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How to Judge Prophetic Messages
Based on what I wrote in the previous chapter, please allow me to share three common mistakes that I have seen people make in the relationship between prophecy and the Scriptures. First, a few allow prophecy to contradict the Scriptures. This is an obvious error that most Bible believing Christians avoid.
Second, some allow it to add doctrines to the Scriptures. They have private “revelations” about who God is and what He requires from us that go beyond what is written. As I argued in the previous chapter, although these “revelations” might not appear to contradict the Bible, when we look closely at Jude 3, we see that they do.
A third problem is far more subtle. It is that we sometimes use prophecy and other expressions of the subjective voice of God to interpret the Scriptures. We say, “The Holy Spirit told me that this verse means ….” This short-circuits the process of studying God’s word and replaces it with “prophetic interpretation.”
I have to be careful here, because I believe the Holy Spirit can tell us what a verse means. The only way to be sure that we have heard correctly, however, is to search to find out what the text actually says. If our subjective sense doesn’t match the objective message, we should base our understanding of the verse on the objective message.
Here is the danger: if we allow our subjective sense to interpret God’s objective message, our subjective sense can take the place of the written word in our hearts. Rather than basing truth on what can be tested by all, we rely on something that we believe the Holy Spirit has spoken to us. This puts a layer of spiritual experience between us and the standard by which we should judge our spiritual experiences. The Bible can no longer speak directly to us. It gets reinterpreted by an inner voice, which may or may not be the Holy Spirit.
When the original writers of the Bible wrote, they communicated a message with words. The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints is found in the meaning of those words, not in a different message that drops into our heart as we read them. We have to base our doctrine, reproof, and correction on what the original writer intended to say, not on a flash of spiritual insight which gets placed on top of their writings.
That doesn’t mean that we can understand the Bible without the help of the Holy Spirit, however.
These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The writers of the Bible wrote about a supernatural reality that must be spiritually discerned. It can’t be perceived unless the Holy Spirit helps us to see it, and we can’t live it unless He empowers us to do so. Being led by the Spirit is a lifestyle of relationship with the Living God, not a theory. Until we walk in the reality of the passages we read, we have a shallow understanding of their meaning. The Christian life is more than an intellectual subject.
What we spiritually discern, however, should match what is said in the actual words of the Bible. Paul calls his message “words …which the Holy Spirit teaches.” His writings accurately describe the supernatural reality we should experience. Spiritual discernment isn’t a shortcut around understanding the language and context of the passages. It is instead the ability to accurately discover and experience what the language and context describe. As 1 Corinthians 12:3 says, we compare spiritual things with spiritual (spiritual words with spiritual experience) to walk in reality.
If we don’t judge “prophetic interpretation” by the text of the Bible, we can be blinded by our impressions. Here is an example: While reading through Romans 7 as a young man, I mistakenly felt that I might have received the “revelation” that because those who are led by the Spirit aren’t under law (Romans 7:6), we shouldn’t try to follow the Bible’s written commandments. I reasoned that written rules stir up sin within us (Romans 7:9), so they are dangerous. Instead of giving attention to them, we should listen directly to what the Holy Spirit says to us subjectively.
Fortunately, I realized that this “prophetic interpretation” didn’t match the words of Jesus.
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. …
Because my mistaken “revelation” didn’t fit well with having and keeping Jesus’ commandments, I dug deeper. I eventually realized that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through God’s commandments. Being led by the Spirit includes learning and obeying them. In fact, if we don’t learn and obey them, it is a sure sign that we aren’t being led by the Spirit.
When Romans says that we aren’t under law, it doesn’t mean that laws are bad for us. It means that we are accepted by God’s grace rather than by earning our way to Him through obedience to laws. It also means that we don’t have to keep God’s laws through our abilities alone. The Holy Spirit gives us the insight and power to do what they require.
In spite of the warnings I have just written, as I was forming my theology of the subjective voice of God, I was conflicted about “prophetic interpretation.” On the one hand, I felt it was a mistake to expect the Holy Spirit to directly drop the meaning of the Bible into our spirits without studying. On the other hand, I couldn’t deny that there had been times when I believed the Holy Spirit had dropped important insights into my spirit as I read the Bible, and sometimes those insights only resembled the words I was reading.
For example, He might help me to see an allegory for my life in a Bible story. Or He might say something to me about my specific calling in life. Since the Bible doesn’t directly tell me what my calling is, anything God says to me about it from the Scriptures has to be subjective. Yet I believed the Holy Spirit had spoken to me, and His message edified, exhorted, comforted, brought conviction, gave information, or provided direction.
I wanted to bring together these sorts of prophetic experiences with my desire for biblical accuracy, so I considered how we could benefit from them without having them undermine our quest for objective truth.
I first recognized that God can bring a prophetic message through words that don’t match the original speaker’s intent. For example:
“… If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”
And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” Now this he did not say on his own authority; but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.
The intent of Caiaphas’ statement that one man should die for the people was that Jesus should die so that the Romans wouldn’t destroy Israel. The context makes this clear. Yet John saw by prophetic interpretation that those words had another meaning. God was saying that Jesus would die to take away the sins of those who believe, both in Israel and the entire world.
If God could inspire a double meaning in the words of Caiaphas, a man who was plotting to kill His Son, can’t He assign double meanings to other words as well? Can’t he take a Scripture that says one thing and use it to speak to us about something else?
For example, consider a man who is deciding whether he should quit his job and go into full time ministry. While reading the story of Peter walking on the water (Matthew 7:29), he hears the Holy Spirit say to him, “I am calling you to step out on the water in faith and trust me as I lead you into full time ministry.” We know that Matthew’s original intent wasn’t to say that a man who lived two thousand years after him should go into full time ministry, but is there any doubt that God could use this verse to prophetically speak such a message?
“Wait!” some might argue, “if we allow for this, we will lose track of the original meaning of the text! People will be able to read all sorts of crazy meanings into the Bible!” My response is that though this is a danger, it isn’t a necessary consequence. God’s people are capable of both interpreting the original intent of the writer and of hearing a different prophetic message.
Wasn’t that what John was doing? He understood what Caiaphas meant to say, but he at the same time heard the Holy Spirit speak a different message through the same words.
Unlike John, our prophetic impressions won’t be included in the Scriptures, so we won’t be able to say with one hundred percent certainty whether they are from God. But that doesn’t make them worthless; it just makes them “not-Scripture.” They can still edify, exhort, comfort, convict, give information, or provide direction. If they help us to walk with Jesus, they are valuable in spite of not being authoritative.
Consider Paul’s use of the story of Hagar and Sarah.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar – for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children – but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.
If we look at the original intent of Moses’ words in Genesis (where we find the story of the freewoman Sarah and the bondwoman Hagar), I don’t believe we can honestly conclude that Moses thought he was writing about Mount Sinai which corresponds to physical Jerusalem and about the Jerusalem above.
If not, then how could Paul have found this allegorical meaning in the story? Was he doing a poor job of interpreting the Scriptures?
Paul never claimed that everything he taught was found in the Old Testament. In fact, he made it clear that many of his teachings were revealed directly to him by Jesus.
But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I believe that Paul’s insight into Hagar and Sarah was a prophetic revelation. The Holy Spirit had shown it to him, and since it has been included in the Bible, we know that the truth it presents is accurate, even if Moses didn’t intend to say it.
Can God give us prophetic allegories like this today? Can He take the story of Peter walking on the water and tell us that we should allegorically do the same in some area of our life? Can He take any story from the Scriptures and use it to speak to our specific situation? I believe He can.
We should never base doctrine on such allegories, because that would be adding to the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. We aren’t like Paul, who was sharing his revelations with scriptural authority, but our prophetic messages can still edify, exhort, comfort, convict, give information, or provide direction. As long as we don’t confuse them with the objective word of God, the Holy Spirit can use them to help us walk with Him.
As I considered the thoughts I have just shared, I came to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit can take any statement or story and use it to speak to us. He can do this not only with parts of the Bible, but also with a TV show, a newspaper article, or Uncle Joe’s discussion of bowling at the breakfast table.
The danger isn’t in believing God can speak in this way; it is with confusing this with interpreting the time-tested words of the Bible. We don’t want to mix up our subjective impressions with objective truth. If, however, we judge our subjective impressions by objective truth, they can become a valuable part of our walk with Jesus.
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