God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Whereas modern “tongues” is a learned behavior consisting of unintelligible stammering and nonsense syllables, the New Testament gift involved the supernatural ability to speak precisely in a foreign language the speaker had never learned. Though charismatics may hijack biblical terminology to describe their practice, the fact remains that such fabricated behavior has no relation to the biblical gift.