One of the other leaders of this group told another Chinese brother and me that God had given him the grace to speak Chinese. He then proceeded to utter certain sounds. We told him that we did not understand a word of what he was saying. Then he began to make other sounds, and we told him that we still did not understand what he was saying. Although we knew Mandarin, Cantonese, and other dialects, we did not understand a word of this brother's "Chinese." What kind of tongue was that?

During the 1963 summer training, I received a copy of a magazine called Trinity. In one of the articles the writer said that he had contacted two hundred people who had spoken in tongues, and without exception they all doubted that the tongues they spoke were genuine. Nevertheless, the writer encouraged them to go on speaking in tongues whether it was genuine or not. After a brother read this article to the trainees, I said, "Do you believe that those who spoke in tongues on the day of Pentecost doubted whether their speaking was genuine? Certainly none of them had any doubts. The reason these two hundred people have doubts is that their speaking in tongues is not genuine."

If the tongues spoken today were recorded and examined by a linguist, the linguist would say that they are not genuine languages. In many cases, three or four syllables are used repeatedly. How could a language be composed of only a few syllables? Furthermore, although the words used are usually the same, the interpretation is often different. At one time the interpreter may say, "My people, the time is short. I come quickly. Watch and pray. Thus saith the Lord." At another time the interpretation may go like this: "You must love Me. If you don't love Me, you'll be cursed." But still a different interpretation may be given to the same sounds, something like this: "You rich people must give money for the building of a temple." At other times the interpreter may say, "Among you there is a wolf, one who is not a real shepherd." Any linguist could tell you that these "tongues" are not genuine. The interpretations are utterly different, but the speaking is virtually the same.

In 1936 I met a leader of the Assembly of God in China, an American missionary named Simpson. One day as I was having fellowship with him, I said, "I have a problem. Although I have been helped to speak in tongues, I doubt that many of the instances of speaking in tongues are genuine." Opening up my Greek-English interlinear New Testament to Acts 2, I showed him that the Greek words for tongue (glossa) and for dialect (dialectos) are used interchangeably, indicating that the tongues spoken on the day of Pentecost must have been dialects. Unable to answer me, he simply shook my hand and said, "Your head is too big." At that time I began to doubt the genuineness of my experience of speaking in tongues, and a year later I discontinued that practice.

Recently a brother in the church in Anaheim, one with a tongues-speaking background and a graduate of Melodyland School of Theology, said that the charismatics are investigating whether the tongues they are speaking are genuine or not. Certain linguists have said that these tongues are not a language. Thus, these charismatic leaders have begun to debate whether what they are speaking should be called a tongue or simply a vocal sound.