I have often wanted to attend a gathering where people claim to speak in tongues, quote John 3:16 in French and then check their interpretation. Is this tempting God, or testing the spirits?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Finding Your Place in the Body of Christ’ (1989).

My answer is that you would be pleasing the Lord by testing the spirits. 'Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world' (1 John 4:1). That is a very important principle.

It seems to me that there is a very prevalent unspoken idea that, somehow, when people speak in tongues it is evidently a direct miracle of the Holy Spirit and you must not question it. That is not so, my brothers and sisters. It is an absolutely false diagnosis of the situation. Speaking in tongues is just like any other gift.

You wouldn't say of a teacher, 'He is led by the Holy Spirit, and we mustn't question what he says, otherwise we should be sinning against the Holy Spirit.' But you must question what a teacher says. Just because a man has the gift of a teacher, it doesn't mean that every time he teaches it's the Holy Spirit speaking. A teacher can be wrong; he can be carnal. You must test what he says. And because we are frail human beings, even when the Lord uses us, it doesn't mean that everything is one hundred percent correct. Ninety-five percent could be correct, but there could be something that is incorrect.

Says Paul, 'For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays' (1 Corinthians 14:14). It's not necessarily that the Holy Spirit prays. When you test a teacher, or somebody speaking in tongues, you are not questioning the Holy Spirit; you're questioning whether that person is really saying what the Holy Spirit meant to say, and if he is speaking by the Holy Spirit or not. You wouldn't be insulting the Holy Spirit if you questioned what I say tonight; and to suppose that, just because somebody speaks in a tongue, it is the Holy Spirit, is an exceedingly dangerous thing. We must 'test the spirits'.

First Corinthians has made the point that we must make sure whether what is being said is of God, or not. Whether it is true, or not. That means that we must understand the translation, and be sure that it is a translation. Not to do so opens one up to all kinds of error.

If somebody gets up in a church and speaks in tongues, and there are five others speaking in tongues at the same time, you may know that it isn't of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit has forbidden it. If somebody speaks in a tongue constantly, and there's no interpreter, that's not of the Holy Spirit either. It contradicts holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit himself says, 'in your thinking be mature' (see 1 Corinthians 14:20).