TONGUE SPEAKING: UPON CONVERSION

Some church groups teach that the sign of true conversion is speaking in tongues. They feel this is so important that they even offer training courses to show their members how to develop this necessary gift. In doing so, these groups are skating the fine line between works- and grace-salvation. In addition, this doctrine has the very unfortunate consequence of condemning some of their members to a lifetime of doubt regarding the validity of their salvation.

Years ago I was browsing through the Christian bookstore in town when I overheard a conversation between a customer and the store owner. The customer accosted the owner by saying, “You know that you must speak in tongues to know that you are truly saved.” The owner patiently explained that this was nowhere taught in the Bible. The customer replied, “Well, I don't know much about the Bible, but you should really read this book,” as she pointed to a best seller on the racks. Of course, the only reliable word on the subject that we have will be found in Scripture despite what some prominent TV preacher or author may have to say.

At about the same time as the incident described above, I was talking to a good friend of mine who had recently had a conversion experience. He was rightly interested in the subject of tongue-speaking since he was beginning to attend meetings of a Catholic charismatic community. I suggested that we go through the Book of Acts together to look for any tell-tale signs that happened immediately after a person became converted. He felt that tongue-speaking would probably be the common factor while I, as a life-long member of independent Christian church congregations, hoped to demonstrate to him that baptism was the first act of a new believer. We were both a little surprised by the results.

In the first place, we could only find two definite occasions on which tongue-speaking occurred and was viewed as a sign of genuine conversion. Both of these marked the outreach of the gospel to a brand new people group, and in both cases apostles were present as witnesses to the validity of those conversions. The first case is described in Acts 10 when the Gentile godfearer Cornelius and his family heard the Gospel and responded to it. They began speaking in tongues, which caused Peter to say to his Jewish-Christian companions, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Later, as narrated in Acts 11, Peter tells those in the Jerusalem church about what happened, in nearly the same words that he used earlier. They receive the news with joy as a sign that even the Gentiles had received new life (v. 18).

The other occasion involved the conversion of twelve followers of John the Baptist who had been baptized as a sign of repentance but knew nothing about the Holy Spirit. In this case, it was Apollos and Paul who ministered to them by sharing the gospel (see Acts 19:1-7). After their baptism, Paul laid hands on them and they began to speak in tongues and to prophesy.

Thus, as far as I was able to determine, the specific references to new believers speaking in tongues right after conversion are limited to those two times. By contrast, references to believers' baptism directly associated with conversion events are more numerous, even if they are not specifically mentioned in all cases. 

The new insight we obtained upon going through Acts is that a third “sign” appears a surprising number of times after conversion – everyone sat down to eat. I have yet to hear of a church that treated hunger pangs as a tell-tale sign of true salvation, but I would not be totally surprised to learn of one in the future.