I’ve come across many people and many situations over the years where believers were convinced that it was necessary to engage in spiritual warfare with the use of the gift of tongues. Is this true? (Click on the title to read on).

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FAULTY DISCERNMENT

Unfortunately, the whole view of spiritual warfare is severely distorted in this faulty thinking. Some believers see evil spirits at work in everything, from their own failings and sins, to accidents and illnesses. So the problem starts here. The truth is that our sin and our failings are due to our fleshly, human makeup gaining the upper hand over the Word of God in our lives. Sickness, while on rare occasions being due to spiritual oppression, is more likely due to the fact that all of nature is under a curse. We will all get sick and die, unless the Lord comes first. But this is a subject for another post.

Our guide is the Bible. If you are one who puts experience over the Word of God, you are indeed opening yourself up to spiritual deception. You need to repent of that.

PRAYER IS PRAYER

The initial thought for anyone trying to look at this question objectively must be that the claim we are considering belittles the power of ordinary prayer in our own language-the language which we and those around us understand. It is, of course, also a language which our God understands. So why use tongues in the case of spiritual warfare? It’s claimed that tongues have more power than ordinary languages because they’re heavenly languages – Holy Spirit languages. There is power in the gift, it’s believed, and God and the entire spirit world is more likely to take notice of your assault if it’s mounted with a “spirit language”.

If you’ll go back to previous parts of this series, you’ll see how this claim is countered and nullified. If, for example, you speak in tongues in the church and nobody understands what you’re saying, you’re just “speaking into the air’, says Paul. If this is the case, there’s nothing whatsoever being accomplished in the heavenlies. No-one present is benefitting spiritually, from whatever you may or may not be saying. No-one is being freed from their sins or their debts or their sickness or their demonic possession. If they were, Paul would have let that incredible gift loose in the church, and would never have controlled it as he did.

THE RECORD OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

But the real evidence against this claim is found throughout Scripture, and especially in the book of Acts and the epistles. We could bring attention to the fact that Jesus Christ never used tongues, even when raising people from the dead, or when restoring their sight. However, the avid tongues speaker is quick to assert that God created “new tongues” for the early church, to empower it. There’s no consideration or thought that the reference to “new tongues” may just mean tongues the speakers hadn’t learned. No, they must have been tongues never heard before, it’s said.

Alright then, if on that great iteration of the Day of Pentecost recorded in Acts chapter two the Lord bestowed new tongues on the church which were to be used in spiritual warfare, we should be able to see the evidence of it in the remainder of the New Testament. However, you can look and look, and not find one example of any spiritual battle being won, fought or even launched with tongues.

PERSECUTION

The early church was already being challenged with persecution, so they gathered and prayed for the power to deal with that challenge. When Peter and John reported what had happened to them, this was the response:

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness (Acts 4:29).

These are the people to whom the Holy Spirit had endowed “new tongues” at Pentecost, and yet here they are, asking for boldness, in their own language. There’s no mention of any tongues in this scene.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

When Paul said that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual (2 Corinthians 10:4) it’s considered that weapons he used included tongues. If this is so, why, when Paul described the armor of God, didn’t he mention the gift of tongues at all? Not one of the pieces of armor: shield, belt, helmet and so on, relates to the gift (Ephesians 6:10-17). In fact, it’s significant that the one offensive weapon Paul does mention is not the gift of tongues, but Scripture:

…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17b).

I’ve already demonstrated in previous parts of this series that tongues do not express the words of God, but the words (or babble) of the speaker.

Ah, says the tongues-warrior, the following verse in Paul’s letter is or includes a reference to tongues. Here’s the first part of that verse:

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests (verse 18a).

Now let’s read the second part of the verse: 

With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people (verse 18b).

This is an aside, but “being alert” is the opposite to the practise of being “slain in the Spirit”, in which the mind is apparently disengaged. You can’t be alert if your mind is not present.

What about Paul’s words that we should “pray in the Spirit on all occasions”? Is this a clear statement that Paul was advocating praying in tongues in order to get things done? We need to consider here what it is to be “in the Spirit”.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “IN THE SPIRIT”

The tongues speaker is convinced that being in the Spirit must include speaking in tongues and losing yourself in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As I’ve covered previously in this series, every true believer has the Holy Spirit. If he or she does not, he or she isn’t a believer at all, and cannot be resurrected:

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you (Romans 8:9-11).

The gospel does not include searching for the baptism of the Spirit-that’s already there since the earliest days of the Chruch. You become a child of God through the gospel, and you receive the Spirit when you accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in your heart. You are filled with the Spirit-meaning to be under His direct influence-at any time as a Christian believer you are walking in or with God in truth, or when He specially empowers you for something.

Therefore being “in the Spirit” is not at all limited to those who speak in tongues (even if it is the real gift). Instead it’s to do with our being in intimate fellowship with the Lord, and our being open to His influence. All true believers can speak by the Spirit of God, and those who try to convince you otherwise are robbing you of your standing as a child of God. If you can say “Jesus is Lord” and mean it, you’re speaking by the Spirit, says Paul:

Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).

IN THE SPIRIT, ACCORDING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

There are Biblical examples of disciples and apostles being “in the Spirit” with no tongues being mentioned. For example, John was in the Spirit when he received the Revelation, and even when the glorified Jesus Christ spoke back to him, there was no mention of unknown or heavenly languages:

 On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea” (Revelation 1:10).

NO TONGUES IN HEAVENLY WARFARE

Even in heavenly scenes in the book of Revelation, when the topic is clearly nothing short of spiritual warfare, with demons and Satan on almost every page, angels, the Lord, and John, never spoke in tongues:

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
  to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
  and honor and glory and praise” (Revelation 5:11-12).

FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT

Similarly, being filled with the Spirit does not at all have to mean or entail speaking in tongues, even if that were (rarely) one of the products of the infilling. Peter was praying one day when he had a vision in which God spoke to him. In this vision, neither he nor the Lord spoke in tongues:

Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:9-14).

PETER’S DEFENSE

Peter was “filled with the Spirit” when he defended himself in front of religious leaders, but there’s no mention of him speaking or praying in tongues:

 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people!  If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed (Acts 4:8-9).

STEPHEN’S DEFENSE

Stephen was filled with the Spirit at his defense, and didn’t use tongues at all, even when prayed:

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God… While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep (Acts 7:56-60).

PAUL’S EXCORCISM

We have a direct example of Paul engaging a demon spirit-and he didn’t use tongues. Paul grew tired of a servant girl following he and others, and hindering their ministry, so he removed the demonic spirit from her:

She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her (Acts 16:18).

The spirit left the girl, and tongues were not necessary and were not used.

RESIST THE DEVIL

When James told us to “resist the devil and he will flee from you” he said nothing about the necessity to pray or speak in tongues (James 4:7). Verses like these are hijacked in order to support a belief system.

PRAYER THAT GETS RESULTS

If we really want to have prayer with power, we need to take notice of James’ totally concise and to-the-point advice. It doesn’t include the use of tongues. Here it is:
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16).

Righteousness, according to the Word of God-the Bible, gets results in prayer, not the claimed ability to speak in tongues. John echoed James’ statement. He said nothing about the need for tongues to get results in spiritual warfare or in any other situation. This was his prescription:

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him (1 John 3:21-22).

CONCLUSION

Our prayers matter to God, but tongues have no extra power in spiritual warfare. In fact, we need to engage our minds in order to speak what we and others understand. The early Church did not use tongues as a weapon. Righteousness is what gives our prayers power, not tongues.

• APOLOGETICS
• FAITH
• THE HOLY SPIRIT