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Prophecy is for Today

Scripture broadly defines a prophet as one who proclaims God's “revelation” of something hidden to mortals. This revelation may be the knowledge of a future event, or simply clarifying what God has already revealed. While these two categories may seem very different—one a miracle worker and one more of a historian—both provide guidance to humans. Both speak for God. The scriptures call both types “prophets.” Beyond these two categories of prophets, scripture also tells us that God can choose anyone to prophesy by His Spirit—even wicked men and enemies of God—although they may not be true prophets.

Prophets and Guidance

In Deuteronomy, God tells us that He can raise up prophets who, through the Spirit of God, reveal the future or give His people guidance. Found in both the Old and New Testament, these prophets were chosen to be God's mouthpiece to speak God's words concerning what was beyond knowing through natural means. People were supposed to listen to them as God's spokesperson; failure to obey them was a sin. Someone falsely speaking what is unknowable is in a unique position to damage God's people.

For our protection God gave explicit rules regarding how we are to “judge” this type of prophet; see Deuteronomy 13 and 18. All true prophets in both the Old and New Testament meet these criteria that false prophets do not. The first rule of discernment is simple; those who make predictions that do not come to pass are false prophets even if some of their predictions are accurate. The second rule is more stringent; those who make accurate predictions must not redefine God and how we seek Him. Why? Because God can test us with false prophets who are accurate and even perform miracles.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

False prophets performing miracles have an important role in God's economy. God tests His people with false prophets to see if they obey the first commandment and love Him with all their heart and soul.

Prophets and God's Revelation

God, through Moses, did provide for a more complete revelation of Himself, but this was always in accordance with His rules. Moses spoke of someone coming after him who we were to listen to. This One revealed the God of Moses more completely and was, in fact, God incarnate. This prophet, Jesus, and His more complete revelation are legitimate and consistent with Moses. He claims in John 5:46, 47: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

Jesus gave us the very words of the Father. God the Father affirmed Jesus as the prophet greater than Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration when He commanded Peter, in the presence of Moses and Elijah, to listen to Jesus. Peter, in Acts 2, speaking as an eyewitness of the events that took place on that mountain, proclaims to the Jews that Jesus is the great prophet Moses predicted. Finally, Hebrews 1:1, 2 affirms that Jesus is now the definitive and ultimate revelation of God.

Jesus personally appointed apostles who also were prophets in that they proclaimed the words and teachings of Jesus; who were authorized to complete the revelation of God that He gave us. The last surviving apostle that Jesus appointed was John. This apostle John wrote the book of Revelation which concerns Jesus' coming in the flesh for the second time. In writing Revelation, John completed the definitive revelation of God “come in the flesh” until the return of Christ.

While God may raise up prophets to predict the future, there can be no more “new revelations” of God until the second coming because Jesus “in the flesh” appointed no new apostles after John and Jesus now abides in heaven sitting at the right hand of God the Father. With the death of the apostle John, the spokesmen Jesus authorized to bring us new revelations of God ceased. This does not mean that prophecy ceased nor even that prophets can no longer exist. It simply means that the revelation of God regarding Himself and how we are to experience Him has been completed.

God's revelation of Himself includes the revelation of His will and what defines “sin.” This means that no one can declare extra-scriptural, certain guidance concerning God's will, because failure to obey God's revealed will is a sin. If that person claims that an action or inaction not specified in scripture is God's certain will, that person is leading us after a god that has not been revealed by adding to the law of God that is now complete. Certain guidance now is found in scripture alone.

Prophets and Predicting the Future

Predictions of the future should not be confused with guidance. The prophet Agabus predicted the future twice in the book of Acts, and he was a true prophet. Both events he predicted came true. Even Agabus, however, did not give guidance regarding how people were to respond to the predictions. In the first case, each disciple decided what they wished to do regarding the coming famine. In the second case, believing that Agabus was correct and that he would be bound in chains, Paul continued on to Jerusalem. Agabus made predictions without giving guidance. People were free to act as they saw fit without any threat of sinning and disobeying God's will.

The gospel is under attack when men claiming to be “modern apostles or prophets” attempt to alter the revelation of God and our approach to Him. When they declare extra-biblical guidance which they claim to be God's certain will, they are leading us after a “god we have not known.” Whenever they promote spiritual experiences, designed to cause us to experience God directly with our physical bodies, they introduce a concept that is foreign to the revelation of Jesus and His incarnation.

Jesus came as a man, and men beheld God. In 1John 1 the apostle expounds on the tangibility of God revealed in the man Jesus:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. (1John 1:1-3)

We know that this man was raised bodily and has ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of God. Jesus is no longer among us in a tangible way. He has sent His Spirit to us and His Spirit testifies to what is unseen and unfelt. In fact, Peter states in 1Peter 1:8, 9, “though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.”

This threat of synergy we saw in the Old Testament when idolatrous worship was added to Judaism still exists today when men claim means to experience God beyond what is explicitly revealed in scriptures. Often these prophets claim that miracles validate their message or experience. But even if their miracles are proven facts, this does not validate them as true prophets because they fail regarding the second rule of discernment—they have altered or added to the gospel. The bottom line is this: God commands us to judge those speaking “revelations” of the unknowable by what can be known by the natural man—the predictions come true and there are no additional or “new” revelations of God.

Many now claim to be modern prophets and predict future events or reveal things hidden from a normal person, but to the best of my knowledge, not even one of them meets the criteria specifically given to judge this type of prophet. Oddly, none of them even claims to be 100 percent accurate in all of their predictions. Instead, they claim that they are growing in their anointing or prophetic ability and if we give them enough time and practice they will grow to be accurate. This contradicts the clear rules that God explicitly gave us through Moses for our protection. God commands us not to fear them and not to listen to them. In fact, paying attention to them is sinful and evidence that we are breaking the first commandment. If we listen, they will certainly lead us astray.

Teachers are Prophets

Beyond miracle workers and those predicting the future, Scripture also states that teachers in the church are “prophets” in the sense that they clarify and help us to understand the revelations that God has revealed to us in His Word. Throughout Scripture these roles are mentioned together (Isa 9:15; Dan 9:10; Acts 13:1; 1Cor 12: 28, 29; 1Cor 14:6; Eph 4:11). This is clear in Daniel 9:10, “nor have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His teachings which He set before us through His servants the prophets.”

Revelation 2:20 links prophet and teaching: “But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.”

2Peter 2:1 shows us that being a teacher is synonymous with this type of prophet. Notice the parallel in the passage: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”

A few verses later we are told that these false teachers/prophets come from a Christian context with the true gospel as their beginning. Obviously, what happened is that they added to it and changed it to something they liked better. Their imaginations would not submit to the authority of scripture and they made up their own authority. This corruption of their message is what we see in 2Peter 2:19-21:

promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.

Peter is speaking of people in the church, not pagan prophets outside it. These people began in the church and are attending their communion services. They corrupt the message of the gospel and imagine other revelations to experience God.

The summary of the message of the false prophets is “Peace, peace where there is no peace.” Instead of clearly proclaiming God's revealed means of establishing peace with God they proclaim an altered message. Often this altered message attempts to minimize any reference to God's wrath against sin and our accountability to the scriptures. False prophets gave false comfort to those who were facing the wrath of God for their sins instead of commanding them to repent. Jeremiah 23:16-18 is a good summary of this concept:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD has said, “You will have peace”'; And as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, They say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.' But who has stood in the council of the LORD, That he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened?”

God has given us explicit criteria regarding how to “judge” this type of prophet. Compare their message to that of the gospel of Jesus come in the flesh and the work of atonement He accomplished here in dying as a man and bearing the wrath of God on our behalf. The freedom that He offers is to escape the bondage of sin and the coming wrath of God that will be poured out upon all sinners who have not made true peace with God through the gospel. The rule does not define as false just those who deny the gospel; but it defines as false also those who simply fail to confess it or change it. 1John 3:24 - 4:3

We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

Prophets and Prophesying

One related issue may also cause confusion: people who are not foretelling the future as “prophets” can “prophesy” when they confess Christ. In fact, the verb “to prophesy” in the New Testament mostly concerns normal people proclaiming the incarnation and work Jesus accomplished bodily. All can prophesy and yet not all are prophets foretelling the future or revealing things which God has kept hidden.

One of the chief functions of the Old Testament prophets was to proclaim the work of Jesus and His incarnation. For instance, John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets before Pentecost, is never even recorded as having performed one miracle. Instead, he confessed that the man Jesus was the Son of God. John states, “I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

We must note that prophesying is not an endorsement of the speaker. Scriptures record several times where the Holy Spirit caused people who we would not consider to be positive role models to prophesy about the incarnate Christ. Evil and wicked men are recorded as prophesying by the power of God's Spirit. Thus, simply uttering a prophecy confers no credibility, authority, or any other power on that individual. They may simply be evil men intent on harming God's true followers as in the case of Balaam, Saul, and Caiaphas. But, nonetheless, all the true prophecy recorded by these evil men met the criteria for discernment found in 1John 4:1 by speaking of the work Jesus accomplished in His body.

Conclusion

Prophecy is very much for today and for God's people. All God's people can now prophesy and speak of the clear revelation of God as revealed by Jesus, God come in the flesh. Sharing the gospel of God is certainly prophecy, as it is God's true certain word given to all men. Beyond this type of prophecy, teachers and preachers who expound the scriptures are also prophets to His church in a certain sense as we see in 2Peter 2:1. Mostly when this topic is raised, the core issue regarding prophets and prophecy concerns guidance and seeking God's will. While I believe that God can choose to raise up a prophet that predicts the future, such as Agabus in the book of Acts, God was very clear that His people were to judge prophets. God's people were not to seek guidance from those who failed the tests given in Scripture. People who seek guidance from prophets who fail God's tests are sinning and rejecting God's authority. For our own protection we are commanded to judge this type of prophet according to the rules that God has laid down for us in Deuteronomy 13 and 18. For our own protection we are commanded not to listen to those who fail these tests.

Issue 95 - July / August 2006

End Notes

Published by Twin City Fellowship

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1988, 1995 The Lockman Foundation.