Question: What is meant by the Apostles’ speaking in
tongues?
Answer: The meaning is that the Apostles taught in a
spiritual tongue, a tongue that embraces all tongues. For the Word of the
Kingdom comprises spiritual meanings and divine mysteries, and whoso attains to
this Word will find the realities and mysteries of creation to be clear and
evident. The divine inner meanings are the all-encompassing reality of all
tongues.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit endowed the Apostles with the
tongue of the Kingdom, and they spoke with all peoples as if in their own
tongue; that is, whenever they conversed with a person of any faith or nation,
it was as though they were speaking his own tongue. Were it otherwise, there
are at present more than a thousand known languages and it would be fair to
expect that the Apostles would have written at least one Gospel in the language
of one of the other nations. It is, however, well established that the Gospel
was written only in Hebrew and in Greek. No Gospel was even written in Latin,
though that was at the time the official language of the land. Yet, as the
Apostles were not proficient in Latin, no Gospel was written in that language.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Table Talks at Akka; Online Baha’i Reference Library of the
Baha’i World center)
