It is surely true that a growing number
of Christians worldwide are accepting that God continues to give the gift of prophecy,
referred to in 1 Corinthians 12:10.
There are still more than a few believers,
however, who deny that He does this. They claim that He stopped giving this
gift in the first century, and they use a number of arguments to try to make
their case.
AN ARGUMENT THAT IS USED AGAINST PROPHECY TODAY
One of these arguments concerns the
supposed scriptural nature of all prophecy, and it goes in this way:
Every genuine prophecy that God has
ever given, in both Old Testament and New Testament times, has become part of the Bible, whether explicitly or
implicitly. Prophecy is by definition something that was designed to be part
of Scripture. However, the Bible is now complete. So there can be no new
prophecies today.
I am convinced that this argument is
badly mistaken.
It is certainly true that the Bible is
now complete and has been for nearly two millennia. There is nothing wrong with
that part of the argument.
However, the other key part of the
argument is an unwarranted assumption. There is no good reason for thinking
that every genuine prophecy was designed to be part of Scripture. And this is what
I want to say something about in what follows.
NO PASSAGE TEACHES THAT EVERY PROPHECY WAS DESIGNED TO BE
PART OF SCRIPTURE
The first point I need to make is both
very important and very simple. It is that there is no passage in Scripture
which states or even implies that every prophecy was designed to become part of
the Bible.
In the absence of any biblical support
for this idea, it seems much more natural to think that there have been genuine
prophecies that God never intended to be included in Scripture.
COMPARISON WITH APOSTOLIC TEACHING
Secondly, we need to consider the place
of apostolic teaching in the early church.
No one should be in any doubt that only
a small part of what the apostles taught has been included in the Bible. Of
course, God will have made sure that all the most important apostolic teaching
was included. But there was much more, somewhat less valuable, teaching of
theirs that the Lord decided not to include.
Why would we imagine that things are
any different as regards prophecy? It makes perfect sense to think that out of
a great many prophecies in the early church, God chose the most important ones
and made them Scripture. It is undeniable that He did this with apostolic
teaching, so why would we think that things are any different with regard to
prophecy?
1 CORINTHIANS 14:26-31
Thirdly, we need to take account of
what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians
14:26-31, where he
writes to the church in Corinth:
“26 What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. . . . 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. 30 If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged . . .”
(Scripture readings in this article are
from the English Standard Version.)
As we will see, this passage quite
strongly suggests that there would have been far too many genuine prophecies in
the first decades of the church, for them all to have got into the New
Testament.
A specific question
In order to focus our discussion of
this passage, let’s ask, and then use the passage to try to answer, a very
specific question:
Of all the genuine, God-given
prophecies in the first 30 years after the day of Pentecost referred to in Acts
2:1-41, what proportion became part of Scripture?
We could have chosen a different
time-frame for the question we are asking. If we were to choose a period that
was longer or shorter than 30 years, the overall conclusion below would not be
any different. But to make the question a very precise and concrete one, let’s
stick to thinking about the first 30 years after Pentecost.
The most common scholarly viewpoint on
the year of the crucifixion, resurrection and giving of the Spirit at Pentecost
is 30 AD, and there is no doubt that these events took place within a few years
of 30 AD.
Because precision in timing is not important
for our purposes, let’s just assume that the Spirit was given, and Christian
prophecy began, in 30 AD.
So, as we consider 1 Cor. 14:26-31, the
question we are asking is what proportion of genuine prophecies between 30-60
AD became part of the Bible.
The date this passage was written
Next, I need to say a word about when this
passage was written.
The scholarly consensus is that Paul
wrote 1 Corinthians within a couple of years of 55 AD. And it was certainly
written within our time window of 30-60 AD. For the sake of argument, let’s
assume that it was written in 55 AD.
So we will assume that Paul wrote 1 Cor.
14:26-31 in 55 AD.
The frequency of main gatherings of the Corinthian church
Next, we need to note how Paul says in
v. 26, “When you come together.” He seems clearly to be referring to the typical
main gatherings of the Corinthian church.
Importantly, it is extremely unlikely
that this church would have met less than once a week. Nothing in the NT leads
us to believe that any Christian church in the first century met less often
than this except perhaps in unusual circumstances. And there is no reason to
think that the Corinthians would have been any different in this respect.
So it makes sense to think that the sort
of situation Paul envisages in 14:26-31 would have occurred at least once a
week.
The number of prophecies per main gathering
Next, we must note that in v. 29 Paul seems
to envisage two or three prophets prophesying at a typical main gathering.
Or, in view of “you can all prophesy
one by one” in v. 31, Paul may mean that two or three prophets should prophesy
before the others weigh the prophecies (v. 29), and then another two or three
should prophesy, and so on. In this case, there would have been many more than
two or three prophecies per typical main gathering.
The number of prophecies among the Corinthians in main
gatherings in 55 AD
So, taking into account the above
points, how many genuine prophecies do we think there might have been in the main
gatherings of the Corinthian church in the year Paul wrote this letter, i.e.,
55 AD?
There are admittedly some big
uncertainties here. We aren’t sure how often the church gathered together. We
don’t know how many prophecies were spoken out at a typical gathering. And we
don’t know how many of the prophecies that were
spoken out would have been genuine, although Paul certainly seems to imply that
many of them would have been.
Fortunately, for our purposes we don’t
need to be at all precise. We just need to give a very approximate figure that
can allow for a lot of doubt.
If we were to say that there were two
genuine prophecies per week, and one main gathering per week, that would work
out at about 100 in the year. I suspect that the real number was probably
higher than that. But let’s stick with a conservative ballpark figure of 100
genuine prophecies at main gatherings of the Corinthian church in 55 AD.
Other prophecies among the Corinthians in 55 AD
We also need to bear in mind that at
Corinth there were probably numerous prophecies that God gave to individuals or
smaller groups of Christians, other than at the main gatherings. To suppose
that He would have chosen to use this gift only at the main gatherings of the
church is completely unwarranted.
As another conservative guess, let’s
say there were 50 genuine prophecies in 55 AD in Corinth, outside the main
gatherings of the church.
Total prophecies in Corinth in 55 AD
So our guess for the total number of
genuine prophecies in the Corinthian church in 55 AD is 150. And I suspect this
is on the low side. The impression that Paul gives in this passage is that God
was doing a lot of speaking to the Corinthians through the gift of prophecy at
this time.
I need to stress that this number of
150 doesn’t need to be at all accurate. The key point I am trying to make is
that, from what Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:26-31, it is likely that the number of
prophecies in Corinth in 55 AD would have been as high as three figures, and
that it is very unlikely that it would have been in the low two figures.
In view of what Paul says in this
passage, it would be very strange if there were only, say, 10 or 20 genuine
prophecies in the Corinthian church that year. That seems much too low.
The number of prophecies in the whole Christian church in 55
AD
Next, let’s consider how many genuine
prophecies there would have been in the whole Christian church in 55 AD.
To do this, we need to estimate what
percentage of all Christians that existed at that time were in the church in
Corinth.
I admit that there are huge
uncertainties here. And I don’t intend to try to research this. But, given all
the areas in the Middle East and Europe that we know there were churches at
this time, and inferences that we can make about parts of Africa and Asia, I think
the Corinthians would probably have comprised less than 1 per cent of the
entire church. I will make a very rough guess that 0.5 per cent of all Christians
were in the church in Corinth.
Again, I need to stress that my guess
doesn’t have to be at all accurate. But let’s say that this was the correct
figure.
So, if there were 150 prophecies in
Corinth in 55 AD, and if other churches were prophesying at the same rate, that
would make a total of 30,000 prophecies this year.
It is true that there may be a
suggestion in 1 Corinthians that gifts of the Spirit such as prophecy were
unusually common in the church in Corinth. Nevertheless, this is far from sure.
And there is no reason to think that things were very different in any other churches at that time. Various passages
outside 1 Corinthians make it clear that prophecy was widely practised in the
early decades of the church (Acts 2:16-18; 11:27-28; 13:1-2; 15:32; 19:6; 21:9;
21:10-11; Eph. 2:20; 4:11). And Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians itself
suggests that the same sort of spiritual gifts were used in churches generally
(1 Cor. 12:4-31).
Anyway, let’s be conservative and say
that in 55 AD there were 10,000 genuine prophecies in the whole church. Again,
I suspect that the real number would have been higher.
The number of prophecies in the whole Christian church
between 30-60 AD
Now let’s move on to consider the whole
church between 30-60 AD. How many genuine prophecies would there have been during
this time?
The first point to make here is that
there is no reason for thinking that God was any more willing to give the gift
of prophecy in 55 AD than He was in any of the other years between 30-60 AD.
On the other hand, the church was obviously
growing in size in this period, so in 55 AD it would have been well above the
average size for 30-60 AD. And it seems likely that the more Christians there
were overall, the more prophecy there would have been. So we can’t just
multiply our 10,000 by 30.
Again, I admit that I am guessing here,
but again too we don’t need to be at all accurate. I think a conservative
figure for the average yearly number of prophecies in the whole church between
30-60 AD might be 2,500. I have to say that I would be surprised if it was as
low as this. But let’s stay conservative and stick with this figure.
This would mean that there were 75,000
genuine, God-given prophecies between 30-60 AD. And personally, I would be
surprised if it was as few as this.
Extremely implausible that all prophecies became part of the
Bible
Clearly, this conclusion is an enormous
problem for those who say that all genuine prophecies have become part of the Bible.
Even if we allow – as we should do –
for a lot of repetition in the prophecies God gave, it is extremely implausible
that all the prophecies between 30-60 AD are explicitly or implicitly in the NT
somewhere. The vast majority of the NT is clearly not prophecy. It includes
much teaching about Jesus’ life, the history of the early church, reasoned theological
arguments and the apocalyptic book of Revelation. It is true that Revelation is
described as a prophecy (Rev. 1:3; 22:7, 10, 18-19), but it is just one
prophecy.
I do think that more than a few
prophecies given to Christian prophets have strongly influenced the NT, and I
think these may well number in the hundreds rather than in the tens. Furthermore,
some specific Christian prophecies are explicitly referred to (Acts 11:27-28;
13:1-2; 21:10-11). But surely the vast majority of prophecies between 30-60 AD
have not become part of Scripture. And then there are the decades immediately
following 60 AD as well, in which all Bible-believing Christians agree that the
gift of prophecy continued to be used at least to some extent.
Even if someone were to disagree with
my figure of 75,000 and believes that it should be a lot lower, the revised figure,
plus prophecies after 60 AD, would still surely be high enough to rule out the
idea that all prophecies made it into the NT.
Summing up, then, it is very difficult
to take what Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:26-31 seriously and also conclude that every
prophecy is by definition something designed to be included in the Bible. To do
this, we would have to assume that the situation Paul describes in this passage
was very different from the normal state of affairs in the early decades of the
church. But nothing in 1 Corinthians, or in any other part of the NT, suggests that
this was the case.
ACTS 13:1-2
Finally,
let’s consider this issue from another
angle.
In Acts 13:1-2 Luke tells us about
something that happened in the church in Syrian Antioch:
“1 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’”
We are told here how the Holy Spirit
gave this church a prophecy, singling out Barnabas and Paul for the mission
that is commonly known as Paul’s first missionary journey.
Here is my question to those who say
that all prophecies were designed to become part of the NT:
The Bible clearly contains few, if any,
other Christian prophecies that are similar to this one. So if every prophecy becomes
part of the Bible, this must mean that God gave no, or almost no, other
prophecies of this sort in the early decades of the church. But why do you
think He would have chosen to not to give prophecies like this?
There seems to be no reason whatsoever
why we should think that He didn’t give many prophecies of this sort. In fact, I
suspect that in the first few decades after Pentecost, God gave the early
church hundreds or thousands of prophecies like this, where He directed
specific believers to do certain tasks. We can very easily imagine that He
would have wanted to do this. And there is absolutely no good reason for
thinking that He wouldn’t have wanted to.
If God did give many prophecies of this
sort, as I am sure He did, then clearly it was never His plan for all
prophecies to become part of the Bible.
CONCLUSION
We have seen, then, that the idea that
every genuine prophecy was designed to become part of the Bible has no real
foundations.
First, no passage in Scripture leads us
to think that this was the case.
Second, as regards what is contained in
the New Testament, there is no good reason for thinking that prophecy in the
early church was any different from apostolic teaching. We know that most
apostolic teaching is not recorded in the NT, so it is very natural to think
that the same is true of prophecy.
Third, what Paul says in 1 Cor.
14:26-31 strongly suggests that there were far too many prophecies in the early
church for them all to have become part of the NT.
Fourth, it seems very reasonable to
think that in the early church the Lord gave many prophecies similar to the one
recorded in Acts 13:1-2.
The idea that every genuine Christian
prophecy was designed to become part of the Bible is therefore one that should
be abandoned.
This idea just seems to be an
assumption that has come out of nowhere.
The upshot of this conclusion is that
it is a big mistake to appeal to the supposed scriptural nature of all prophecy
as a reason why God doesn’t give this gift today.
I noted above that it is very
reasonable to think that in the early church God gave many prophecies similar
to the one recorded in Acts 13:1-2, where He singles out Barnabas and Paul for
a task. It is just as reasonable to think that He often wants to do the same
today. And I am sure that He often does give prophecies like this, that refer
to specific tasks for individual Christians and individual churches. Prophecies
of this sort in no way threaten the supremacy of the Bible, and we should all
be seeking this gift from the Lord.
See also my longer article on the gift
of prophecy:
And see also:
