Prophets in the Old Covenant
As I expect you to know, in the Old Testament, the Lord led His people (spiritually) through two kinds of people, the priest and the prophet. The priest was responsible for standing before the Lord on behalf of the people, while the prophet stood before the people on behalf of the Lord. The Priest also read the Law to the people, and taught it to them. When the people failed to listen to the priest and his law (as they obviously did), the Lord then raised up a prophet; who urgently came with a direct message of warning from God – through a dream or vision, save for Moses who spoke with the Lord face to face (Num 12:6-8). These prophets could also accurately predict what the Lord would do in the future, particularly the coming of the Messiah, whose ministry would be to ultimately fulfill the ministries of both the prophet and the priest. Hence God now directly speaks by His Son (Heb 1:1-2) and Christ is the Great High Priest who goes in the holy presence for us (Heb 4:12-16). This means we do not have any prophet nowadays in the similitude of the Old Testament prophet. Anyone who claims such is ignorant of who Christ is, worse, they are deceiving people.
The New Testament Prophet
After the Messiah ascended back to heaven, He gave gifts to the Church, including prophets, whose job was to edify the Church through words of wisdom, particularly by explaining the significance of Christ Himself as written in His word. Therefore, unlike the Old Testament prophets who pointed forward to the coming Messiah, the New Testament Prophet’s duty is to point the people backward, to that which the Messiah has done on the Cross.
John the middle prophet
There is only one unique prophet in the Bible whose ministry was to represent both the Old Testament and the New Testament prophets, John the Baptist. There is a reason why our Lord said the prophets prophesied until John (Mat 11:13), that is, all those old prophets whose ministry was to anticipate the Messiah, came to their final with the one who prepared the way of the Lord. On the flip side, we see John as the first of the New Covenant prophets, whose mission is to point the crowd to “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Therefore, he had no shame to declare himself as “just a friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29).” In that vein; any true prophet, on this side of the Cross, must stand on the shoulders of John and declare “I am not the Light, but I am just a witness to the Light”, that is to point people back to that which Christ has done, and who He is in our lives.
Prophesying?
According to Numbers 11:26-29, Eldad and Medad were found to be “prophesying” among the people in the camp. This was a common occurrence in the Old Testament, when the Spirit of the Lord randomly enabled individuals, who were not designated prophets, to speak out words of God or to prophesy. It is not really clear what kind of messages came out from these individuals, the closest speculation would be that they were used to speak out words of praise in a supernatural way. Therefore, we learn that the word prophecy has two meanings; to foretell and to forth tell, that is, to predict the future and to speak out words of the Lord. Hence we have the words, “I wish that all God’s people were prophets (Num 11:29).” The New Testament simply explains this as “the testimony of the Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). Meaning that all born-again individuals are prophets in the sense that they can speak out words from the Lord through the message of the Gospel, which is a testimony of what Christ has done.
The impression of the heart
Again to explain, prophecy is a direct, clear and authoritative word from the Lord. This is where we get the bold statement “thus says the Lord.” Prophecy in Scripture, was never wrong, because it was the direct word of the Lord, who never lies. Only in the world of false prophets were there presumptuous prophetic utterances. On the other hand, we have in Scripture God impressing ideas and thoughts in the hearts of the people. For example,
Then my God put it into my heart to gather the nobles, the rulers, and the people, that they might be registered by genealogy… - Nehemiah 7:5
This, therefore, is where we get the humble utterance “I believe in my heart that the Lord is saying…” This proves that such an individual may not be sure if it was indeed God who spoke or just an imagination of the human mind. I fear, therefore, that many people have come to confuse heart impressions with prophecy. When these “heart impression prophecies” turn out to be false, as they usually do in the Church today, God’s name is blasphemed for supposedly speaking something that never came to pass. Furthermore, many are they who have been directed to make costly life decisions that were taken as a “message from the Lord” when in fact, it was nothing more than speculative thoughts. That is dangerous to the innocent souls and a serious threat to the Gospel’s integrity.
To conclude I say; Prophecy is and has always been a true, authoritative and serious message directly from the Lord Himself. Its purpose was never to advance personal egos but serious matters of the Kingdom of God and the person of Christ, who is the ultimate prophet for our redemption. But what about the prophets of today compared to the prophets in the Bible? Is it still the same thing or there is a difference somewhere? Save that for next time. Grace and peace.
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