Did Speaking in Tongues Exist Before Pentecost?

[26–26] Adelphos Sunday Sermon

Adelphos World Mission | Pastor Taik-soon Yim | June 28, 2026

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Today we continue from last week with the subject: Speaking in tongues existed before Pentecost.

Before entering the message, I want to share something personal. I came to faith late in life, and the early years of my Christian walk involved moving from one church to another. I used to commute all the way from Hwagok-dong to a church in Gangnam, transferring buses several times along the way. After eventually moving to Gangnam myself, I drifted away from church attendance altogether.

Then my son began attending a Sunday school program at a local church. At the time I paid little attention to it. One morning at breakfast, he said there was a “Total Mobilization Sunday” coming up and that he had been asked to bring his parents. He said it would be awkward if they didn’t come, and asked us to help him save face. So we went.

What ended up drawing us back the following week was something small but striking. During the service, when the congregation was invited to pray, I had no idea how to pray and simply sat there with my eyes open. But the pastor’s wife noticed my son — hands clasped, praying with genuine concentration — and was visibly moved. From the very next Sunday, we began attending regularly.

The senior pastor of that church had a deep preoccupation with Pentecostal tongues. Convinced that any evangelist worth the name had to have a proper grasp of tongues and spiritual experiences, he made regular midweek trips to a well-known prayer center. Each time he returned, he would conduct practice sessions — having studied how tongues should be received and how the laying on of hands should work, he would apply what he had learned directly on the congregation.

As it turned out, I was the one who caused him trouble. On the very day before he had scheduled his tongues-reception meeting, tongues broke out in me — not the kind people talk about, but the kind the Bible actually describes. It must have felt to him like a direct challenge to his authority.

That experience made one thing unmistakably clear: the tongues God gives and the tongues produced through human effort, method, and willpower are not the same thing. The same is true of their interpretation. The interpretation of God-given tongues opens up the meaning of Scripture — it unfolds the Word. The interpretation of tongues produced by human method tends to run in a very different direction, mostly telling people what they want to hear, confirming their desires and pronouncing earthly blessings over them.

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Picking up from last week — what is it that people commonly call “tongues”? In the United States, regional dialects vary widely from state to state; you can hear speech patterns that are almost mutually unintelligible across different parts of the country. Expand that to the global stage: the United Nations convenes representatives from more than 190 nations, each speaking their own language. Every one of those languages is, to someone else, an unknown tongue.

The popular understanding of “interpretation of tongues” is this: someone speaks in an unintelligible sound, and another person renders it into plain speech. But that understanding is wrong. What the Bible means by the interpretation of tongues is not translating strange sounds — it is opening up the meaning of Scripture that the listener cannot understand.

I have taught on Pentecostal tongues in seminar settings in the United States, and those sessions are already available on YouTube. As this sermon series continues, that material will be incorporated alongside the messages here.

The Calling of Those Who Proclaim

The word “interpretation” appears in 1 Corinthians, and it is important to recognize that 1 Corinthians and the Book of Acts operate in entirely different contexts.

Acts is the story of people who are outside of Christ — people who are proclaiming that Jesus is coming, who call upon His name from the outside. First Corinthians, by contrast, is addressed to people who have already been united with Christ Jesus:

…the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints… (1 Corinthians 1:2)**

This is a community already joined to the Lord. Acts, on the other hand, describes people who have not yet entered that union — people in the same position as the faithful of the Old Testament, calling on Jesus from outside, proclaiming Him from a distance. The meaning and content of both tongues and interpretation, therefore, necessarily differ between Acts and 1 Corinthians.

The Bible is the holy Word of God, received and written down by human hands. Consider Amos 3:7:

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7)**

All of Scripture is God’s secret. The entire Bible is the disclosure of what God has hidden. What is remarkable is that people from every field — religion, academia, politics, economics, society, culture — who approach the Bible with varying degrees of skepticism tend, upon serious engagement, to arrive at the same conclusion: this book is extraordinary. Some remain opposed, but many become its most committed defenders. Scripture is right. There is one book on this earth that does not change — the Bible. Every nation reads it; every profession must ultimately reckon with it.

Among those whom God has recognized are people like Moses. The question of how Moses wrote the Pentateuch is still a live discussion today. But Moses was a prophet raised up by God. So then — who are we, gathered here? Merely churchgoers? No. We are prophets in the sense the Bible describes.

Ephesians 4:11 tells us that those united with the Lord carry five offices: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. When someone asks what you do for a living and the first thing that comes to mind is your job in the world, that reflex deserves examination. Worldly occupations and these callings can coexist — there is nothing wrong with running a business or working in any trade. But is that your primary calling?

Here is a useful illustration. When children are asked at school to find out what their parents do, and the parent answers only with their occupation in the world, something is being left out. There is a vocation that most people carry without realizing it: farming. Even someone with no land, no field, no garden is farming. That farming is the raising of children. Everyone does it.

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The Gospel Father, the Spiritual Husband, and the Farming of God’s Kingdom

Child-rearing cannot be done alone. It is precisely when children arrive that friction between husband and wife tends to intensify. During the Korean War, a colonel fighting at the front lines appeared in a radio interview and said he felt sorry for his children — he had three, but he had only changed the oldest child’s diaper a handful of times because he was always away at the front. Whatever his wife felt hearing those words in the middle of a war, it is hard to imagine she was anything other than moved — here was a man in the middle of mortal combat, and what weighed on him was that he had not changed enough diapers.

In the same way, God’s kingdom also has its own form of child-rearing.

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:15)**

Those united with the Lord become fathers through the gospel — they beget children by the Word. This is the key to understanding the woman at the well in John 4. Reading that passage as the story of a promiscuous woman who had been with five men misses the point entirely. In the Bible, whoever teaches Scripture stands in the position of a husband — a spiritual husband. That woman had gone through six teachers of Israel, six spiritual husbands, and none of them had given her the truth. The one she was currently with was not her husband either, she said — meaning not her true teacher. Jesus came to her as the seventh, the true gospel-husband, the one who would finally give her living water.

When a person leaves one church for another, they are changing pastors. In biblical terms, that is changing husbands. Reading Scripture as a unified whole, the answer to any one passage emerges from the movement of the entire Bible. If you approach John 4 with the assumption that it is simply about a woman who slept around, you will never hear what the passage after the well-scene is saying — the abandoned water jar, the return to the village, the townspeople who come out to see. Patience is required.

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The Lord tends us with something that can only be called maternal love. He does not correct every failing the moment it occurs. He is the gospel-mother as much as the gospel-father. The first quality named in the love chapter is this: love suffers long. That which endures is what love is.

Returning again to Amos 3:7:

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7)**

God’s secret is contained in Scripture, and He reveals it to His servants the prophets. The habit of reading “His servants the prophets” and quietly exempting oneself — I’m not a prophet — needs to be broken. We are those prophets.

The right teacher of Scripture — the true spiritual husband — matters enormously. Did Jesus have a good reputation as a husband, or a bad one? When you read the Bible, what matters is which angle the Lord opens it from, and what He chooses to show you.

What Are Tongues? The True Meaning of Interpretation

When the world was in a frenzy over receiving tongues — understood as producing unintelligible sounds from the mouth — we were taught from the very beginning without that misunderstanding. The same applies to interpretation. It is not the rendering of strange sounds into plain speech. It is the opening up of Scripture that the listener has heard but cannot understand. Getting this right from the start matters. This is precisely why today’s subject is: tongues existed before Pentecost.

When we look through Scripture for those who spoke in tongues before Pentecost, we find David, Zacharias (the father of John the Baptist), Simeon, John the Baptist, and Elijah, among others.

Now let us go into the Greek text of Acts 2:4. There are two distinct expressions used for the Holy Spirit in this passage.

The first is to pneuma (τὸ πνεῦμα) — the Spirit. This expression carries the meaning of taking the words from the Lord’s mouth and delivering them into the mouth of the prophet. The second is pneuma hagion (πνεῦμα ἅγιον) — the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost. To pneuma is not simply about speaking; it contains the concept of the Lord’s own words being transferred — handed over — to the mouths of the prophets.

Looking at Acts 2:4 in the King James Version, all 120 were filled with the Holy Ghost — pneuma hagion — and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. But the translation “gave them utterance” is inaccurate. The Greek word is didōmi (δίδωμι), which means to give, to hand over, to deliver.

The Spirit did not simply enable them to speak. The Spirit took what the Lord desired to say and handed it over into their mouths.

Picture a mother teaching her child to speak. She says, “Say ‘mama.’” The child tries — “muh… muh…” — and eventually gets there: “Mama.” That handing over of speech is didōmi. When someone asks for something and you place it in their hands, that too is didōmi. The precise meaning of Acts 2:4, then, is this: in accordance with the Spirit delivering the Lord’s words into their mouths, they began to speak with other tongues. Speaking with other tongues means their tongues were changed into tongues that proclaim the Word of God.

To draw the distinction clearly: pneuma hagion maintains the state of holiness. To pneuma delivers the words in the Lord’s mouth into the mouths of those who proclaim. These two are not the same.

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The Three Names of the Holy Spirit: Pentecost and the Spirit of God

Let us now set out the three Greek terms for the Spirit.

The first is pneuma hagion (πνεῦμα ἅγιον) — the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost.

The second is to pneuma (τὸ πνεῦμα) — the Spirit.

The third is pneumatos theou (πνεύματος θεοῦ) — the Spirit of God.

There are of course other spirits in Scripture — unclean spirits and the like — but for now these three are our focus.

This is where something important emerges. Consider the Korean expression: gwishin ssinarakk kkaemeokneun sori — roughly, “the kind of talk that lets a ghost eat up the seed-grain.” What is the seed here? It is not seed in the agricultural sense. It is the seed of the Son of God — ho logos (ὁ λόγος) — being stolen away, consumed, stripped from a person. This will be taken up further in a later message.

To state the conclusion clearly: the Spirit that came at Pentecost was pneuma hagion and to pneuma — these two. Pneumatos theou, the Spirit of God, did not come at Pentecost. This means that if someone speaks of the Holy Spirit using only the Pentecost account, their understanding has not yet reached even the foundation.

Why did pneumatos theou not come at Pentecost? Because the Spirit of God has a specific characteristic: it comes only upon the sons of God — not merely the people of God, but the sons of God. Those gathered at Pentecost were not yet in the state of being sons of God. They were in the same position as the faithful of the Old Testament — participants in a historical event that previewed what would be accomplished in the kingdom of God. That is the work of the Pentecostal Spirit.

A Dove? The Three Spirits That Came Upon Jesus

Now let us look at the scene of Jesus’ baptism.

And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him. (Matthew 3:16)**

Three expressions of the Spirit came upon Jesus — the two that came at Pentecost (pneuma hagion and to pneuma), plus pneumatos theou, the Spirit of God. All three.

In Matthew’s account it says “the Spirit of God descending like a dove,” yet most readers fasten onto the dove and pass over the Spirit of God without a second thought. But what descended was not a dove. It was the Spirit of God — descending like a dove.

Luke 3:22 makes this even clearer:

And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased. (Luke 3:22)**

Did a dove speak? Or did God Himself speak? The text says a voice came from heaven. The Lord spoke directly. So should a church building have a dove mounted at the top, or the Spirit of God? What descended was the Spirit of God.

Mark 1:10 confirms the same:

And straightway coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him. (Mark 1:10)**

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Again — what descended was the Spirit, not a dove.

What does God look like? The first man, Adam, was made in the image of God. If Adam was made in God’s image, then God’s form is that of a man — a human form. That is what descended. Luke records the expression eidos (εἶδος) — bodily form, the form of a human being — to describe what came down, while Matthew and Mark omit this detail. English-speaking theologians working within a Pentecostal framework largely ignored this, passing over it with a generic reference to “the Spirit.”

The Breath of Life in Adam, and the Spirit That Enables Speech

Consider the difference between a robot built by human hands and the first man built by God. A robot is fashioned to look human on the outside, but inside it is metal and circuitry. The first man Adam was made with flesh and bone — the same flesh and bone we touch today. And into that man, God breathed the breath of life.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust (aphar, עָפָר) of the ground (adamah, אֲדָמָה), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)**

“Became a living soul” is better rendered as: became a living being, a living breath, a living life. What was breathed into his nostrils? The capacity for speech. Of all creatures, only man uses language. God made Adam a degree above every other living thing.

So what Spirit entered Adam? Was it to pneuma — the word-delivering Spirit? Was it pneuma hagion — the Holy Spirit? Or was it an unclean spirit? Some might argue for the unclean spirit, but that is not the answer. What was placed in Adam at the beginning was the capacity to speak — the spirit of speech.

Think of Helen Keller. Blind and deaf, she placed her hand on the lips of another person and felt the movement of their mouth to understand what was being said. An infant’s earliest sounds are unintelligible. The mother keeps handing over words — say mama, say dada — and gradually the child learns to speak. In the same way, God breathed into Adam the ability to speak.

Whether pneuma hagion — the Holy Spirit — was also placed in Adam at that moment is a question we will take up in a future message. What is clear is this: the first man Adam was not born as a Pentecostal man. The Holy Spirit had not yet been given. What was placed in him was the spirit of speech alone — the word-delivering spirit, handed over into his mouth.

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Genesis 2:21 and following tells us that God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, took one of his ribs, formed the woman from it, and brought her to Adam. It was the first time Adam had ever seen another human being.

Adam spoke:

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. (Genesis 2:23–24)**

Husband and wife were originally one. It is not that two become one — it is that what was divided returns to what it always was.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:25)**

Reading “naked” as simply having no clothes on closes off the passage. In Matthew 6, the Lord said:

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? …for after all these things do the Gentiles seek. (Matthew 6:31–32)**

To pray anxiously about food, drink, and clothing — to make these the burden of one’s prayers and expect God to resolve them — is what the Gentiles do, Jesus said. Whether a church is truly God’s church can often be discerned by whether its pastor prays primarily about material provision. And when the Lord says “wherewithal shall we be clothed,” He is not speaking of physical garments. He is speaking of a different kind of clothing:

…put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 13:14)**

Before being united with the Lord, a person is spiritually naked regardless of what they wear on their body. This is the context in which Adam and Eve being “naked and not ashamed” must be understood. God clothed them — and what that clothing was is the essential question.

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Then the serpent appears:

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Genesis 3:1)**

The serpent told the woman that on the day she ate of the fruit, her eyes would be opened and she would be as God. The answer to what this means is found in Galatians 4:6 and following.

The woman ate of the fruit and gave it to her husband, and he ate also.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (Genesis 3:7)**

Were those fig-leaf aprons made by the devil, or did they make them themselves? Not being able to answer immediately is no cause for shame before the Lord. His response is not rebuke — it is the resolve to love more, to teach more. There is no need to be embarrassed before Him.

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (Genesis 3:9)**

Here the message for today comes to a close. We will take up what follows next week. May the joy of the Father and ours be the very same — We pray in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord.