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

The Importance of Prophecy

Differing Viewpoints

A statement of four modern-day approaches to prophecy will help our discussion. My abbreviated summaries naturally reflect my own opinion (#4), but I am grateful for the worthwhile contributions each view has made to the total picture of prophecy in the Church.

1. The Form Critical School and the "I Sayi ngs " ofJesus

This approach, espoused by some form critics of the New Testament, is hardly known outside of scholarly circles, but it has made a significant impact on the discussion of prophecy and the training of ministers. This theory proposes that Jesus is both the Jesus of history as well as the living Lord in heaven. As the historical Jesus who walked on earth, He did give teaching, some of which was remembered and recorded. As the Lord in heaven, He possibly spoke through Christian prophets pres ent in the early Church prior to the writing of the gospels. These prophets received and uttered words from the risen Jesus to the congregations. These sayings were then recorded as authentic sayings of the risen Jesus and incorporated into the Church's written tradition of the recorded say ings of the historical Jesus-even though He actually did not say them while physically on earth.11 Whether or not these prophetic words were really the words of Jesus (or considered to be) is of little consequence, so they say, because they at least reflected the ideas of the early Christians. Even scholars promoting this viewpoint admit the lack of conclusive evidence, and a number of New Testament scholars remain unpersuaded. 12 I cannot imagine that the integrity of the early Church leaders would have allowed them to mix the actual remembered, recorded sayings of Jesus with spontaneous, prophetic utterances given in the Church, and then record them all as the true account of Jesus' earthly ministry! I appreci ate the serious effort expended to explain the Bible and the mystery of prophecy, but take strong exception to any effort to force the Bible into an anti-supernatural mode. Bultmann and other liberal German theologians carried this approach to the extreme as they "demythologized" the New Testament, while at the same time using this theory of prophecy to explain the creativity of early Church beliefs. Recorded miracles became merely symbolic stories, and the utterances of "inspired" prophets became statements by Jesus.13 Unfortunately many ministers have been trained in this approach during seminary studies, which has affected their view of prophecy and how they present the subject to their people.

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