Tom here are some notes from Charismatic Chaos by MacArthur that may assist you: Sorry the Gk did not come out correctly:

TONGUES

1 Corinthians 13:8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

Though we are told here that all three gifts would someday cease to exist, two different verbs are used to indicate their cessation. Prophecy and knowledge will be done away, whereas tongues will cease.

1. Done away is from ƒÛƒÑƒäƒÑƒâƒ×ƒÕƒß„f,

a. which means ¡§to reduce to inactivity,¡¨
b. or ¡§to abolish.¡¨
c. The gifts of prophecy and knowledge one day will be made inoperative. Both forms of this verb in verse 8, as well as its form in verse 10, are passive; that is, something or someone will cause them to stop. As will be discussed below, that something is the coming of ¡§the perfect¡¨ (v. 10).

2. Cease is from ƒàƒÑƒåƒß„f,

a. which means ¡§to stop, to come to an end.¡¨
b. Unlike ƒÛƒÑƒäƒÑƒâƒ×ƒÕƒß„f, this verb is here used in the Greek middle voice, which, when used of persons. indicates intentional, voluntary action upon oneself. Used of inanimate objects it indicates reflexive, self¡Vcausing action.
c. The cause comes from within; it is built in. God gave the gift of tongues a built¡Vin stopping place. ¡§That gift will stop by itself,¡¨ Paul says. Like a battery, it had a limited energy supply and a limited lifespan. When its limits were reached, its activity automatically ended. Prophecy and knowledge will be stopped by something outside themselves, but the gift of tongues will stop by itself. This distinction in terms is unarguable.

The cessation of tongues, however, is not mentioned in relation to the coming of the perfect. They will have ceased at an earlier time. That is why they are not stopped by the same thing that stops the other two gifts. The gift ended with the apostolic age.

1. In the first place, tongues was a sign gift and, as with the gifts of healing and miracles, it ceased to operate when the New Testament was completed.

a. Miracles during the ministries of Moses and Joshua,
b. the second during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha,
c. and the third during the ministries of Jesus and the apostles.
d. Each period lasted only about 70 years and then abruptly ended.
e. The only other age of miracles will be in the millennial kingdom, and the sources of those miracles are described as ¡§the powers of the age to come¡¨ (Heb. 6:5).
f. The last miracle recorded in the New Testament in which God worked directly through a human instrument occurred about the year 58 (Acts 28:8). From that time until about 96, when John completed the writing of Revelation, not a single miracle of that sort is mentioned.

2. The second evidence that the gift of tongues ended with the apostles is that its purpose as a judicial sign of Israel¡¦s judgment ceased to apply at that time.

a. Paul reminds the Corinthians that ¡§In the Law it is written, ¡¥By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to Me,¡¦ says the Lord¡¨ (1 Cor. 14:21; cf. Isa. 28:11¡V12). In other words, because Israel refused to listen and believe when God spoke to them in clear language, the prophet said the day would come when He would speak to them in a language they could not understand, as a testimony against their rejection of Him.
b. Tongues were not given as a sign to believers ¡§but to unbelievers¡¨ (1 Cor. 14:22), specifically unbelieving Jews.
c. With the destruction of the Temple by the Roman general Titus in A.D. 70, Judaism ended except as a shadow religion.

i. When the Temple was destroyed, the sacrificial system was destroyed,
ii. and the need for a Jewish priesthood was destroyed.
iii. From that day it has been impossible for the requirements of the Old Covenant to be fulfilled.
iv. When that destruction occurred, some 15 years after Paul wrote this epistle, the need for tongues as a judicial sign to Israel had no further value.
v. There is no need today for a sign that God is moving from Israel to the world.

3. Third, tongues ceased because they were an inferior means of edification.

a. When properly interpreted, tongues had the ability to edify in a limited way (1 Cor. 14:5; 12¡V13; 27¡V28).
b. But the primary purpose of 1 Corinthians 14 is to show that tongues were an inferior means of communication (vv. 1¡V12),
c. an inferior means of praise (vv. 13¡V19),
d. and an inferior means of evangelism (vv. 20¡V25).
e. Tongues provided limited and inferior edification,

i. whereas prophecy is far superior in every way (vv. 1, 3¡V6, 24, 29, 31, 39).
ii. Five words spoken intelligently and intelligibly in ordinary language are of more value ¡§than ten thousand words in a tongue¡¨ (v. 19).

4. Fourth, the gift of tongues has ceased because its purpose as a confirming sign of apostolic authority and doctrine ended when the New Testament was completed.

a. Genuine tongues¡Vspeaking involved direct revelation of God to the speaker, though it was veiled revelation that always needed translation or interpretation, often even to the speaker himself (1 Cor. 14:27¡V28).
b. Revelation of God¡¦s Word was completed, however, when the New Testament was completed, and to that nothing is to be added or subtracted (Rev. 22:18¡V19). The confirming purpose of tongues was completed.

5. Fifth, it is reasonable to believe that tongues have ceased because their use is mentioned only in the earlier New Testament books.

a. Most of the books, in fact, do not mention it.
b. Paul mentions it only in this one letter, and James, Peter, John, and Jude make no mention of it at all.
c. Nor does reference to it appear in the book of Acts after 19:6.
d. It seems clear from the New Testament record itself that tongues not only ceased to be an issue but ceased to be practiced well before the end of the apostolic age. Nowhere in the epistles is it commanded or enjoined on believers as a responsibility or spiritual exercise.

6. Finally, the gift of tongues has evidently ceased because, since the apostolic age, it has reappeared only spasmodically and questionably throughout nineteen centuries of church history.

a. The gift of tongues is nowhere alluded to or found in any writings of the church Fathers.

i. Clement of Rome wrote a letter to the Corinthian church in the year 95, only about four decades after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.

1. In discussing problems in the church, Clement made no mention of tongues.

2. Apparently both the use and misuse of that gift had ceased.

ii. Justin Martyr, the great church Father of the second century, visited many of the churches of his day,

1. yet in his voluminous writings he mentions nothing of tongues.
2. It is not mentioned even among his several lists of spiritual gifts.

iii. Origen, a brilliant church scholar who lived during the third century, makes no mention of tongues.

1. In his polemic against Celsus he explicitly argues that the sign gifts of the apostolic age were temporary

2. and were not exercised by Christians of his day.

iv. Chrysostom, perhaps the greatest of the post¡VNew Testament writers, lived from 347 until 407.

1. Writing on 1 Corinthians 12 he states that tongues and the other miraculous gifts not only had ceased but could not even be accurately defined.

v. Augustine, in his comments on Acts 2:4, wrote, ¡§In the earliest times the Holy Spirit fell on them that believed and they spoke with tongues. These were signs adapted to that time, for there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit. That thing was done for betokening and it passed away.¡¨

vi. The historians and theologians of the early church unanimously maintained that tongues ceased to exist after the time of the apostles.

1. The only exception of which we know was within the movement led by Montanus,

a. a second century heretic who believed that divine revelation continued through him beyond the New Testament.

vii. Apparently no other tongues¡Vspeaking was practiced in Christianity until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it appeared in several

1. Roman Catholic groups in Europe
a. (Cevenols and Jansenists) and
2. among the Shakers in New England.
3. The nineteenth century lrvingites of London were marked by unbiblical claims of revelations and by ¡§tongues¡Vspeak.¡¨

a. For over 1800 years the gift of tongues, along with the other miracle gifts, was unknown in the life and doctrine of orthodox Christianity.

b. Then, around the turn of the twentieth century, tongues became a major emphasis within the holiness movement, a large section of which developed into modern Pentecostalism.

c. The charismatic movement, which began in 1960, carried the practice of tongues beyond traditional Pentecostalism into many other denominations, churches, and groups, both Catholic and Protestant, filling the void in true spiritual living with false experience.

Reformed and Always Reforming,