Now, suppose that, like Simon of Acts 8, you want that kind of power. Perhaps you even have good motives, wanting to advance Christianity as powerfully as the apostles did. You discover, however, that you cannot speak Chinese or Swahili instantly since you have not taken the time to learn it. Finding that you cannot attempt the impossible, you attempt the possible, namely what any human can do. You find it easy to make sounds and to think of them as ‘tongues.’ Of course, no one can understand the sounds. So you do the next thing within your reach: You claim to have the gift of interpretation. You ‘translate’ from your sounds into English. Like invisible healings, this seems to give you certain advantages. It gains attention and impresses people. And doubters have little to test. They cannot know every language in order to check if your sounds constitute a real language or not. Neither can they check whether the interpretation is valid. However, like invisible healings, the fact that your ‘miracle’ cannot show anything clearly miraculous is itself a red flag, a clear warning sign.
To speak well in a real language—a language outside your own experience but well-known to others—now that is a miracle. When a foreigner is present, use that visitor’s native language just as the apostles did on Pentecost. When the Bible is read to you in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, spontaneously speak the accurate translation for all to understand. It is so much easier to claim to speak a language by making random sounds. It is entirely different to speak fluently in a language that others can recognize and check.
Of course, if you can, without prior preparation, translate the Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, there can be no doubt that its message is inspired. For Scripture truly is the word of God. It already has been accredited by the genuine miracles of Jesus and His inspired prophets and apostles.