Tongues & Interpretation of Tongues
To properly understand this whole matter of “various kinds of tongues,” as the New American Standard Bible renders it, requires to first understand the matter of tongues is not a humanly-invented phenomenon, but as the above passage brings out, it was God’s idea and doing to appoint or set in the ekklesia or Church Jesus is building different “kinds of tongues.” The terms “set” and “appointed” both connote permanence. Everyone who has ever worked with cement knows well what the word “set” means, and that once the mixture is set it is permanent and immutable. So, this use by the Holy Spirit of these terms in this passage establishes that fact that God has ordained that various kinds of tongues should be operating in the assemblies of the Church for as long as the Church exists. Nowhere does Scripture inform us that God has rescinded the appointment of the gift of various forms of tongues in the Church, though many have sought to have them “impeached” or “abrogated” from the Church without any Biblical justification for doing so. Cessationists must resort to extra-biblical theorization to support their unproven assertions, which are based virtually exclusively and entirely upon past Church history, which is the record of what the Church did vis-à-vis what God ordained and prescribed in His Word for the Church to do. The chasm between the two is vast!
