Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

A Profile of the Ancient Hebrew Prophet

Jehovah revealed the mystery of His divine will to the children of men, teaching them through symbolic signs and types, and through utterances. The signs and types were a very illuminating, lucid and effective way of impressing on [sic] the mind, while the prophets were inspired, on the other hand, to explain the nature and meaning of such symbols.So that the impres sion had double force on them which they tutored.72 D.P.Williams The prophet thus discovered and proclaimed eternal verities.Yet the garb in which he clothed them was essentially the fashion of his own age. The language, metaphor, style, and still more the 'thought-shape' were such as were current amongst his compatriots and contemporaries. 28 T.H.Robinson The prophet, as regarded in the light of Scripture, was simply the recipient and bearer of a message from God; and such a message of course was a prophecy, whatever might be its more specific character-whether the disclosure of some important truth, the inculcation of an imperative duty, or a prospective delineation of coming events.A message, however, that bespoke no supernatural insight into the will and purposes of Heaven could not, except in peculiar circumstances, require a divinely-commis sioned person to deliver it. 29 Patrick Fairbairn ...The prophet speaks primarily to the men of his own time, and his message springs out of the circumstances in which he lives....But for all this, the source of the message is super-natural, not natural.It is derived neither from observation nor intellectual thought, but from admission to the council chamber of God (Amos 3:7; Jer.23:18, 22), from knowing God and speaking with Him (Num.12:6ff; Exod.33:11). 30 H.L.Ellison

110