We get so very stupid when we start our crazy imaginings about "tongues."
The best one I get a kick out of is the idea each of the disciples was "speaking" in a known Earthly language... when the Bible never says that at all.
First of all, you have the number of 3,000 to deal with. Just look out your own window, and envision only a hundred people standing on your lawn. Now, keep multiplying that by two times, and by two times again.... then again... till you get to 1,000. How far down the block are they? Now keep on doing the multiplying, on and on till you get to 2,000. Now do it again, and make the number 3,000.
Now the crowd is spread out close to a solid city block in either direction. And we live where there are wide streets and open places, lawns in front of most houses. None of that existed in Jerusalem. Their streets looked like our NY alleys, and there were no lawns to stand in.
And even if you try to claim that the people came and went in orderly, quiet smaller groups of just 300 every hour, they would have to be filing through for 10 hours, straight with no meal time or bathroom breaks. Now, all that 3,000 still has to get baptized, probably by those same guys doing the speaking in that same time period. Those were some hustlin' disciples, getting all that done!
Let's now look at the actual speaking.
This all happened in a city where everyone was already speaking 15 different languages or dialects all day long, all over the city. This was a celebration where everyone and his cousin, from all over the land were gathered in one place. Everyone was thoroughly comfortable with hearing all sorts of foreign languages spoken everywhere.
Why in the world do you think the disciples would be accused of being drunk if all they were doing was simply speaking one of the 15 different languages the crowd was very used to hearing? They wouldn't have been. They had to be "sounding" drunk. And, what does a drunk sound like? Kinda like a person "gibbering." Like a person speaking in "tongues."
Now, for all you who still swear they were speaking real languages......... we have several more problems. They all seen to have stood up at once, indicating that there were not 15 different speeches, at 15 different times. Especially when you have the audience, astonished, looking right at one another, marveling at the fact that each one of them was "hearing" the words spoken in their own language. No one said, I'm glad one of them spoke in your language, Friend, but I was even happier because the other guy was speaking in MY language.
But, let's just pretend that DID happen.
Here are all these people listening to just a small group of men, talking. Thousands (or at least "hundreds") of people spread way out in both directions on a tiny path out front of this building. There are no PA systems. The disciples would have to have been shouting at the top of their lungs for "natural" or "normal" sound to have reached all those ears, bouncing and echoing all off the closely-built houses.
But, the Bible seems to indicate that the "speaking" of 15 different languages was all being done at once.
All the disciples shouting at the same time. Can you imagine? What bedlam! (But wait! Does the Bible say that? Yes, and no. It seems to say all were "speaking" at once.... but the listeners were "hearing" quite individually... and plainly distinctly.) Interesting. Hearing different things in that HUGE crowd, at the same instant..... despite the noise level which must have sounded like a subway station at rush hour.
And to some unreceptive onlookers, all this sounded like a bunch of drunks babbling.
No, I think we have to get beyond our usual LIMITING of the power of The Holy Spirit to only our human understanding. We have to quit our incessant telling God what He cannot do, because we have declared it.
Clearly, some odd and strange sounds were coming from the disciples... totally indistinguishable... and it reached ALL the thousands of ears, no matter how far down the streets they had been shoved, and every single one of the members of the audience heard God's word, very clearly and distinctly, in their own language.
