast of Pentecost, or the Feast of Tabernacles. These individuals, as they heard, and as they stood together, standing together, different nationalities, every man was able to hear the works, the mighty works of God in his own particular language. The words that come out of the apostle's mouth somehow by the Spirit was brought into the very ear of the hearer in order that they would hear whether it be in Greek Hebrew, whether it be in Aramaic, whether it be in the languages of the individuals who lived in Mesopotamia and Asia and Egypt and Rome and Crete. For the Arabians, every individual was able to hear the language and what they were saying in their own particular language. But there's something even more amazing. what happened on the day of Pentecost, and them simply hearing the wonderful works of God in their own languages. There are 16 different languages, nations mentioned in the verses 9 through to 11, but the amazing thing is that they heard it in their own dialect as well. Their own dialect. The word language in verse number six, Acts chapter two, is the English translation of the word dialecticos, It's where we get our English word dialect. Now every nation has its various dialects, even though the language is the same. Let me give you the example. The County Antrim man or woman has their own dialect. It is a dialect that is distinct from an individual that lives in County Fermanagh. They have their own dialect, the own words that they say. Both speak English or some kind of English, maybe not the Queen's English, maybe Ulster English, but they speak English, but the dialect is different. And you'll find that not only in this nation, go on to the British mainland, Make your way up to the highlands of Scotland and you'll find that the individual that speaks there speaks a different dialect than the individual that speaks in the home counties of Kent and around the city of London. There are different dialects even within a nation. It seems what happens on the day of Pentecost that even regional differences, regional variations in languages were discernible by those who preached or who heard the preaching that day, these were not, or this tongue, this gift of tongue speaking was not some kind of prayer language as the charismatic would say these are not angelic languages, these are not ecstatic, unrecognizable utterance that no one can discern, but rather these were meaningful, translatable, known words that were being spoken, not some kind of mystical experience that bypassed the mind. but rather something that was meaningful, something that was understandable. Every man heard in his own language. And so, Those who claim that the gift of tongue speaking has returned to the church of Jesus Christ today needs to take those claims and see what is being practiced today, see whether or not it correlates to what occurred in the book of Acts. Because if it doesn't correlate with what's happening here in the book of Acts, the gift of tongue speaking, therefore it is not biblical. Rather, it is something else. And you'll find that whenever it is done and whenever their experiences are brought to what happened in the Bible and the gift of tongue speaking within the Word of God, you'll find that it is not correlating. It does not correlate. Rather, what is spoken is undiscernable. It is unrecognizable. It is something that cannot be discerned, and therefore, it falls short of what we have here in Acts chapter two, and in Acts chapter nine as well, and in other portions of God's word. As a result, they must then be rejected. I don't know what they're speaking, but it isn't biblical tongues, because tongue speaking in the Bible was a known language. But then we come to think not only of the commencement of the gift of tongues, we think about the confusion that then started to develop concerning the gift of tongues. This confusion manifests itself within the Corinthian church. Now, the charismatic will point to the book of Corinthians and say, well, Paul speaks about tongues speaking, he speaks about it under the gifts of the spirit, and thereby, because it's in the biblical narrative then, we should accept it and we should believe that they continue today. But we must not forget that the Corinth church was a carnal church. The Corinth church wasn't a church that Paul held forth as an example for other churches to follow. If he wanted to do that, he would have maybe used the church in Philippi. They were a good church. But what had happened in Corinth was that they had become carnal. It seems to be that there is no governance within the church. You read through 1st and 2nd Corinthians and there's not one mention of elders within the church. And whenever there is bad government or there is no government within the church, then everything and anything goes. There is nothing to check. whenever there is a misusing or abusing of gifts. There is no form of discipline within such a church in order to bring God's people into line with the word of God. And so where there is no church governance, then it just seems to be that this church employs the gifts for their own benefit and for their own edification. Paul writes to this church, Because this gift of tongue speaking, along with other things, needs to be ironed out, dealt with. This is one of the reasons why he writes this little book, as I said. He spends a large portion of the epistle trying to correct the congregation's abuse of spiritual gifts. As we read through the book of 1 Corinthians, we find that the believers in Corinth had counterfeited the real gift of tongue speaking and had substituted it with some kind of pagan, ecstatic kind of speech that was commonplace in pagan religions that were established in that Gentile city. The true gift of tongue speaking had been confused with ecstatic tongues, that being the counterfeit. And therefore Paul admonishes the church in a very public manner in writing this letter. I suppose the whole theme of the apostles admonition about gifts and how they were to function is neatly summarized in that statement that we find in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and the verse number 40. There we read these words, let all things be done decently and in order. The inference is that they weren't being done at present. Things were not being done decently and in order. Now many in the charismatic movement claim that the tongues referred to in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, chapter 12, 13 and 14, they suggest that these tongues are different from the tongues in Acts chapter 2. And they argue from verses like 1 Corinthians 14 and the verse number 2, for he that speaketh in an unknown tongue. But you need to notice something there in verse number 2, that the word unknown, upon which the charismatic emphasizes, The unknown is found in italics, simply meaning that this word is not found in the original document from the original manuscripts. And so we could simply read, for he that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 14 they say, for if a man pray in an unknown tongue, look at it again in italics, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. And these individuals, the charismatic movement, those who ascribe to the charismata They take these texts and they say, well, these are ecstatic utterances. These are angelic tongues. These are not the known language of Acts chapter 2. And so there is a distinction between what's happening in Acts chapter 2 and what's happening in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. The tongues of Acts 2 are not the same as the tongues of 1 Corinthians chapter 14. But if that were the case, then the author of Holy Scripture, who is the Holy Spirit, would have used a different word for tongues. He would have used a different word for tongues if it was different. However, if you go back to the original, you'll find that both tongues, the tongues of Acts 14 verse 2 and the tongue of Acts chapter 2 is the same word. It is the word glossia, the same word. Not distinct, but the same. Now the apostle Paul couldn't make his way to Corinth at this time. And as a result, Paul decides that the wisest policy with regard to this abuse of the gift of tongue speaking was to have some type of testing procedure, some kind of objective testing procedure in order to see whether or not this speaking of tongues was being done biblically or not. And so he sets down four criteria that was to govern the practice of tongue speaking within the Corinthian church. And he sets them forth in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and the verse 26 down to the verse 28. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 26 down to verse 28. How is it then, brethren, When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto Ediphine. You see what was happening in the Corinthian church was that there was no order to the service. One would have stood up and sang a psalm, and then someone came in with a bit of doctrine, and then someone began speaking in tongues, and then someone gave a revelation, and then another gave a revelation. There is no order within this church. It's chaos, it's chaotic. And this is causing great confusion, and it's keeping the Corinthian church in a state of immaturity. He goes on to say, if any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be done by two, or at the most by three, and that by course, and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church, and let him speak to himself and to God. In those verses, there are four criteria with respect to tongue speaking. And so we need to look at this and we then need to bring what the more modern tongue speaker does within his assembly and see whether or not they are adhering to this biblical criteria. Whether or not they are keeping to what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, how he said that this tongue speaking was to occur within the church. First of all, verse 26 tells us the first criteria was that it was to be done with the purpose of strengthening the church. This tongue speaking was not to be done for self-promotion or for personal edification. Verse 26, let all things be done on to edifying. This gift of tongue speaking was to be done to edify the church, to build up the church. How can the church be built up if we cannot understand what is being said with respect to tongue speaking? The second criteria, it was to be done in the public worship service, not in private, in which only one or two, not the whole congregation, Only one or two should speak so as to avoid confusion. Verse 26 and 27, when you come together. So there's the public worship service. When you come together, not in private, but in public. When you come together, if any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be done by two or at the most by three. That's the second criteria. Thirdly, when speaking in tongues, it should be done one at a time. Verse 27, and that by course. This refers to the order that was to mark tongue speaking in that it was to be done one at a time and not all together. One at a time, not all together. The fourth criteria was that there had to be present someone who could interpret what was being said, verse 27, and let one interpret. And verse 28 goes on to say that if there is no interpreter, then the tongue speaker is to remain silent. So let's ask the question, is that what's happening in tongue speaking churches today? Well, I'll tell you that is not what is happening. Instead of order, chaos and confusion reigns. The entire congregation at times, not one or two or three at the maximum, but they break out into tongue speaking, which really is unidentifiable gibberish. There is no interpretation given. for the purpose of edifying the church of Jesus Christ. So bringing the experience to the Bible evidences that what is happening today in tongue-speaking churches is not biblical tongues. It cannot be. Wally Mullen was the great Baptist preacher. Willie Mullen spoke against tongue speaking and I suppose he ruffled a few feathers within the charismatic and Pentecostal movement. And so a pastor asked him one day, a pastor whose church believed in tongue speaking, that Mr. Mullen would come along because He couldn't, as it were, denounce such things if he had never experienced such things. And so Willie Mullen, he went to the prayer meeting, I think it was, a public meeting at least, and there was a man who stood up and he started to speak. And he continued to speak in tongues. And whenever he drew a breath, it seemed to me that every time he was doing that, he used the word Karatchi, Karatchi. Whatever that word meant. And then another man, he stood up to interpret what was being said. The meeting closed. The pastor asked Mr. Mullin, well, what did you think off the surface? He said, those two men, the tongue speaker and the interpreter, bring them to me. We'll have a little word together. And as he interviewed them, he said, was the same spirit helping you in your interpretation as it was in your tongue speaking? To which the two men agreed. Well, he said, I heard the word carache 37 times. But in your interpretation, I never heard anything interpreted 37 times. This is all nonsense. And they threw him out. You see, these words that supposedly were being interpreted never find their interpretation into English. He was listening for this word kerache and whatever its interpretation was, but it simply was babbling. There was no logic to it whatsoever. It was unidentifiable gibberish. And so those who promote tongue speaking cannot say, They cannot say that what they practice today meets the biblical criteria as set forth in 1 Corinthians 14 verse 26 to 28. Neither those who practice tongue speaking and they say that Paul spoke in tongues. Paul spoke in tongues. 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1, the apostle clearly states, though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And so, what we have here, the charismatic will say, the tongue speaker will say, here's Paul. Paul, he speaks about speaking with the tongues of men and of angels. They make a distinction between the two tongues here. the tongue of men and of angels. They suggest that one is an angelic heavenly language unknown to man, and then there is the earthly language, the tongues of men. But if you look at the word of God, and you look at any visitation by any angel to any individual, those individuals fully understood what the angel was declaring on to them. They did not speak in some angelic language. Rather, they used the language of the individual. I'll give you a couple of examples. I think of Elijah. He's under the juniper tree. He's fleeing from Jezebel the queen, 1 Kings chapter 19. And in verse 7, we read, And the angel of the Lord came again the second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee. Now what was Elijah's response to the angel's instruction? Did he scratch his head and ask for interpreter to translate what the angel had said onto him? No, it tells us that he arose and did eat and drink and went in the strength of that meat 40 days and 40 nights onto Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel said, arise and eat. What did Elijah do? He simply listened and he simply obeyed because he understood what the angel said. The angel had the tongue of an angel, but he still understood what was being said. Think about Mary, that dear woman who carried in her womb the Lord Jesus Christ. When she spoke to Gabriel, she fully understood what the angel said unto her. We can only but conclude that this, some believe, a teenage girl from Nazareth, most likely uneducated, understood exactly what Gabriel communicated to her. Also I suggest to you that Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1 was using a language or what you would talk about an expression of speech, a figure of speech. He would use that language to exaggerate, as it were, to the point to emphasize something, hyperbole, hyperbole. Let me give you an example of what hyperbole is. Someone would say to you, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Now whenever someone says that, you know that they're not saying literally they could sit down and eat a horse. They are using that figure of speech to emphasize something. They're emphasizing how hungry they are. Another example is, I'm so tired I could sleep on a clothesline. It's not their intention to actually go and literally sleep on a clothesline. It is just to express, to emphasize how tired that individual really is. And Paul is using this kind of language. He's using the language or a figure of speech to emphasize. He's saying, if I had the ability of the tongues of men, and if I was able to speak with the tongues of angels, and if I did that without love, then it would all be empty and it would all be vain. It's not literally saying that he did speak in angelic tongues. But if he could, it would all be pointless and would all be empty. Paul, however, did speak with tongues. We can't deny the biblical narrative. If you look at chapter 14, verse 18, Paul said, I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than you all. We can't rub that out of the scripture. We have to be true to the word. Here's a man, he says, I speak with tongues more than you all. Who was Paul? Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was a Hebrew, a Jew. His native language, Hebrew. Bit of Aramaic, probably a little bit of Greek as he learnt under the feet or was taught at the feet of Gamaliel. But here's a man now commissioned by God to go into Asia, Asia Minor, to go into Macedonia, into Europe itself. And he's going to have to communicate the gospel to individuals who were not Hebrew speaking, who were not Greek speaking, but rather individuals in their own native tongue. How was Paul going to do that? Well, Paul was going to do that because he was gifted with the gift of tongues. Gifted with the gift of tongues. But Paul said something about his gift of tongue speaking. Because if you look on down, Yes, he spoke with tongues more than you all, but notice what it says in verse 19. Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue. Paul regulated his tongue speaking. He understood that he needed to use the gift to edify the church, and if it was not going to edify the church and the believers, then he would rather speak five words in a language that they understood than ten thousand words in a language that they didn't understand. Some people maybe think, well, that's how I should preach. Five words, that would be a good message. Wouldn't we all get out in time and the roast beef wouldn't be burnt? And maybe you think that's the way it should be. But here's Paul. Yes, he's given the gift of tongue speaking. But he's only going to use it whenever it's going to be for the building up of the church. So the question is, to those who speak in tongues, does it edify the church? Does it build up believers? There was great confusion. Paul sets down parameters. Within these parameters, the gift of tongue speaking is to be used. Without them, outside of them, they are to be set aside. But then we come finally very quickly to the cessation of the gift of tongues. As I've stated on numerous occasions, it's very clear that in the New Testament church, there was the gift of tongue speaking. We can't deny that. We can't, as it were, erase it from Holy Scripture. However, it was a rare experience in the New Testament church. The book of Acts covers 30 years of biblical church history. And in that 30 years, you find only three occasions whereby the gift of tongue speaking is used, one in every 10 years. Acts 2, Acts 10, Acts 19. Only three times in a 30-year period is tongue speaking employed. Dealing with the abuse of tongue speaking in Corinth, Paul made known that the gift had a limited time period within Christ's kingdom. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 8. Paul said there would come a time when tongues would cease. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. I'm told that the word cease is the Greek word polio. It is a strong word. It indicates that once ceased, They would cease for good. That's the verb. That's the import of the verb. They're going to cease, and they're not going to, as it were, lie dormant for 1,800 years, and then, as the Pentecostal charismatic movement finds traction within society, then God's going to, again, re-give the gift of tongue speaking. No, when they cease, that's it. Gone forever. That is affirmed by history. The cessation of gifts, the tongues speaking is confirmed by history. Peter never mentions tongues. James never mentions tongues. John never mentions tongues. Jude never mentions tongues. Paul outside, Corinthians, never mentions tongues again. The writings of the early church fathers, they speak nothing of tongue speaking. They have been discontinued. 2,000 years of church history attest to the fact that these non-language tongues have been done away with. The Reformation, the greatest outpouring and moving of God the Holy Spirit since the day of Pentecost, And yet we never read of Zwingli or Luther or Calvin or Knox speaking in tongues. All the evidence, whether biblical or historical, testifies to the fact that tongue speaking has ceased. Why? Why has it ceased? It has ceased because the gift has served its purpose. The gift has served its purpose. You see, as I've said, the gift of tongue speaking was used to authenticate the validity of the apostles' preaching. With the coming of the complete scripture, along with the death of the apostles, that authentication process was no longer required by the church, because the church has left her infancy and has been brought to a point of spiritual maturity. You see, what the apostles did when they preached, they preached the good news, and then they performed some miracle. Maybe touching an individual, healing a lame man, and it was that which validated what they preach. This is God's proof that what I am preaching is true. But brethren and sisters, I as a gospel preacher, I don't point you to signs, but rather I point you to the Scripture. The Scriptures are now complete. And it is the scripture that authenticates my preaching, not the performance of miracles, signs, or tongue speaking. Now the charismatic will tell you that for an individual to be filled with the Holy Spirit, they must be a tongue speaker. That's what they say. Tongues are an evidence that a man is filled with the Holy Ghost. My question to them is then, why did Jesus Christ not speak in tongues? He was filled with the Spirit without measure, but we never read of Him speaking in tongues. Why was John the Baptist? Why did he not speak in tongues? Why did Zechariah not speak in tongues? Why did Elizabeth not speak in tongues? These are individuals who were all filled with the Spirit and yet they never spoke in tongues. And so they have a problem with Christ. They have a problem with Christ. Whatever the tongues of today are, they are most certainly not the tongues of the New Testament. Dr. Ferguson, Paul Ferguson said, the tongues of the modern charismatic movement are not the same as those on the day of Pentecost, so that we can only conclude that they are either self-induced, group-induced by the flesh, such as hypnosis or ecstatic emotion, or they are satanically induced. Certainly none of these sources commend themselves to the child of God. Brethren and sisters, whatever a person says about their personal experience, we need to be discerning. As I said in my introductory remarks, we are exhorted by John to believe not every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they be of God. God has given you and I the gift of language, English. And we are to use that gift to spread the gospel. We're to use that gift to make Christ known in this community. Instead of using our tongues to gossip, to slander, to malign, we are to employ our tongues, the gift of speech, the gift of language, to preach Christ and Him crucified. so that those who hear it are brought into the Redeemer's kingdom. May God save our young people and us of an older generation. May he save us from the charismatic confusion. And whatever their claim is, it seems from Scripture that their claims do not correlate with what tongue speaking was the New Testament era. May God help us and may God deliver such from their ignorance and be brought to use their tongues to sing his praise and to let Christ and make Christ known even in this world. Let's bow our heads in prayer, let's pray I trust that the message has been informative. We will come in coming weeks to maybe some more devotional type of messages for God's people, but we want to clear up a few matters with respect to the gifts and whether they are to be continued today, and so I trust that What I've said today will have helped in some little way with respect to that. Oh God, our loving Father, we thank Thee for the gift of language and of speech. We take it for granted. We just use our tongues and use our lips. Words are formed in our mouth. They proceed out into the world and we can never gather them up again. Oh, that we would use this gift as thou has given to us all to make thee known, to make the gospel known, to make known that Christ is the only savior of sinners, that he's able, ready, and willing to save all that come on to God by him. Oh, answer prayer, deal with those, oh God, who are caught up in such confusion. who seek the experience, but they never seek God or Christ. They seek to have their emotions stimulated and excited in some manner. And yet, dear Father, they're never excited about Christ and the preaching of the gospel. It's all very dry to them. They seek after signs. It is the indication of an adulterous and a wicked generation. Oh, save us from seeking after the sign, but let us seek after the Savior. Save us from seeking the gifts, but may we look to the giver, the giver of all good things. And so answer prayer. Help us, we pray, guide us in these matters. May we be biblical in our thinking. We pray these our prayers and through the Savior's precious name. Amen.