Are There Still Real Prophets Today?
What Is Prophecy?

Bob sat at the meeting with other Christian leaders from several different local churches.  They had been planning a outreach big event together for several months now.  Suddenly one of them announced that he had just received a prophecy from God telling them what to do next...  

This happened to someone I knew several years ago.  How would you respond?

If you are wondering if God still gives prophets today, the first question you need to ask is "What is prophecy anyways?"  Two people might agree that prophets exist, but mean completely different things.  Basically, there are four main views out there about the meaning of the gift of prophecy.  We should try to understand the views, and then go with the one that matches best with what the Bible teaches.

VIEW 1.  Direct message from God; without error; still given today.  The people who hold this view believe that God still gives true prophets to the Church the same way that He did in earlier times.  The message from these prophets are believed to be inspired, infallible, and authoritative.  This view is actually less common than most people think.

VIEW 2.  Direct message from God; not without error; still given today.  This is the view that God still gives prophets today, but that this type of prophecy is not the same as it was in the Old Testament.  Today's prophets sometimes make mistakes and are not always correct.  Also, their message is not as authoritative as the Scriptures.  

VIEW 3.  Preaching.  This view equates modern "prophecy" is really just preaching.  When a pastor takes God's written message from the Bible and teaches it powerfully, that is prophesying.  The pastor is not receiving any new message from God.

VIEW 4.  Direct message from God; without error; no longer given.  This view is somewhat similar to view #1; they both believe that real prophecy is when someone is given a direct message from God that- because it is from God- authoritative and without error.  However, unlike view #1, this view does not believe that this is something that God chooses to give at this stage in history.  Now that the church has the completed and sufficient Bible, prophecy is no longer needed.

Here I will list what I think are problems with some of these views.  Some of these problems are much more serious than others. 

Problems with view #1:

• Prophecy of this type would be a direct message from God and therefore would be equal to the Word of God.  It would be as authoritative and binding as the Bible.  On it's own, this doesn't necessarily mean that this view couldn't be true, but people do need to realize that this is what this view would imply.  If a modern prophet told you to do something, you would be just as bound to do it as if the Bible said it.  God's Word is God's Word, whether it comes from the pages of Scripture or the mouth of God's prophets: if God says it, you need to submit to it. 

• This would, at least in a sense, be adding to the Bible. (Rev. 22:16-19 warns against adding or taking away from the Book of Revelation, if not the whole Bible.)

• If someone claims this type of prophecy, they would need to agree to the Deuteronomy 18:18-22 test. They must predict events in the near future, and if any of them are ever wrong, they need to be stoned to death! “The Lord said to me: I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death. You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ If what a prophet claims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.” (Deut. 18:18-22.)  Not many of today's prophets are confident enough in their messages to allow themselves to be put to death if they are wrong!

• Most advocated of modern prophecy admit that modern prophecy is not without error!  One of the main books written in the past few years supporting modern prophecy was Surprised by the Voice of God by Jack Deere.  The entire book is written to make the case that God still speaks through prophets today.  But on page 208 of this book, Deere admits, “I don’t know any prophetic people today who are 100 percent accurate.” 

Problems with view #2:

• Prophecy with errors fails the Deuteronomy 18:18-22 test.  If these prophets were held to this standard, they would need to be put to death!

• There is no good reason to think that prophecy changed from what it was to this lesser version.

• From a practical perspective, what’s the use of a message, supposedly from God, that might have mistakes in it? How would you know to really trust it or not? (This type of prophecy really isn’t much different than having a “holy hunch” about something.)

• How can the Word of God be wrong?  If it’s wrong, then it isn’t the Word of God.

• We can’t say that God gives the message perfectly, but the human messenger screws it up.  If God is powerful enough to make sure than the human authors of Scripture didn't screw up His message, then He is also powerful enough to make sure that His prophets don't alter His message.  Like Scripture, God not only guarantees the prophet or apostle knows the right information, but that it is communicated correctly.  For the Bible, God used the writer’s personality and style, but He made sure that the exact words He wanted were written down.  In the same way, God also made sure that the specific words that the prophets spoke, while prophesying, were His words. In Deuteronomy 18:18 God says, “I will put my words in [the prophet’s] mouth.” The prophets constantly use the phrase “The Lord says” or similar phrases almost like quotation marks, often giving the following message as if they were the Lord speaking.  True prophecy was not just fuzzy impressions that God gave His prophets expecting them to put the message into their own words without His help.

• View 2 also says that this type of prophecy is not as authoritative as the Word of God. That doesn’t make sense.  If it really is a message from God, how can we feel free to ignore it or disobey it? On the contrary, in Deuteronomy 18:19 God says, “If anyone does not listen to the words that the prophet speaks in My Name, I Myself will call him to account.”  No one is free to ignore someone speaking for God.

• Contrary to what some claim, Agabus is not an example of a New Testament prophet who made a prophetic error.  In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul was planning on traveling back to the city of Jerusalem, certain that God wanted him to go there.  However, he was confronted by a prophet named Agabus who warned him what would happen. Acts 21:10-12 reads, “After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.  Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, ‘The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’’ When the people heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go to Jerusalem.”  The people assumed that the prophecy meant that Paul shouldn’t go to Jerusalem, but apparently Paul knew that God wanted him to go, in spite of what would happen to him.  The prophecy itself did not say that Paul shouldn’t go; it just said what would happen to him. However, some people teach that this prophecy was in error because what actually ended up happening was different from what was predicted.  After arriving in Jerusalem, the non-Christian Jews formed a mob, seized Paul and tried to kill him. (Acts 21:30-32)  The Romans soldiers (the Gentiles) saw this happening and stopped the crowd.  “The commander came up and arrested him [Paul] and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done.” (Acts 21:33)  Those who hold to View 2 say that the Romans (Gentiles) actually rescued Paul from the Jews; the Jews didn’t deliver Paul to them. Also, they point out that it was the Romans, not the Jews who had Paul tied up.  But in reply to this we must point out a few things.  First, it doesn’t say that the Jews didn’t tie Paul at all when they seized him.  The Romans could have simply tied him up again, or better. But even more, sometimes we say that someone has done something when they are the cause of it happening, even if they personally didn’t do it.  For example, someone could say “George Bush bombed Iraq.”  Most people would agree that this is true.  However, did George Bush personally drop bombs on Iraq?  No. But he was the cause of it happening.  In the same way, the rioting Jews were the cause of Paul being tied up, even if they personally didn’t do it.  It is also wrong to claim that the Jews didn’t deliver Paul over to the Gentiles.  The were the cause of why Paul spent the next four years of his life in Gentile prisons.  Paul obviously agrees with Agabus (and the Holy Spirit) that the Jews delivered him to the Romans.  In Acts 28:17 Paul is describing what happened to him and says, “My brothers, although I have done nothing against our people or against the customs of our ancestors, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans.”

• Note: One of the main advocates of this view of prophecy is Wayne Grudem.  Although I really appreciate Grudem’s teachings on many other issues, I disagree with him about spiritual gifts.

Problems with View #3:

• This doesn’t seem to fit the description of prophets as used throughout the Bible.

• If the spiritual gift of prophecy is basically just preaching (giving a message explaining the written Word of God), this would make the gift of prophecy basically the same as the gift of teaching.  (In 1 Cor. 12:28 Paul says that “in the church God has appointed first of all Apostles, second prophets, third teachers...” This would seem to support that prophecy is not just teaching the Bible.)

• Advocates of View 3 state that prophecy is not always fore-telling, but also forth-telling. By this they mean that a great deal of the prophecy found in the Bible is not predictions of the future, like many people often assume all prophecy is.  They are correct.  Most of the content of prophecy in the Bible is not about the future; much of it is a message to the people about current situations, usually calling them back to God’s Law.  However, it is still a direct message from God spoke through the mouth of the prophet.  (Like Deuteronomy 18:18 says it would be.)  All prophecy doesn’t have to predict the future, but it does have to be a direct message from God put on the lips of the prophet. Further, it is still important for some of the prophet’s prophecy to be about the future to fulfill the Deuteronomy 18:18-22 test.  Anyone can claim that they are speaking for God, but no one can always predict the future accurately without God!

• 1 Corinthians 14:29-30 describes prophecy as involving a revelation suddenly coming to a prophet.

• 1 Corinthians 14:25 describes prophecy as causing the secrets of a person’s heart to be laid bare so that he will fall down and worship God because he realizes that God is really among them. To me this fits better with prophecy as direct revelation rather than preaching.  (This is not one of the stronger arguments against view 3.)

• Note: Although this view is held by many Bible teachers that I deeply respect, including many of the Puritans, I disagree with it because of the reasons above.  Also, I should point out that sometimes people refer to certain preachers such as A.W. Tozer or Francis Schafer as being “prophets” in the sense that they spoke a powerful message to their generation.  Usually when people say this, they don’t literally mean that these people were prophets in a technical sense.

Problems with view 4:

• Honestly, I feel that view 4 has the least problems because it is the correct view.  For more reasons that support this, read below.
  

Does God give prophets today?

We can examine this issue from two perspectives (a priori or a posteriori). 

Before Examining Modern Prophecy:

Even before examining modern prophecy, I believe there are reasons to expect that God planned on only giving prophets for a limited time:

• There was about 400 years of prophetic silence between the completion of the Old Testament and John the Baptist.  It’s not unheard of for God to stop giving prophets.

• With the New Testament complete, it does not seem like there is a need for prophecy today.  But unlike us, the early church did not have the full Bible for many decades.  Prophets would have been very important in the meantime.  Also, God used prophecy to give the writers of Scripture the truths they were to record.

• 2 Timothy 3:17 says that Scripture is able to make us “thoroughly equipped” for every good work. If Scripture is enough, then we don’t need additional messages to equip us.

• Ephesians 2:20 says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.  When you build a building, you don’t need to continue to lay the foundation again and again.  You don’t build another foundation on the third floor.  The foundation is built first, and everything built after that time rests on that foundation.  In the same way, we today depend on the apostles and the prophets for the message that they wrote down in the Bible, but now that the foundation has been laid, the need for new apostles and prophets has passed.
  

After Examining Modern Prophecy:

Even if we ignore the “before experience” reasons above, we have a good reason to believe that God no longer gives prophecy if modern prophecy doesn’t match with biblical prophecy.  Here is the logic:

A. The Bible teaches that real prophecy was the direct speaking of a message from God without error.

B. Modern claims of prophecy are not the direct speaking of a message from God without error.  (Remember Jack Deere's quote, "I don't know of any prophetic people today who are 100 percent accurate.")

Therefore, modern claims of prophecy are not the same as biblical prophecy. (And Scripture, not experience, should be what we judge things by.)

In conclusion:  To quote my answering machine, "No new messages."

How does God feel about people putting words in His mouth?

We need to be very careful about claiming to speak for God if that is not the case!  God has been very clear about how He feels about people putting words into His mouth. 

For some examples how God feel about this, look up these passages from the book of Jeremiah.  If you, or someone you know, want to build a case that you are a genuine prophet who speaks for God, must realize how big of a deal this is!  Fortunately, we do have a message from God that is certain!  God's has given us the gift of the objective and certain Word, the Bible.  The completed Bible is far more valuable than any prophet.  It tells us everything that we need to know to do God's moral will. 

We should also be careful when we flippantly say things like "God told me" or "God is leading me..."  People say those kinds of things all the time when God had nothing to do with it.  Unless you can prove it from Scripture, don't claim that you know this is what God is saying.  You could be wrong.  You could be using God's name to make your own hunches or ideas seem more spiritual.

• Jeremiah 5:12-17

• Jeremiah 14:13-16

• Jeremiah 23:9-40 (notice verses 21, 26, 31, 32, 34, and 36 in particular)

• Jeremiah 28 and the story of the false prophet Hananiah

-by Nate Archer