Demystifying Acts 2:4

I am sure that some of you have raised their aerials higher on seeing that verse.

I will not disappoint you, though for most of you reading this may cause you some pain, especially if you want to walk according to what God’s word says.

I will start by using some real-life examples.

I spent my childhood on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

This means my early education was wholly done by teachers of the language group I was part of, especially because we learnt the vernacular in our first years. I can fluently read the Kimeru Bible to date due to that.

One day, a cute new teacher came to our class and this is what she said as an introduction.

Tonday we wiru mbi running ambout the shash

We laughed, but inwardly because in those days nobody dared challenge a teacher in any way.

Why did we laugh?

We laughed because she mispronounced the word church.

Why only the church when her whole sentence was ridden with pronunciation errors?

Because that was the only word in that sentence sounding weird, and that probably because she had gone to a college where the bulk of her teachers mispronounced the ch.

Had anybody else spoken that sentence, whether teacher or pupil, they would have done the same thing, only pronouncing the word church right in our ears.

Our English was thus weighted heavily with the Meru accent, and none of us saw anything wrong with it.

Take this young boy to a national school a few years later and the conglomeration of different pronunciation variances becomes an adventure.

But there was a real problem when the chemistry class started because another pretty girl fresh from India was our teacher.

My heavily accented ears from Meru could not make head or tail about what this girl was saying due to her also heavily accented Indian tongue. I therefore was unable to understand anything she was saying for the first term.

This for me made chemistry the most difficult subject because the clash of accents disconnected me from Chemistry. My foundation was therefore destroyed by that clash.

Yet both of us knew English since she spoke English and I could understand English.

Allow me to give another example.

I interacted a lot with the Congolese when I ministered to refugees. I therefore understood that their Kiswahili was queer, but I could understand it since they sought to customise it to our Kiswahili.

Then I went to minister in the DRC.

After teaching someone would make a comment or ask a question and I would wonder what language they were speaking. It would sometimes take a translator for my Kenyan Swahili ears to understand their Congolese Swahili tongues.

And another

One day I was invited to a seminar by a new church because they had teachers from the USA.

That first day an elder of that church was doing the translation. The problem was that he really could not understand American English but was not honest enough to admit his shortcoming.

He therefore said what he thought the teacher was saying as opposed to what he was actually saying. And the pastor was none the wiser because like I had been his ears were heavily accented to the Meru English.

After the first session, I approached the pastor and gave him my observation and he asked whether I understood the English being spoken.

I ended being the official translator for the whole time though I had attended initially to see what was happening in my neighbourhood, probably with no intention of being in the whole seminar.

It is important for us to keep that in mind when we explore Acts 2:4.

I will give a similar situation.

Now for a moment imagine with me that the king of the UK has a convocation for the subjects of his commonwealth.

We will have people from all over the world.

Suppose with me that we do not have these modern gadgets and services that we enjoy in most international meetings since that was the situation in Acts. We therefore have the king speaking to all his subjects using his British English, of course since English is the language of the commonwealth.

There is the Nigerian, the Indian, the Pakistani, the Australian, the Cameroonian, indeed all the nationalities that are former colonies of Britain and others like Rwanda that have recently joined the Commonwealth. Then we will have observers and journalists from across the world, from China to Papua New Guinea; from Guyana to Barbados.

How many in that meeting will follow what the sovereign is saying?

That is the context of Acts 2:4

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. (Acts 2:5)

If you need a refresher, there was an annual festival (harvest) requiring all the Jews to assemble in Jerusalem.

It was called Pentecost because it came fifty (gk. Penta) days after the Passover

These Jews of course understood Hebrew. But I am sure not exactly the kind of Hebrew a Jew in Jerusalem spoke. They had their own accents weighted by the places they lived.

Just like you will take long to understand a language from a different accent, I believe it was the same problem those Jews from around the world were experiencing at Pentecost as at any other time they came for those mandatory festivals.

That was the purpose of the release of the tongues of Pentecost.

Everybody then heard Hebrew being spoken in their accent as I also am sure those who may not have known Hebrew heard the Gospel spoken in the language they understood properly.

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 marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. (Acts 2: 6 – 11)

Associating unknown languages with Acts 2:4 is actually abusing the intelligence of anybody logical enough to understand Acts 2.

The fact that millions subscribe to that error does not make it any less grave.

The fact that myriads of denominations and congregations are guided by that single verse does not reduce the impact of that error.

I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: (1Corinthians 14:18)

I know some may use this verse to ‘prove’ their argument about glossolalia.

But allow me to ask a simple question.

How can you know how many languages you are speaking if they are unknown to you? How will you even know when you shift from one to the other if they are unknown?

Simply speaking, Paul knew many languages from being raised in a metropolitan context.

No wonder he was chosen to be the apostle to the gentiles because he could easily switch from one language, accent and dialect to the other to effectively share the Gospel with them.

The other apostles would have needed a permanent gift of the Acts 2:4 tongues to be able to do the same since they were only conversant with their local dialect.

Or do you not remember Peter being easily identified as Jesus’ disciple because his accent was Galilean?

That and the simple fact that they were uneducated and so unexposed to the world beyond the narrow confines of Judah, something that the international citizen, Paul, wasn’t. Not only was he highly educated, but he also had a very extensive education and exposure to the world.

Or do you not see him quoting Cretan poets or prophets, and of course arguing with the Epicureans on their own terms.

That for me is the context of Acts 2:4, speaking languages that the congregation can clearly understand the Gospel.

I do not dispute the usage of unknown languages since Paul wrote about them.

But it is wrong to use them to explain Acts 2:4.

Is the Acts 2:4 gift still there today?

I believe so. But it is in a very limited way since for today language has been demystified, especially by our progress and gadgetry.

You can take a computer or mobile phone and quickly shift from one language to the other.

Even the study of languages has been simplified.

But allow me to give an incident I have heard one time or the other.

A team from a university went to a remote and unreached place to share the Gospel.

Sadly, they did not have anybody from that community and so had to source for a translator from the community.

The person they got worshipped a different God and so decided to ‘translate’ what was being said to pour mud on the preaching and praise on his faith.

All of a sudden, the young man started speaking that language clearly that the translator had to sit down. When the meeting ended people came to him and asked why he did not tell them that he knew that language. He was as shocked as they were because he did not even know he was speaking it.

Is that not what had happened at Pentecost? Only that it was not preceded by sabotage, nor was it restricted to a single language group.

We will get into the arguments later.