Tongues?

When you expected dreams, visions and prophecy ...

It’s Pentecost Sunday this week! Pentecost didn’t begin in Acts 2. It wasn’t a sudden gust of divine spontaneity, as if God woke up one morning and thought, “Now seems like a good time to pour out My Spirit.” No, Pentecost was etched into the divine script from the beginning. Planned, purposed. Intended.

You can trace its beating pulse right back to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show of Eden. When God carefully and precisely formed Adam from the mere dust of the Edenic soil, He didn’t just craft a man - He crafted a vessel. And into that vessel, He breathed. Genesis 2:7 says, “The man became a living creature.” That breath - ruach in Hebrew - was life itself. The first breath inhaled by man was the exhaled breath of God, but it wasn’t yet what we now know as the indwelling Spirit. Adam inhaled the breath of life, not the fullness of God’s indwelling presence.

Fast forward to a locked room in Jerusalem, post-resurrection. Jesus appears to the disciples, and once again, breathes (John 20:22), but this time, He says something different, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Judas Iscariot, privy to the signs and wonders, miracles, healings and death-nullifying works of Jesus - including the laughter, joy, tears and mysterious parables of Jesus’ life and ministry, including His death and resurrection - tragically missed all of this.

Here, the echoes from Eden are deliberate, a new creation is being formed. Where Adam once received the breath that made him alive, the disciples are now themselves receiving the breath that makes them alive in Christ - this time not to till the soil, but to bear witness to a risen King.

As prescribed in the Law of Israel, the Day of Pentecost arrives fifty sleeps after Passover, and the day - that day - would mark the first fruits of a new harvest - not wheat, but people. Not a crop, but a kingdom.

No one knew where it (or more accurately, ‘He’) came from, but the Spirit came with fire and wind, and suddenly in the divine aftermath, people are speaking in languages they never learned. Tongues! That’s what grabbed the headlines of Jerusalem Post. That’s what turned heads and caused bewilderment and confusion.

Pentecost was never just about tongues, the real miracle was not in the sound, but in the significance. Here was the Spirit of God, no longer just visiting, no one-off spectacular light show-thunder and lightning-on-the-mountain manifestation, no longer resting, but indwelling. The church wasn’t just being empowered; it was being birthed and filled - with power.

Some see Pentecost as a reversal of Babel, and in a way, it was. At Babel, humanity tried to reach heaven on its own terms, and God scattered their languages but at Pentecost, heaven came down to humanity, and God spoke every language through His people. But if you stop there - if you think Pentecost was simply about a one-off communication - you miss the weight of what’s unfolding.

The prophet Joel had seen it from a distance. “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,” he declared. “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). Expectation was high. Everyone was on standby. Something was going to happen - God was going to do what He promised; but what? They waited for power, but didn’t expect it to sound like this. Tongues? What kind of strategy is that? Yet God was making a point. The gospel wasn’t going to be confined to one culture, one language, one people. The Spirit’s arrival in tongues was a declaration, "This gospel will go to the ends of the earth.

Dreams, visions, prophecy - these are signs of a whole people reconnected to heaven. A people filled, not merely touched; tongues were not the goal, but the gateway. They signalled that heaven was no longer distant. The Spirit that hovered over the deep in Genesis, the Spirit that filled the tabernacle, now fills human hearts.

Pentecost is not a side note, it’s the fulfilment of a plan set in motion before time began. God didn’t just plan to dwell with His people - He planned to dwell in them. And now, through Christ, He does.

So this Sunday, don’t just ask, “What happened?” Ask, “What does this mean?” because if the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then Pentecost isn’t just history - it’s your present reality.