Are there prophets today?

Question 09013.

Whether there are prophets today is a question I answer yes to, with a great many qualifications attached, and the qualifications are not small print. They are the difference between a healthy church and a wrecked one.

I am a continuationist. I do not believe the gifts were withdrawn when the last apostle died. But I have also seen enough damage done in the name of prophecy to understand exactly why other Christians want the whole subject closed down.

Why I Do Not Think the Gift Ceased

The cessationist case usually rests on 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, where prophecies will pass away when the perfect comes. If the perfect is the completed New Testament, the gift has gone.

I do not find that reading persuasive. Paul says that when the perfect comes we will see face to face and know fully, even as we have been fully known. That is a description of the return of Jesus, not of a canon being finished. Nobody who has read a chapter of Romans this morning would say they now know as they are known.

So my starting position on prophets today is that the burden of proof lies with those who say the gift has been withdrawn, and I do not think Scripture supplies it. My answer on whether the gifts are for today sets out the argument in full.

What the Gift Actually Is

The Greek prophetes means one who speaks forth. The core idea is not prediction but speaking on behalf of another. Prediction happens, but it is a subset rather than the definition.

Paul defines the effect rather than the mechanism. The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation (1 Corinthians 14:3). He also describes an unbeliever coming in, being convicted, the secrets of his heart disclosed, and falling on his face declaring that God is really among you.

That is what prophets today should look like if the gift is operating. Building up, encouraging, consoling, and occasionally an uncanny accuracy that leaves a person in no doubt that God sees them.

The Distinction That Settles Everything

Here is the point on which the whole subject turns. Prophecy today is not Scripture, does not carry the authority of Scripture, and is not added to Scripture.

Old Testament prophecy was tested by an absolute standard. If the word does not come to pass, the prophet has spoken presumptuously, and the penalty was death (Deuteronomy 18:20-22). Nobody claiming to be among the prophets today would survive that standard for long, and the honest ones know it.

The New Testament handles the gift differently. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said (1 Corinthians 14:29). Weighing implies a mixture. You do not sift what is infallible. My answer on whether prophecy is the same as Scripture works this through carefully.

Weighing Rather Than Swallowing

Paul’s instruction to the Thessalonians has the same shape. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.

Notice that both errors are addressed in one breath. Quenching is a real sin, and so is credulity. The church that suppresses the gift and the church that swallows every word from the platform are both disobeying the same paragraph.

John says the same in his own terms. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. That warning assumes real prophets today alongside false ones, which is why testing is necessary at all.

Where the Damage Comes From

Nearly all the harm I have seen has come from one mistake, which is treating a prophetic word as though it carried scriptural authority. Once that happens, disagreement becomes rebellion and questioning becomes unbelief.

I have sat with people who married the wrong person, moved countries, gave away money they did not have, or stayed in a dangerous situation because someone told them God had said so. The word failed, and the person was then told their faith had been insufficient.

That is spiritual abuse whatever the theology behind it, and it is why I insist so heavily on the distinction. Prophets today who accept correction are usually safe. Prophets today who cannot be corrected are dangerous regardless of their accuracy rate.

Directive Prophecy and Agabus

The most instructive case in Acts involves Agabus, who takes Paul’s belt, binds his own hands and feet, and says that this is how the Jews will bind the owner of the belt at Jerusalem (Acts 21:11).

Everyone present, including Luke, urges Paul not to go up. Paul goes anyway. And the outcome does not exactly match the prediction, since the Jews seize him and the Romans do the binding.

I find that passage enormously helpful. A genuine prophetic word is given, it is not treated as a command, the recipient weighs it and acts otherwise, and nobody is rebuked for unbelief. That is a model for how prophets today should function, and it is a long way from how the gift is often practised.

Office and Gift Are Not the Same

A further distinction helps. There is a gift of prophecy which Paul urges the whole congregation to desire, saying he wishes they would all prophesy. And there is a recognised ministry, since Ephesians 4:11 lists prophets among those given to equip the saints.

But recognising a ministry is not the same as installing an office with governmental authority. When people ask about prophets today they often mean the second thing, a titled figure who directs churches and networks, and that is where I part company.

Nothing in the New Testament shows a prophet governing a congregation. Elders lead. Prophets speak and are weighed by the others. My answer on whether there are apostles today raises the same structural concern about the modern apostolic and prophetic movement.

How to Test a Word

Start with Scripture. Any word contradicting the Bible is finished at that point, however moving the delivery. Then ask about direction. Does it point to Jesus, or to the person delivering it, or to a ministry that needs your loyalty?

Then look at content. Paul’s categories are upbuilding, encouragement and consolation. A word that leaves a believer crushed, frightened or dependent has not done what the gift is for. That is not the same as saying prophecy never convicts, since 1 Corinthians 14 explicitly says it does, but conviction and cruelty are different things.

Then take your time. Genuine words survive delay. If you are being pressed to act tonight on something you cannot check, that pressure is itself the warning. See how to weigh a prophetic word.

The Date-Setting Problem

One category deserves its own warning. A great deal of what passes for prophecy in the wider church is prediction about the end of the age, and much of it involves dates.

Jesus said that concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Any prophets today announcing a timetable have contradicted the plainest possible statement, and the fact that they always survive the failure of their own predictions tells you how little the movement values the biblical test.

I would treat date-setting as automatically disqualifying. It is not a small mistake by an otherwise useful ministry. It is a refusal of what Jesus explicitly said.

Holding Both Errors Off

I want to finish this section where I began. There are two ditches and most churches are in one of them.

In the first, the gift is suppressed, prophecy is never mentioned, and a congregation quietly stops expecting God to speak to anybody about anything. Paul’s word for that is quenching, and it is not a safe harbour.

In the second, the gift is inflated, words are unweighed, and the church is steered by whoever is most confident. Both ditches produce casualties. The road between them requires the very thing Paul asks for, which is a congregation that welcomes prophets today and weighs what they say without embarrassment.

What Prophets Today Should Not Be Doing

It helps to be concrete. I would be concerned by any of the following, and I have seen all of them.

Words that direct a person’s major life decisions, especially marriage, money or geography. Words delivered publicly that expose private matters without consent. Words that arrive with a demand for immediate action and no room to weigh. Words that consistently flatter the leadership and consistently correct everybody else.

None of that matches 1 Corinthians 14, where prophets today would be expected to build up, encourage and console, and where the congregation weighs what is said as a matter of course. The pattern in the New Testament is remarkably undramatic.

Fallible Prophecy Is Not a Contradiction

The objection I hear most often is that a fallible prophecy is a contradiction in terms. If God speaks, He does not get it wrong, so any error proves the whole thing false.

The reply is that the New Testament itself builds in weighing, which would be pointless if every word were guaranteed. Paul says we prophesy in part, and that we know in part. The gift is described as partial by the apostle who most wanted it exercised.

So the fallibility lies in the receiving, the understanding and the delivering rather than in God. That is not a modern evasion. It is the reason 1 Corinthians 14:29 tells the others to weigh what is said, and why prophets today who resent being weighed have misunderstood the gift they claim.

Prophets Today and the Old Testament Office

A large part of the confusion comes from importing the Old Testament office wholesale into the church age. The prophets of Israel spoke covenant words to a covenant nation, and their words became Scripture.

Israel and the church are distinct in God’s programme, and the prophetic function in the church is described differently, sitting under apostolic teaching and subject to congregational weighing rather than standing over the community with absolute authority.

That distinction matters practically. Anybody claiming the mantle of Elijah over a congregation has claimed something the New Testament never offers. See my answer on the difference between Israel and the church.

A Word to Cautious Christians

If you have come from a background where none of this was mentioned, I would not push you into anything. Paul does not tell the Corinthians to manufacture experiences.

But I would ask you to notice how much of 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 has quietly become unusable in your church, and whether that is a settled conviction or an inherited nervousness. Do not quench the Spirit is an instruction, not a suggestion, and it was written to people who were getting it wrong in the opposite direction.

The safest position is not the one that risks nothing. It is the one that obeys the whole paragraph, welcoming prophets today and weighing every word without fear (1 Corinthians 14:29).

What This Looks Like in an Ordinary Church

People sometimes assume that taking this view means chaotic meetings and a microphone passed around. It does not have to, and in my experience it usually should not.

In a healthy congregation the gift often appears quietly. Someone says a sentence in a prayer meeting that lands with unusual weight. A member phones another at exactly the moment they were needed, without knowing why. A word given privately turns out to name something nobody else knew about.

That is a long way from the platform culture the phrase prophets today usually conjures. Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 14 is for order, intelligibility and building others up, and he was writing to the most excitable church in the New Testament.

The Responsibility of the One Who Speaks

If you believe you have something to say, the New Testament places a considerable weight on you before you open your mouth.

Say it humbly and say it in a form that can be weighed. I think this may be from the Lord is an honest sentence and it costs nothing. Thus says the Lord is a claim you had better be able to stand behind, and it removes the very weighing Paul commanded.

Be willing to be wrong in public. Prophets today who can say I got that one wrong are the ones I trust, because the willingness to be corrected is the single clearest evidence that a person is under Scripture rather than above it.

What I Would Say to a Church Leader

If you lead a congregation and this subject makes you nervous, that instinct is not foolish. Badly handled prophecy has damaged more churches than most other issues in this area.

But nervousness is a poor governing principle. I would rather teach a congregation carefully what the gift is, what it is not, and how weighing works, and then let it operate under that teaching, than leave the subject unaddressed and hope nobody raises it.

The churches that get into trouble are almost never the ones that taught this clearly. They are the ones where nothing was ever said, until somebody with a microphone and a large personality said it for them.

A Closing Encouragement

Whatever you conclude, do not let this subject become the thing your Christian life revolves around.

Prophecy is one gift among many, given for building others up, and Paul places the whole discussion inside a chapter about love. The most impressive spiritual gift exercised without love is, in his words, a noisy gong.

So pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. That is the order he gives, and it has kept a good many churches out of trouble.

So, now what?

If you belong to a church where nobody has mentioned prophecy in twenty years, ask yourself honestly whether that is conviction or just comfort. Paul told a chaotic Corinthian church to earnestly desire the gift, and he was not being reckless.

If you belong to a church where words are given and never weighed, ask whether anyone is allowed to say I am not sure about that. The permission to weigh is not scepticism, it is obedience to a direct instruction.

And if someone has given you a word that has left you frightened or trapped, take it to your Bible and to a mature believer and test it properly. What has God actually said to you in Scripture that you already know to be true?

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.

1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 (ESV)

For Further Study

Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology gives a balanced survey of the continuationist and cessationist positions and is worth reading whichever conclusion you reach. Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology is concise and clear on the gifts within a dispensational framework, and Lewis Sperry Chafer treats the subject at length in Systematic Theology. J. Dwight Pentecost and John Walvoord are useful on the relationship between Old Testament prophetic ministry and the church age, which is where much of the confusion originates. Arnold Fruchtenbaum is worth consulting on the standards applied to prophets in Israel and why they cannot be transferred wholesale to congregational prophecy.