Miraculous Gifts
What Is the Gift of Prophecy in the Bible?
What is the gift of prophecy in the Bible? Examine New Testament prophets, revelation, edification, testing prophecy, and the role prophecy played in the apostolic church.
A Revealed Message
New Testament prophecy was more than giving a sermon.
The word prophecy is sometimes used loosely today for forceful preaching or spiritual insight. In the New Testament, however, prophecy belongs among gifts associated with revelation from the Holy Spirit.
Paul distinguishes prophets from teachers while placing both within the life of the church. In 1 Corinthians 14, revelation can come to a prophet while the congregation is assembled, and other prophets are instructed to weigh what is said.
That setting is important. If prophecy simply meant explaining an already available biblical text, Paul's instructions concerning fresh revelation and the weighing of prophetic speech would be difficult to explain.
Paul instructs prophets to speak while others weigh what is said and describes a revelation being made to another person who is seated.
Paul says the mystery of Christ was revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.
What Prophecy Did
Prophecy strengthened the church while revelation was still being delivered.
Paul tells the Corinthians that prophecy speaks to people for strengthening, encouragement, and consolation. Because the message could be understood by the congregation, he ranks it above uninterpreted tongues in the assembly.
The gift therefore had a practical congregational purpose. Revelation was not given merely to impress hearers with supernatural activity. It was intended to build up the body.
Acts also records prophets communicating information relevant to the church, including Agabus predicting a famine and later warning Paul about what awaited him in Jerusalem.
Paul says the one who prophesies speaks to people for strengthening, encouragement, and consolation.
Agabus, identified among the prophets, predicts a severe famine.
Prophecy Had to Be Tested
A claim to revelation was never automatically self-authenticating.
The existence of genuine prophecy did not mean Christians were commanded to believe every person who claimed to speak for God.
Paul tells congregations to weigh prophetic speech. John commands believers to test the spirits because false prophets had gone out into the world.
This requirement becomes especially important when examining modern claims. The biblical question is not simply whether someone uses the title prophet, but whether the claimed phenomenon matches the nature, authority, purpose, and tests found in the New Testament.
Christians are told not to despise prophecies but to test everything and hold fast to what is good.
Believers are commanded to test the spirits because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Prophecy and the Foundation
Ephesians places prophets beside apostles in the church's foundation.
Ephesians describes God's household as built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone.
Paul then explains that the mystery of Christ had been revealed by the Spirit to those apostles and prophets.
Who Changed the Church? treats this connection as central. Prophets were not an independent stream of authority floating above the church forever. They participated in the revelatory work by which the foundation was established.
God's household is described as built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone.
Paul connects apostles and prophets with revelation of the mystery by the Spirit.
Prophecy and the Partial
Paul explicitly says prophecy would pass away.
First Corinthians 13 is unusually important because Paul does not merely regulate prophecy. He says prophecy will pass away and contrasts partial knowledge and prophecy with the coming of what is complete.
Christians disagree about when that transition occurs. Many continuationists connect the completion with Christ's return or the believer's final state. Cessationists have offered several readings tied to the completion of the church's foundational revelation.
Wood makes a specific argument: the partial revelatory gifts belonged to the period before the apostolic deposit reached completeness. He connects Paul's language about partial knowledge with the full knowledge language he sees elsewhere in the apostolic writings.
Paul says prophecies will pass away and contrasts what is partial with what is complete.
Prophecy Versus Biblical Teaching
Interpreting revelation is not the same thing as receiving new revelation.
Even if a revelatory gift ceases, teaching does not cease. Christians still have to read, explain, apply, and defend what God has revealed.
Who Changed the Church? makes this distinction explicitly. The function once served by inspired revelation should not be confused with the continuing responsibility to understand the written apostolic message.
A preacher who carefully explains Romans is doing something important, but that does not by itself make the preacher a prophet in the New Testament revelatory sense.
Why It Matters
The New Testament gift of prophecy communicated revelation from God for the strengthening and instruction of the church. Prophecy had to be tested, operated alongside other spiritual gifts, and is placed with the apostles in the foundational work of revelation. Paul also says prophecy would pass away. Who Changed the Church? argues that this happened when the partial revelatory period gave way to the completed apostolic deposit. That conclusion leads directly to the modern question: if biblical prophecy was revelatory and foundational, what should Christians make of people who claim to be prophets today?