Question: How is the gift of prophecy used in the church today? From time to time, a prominent church leader will say that he received a revelation from God. What is your comment on this and generally about prophecy?

Answer: Generally, we would have two comments. One, prophecy in the Bible can take on one of two forms. First is “forthtelling,” which is the most common. A prophet was called upon by God to instruct or warn His people to change their behavior or suffer certain consequences. The other is “foretelling,” which was related to predicting future events. This one gets the most attention, of course.

One of the requirements of the prophets of God in the Old Testament was that they were never wrong. A prophet who issued a false prophecy was subject to death. Needless to say, that requirement had a way of weeding out the fakes.

In our day we have a lot of people who claim to be receiving words from God. When someone does that, we would be inclined to say they are speaking more from their emotions and perhaps personal views than they are speaking for God. It’s unfortunate, and it generally gives Christianity a black eye.

Having said that, is it possible to have a genuine gift of prophecy today? After all, the Bible does list prophecy as one of the spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:28). The answer is yes, but as theologian Wayne Grudem states, it is prophecy as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind” rather than “predicting the future.” A study of the New Testament shows that prophets in the church did not speak with the authority of “God’s very words,” as did the prophets of the Old Testament. Furthermore, prophecies in the church were always subject to the authoritative teaching of Scripture. The same is true today.