---
title: 1 Corinthians 13:8
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-13-8/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-corinthians-13-8.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Corinthians 13:8
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Corinthians 13:8

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed.

## JW Usage

rs cites 13:8 ("tongues will cease") as biblical warrant that tongues have already ceased. In JW practice this is paired with the Acts 8 / Acts 19 laying-on-of-hands reading to locate the cessation point at the end of the apostolic era, making 13:8 a prediction already fulfilled and a justification for treating modern tongues-speakers as operating by the wrong spirit.

## Protestant Usage

Paul does say tongues will cease — in verse 10, "when the perfect comes." The rs book's own reading is that "the perfect" is still future, not the closed canon. So on the rs reading of 13:10, the cessation 13:8 announces has not happened yet. The rs argument is internally incoherent — it cites 13:8 as already-fulfilled while reading 13:10 as still-future. Protestants are divided on WHEN tongues cease (cessationists vs. continuationists), but no credible Protestant reading takes 13:8 as announcing an already-past cessation while treating 13:10 as future. The rs book's exegesis has to pick one coherent timeline, and it has not.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Tongues — The Watchtower Case Breaks on Acts 10](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/tongues-cessationism-rebuttal.md) — Acts 10:44-48 / 1 Corinthians 14:39 / 14:2 [Practice]