What Is Prophecy Today?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Pastor John, in the last podcast episode, in episode 214, you addressed recent allegations
00:00:10.260 | claiming that while you are open to prophecy in tongues today, you don't seem necessarily
00:00:15.160 | convinced enough to advocate that others pursue these gifts themselves.
00:00:18.880 | You corrected that, and you said that there are very good exegetical reasons for your
00:00:22.920 | confidence.
00:00:23.920 | Explain those reasons for us here.
00:00:25.320 | Right.
00:00:26.320 | What I said was, in 1 Corinthians 14, 39, it says, "Earnestly desire to prophesy, and
00:00:35.080 | do not forbid speaking in tongues."
00:00:37.400 | And I said, "I think that is a command that we should still obey today, and that I try
00:00:43.360 | to, and my way of understanding prophecy is not as infallible, Scripture-level, authoritative
00:00:56.840 | speaking," which is, I think, the way John MacArthur would take it and other folks.
00:01:04.720 | I take it as something that God spontaneously brings to mind in the moment, and because
00:01:13.880 | we are fallible in the way we perceive it, and the way we think about it, and the way
00:01:19.640 | we speak it, it does not carry that same level of infallible, Scripture-level authority.
00:01:28.120 | And here are some reasons for why I think that's true, and why I think it's still
00:01:35.920 | valid today.
00:01:37.440 | 1 Thessalonians 5, 19, "Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test
00:01:45.600 | all things, hold fast to what is good."
00:01:48.920 | Now that text is different from 1 John 4, 1, where it says, "Test the spirits to see
00:01:54.280 | whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world."
00:01:59.600 | There, you test a person to see if he's a false prophet, and you hold fast to the true
00:02:05.800 | one.
00:02:06.800 | Here, you test words or prophecies, and you hold fast to the ones that are good.
00:02:14.280 | Test all things, and hold fast to what is good.
00:02:19.040 | You're not choosing between people here, it seems to me, you're choosing between what
00:02:23.400 | they say, which you would not do if they spoke with infallible, inerrant, Scripture-quality
00:02:31.880 | authority.
00:02:35.280 | The issue here is that some in the church are despising, not the prophets, but the prophecies.
00:02:44.240 | Now why would that be, I ask?
00:02:47.960 | And my answer is probably because they are sometimes wacko.
00:02:53.160 | Despise is a very strong word.
00:02:55.280 | Paul says, "Don't despise."
00:02:57.800 | So somebody in the church at Thessalonica is saying, "Look, you told us that prophecy
00:03:03.840 | is a gift from God.
00:03:05.520 | Frankly, we're not liking what we're hearing because it's stupid, it's weird.
00:03:11.200 | They're saying things that are off the wall, and so they're tending to despise them."
00:03:17.200 | And Paul seems to be trying to keep the people from throwing the baby of true prophecies
00:03:22.760 | out with the bathwater of weird ones.
00:03:25.760 | So that's my first observation from 1 Thessalonians 5, 19-21.
00:03:32.400 | Here's the second one.
00:03:34.480 | Every man who prays or prophesies—this is 1 Corinthians 11, 4—every man who prays
00:03:39.580 | or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, and every wife or woman who prays
00:03:45.440 | or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.
00:03:49.280 | Now, I don't see how women prophesying in the assembly fits with an infallible scripture-level
00:03:58.720 | authority when Paul forbids that kind of authority to be exercised over men by women in the church
00:04:07.000 | in 1 Timothy 2, 12.
00:04:09.840 | Instead, the picture here seems much more spontaneous and mutual, as is described in
00:04:16.840 | 1 Corinthians 14, 3.
00:04:18.600 | The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding, their encouragement, their
00:04:23.080 | consolation.
00:04:24.080 | Now that would just make sense if God brought to the mind of a woman, say, in a gathering,
00:04:28.640 | a small group gathering, something she felt would be incredibly helpful to somebody, as
00:04:33.960 | long as she does it in a way that is culturally appropriate, that she's not undermining the
00:04:38.840 | authority of the men—I think that's what the head stuff is all about—then she's free
00:04:44.680 | to do that.
00:04:46.200 | This is what men and women do in smaller worship settings, and the gift of prophecy would be
00:04:52.840 | when God does that, when he brings something to mind with an extraordinary timeliness or
00:04:57.600 | suitableness, and exerts the power for upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
00:05:03.400 | So the fact that women are encouraged to do this, and yet women are told not to exercise
00:05:08.400 | authority over men, says to me, we've got something else going on here besides what
00:05:12.520 | others say are Scripture-level authority.
00:05:15.760 | And here's a third one, just the last one.
00:05:19.240 | And there are others, but "Love never ends," this is 1 Corinthians 13, "as for prophecies,
00:05:25.540 | they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass
00:05:30.320 | away.
00:05:31.400 | For now we know in part, and we prophesy in part," that's a very crucial statement, "we
00:05:35.840 | prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes," as though the prophecies were not that, "when
00:05:44.160 | the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
00:05:47.160 | When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a
00:05:50.760 | child; when I became a man, I put away childish things.
00:05:54.880 | Now we see in a mirror dimly.
00:05:57.560 | Then face to face, now I know in part, then I'll know fully, even as I have been fully
00:06:03.560 | known."
00:06:04.560 | Now what's he talking about there?
00:06:05.620 | The future in view here, I think, is manifestly when Christ comes.
00:06:11.580 | When the perfect comes, in the time of adulthood, when he's not speaking like a child anymore,
00:06:16.520 | the time of seeing face to face, not in a mirror anymore, but rather knowing fully,
00:06:24.760 | even as I have been fully known.
00:06:26.440 | That's not any time in this age.
00:06:28.740 | That's the end of the age, when we will know fully, even as we have been fully known.
00:06:34.560 | So that's when the gift of prophecy stops.
00:06:39.040 | So this text is a pretty clear argument, I think, that the gift of prophecy in tongues
00:06:45.080 | will continue until Jesus comes back.
00:06:48.800 | It seems to me that the reason they pass away, it says, is precisely because they're imperfect.
00:06:55.400 | They're not scripture-level authority, because verse 9 says, "ekmerus prophetuomen."
00:07:02.800 | That's the Greek.
00:07:03.800 | "We prophesy ekmerus."
00:07:06.320 | We prophesy in part, just like a little child trying to reason and think and talk.
00:07:14.780 | And when he grows up and becomes a man in the age to come, he won't need that kind of
00:07:19.120 | help anymore.
00:07:20.120 | So those are three reasons that I would say that the gift of prophecy is here until Jesus
00:07:27.060 | comes, and that it doesn't mean the kind of scripture-level, inerrant, infallible, authoritative
00:07:36.040 | speech that some take it to mean.
00:07:38.240 | Yes, excellent.
00:07:39.240 | Well said.
00:07:40.240 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:07:42.120 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:07:45.280 | Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and
00:07:49.120 | other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.
00:07:51.600 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:07:52.600 | Thanks for listening.
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