1 Corinthians 12:8–11: “For one person is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and another the message of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another performance of miracles, to another prophecy, and to another discernment of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as He decides to each person, who produces all these things.”

So we see it is a production; the Holy Spirit is producing it. The last time we talked about the idea of having plurals here, I noted that we see “gifts of healing.” Now verse 10 says, “to another performance of miracles.” This is a plural too.

It does not make you the solution to every problem. The fact that a person has the gift of performance of miracles does not mean that person is now going to solve everybody’s problem in the world. I have already said miracles are powerful things that happen to benefit a lot of people.

So let us now go to the discernment of spirits. That does not mean you will be able to know every spirit that is everywhere. God gives you the ability to identify a specific spirit at a specific time, for a specific purpose. It does not mean now that you are over all the spirits and you can now know all the spirits.

Now we come to the issue of tongues. He said, “to another different kinds of tongues.”

There has been an argument that says, are these tongues languages that people will understand, or is it what, in some circles, people say, and people do not understand? My conclusion is the latter: that it is actually what is spoken and nobody understands.

Now you are going to take me to Acts 2, and you are going to say, “But they spoke in tongues there, and the people heard them in their own languages” (Acts 2:4–11). But notice what never happened: that never happened again. So this is what I am concluding.

I am concluding that they spoke in tongues, meaning languages that nobody can understand, but the people listening to them heard them in their own languages. So we are seeing two things happening. There is a speaking and there is a hearing. God can cause you to hear something.

Look at the miracle of the four lepers in Samaria, where there was a siege (2 Kings 7:3–7). God caused the opposing army to hear something that did not exist, that was never said, that was never sounded. They heard something.

And we see another thing in Israel too, where a king was going to battle and God said, “When you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, then you must act, for at that moment the Lord will be going before you” (2 Samuel 5:24). I am saying that “they heard them in their own language” does not mean they spoke in their own language. They heard them in their own languages. It is different from “they spoke in their own languages.”

So my conclusion is that the tongues are what we are speaking now that are not understandable, because that is how you can square that up with the 1 Corinthians 14 passage where Paul talked about speaking in tongues. That is the only way you can square it up. And remember, I am talking about my best estimation here of what this passage means. He said, “to another different kinds of tongues.”

That is one. The second one that may go unnoticed is that Paul, in his explanation in 1 Corinthians, wanted us to make speaking in tongues more personal.

We will continue the discussion on tongues later.

God bless you.