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

Christ's Continuing Voice in the Church

Here are five reasons some New Testament prophecy, like all contem porary prophecy, had the possibility of partial or total inaccuracy and is therefore not on a par with Scripture prophecy: • Prophecy is to be judged. • Prophecy today is "in part." • Prophecy was encouraged among the people by Paul, something he

would not have done if it was only for creating Scripture. • Prophecy depends on the faith level of the one speaking. • Prophecy often contains a conditional aspect.

To be judged. We will discuss fully the subject of testing prophetic utter ances in chapters 20 and 21. Three Scripture passages (1 Corinthians 14:29, 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 and 1 John 4:1, each of which we will examine in those chapters) teach that Christian prophecies should be judged or evaluated. This implies, of course, that prophecy can have error. False prophecy is troublesome for a local congregation, but there are also the challenges of impure, weak or "sloppy" prophecy given by sincere but untrained people. 31 Even the content of "good" prophecy must be gauged by whether the utterance is inspired in general content or exact wording. In parl. The great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, sandwiched between two powerful chapters on spiritual gifts, says it simply: "We prophesy in part" (verse 9, NKJV, NIV). The clear meaning of the two Greek words (ek merous) is translated consistently: "incomplete" (Williams), "fragmen tary (incomplete and imperfect)" (Amplified), "imperfect" (RSV), "only partial" (TEV), "fragmentary" (Berkeley), "not complete" (CEV). We must conclude that today's prophecy, like that of the Corinthian believers and unlike Scripture, was subject to imperfection. Encouraged. Paul encouraged all the Christians to prophesy in their local settings, but he did not envision that Scripture-level prophecy would be produced by everyone. Only a few apostle-prophets would be inspired on a canonical prophecy level to write the New Testament Scriptures, and those writings alone would be accepted on a par with the Hebrew Scriptures (1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Peter 3:16)-that is, binding and authoritative. The inscripturating prophecy that produced the Bible ceased after the last New Testament books were written. A dire warning is given in Rev elation 22:18-19 not to add or detract from the message given to John. These verses are rightly applied to the whole Bible. Note, however, that John was told he would "prophesy again" (Revelation 10:11), indicating that the day of prophecy was not over, even though the writing of Scrip ture had been completed. ■ 174