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

Insights from Modern Church History (A.O. 1830-1980)

With the inauguration of the Constitution in 1937 a practice was for malized: "With the appropriate jurisdiction, a prophet was allowed the free dom to prophesy on any matter, including the life and work of ministers." 30 When prophecy becomes too common and too inclusive within a church movement, the people will find cause to speak out. So it was in the early 1940s that "the Council decided to put some restraints on the function of prophets. It was thought, for instance, that prophets were nominating people for too wide a variety of ministries in the church, so it was agreed that apostles also should make appointments-for instance to the min istry of Sunday School teaching-rather than use the prophet calling." 31 The general system worked well for about thirty years but by the 1950s became cause for severe criticism. Although the prophets themselves were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with being restricted to certain spheres, a change finally came when a Scottish prophet, Charles Forrest, declared in the General Council in 1951 that the hedges that the movement had built up around the prophets had to be torn down. It was a controversial decision, but now the prophets were free to speak on any matter worldwide, although usually they restricted their proph esying to the meetings of which they were members. 6. A prophetic movement tends to gravitate from a renewal of spon taneity to a routine under ecclesiastical authority. It is both a blessing and a curse that the inherent nature of any religious movement or insti tution is to formalize or institutionalize. Efficiency and organization cer tainly help maintain standards and ensure a consistent image to both mem bers and outsiders. But when well-defined doctrines and ecclesial procedures are set in place, the members gradually accept the resulting modicum of spiritual manifestations that take place. There is now an assurance, created by the rigid, formalized structure, that the ways and traditions of the founding fathers will not be violated. Generally the effort to preserve the historic message and history of a movement tends to settle that movement into a hardening commitment that defies change. We looked at the cycle of deterioration in chapter 15 and saw that this formalism is the enemy of spontaneous prophetic activ ity. Unless church leadership continually crusades for a program that also includes the prophetic, that gift will gradually pass away. It is probably true that the AC originally had too much confidence in the prophetic, hardly making a move without prophetic confirmation. The prophets were sometimes accorded an infallible status by some of the people because of the freshness of the experience and the fear of quench ing the Spirit or missing God. Now, however, "Present day prophets are not infallible." 32 • 282