Do we need prophets today?

[Iron Mountain Mark]

Why do we need prophets when we have the bible? Well, the simple answer is it is one of the gifts Jesus gave to the church to help equip us until He returns. (Ephesians 4: 9-16)

There are many attributes to this gift and one of them covered in this video is timing. Will you listen? Will you prepare and be ready? God uses prophets to tell us what time it is. Another way of saying it is -Do you know what time it is? And will you be ready?

Hey honey, "Do you know all the money you borrowed and gambled away, well the bill is coming due to pay it back! what are you going to do about it?"

Do we need prophets?
What other useful attributes of a prophet have you thought of?
Or do we need Jesus’s ministry at all today or can we each go it on our own? What do think?
Here’s a short video on some thoughts on that subject I made.

 

[JRT]

Prophets arise in every generation --- not to foretell the future but to shake up our attitudes and move us out of our complacency. Two of them spring immediately to mind, one is Christian and one is not. Bishop John Shelby Spong and the Dalai Lama.

 

[grumix8]

Bible says there will be 2 last prophets that come and will say the word of G-d.

 

[MrW]

We may need them but we don’t have them. Bunch of fakers.

 

[tango]

Personally if someone says they are a prophet I figure I can probably safely ignore anything they have to say. I do believe God speaks to us, sometimes through others, I just don't believe we have prophets in the OT sense of the word. If someone claims the title of prophet and, based on that, expects me to ignore the numerous Scriptural calls to test because they spoke, chances are they are a charlatan. If someone presents something in humility, fully expecting it to be tested but believing it to be God speaking, then it's more likely to be worth considering. In any event, if it's truly God speaking he is quite capable of giving enough people the same message to make sure it gets through OK.

 

[TonyC7]

Paul encouraged prophecy as among one of the greater gifts to be sought. I’d say it would be very beneficial today.

 

[tango]

Paul encouraged prophecy as among one of the greater gifts to be sought. I’d say it would be very beneficial today.

When it's genuine it can be beneficial. The trouble is that so much of it isn't, and my experience is that the people most prominently touted as prophets are the least likely to produce anything useful.

 

[Josiah]

Paul encouraged prophecy as among one of the greater gifts to be sought. I’d say it would be very beneficial today.

A "prophet" is primarily a teacher.

Paul warned against teachers with new or different teachings. We are to hold fast to the message AS TAUGHT (past tense)... and beware of those with new and different teachings.



.

 

[Andrew]

A "prophet" is primarily a teacher.

Paul warned against teachers with new or different teachings. We are to hold fast to the message AS TAUGHT (past tense)... and beware of those with new and different teachings.



.

Correct. My understanding of "Prophet" is one who has brought forth new insight from/through the Lord God himself.

John of Patmos was the last and final prophet of God IMHO.. besides Jesus Christ Himself... actually Jesus gave John HIS revelation THROUGH John!

 

[MrW]

Right. No “predicting-the-future-new-Revelation” prophets today.

 

[tango]

Correct. My understanding of "Prophet" is one who has brought forth new insight from/through the Lord God himself.

John of Patmos was the last and final prophet of God IMHO.. besides Jesus Christ Himself... actually Jesus gave John HIS revelation THROUGH John!

It would really depend on exactly what you mean by "prophet", as here you've got some conflict.

A person who brings forth a new insight from God could be anyone who speaks a word to someone else that was inspired by God. What that person speaks may only be relevant to that one person but could still have come from God and therefore, by your first line, such a person would be a prophet. But then your second line says that John was the last prophet and therefore such a person could not be a prophet.

The big difference is the scope of what is said. To argue that the canon of Scripture should be reopened to record the latest utterance of a modern day person is a very different proposition from accepting that this particular person often has a particular insight into the situation and seems to speak in a divinely inspired way. If you speak a word from God to me that is relevant only to me it does not need to be recorded; if you speak a word from God that is relevant to the church now and indefinitely into the future then it should be recorded as part of Scripture. The latter is an unimaginably bold claim for anyone to make and I'd certain question anyone who claimed it of themselves - I'd be extremely hesitant to believe it said about another without seeing some pretty solid evidence. The former is arguably still a fairly bold statement - it's not a small thing to claim to be speaking words given by God - but I suspect a lot of the time people doing it don't necessarily even realise how inspired their words really are.

 

[TonyC7]

Right. No “predicting-the-future-new-Revelation” prophets today.

I wouldn’t be closed to that possibility.

 

[MrW]

I understand. But I would.

The Canon is closed, thank God. If we had a thousand books added, how would we study them all. How about 10,000 more? You see what I’m saying. God gave us the right amount.

 

[TonyC7]

I understand. But I would.

The Canon is closed, thank God. If we had a thousand books added, how would we study them all. How about 10,000 more? You see what I’m saying. God gave us the right amount.

I’m not arguing against the closure of the canon. In fact, I rather agree with that.

But I don’t see why God should be put in a box and told that He can’t use someone today to prophesy the future.

 

[MrW]

I think there is some CONFUSION. The prophesying that I don't believe exists today is FORETELLING the future. We have the Bible for that.

What the office of prophet in the church today is for is FORTHTELLING--that is, "telling forth" the future from the Word of God. In other words, it is PREACHING THE WRITTEN WORD, for example, studying and preaching from books like Daniel and Revelation, and passages from Paul and Peter and other places in Scripture where the FORETELLING has already been done. "In the last days, perilous times shall come..." and then Paul goes on to tell us the hallmarks, the signs, of the last days.

When a man gets up and says, "Thus saith the LORD, there will be an earthquake in Los Angeles, and it was fall into the ocean", I know the guy is not a prophet of God.

 

[tango]

I think there is some CONFUSION. The prophesying that I don't believe exists today is FORETELLING the future. We have the Bible for that.

What the office of prophet in the church today is for is FORTHTELLING--that is, "telling forth" the future from the Word of God. In other words, it is PREACHING THE WRITTEN WORD, for example, studying and preaching from books like Daniel and Revelation, and passages from Paul and Peter and other places in Scripture where the FORETELLING has already been done. "In the last days, perilous times shall come..." and then Paul goes on to tell us the hallmarks, the signs, of the last days.

When a man gets up and says, "Thus saith the LORD, there will be an earthquake in Los Angeles, and it was fall into the ocean", I know the guy is not a prophet of God.

... except that if there is then an earthquake in LA, and it falls into the ocean, and the person who foretold it checks all the boxes about being a Godly person showing the fruit of the Spirit etc, why should we preclude the possibility that God will give us advance warning of something specific?

Such a prophecy wouldn't need to be recorded forever in the chapters of Scripture so there's really no need to get bogged down with that issue. By the time people had forgotten there was ever a city called Los Angeles they wouldn't specifically need to remember the prophecy. Maybe the history books that recorded the one-time existence of this city would also record the guy who said it would fall into the sea who nobody believed until there was a big hole where there used to be a city.

 

[tango]

I understand. But I would.

The Canon is closed, thank God. If we had a thousand books added, how would we study them all. How about 10,000 more? You see what I’m saying. God gave us the right amount.

Honestly, this isn't a good argument for anything.

Of course it would be hard to study if there were thousands of extra books in Scripture. If you really want to go there you could just make the case the book wouldn't have survived through history because nobody was strong enough to lift it, or borrow a line from Douglas Adams and say that the Bible would cease to exist because it would undergo gravitational collapse and become a black hole.

But hey, let's change the scope a little. We have 66 books in Scripture. Would it really be so difficult to study an extra 20 books? 30 books? It's not as if there's a time limit, other than our own mortality. If you study one book a month (and many books of the Bible are short enough that a first study can be much faster than that) you're talking an extra 2-3 years.

 

[MrW]

I believe (and I mean that sincerely—I don’t just toss that out there casually) that in the 66 books of Scripture we have no less and no more than God meant for us to have (see Deuteronomy 29:29).

I’ve read it straight through every year for a number of years, and truthfully, there is more there than a man can absorb in one lifetime. There is so much in the 29 books of the New Testament I am considering reading it two or three times in 2022.

 

[NathanH83]

We need prophets

 

[MoreCoffee]

Why do we need prophets when we have the bible?

Some might say we have prophets in the scriptures.
Some may want prophets now because prophets are in the bible.

Capitalists want profits now!
Many churches with prophets have them for profits sake.