The Confusion of Tongues

The Confusion of TonguesAnd the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one anothers speech (Gen. 11: 67). In Genesis 7 is recorded the strange miracle of judgment which confused the language of the builders of earths greatest city. Since they could no

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech (Gen. 11:6‑7).

In Genesis 7 is recorded the strange miracle of judgment which confused the language of the builders of earth’s greatest city. Since they could no longer understand each other, they were scattered abroad over the face of the earth. This scattering illustrates how sin works misunderstanding, confusion, and division.

On the other hand, Acts 2 records the story of the unifying and illuminating work of the Spirit of holiness. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, that historic birthday of the church, a miracle of judgment resulting in the confusion of tongues at Babel was reversed into a miracle of mercy. At Babel the people were stricken with confusion so that they could not understand one another. At Pentecost they were blessed with illumination, understanding, and unity so that they cried, “How hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”

It is one of the strangest paradoxes of religious history that the modern sect which names itself after Pentecost gives a far better illustration of the miracle of judgment in the confusion of tongues than of the miracle of mercy when the confusion of tongues was done away at Pentecost. In the modern tongues movement, one man speaks and no one understands him; thus is reproduced exactly the conditions which existed at Babel instead of those which existed at Pentecost.