It's when hillside Protestants who wish they were Calvinists raise their hands in the air, close their reason, and start babbling nonsense as if that validates some form of communication with a deity that does not exist. If it did, it wouldn't sound like incoherent redneck speak.

In Acts after Pentecost, the Disciples were able to speak the Word so that all nations could understand in their own language.

Today weird cults have these frenzies, froth and writhe around and speak gibberish.

Is the inspiration for such activity the Holy Spirit or an unholy spirit?

The gift of tongues is a gift granted by God through which a person has an unusual ability to learn and speak different languages, both earthly and angelical. Earthly languages can easily be interpreted and translated. Angelic tongues are non human languages that can only be understood by God and have no human parallel. The use of the tongues is limited and clearly stipulated, must not be used when an interpreter is not present and it is not a sign or evidence of anything. I have a limited gift of tongues (used to speak 5 of them) and occasionally allow my spirit to express itself freely and in utterances that even I do not understand. But He does.

See, this is an element of the weird walk of numbah. Yes kids, its story time. See, years ago numbah was invited to a church where speaking in tongues was seen as a requirement, not a special gift from God that he uses as needed like numbah always thought. Now, numbah has read himself a bit of Bible in his time and was a bit concerned that the speaking these folks were doing sounded like crazy talk when compaired with the descriptions of speaking in tongues numbah had always read in the Acts of the Apostles. For his concern numbah was told he was going to hell if he didn't speak in tongues. Crazy, huh? Now, like I said, numbah believes in the concept, so he responded by telling those people that if God wanted numbah to speak in such a manner, the power of God is sufficent to the point that numbah wouldn't have a choice in the matter. Then numbah departed and left them to their judgements. Now, numbah still thinks its possible, but he also thinks some people need to read Acts and quit gibbering.

This is a very misinterpreted and misused (and therefore misunderstood) concept. As Gentle Jude points out, there are some that don't believe this is a gift for today's Christian, while there are some who actually believe it's a requirement for salvation. Others believe in "teaching" people to speak in tongues when that is not the way it's supposed to be done at all. No wonder there's so much confusion.

Not every Christian is going to have this gift, and no, I don't believe that the gift of tongues saves the soul. However, as a Pentecostal, I strongly believe that this gift is available for today's Christian, for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

Nothing more than jibberish, if no one can understand it.

The gift of tongues is not to speak in an unknown language as some of our more haughty scholars would have you believe. What good could it possibly do to say a bunch of words nobody understood? The Pentecostal tongue was the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through believers so that every man, woman, and, child understood it completely, no matter what language or dialect they spoke. It was the tongue of God. To speak in tongues generally means to know other languages so you do not need an interpreter. This is why Paul would say " I speak more languages than all of you ". he was gifted to learn many languages including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

It is defined as two things. Either speaking in a special spiritual language that only God can understand or speaking in another language that is of this earth, but sounds gibberish to other people who can't understand that language and may not even make sense to the person who is speaking that language. It is actually the Holy Spirit uttering those words out of you and using your tongue to do it, so in actual fact, it is not really you doing it. This example was seem in Acts where the Apostles started speaking in a language that was unknown to them (as soon as they recieved the Holy Spirit), but in actual fact what sounded like gibberish to other people, was eg actually perfect Italian. God would use this gift to amaze eg the Italians. Of coarse, an Italian wouldn't expect a full blooded Jew to understand them or speak their language. But when they all of a sudden speak their language, that amazed them. And they were actually witnessing about Jesus. It wasn't just plain gibberish, there was a function for it and it was for the benefit of the non-believers. But the other sort of tongues is when God actually speaks through you in what is known as the language of the Angels ie it is not an earthly language. When this happened, God told the church to not go around speaking in tongues in public like churches do today, but there must be a person to interpret what the person speaking in tongues is saying. But there was also an element of tongues where a person would go in private and the Holy Spirit would take over them and they would start speaking in the language of the Angels to the Father. In actual fact, it isn't you praying but the Holy Spirit praying to the Father on you or someone elses behalf through you. People today either think that this gift no longer applies to us today because it has passed away and was only meant for that time, but there are also people who believe that everyone MUST speak in tongues. Each opinion is wrong in my view. I believe that this gift still applies to today, but it shouldn't be forced as a command or a 'sign' that you have the Spirit in you. Although some people will tell you that everyone must do this, I believe that today, this gift is purely at the hands of God ie it has to be God's specific will for your life to be using this gift. But there is too much hype about this gift too, and people who claim to have this gift, there is a chance that they probably don't. If you are speaking in tongues because someone led you to believe you HAD to, then there is a chance that you are not really speaking in tongues.